Kevin Warsh delivers his first Jackson Hole keynote at 10:00 ET, and the setup is unusually loaded. He became the Fed's 17th chair on 22 May and has spent every month since deliberately saying less — shortened post-meeting statements, no forward guidance, two press conferences that told markets almost nothing. This year's symposium theme, "Financial Innovation: Implications for Payments and Policy," gives him plenty of room to stay high-altitude.

The bond market is not in an abstract mood. The 30-year closed at 5.31% on 17 August, its highest print since 2007, and sat near 5.18% Thursday against a 10-year around 4.66%. Core PCE ran 3.3% in July. Treasury has already intervened twice — propping the yen through a Fed facility, then committing to at least double its $2bn weekly buyback pace from 9 September. Three regional presidents dissented in favour of hikes at the July FOMC.

CNBC's Fed survey found 45% of economists expect no guidance whatsoever, roughly a third expect hawkish. Bank of America warns the dollar is exposed to an extended sell-off if he disappoints. For crypto the asymmetry is clean: an absent reaction function reads dovish, and dovish is what has been funding the August bid.

Spot bitcoin ETFs have now taken in roughly $2.8bn across eight consecutive sessions, the longest run since April. August flows have cleared $3bn, making it the strongest month of 2026 and about double what April managed. Net assets closed Tuesday just above $99bn against roughly $77bn in mid-August — though the bulk of that $22bn gain is mark-to-market, not new money.

Look at the daily cadence and the picture softens. Inflows peaked at $606.3m on 20 August and have not topped $340m since, with Wednesday's $232.2m the smallest of the streak. New capital is still arriving; the marginal buyer is getting weaker. Bitcoin is simultaneously grinding against its largest on-chain supply cluster at $80,000, which happens to sit near both the 50-week moving average and the average cost basis of ETF holders.

The dispersion since launch remains brutal: $54.7bn cumulative net inflow across the category, with IBIT at +$63.1bn and GBTC at −$27.6bn. Ether products are matching bitcoin day for day, past $1bn on their own streak. Futures open interest is flat near 700K BTC, so this is a spot-led advance — slower, but with far less liquidation fuel underneath it.

ENA jumped 23% Thursday to $0.17, taking its gain to roughly 100% in a little over a week, after the Ethena Foundation published a full overhaul of the token's economics. The plan attacks the two things that have suppressed ENA since launch: relentless supply from early-investor unlocks, and genuine ambiguity about whether protocol value accrued to tokenholders or to Ethena Labs equity.

The supply side gets addressed directly. The foundation bought the remaining locked tokens from large seed investors who had been selling for nine months, and will accelerate what is left of the original investor schedule, ending monthly VC releases entirely. Team tokens keep their existing vesting. On the demand side, holders are voting on a fee switch that would send 95% of net revenue from Ethena-branded businesses into programmatic ENA buybacks once USDe circulation crosses $7.5bn, with 5% funding growth.

That threshold is the catch. USDe supply has collapsed below $5bn from a peak near $15bn last October, as funding rates compressed alongside the broader market. Hence the pivot — a $1bn FalconX facility routing USDe backing into overcollateralised institutional loans, Janus Henderson's June investment, a Coinbase savings product. The buyback is real. Reaching the trigger is the harder problem.

HM Treasury confirmed on 27 August that it will give the Bank of England a secondary statutory objective to support innovation in payment systems and digital money, including stablecoins. Financial stability stays the primary duty, so nothing is overridden — but the Bank will have to report to Parliament annually on what it has actually done to advance innovation. The change arrives as an amendment to the Financial Services and Markets Bill, next debated in the Lords on 7 and 9 September.

This is the culmination of sustained industry pressure on a central bank widely accused of excessive caution. That pressure has already produced concessions. When the Bank published its sterling stablecoin rules in June, it scrapped planned per-holder caps in favour of a temporary £40bn ($54bn) issuance limit per systemic token, and trimmed the share of backing assets that issuers must park in zero-interest deposits at Threadneedle Street.

The practical test comes next. The Bank intends to finalise its systemic stablecoin Code of Practice by end-2026, with the regime live from 2027 — and that drafting is where the innovation objective either bites or doesn't. Britain is closing the gap with the GENIUS Act and MiCA from behind: sterling stablecoins currently hold close to zero share of a $308bn global market.

Park Hyeon-joo, founder and chairman of Mirae Asset Financial Group, told employees at a Seoul event Wednesday that the group intends to build a 150 trillion won ($109bn) digital asset business around Digital X, the exchange it acquired in July when it was still called Korbit. The target for profitability is 2027. The stated leverage is the group's 1,500 trillion won (~$1.09tn) in client assets.

Digital X is being pointed at four verticals: crypto, stablecoins, real-world assets and security token offerings, with explicit plans to tokenise gold, silver and electricity alongside an "on-chain finance" ecosystem bridging traditional and digital rails. Mirae is weighing an additional 200–300bn won ($218m) third-party allotment in Q1 2027, contingent on how earnings develop.

Worth keeping the base rate in view. Mirae Asset Consulting took 97.15% of Korbit for roughly 141.4bn won — around $100m — and Korea's Fair Trade Commission waved the deal through in July partly because Korbit held about 0.5% of domestic trading volume. So this is a $100m asset with a $109bn ambition attached, in a market with 11.3m verified users and stablecoin, exchange and crypto-ETF rules still being drafted. The strategic logic is sound. The execution gap is enormous.

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.