Zelensky awarded Elon Musk the Medal of Freedom, Ukraine seeks to expand Starlink usage rights

Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas stated that the combined inflow of gold ETFs and Bitcoin ETFs exceeded $7 billion in the past week, setting a record for the highest inflow in a 5-day trading cycle in history. SPDR Gold Shares (GLD) and iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) have entered the top ten ETF fund inflows in the past week, with market focus shifting towards currency depreciation trading. Since the beginning of this year, the cumulative inflow of funds into IBIT has turned positive, filling the gap of previous fund outflows.

On August 18th, the US SEC announced proposed rules for Regulation Crypto Assets, allowing startups to raise up to $5 million within 4 years, or eligible issuers to raise up to $75 million within 12 months. Winston&Strawn partner Drew Hinkes stated that the project could theoretically raise $75 million every 12 months. Lilya Tessler, the head of Sidley's fintech and blockchain business, pointed out that subsequent financing needs to resubmit the prospectus and undergo SEC review. Duke University financial regulatory expert Lee Reiners believes that this rule is unlikely to replicate the ICO boom of 2017. The SEC expects about 130 issuances per year to use the aforementioned exemptions, and approximately 475 issuers may use the investment contract safe harbor. The proposal stipulates that investment contracts related to encrypted assets may be transferred with tokens in secondary market transactions.

US President Trump is attempting to influence monetary policy by replacing Federal Reserve officials, and there are four windows in the future that will affect the Federal Reserve's personnel layout: the dismissal of Cook, the end of former Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell's term, Jefferson's departure, and the appointment of candidates for the Atlanta Fed presidency.

[Solana Advances Two Governance Proposals to Adjust Inflation Rate and Burn Mechanism] According to a report by 21Shares, Solana is advancing two governance proposals, SIMD-550 and SIMD-553. SIMD-550 proposes increasing Solana's annual inflation decay rate from 15% to 30%, with nominal staking yields expected to drop to approximately 2.25% within three years. SIMD-553, approved and merged on July 20, will introduce burn fees for compute unit requests, increasing the daily SOL burn amount from approximately 600–800 tokens to around 7,500–9,000 tokens.

According to BIT market data, the US stock market opened on Wednesday, with WDC up 3.16%, STX up 2.35%, SKHY up 0.51%, and MU up 0.33% in the storage sector. Among the optical communication stocks, CIEN rose 2.45%, LITE rose 1.02%, ALAB rose 0.71%, NOK fell 1.59%, and MRVL fell 1.29%. Among semiconductor stocks, MRVL fell 1.29%, AMAT fell 1.16%, KLAC fell 1.06%, NVDA fell 0.92%, and AMD rose 0.93%. GLXY fell 3.93%, IREN fell 3.13%, CIFR fell 2.76%, and APLD fell 2.63% in the Neocloud sector.