Nvidia reported fiscal Q2 2027 after Wednesday's close, and the numbers were absurd by any normal standard: revenue of $96.2 billion, up 106% year over year, against roughly $92.1 billion consensus. Adjusted EPS came in at $2.22 versus about $2.09 expected. Data Center did $89 billion, up 117%, or roughly 92% of total sales. Gross margin held at 75%.

The guide was bigger news than the print. Management pointed to $108 billion for Q3, some $3–4 billion above consensus, and did so assuming zero Data Center compute revenue from China. Sales to non-hyperscale buyers — AI clouds, enterprise, industrial — grew 138% to $40.3 billion, which is the diversification story bulls have wanted for two years. Vera Rubin is in full production, with racks live at CoreWeave, Google Cloud, Azure, Oracle Cloud and Nebius.

So why did the stock initially slip after closing the session down 1.59% at $209.66? Gross margin guidance for Q3 was trimmed to 74%. Shares later recovered into the $217–218 range on the call, after CFO Colette Kress took the unusual step of framing fiscal 2028 growth. Read the tape correctly: the bar is no longer revenue. It is margin trajectory and the financing structure behind the buildout, with free cash flow at $21.3 billion.

The Kansas City Fed's symposium runs August 27–29 under the theme "Financial Innovation: Implications for Payments and Policy," with Kevin Warsh delivering his first keynote as Chair on Friday. He took office on May 22, so this is the market's first extended look at how he thinks, not just how he votes.

The setup is unusually tense. At the July 29 meeting the Fed held at 3.50%–3.75% while three regional presidents dissented in favor of a hike — the first three-way hawkish dissent since 2016. Inflation is running at 3.4% against a 2% target, unemployment is near 4.3%, and long-end yields have been climbing. CNBC's Jackson Hole survey of 31 economists and strategists found 53% expecting hikes over the next year, 30% expecting cuts and 16% expecting nothing. Eighty percent want Warsh to say more about how he reads the economy; they split evenly on whether he should touch the rate path at all.

Three tells to watch. Whether he addresses the long end at all, or treats it as Treasury's problem. Whether inflation or the softening labor market gets more airtime. And whether he characterizes the September 16 meeting, currently priced near one-in-three for a hike. Crypto is a rates asset now; this speech matters more to BTC than most on-chain metrics do.

On August 25 the SEC submitted a proposal titled "Amendments to the Custody Rules" to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, the OMB unit that vets federal rules before publication. The stated purpose is to clarify the framework for custody of crypto assets by investment advisers and investment companies, and to strip out provisions the agency now considers outdated.

This is procedurally boring and strategically significant. The current custody regime was built for securities held at qualified custodians, and applying it to assets whose core functionality involves staking, governance or on-chain settlement has forced advisers into compliance postures that satisfy nobody. Chair Paul Atkins has spent the past year reworking the agency's digital-asset approach, and this is the piece that determines whether large RIAs can hold crypto directly rather than only through wrapped products.

The text is not public yet, and that matters. OMB can send it back with changes; the Commission then votes on whether to release it for a comment period of at least 60 days. Nothing binds until final adoption. Note the timing: the CLARITY market-structure bill remains stalled in the Senate, with a cloture vote expected after the recess. Regulators are not waiting for Congress, and rulemaking that survives an administration is worth more than legislation that never gets a floor vote.

Better Home & Finance and Coinbase moved their token-backed mortgage into general availability on Wednesday, turning a March pilot into a nationwide product. The structure pairs a standard Fannie Mae-backed conforming mortgage with a separate down-payment loan secured by pledged Bitcoin. Borrowers keep exposure to the asset instead of selling it and realizing a taxable gain.

The mechanics are conservative, which is the point. Pledged BTC must equal at least 250% of the down-payment loan, and the collateral moves into Better's custodial account on Coinbase Prime. Ordinary price swings do not trigger margin calls; liquidation risk attaches to 60-day payment delinquency, the same trigger as any conforming loan. Coinbase One members get a lender-funded credit worth 1% of the mortgage, capped at $10,000. The first loan under the program closed in June with a Michigan couple.

Crypto-backed housing finance is not new — Ledn floated the idea in 2021, Milo has since crossed $100 million in digital-asset mortgages — but it has always sat outside the agency framework. That is what changed. Once collateral posted at an exchange can support a Fannie-conforming loan, Bitcoin stops being an asset you sell to buy a house and starts being an asset you borrow against, which is exactly how households treat equities and home equity.

Nikkei reports that Japan's Financial Services Agency, Ministry of Finance and Bank of Japan are forming a study group with the country's largest banks to build blockchain settlement rails for equities and Japanese government bonds. A development plan is targeted for early 2027, with live operation somewhere in the early 2030s.

The design is the interesting part. Rather than issuing a retail digital yen, the plan converts a portion of commercial banks' current accounts at the BOJ into tokens — a wholesale CBDC used only between financial institutions — so that delivery and payment can settle atomically, in real time, around the clock. Japanese equities currently settle T+2 and JGBs T+1, and every hour in that window is counterparty risk sitting on somebody's balance sheet.

The motivation is competitive rather than ideological. Officials are openly worried that if the US and Europe get to tokenized securities infrastructure first, foreign capital routes around Tokyo. That anxiety is showing up across policy: July's amendments to the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act reclassify roughly 105 crypto assets as financial instruments from fiscal 2027 and set up separate taxation near 20%, down from rates reaching 55%. Infrastructure, tax and regulation are moving as one program.

DISCLAIMER: None of this is financial advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. Please be careful and do your own research.