The Weekly Wrap: No CPI Surprise, Trezor Data Breach & Seller Exhaustion is Building, But Buyer Conviction Remains Absent

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This Week’s Top Stories

“No surprise in this week’s US CPI data, but energy prices remain elevated.”, Wednesday, 12 August 2026 

• The US Consumer Price Index increased by 0.1% in July, in line with expectations, while Core CPI also did not bring any surprises, rising by 0.2% in July.
• The July inflation data came in relatively mild again, following a negative 0.4% reading in June, especially if you think back to May, when inflation saw a 4.2% annual increase, the fastest pace in over three years, as the closure of the Strait of Hormuz sent oil prices higher.
• The Polymarket odds for a Fed rate hike in September dropped from above 40% before the inflation data to 28%, while Fed funds futures are currently pricing in a hike at 32.9%.

“Bitcoin hardware wallet provider Trezor announces data breach in shipping provider incident.”, Thursday, 13 August 2026 

• Trezor communicated a new data breach involving its shipping provider that exposed sensitive customer order data, including full names, shipping addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses.
• Trezor devices are secure, but affected customers could experience an increase in phishing attempts.
• This data breach could potentially affect new customers who received an order in the following countries: the US, the UK, Sweden, Colombia, Brazil, Italy, and Portugal, between 10 May and 8 August 2026.
• Hardware wallets are not getting a break, with another wave of bad news just weeks after the Coldcard incident, and investors all over the world are starting to question the whole reasoning behind self custody and the risks involved.

“The SEC poised to unveil major crypto plans as CLARITY Act stalls.”, Tuesday, 11 August 2026 

• As the US Senate did not vote on the CLARITY Act before the summer recess, the crypto bill is currently stalled and will not be voted on until September. Majority Leader Thune filed cloture on the CLARITY Act, giving the crypto market structure bill a path to the floor when lawmakers return from their August recess next month.
• The Polymarket odds for the CLARITY Act to pass in 2026 dropped to 21%, down from 74% in May.
• This week, however, news started circulating that the SEC is poised to roll out a pair of crypto initiatives. The regulator announced that it would hold an open meeting on Friday (today) to create a tailored offering regime for certain investment contracts involving crypto assets. The agency was also planning to soon unveil its innovation exemption for trading digital versions of securities. Yesterday, however, the meeting was rescheduled due to a scheduling conflict.

New S&P 500 ATH while crypto stayed quiet 

The total crypto market traded lower this week as the industry continues to struggle to keep up with US equities, which saw new all-time highs this week. The S&P 500 traded above 7’800 for the first time this week as the mild inflation data brought more positive tailwinds to the stock market than it did to the crypto market. 

As mentioned, the overall performance of crypto assets was skewed to the downside, with only a few coins managing to trade higher, as PUMP is up almost 26%, ATOM 14%, ETHFI 18%, and WLD 15%. 

ETHBTC traded higher this week as Bitcoin dominance lost some ground this week. Other than that, the markets did not bring any huge surprises, as oil trades at roughly the same price as on Monday and gold also experienced a sideways week, trading around the 4’300 to 4’400 levels.

Seller Exhaustion is Building, But Buyer Conviction Remains Absent 

While selling pressure appears to be fading, there is little evidence of aggressive dip buying at current prices, as ETF flows continue to stay rather small and overall demand has yet to increase again. The market therefore looks increasingly apathetic rather than capitulative, consistent with a late stage bear market or transition regime.

 Pump.Fun tops $10M weekly revenue 

Pump.Fun’s 30D revenue has surpassed Hyperliquid as the platform recorded its first $10M revenue week between August 3 and August 9, with revenue up 12% week over week. Over the same period, the platform bought back and burned approximately 2.15 billion PUMP worth about $5.02 million, while ecosystem trading volume reached $2.97 billion, the highest since late January. Hyperliquid and Pump.Fun remain in the top 5 of all revenue generating projects in crypto, with Tether and Circle in the first two spots, as they have been for the last couple of years. Tether and Circle continue to lead by a large margin, but Hyperliquid and Pump.Fun both generated more than $30M of revenue over the past 30 days. 

In the Ethereum world, Justin Drake posted on X that the Ethereum Foundation is abandoning the Poseidon hash function in its planned post quantum architecture. On Thursday, Justin Drake wrote that the foundation was turning to established alternatives such as SHA or BLAKE. According to him, breakthrough binary field SNARK designs proved that traditional hash functions can match Poseidon's performance, unlocking post quantum security without exotic cryptographic assumptions. 

In other news, Solana came within 86% of a full network halt this week as a routing fault took 28.83% of staked SOL delinquent, much of it amid a routing failure at infrastructure provider Teraswitch. Traffic was restored after 33 mins, with 90 affected validators losing a combined 333 SOL in rewards.

Strategy continues to sell BTC, while BitMine buys & Sharplink stakes ETH 

Strategy sold another 1’690 BTC last week and used all proceeds to repurchase STRC shares. The company additionally sold more than 6M shares of MSTR to increase its USD reserve to $4.65B. The market did not really flinch amid the news, which, in our opinion, is a very positive sign, as such a large holder continuing to sell without the market tanking is a sign of resilience and maturity. It seems like Michael Saylor’s plan played out well in the end, as they were “testing” the market with a very small sale this spring to prepare investors for potential future sales. It’s worth stating, though, that Strategy arguably misunderstood the “buy low and sell high” strategy, as they have done exactly the opposite over the past year: buying high last year and selling low at today’s prices. 

BitMine, on the other hand, increased its ETH holdings by more than 7K ETH last week, inching closer to 6M total ETH in its treasury. SharpLink is back in the news again, as they announced that they will stake $200M worth of ETH through Lido Finance, the largest liquid staking protocol on Ethereum. 

Looking at the spot ETF flows, this week is less positive than last week, when the BTC spot ETFs managed to attract more than $800M in net inflows. The BTC products are currently sitting on roughly $300M in net weekly outflows so far this week. Ethereum’s flows are roughly flat this week after a positive week last week, while Solana and Hyperliquid are not seeing any inflows or outflows at the moment.

Crypto in Fear, AAII bulls drop slightly & bears are well above historical average 

The Crypto Fear and Greed Index remains in fear (29), pretty much unchanged from last week. The CNN stock market index continues to stay at greed levels, while AAII members continue to show a very mixed stance on the market. Almost 38% of members continue to stay bearish, with 34.7% bullish and more than 27% taking a neutral position on the stock market over the coming six months. Stock indices are at all-time highs, while individual investor sentiment remains very divided. An interesting setup continues to develop, as the share of bearish members remains well above the historical average.

• Trump sued over Truth Social’s early-access feed as firm explores licensing data to prediction markets. – Link 
• Trump Media records $360.6M unrealized loss on digital assets in first half of the year. – Link 
• Riot Platforms stock jumps 25% after-hours on $9.1B AI deal reportedly with Anthropic. – Link 
• Adam Back-backed H100 more than triples bitcoin holdings to 3’506 BTC in acquisition deal. – Link

Quiet summer price action, but until when? 

This week, the rather quiet summer price action continued, and market participants are increasingly wondering how long this will last. As various indicators are yet to move into bottom territory, while some already flag that the cycle bottom could be close, it remains to be seen how the geopolitical situation in the Middle East and its impact on oil prices and therefore inflation will play out over the coming weeks and months. As summer ends, we are moving closer towards the midterms in November, an event that will very likely play its part in the overall markets, as a Democrat win could act as a potential top forming narrative for the stock market. 

Let’s enjoy the quiet times and use them to get ready for the next explosive leg, no matter the direction. 

Monday, 17 August 2026 

Japan – GDP 

China – NBS Press Conference 

China – Unemployment Rate 

Wednesday, 19 August 2026 

UK – CPI, Core CPI 

Eurozone – CPI, Core CPI 

Thursday, 20 August 2026 

USA – Initial Jobless Claims 

Friday, 21 August 2026 

Japan – CPI