United Wholesale Mortgage (UWM), the second-largest U.S.-based mortgage lender is planning to accept cryptocurrency payments this year starting with Bitcoin (BTC). UWM CEO Mat Ishbia revealed the crypto plans on Monday in a conference call regarding the firms’ Q2 results — with the firm posting a $138.7 million net profit for the quarter. "We’re excited that hopefully (this year) we can actually execute on that before anyone in the country," Ishbia said.

De Nederlandsche Bank, the central bank of the Netherlands, issued a warning to Binance Holdings Limited and its entities offering crypto services to local residents. In a Wednesday statement, De Nederlandsche Bank said the major crypto exchange was not operating in compliance with the country’s Anti-Money Laundering and Anti-Terrorist Financing Act, alleging that Binance customers were at risk of “becoming involved in money laundering or terrorist financing.” According to the central bank, Binance is illegally offering crypto services as well as custodian wallets without the required legal registration. The Dutch central bank specified that its notice was to the crypto exchange’s parent company Binance Holdings Limited as well as entities “under which Binance provides crypto services in the Netherlands.” This would seemingly apply to the global crypto exchange as well.

Zachary Kelman, general counsel of Cointelegraph, said that the political fight over the tax implications for crypto in the United States infrastructure bill is nothing new, as it’s likely about how lawmakers plan to pay for everything. In an interview with Cointelegraph's Jackson DuMont, Kelman claimed that senators pushing the crypto language in the infrastructure bill — which ultimately passed in the U.S. Senate after one senator objected to a clarifying amendment — may have been more influenced by political concerns than ones potentially affecting the crypto space. Namely, the general counsel claimed that lawmakers know that crypto firms “can't actually acquiesce” to the proposed tax reporting requirements but needed the language to essentially win over senators concerned about paying the bill. According to Kelman, Republicans and moderate Democrats may be supportive of the bill but want the language to have a provision to fund some of the roads, bridges and major infrastructure projects proposed without actually having to raise taxes.

In a newly published Medium piece titled "Good stablecoins, a protocol for money, and digital wallets: the formula to fix our broken payment system", Facebook’s crypto pioneer David Marcus shared his views on topics of economic inequality, regulatory challenges and Novi’s proposed stablecoin solution. Marcus has spent the last couple of years building Diem’s crypto wallet Novi — an interoperable digital wallet designed to integrate with the Diem payment system. It is meant to enable individuals and businesses worldwide to transfer money with ease, revolutionizing the age-old financial payments system once and for all. In the piece, Marcus cites the 1.7 billion individuals unbanked across the world, as well as the reported 62 million Americans not maximizing their financial potential with their current banking provider, as primary reasons to innovate this sector.

Mikhail Fedorov, Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister and the head of the country’s Ministry of Digital Transformation, has revealed a possible early use case for the nation’s planned central bank digital currency (CBDC). In a recent interview published by Ukrainian media outlet TSN, the minister revealed considerations within the ministry to test out the CBDC by using the electronic currency in staff salary payments: Fedorov made these comments while arguing the case for the initial roll-out of the e-hryvnia to focus on a small, controlled use case rather than being deployed for social payments. According to Fedorov, there is the need to test the CBDC to prevent inappropriate use, hence, his call for staff salary payments as a viable pilot scheme for the national digital currency.

The football ecosystem has stepped up its adoption game as more clubs continue to involve crypto in mainstream operations.  Netherland-based top-tier football club PSV Eindhoven has partnered with local crypto trading platform Anycoin Direct, which will pay the club an undisclosed amount of Bitcoin (BTC) in a new sponsorship deal. According to the official statement, Anycoin Direct will remain an official partner of PSV Eindhoven for the next two seasons with the goal of growing awareness of crypto across Europe.

London-based financial services firm ETC Group will list its entire portfolio of crypto exchange-traded products (ETPs) offering exposure to Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH) and Litecoin (LTC) on Austria’s national stock market. In a Wednesday announcement, the ETC Group said the Wiener Börse, or Vienna Stock Exchange, would be listing three of its crypto exchange-traded products that are “100% physically backed and central counterparty cleared.” These include the firm’s carbon-neutral Bitcoin product, a Litecoin-based product and its Ether ETP. The ETC Group has already made similar listings on stock exchanges in London, Paris, Amsterdam, Zurich and Frankfurt. The ETPs are aimed at allowing investors exposure to crypto with the regulatory protections afforded to traditional stocks. Previously stating that its crypto product was like trading Bitcoin “through an ETP structure,” the firm said its offerings are not the same as an exchange-traded fund, as they’re single asset instruments.

Japanese exchange Liquid has been hacked with about $80 million in digital assets moved off the platform. The exchange confirmed the security breach in a tweet that exposed the wallet addresses implicated in the breach. The following assets had been transferred to hacker's following addresses (Further investigation to come):BTC: 1Fx1bhbCwp5LU2gHxfRNiSHi1QSHwZLf7qETH/EWT: 0x5578840aae68682a9779623fa9e8714802b59946TRX: TSpcue3bDfZNTP1CutrRrDxRPeEvWhuXbpXRP: rfapBqj7rUkGju7oHTwBwhEyXgwkEM4yby

Smart contract platform Avalanche has announced a $180 million liquidity mining incentive program, named Avalanche Rush. The program aims to encourage more applications and tokens to move to Avalanche’s decentralized finance (DeFi) platform, according to the release. It's set to follow a multi-stage deployment starting with the Aave and Curve protocols, before expanding to other assets in the coming months. For this first stage, Avalanche will allocate up to $20M AVAX tokens for Aave and $7M AVAX tokens for Curve over a 3 month period. At the same time, the Avalanche Foundation will sponsor the launch of Benqi’s DeFi protocol native to the Avalanche network with a $3M allocation starting August 19. News of the Rush program follows the re-release of the Avalanche Bridge — an upgraded version of the project’s previous cross-chain bridging tool that is allegedly five times cheaper, faster and more secure than before.

The CEO and founder of one of the world’s largest independent financial advisory organizations, the deVere Group, has stated that Ethereum’s price appreciation should continue to beat Bitcoin’s in 2021. The deVere Group chief executive Nigel Green also believes that Ethereum’s value will exceed that of Bitcoin's within a few short years. “Ethereum is outperforming Bitcoin and it can be expected to continue this trend for the rest of 2021,” he said.

MobileCoin, a crypto-focused digital payment ecosystem, announced Wednesday that it has concluded a $66 million funding round as part of a wider effort to bring more of its products and services to market.  The Series B had participation from several leading venture funds from within the blockchain and cryptocurrency industry, including Alameda Research, BlockTower Capital and Coinbase Ventures. Berggruen Holdings, General Catalyst, Vy Capital and TIME Ventures also participated. Several entrepreneurs and investors also contributed to the funding round. MobileCoin said the funding will be used to further develop its core crypto offerings, including MOBot, which is described as the “first cryptocurrency chatbot payment system.” The company also plans to expand its merchant services and introduce a new dollar-pegged stablecoin.

Popular retail trading app, Robinhood, has revealed crypto trading surged in popularity on the platform and now represents 41% of its revenue. According to its second-quarter financial results published Aug. 18, the firm generated $233 million from crypto trading services for the quarter, up from $5 million for the entirety of 2020. More than 60% of funded Robinhood accounts traded digital assets during Q2 2021. With early 2021 witnessing the speculative dog-token trading frenzy, a whopping 62% of Robinhood’s crypto revenue was derived from Dogecoin trades.

Coinbase, the largest American cryptocurrency exchange, has stockpiled a war chest worth about $4 billion in cash in preparation for decreased crypto retail trading volumes and higher operating costs brought on by regulatory hurdles. It reportedly expects to use the cash to cover costs incurred by a variety of factors, including conforming to new regulations handed down by the United States legislature. Coinbase CFO, Alesia Haas, told the Wall Street Journal that no one single danger to the exchange or the industry had compelled the exchange to build its cash reserves, but that it was best to be prepared for the worst while times are good. The company has conducted stress tests to ensure it can meet the costs of compliance, cyber attacks or possible trading declines.

According to data from eth.btc.com，ethereum network's hashrate is606,488.28 GH/s，mining difficulty is8,043.07T. ETH's price ：$ 3,227.29 Avg Gas Price：21.20Gwei Pending Txs ：153156

The Australian Border Force (ABF), Infocomm Media Development Authority of Singapore (IMDA) and Singapore Customs, along with other industry representations, have concluded a blockchain trial project analyzing the status of the countries’ digital verification systems in issuing and verifying trade documents. The collaborative venture was a part of the Australia–Singapore Digital Economy Agreement — an initiative designed to increase the efficiency of trade between the two countries, as well as to minimize economic friction in cross-border payments. The interoperability of the two digital verification systems — the ABF’s Intergovernmental Ledger and IMDA’s TradeTrust reference implementation — was analyzed to understand the possibility of creating “high integrity digital trade documents that can be instantly authenticated, provenance traced, and digitally processed.”

Outages in crypto exchanges have resulted in losses for investors trying to get out in time. While Binance has been proactive in neutralizing such situations, numerous investors are reportedly seeking damages due to the exchange’s inoperability.  Speaking to CNBC, a Binance spokesperson highlighted the company’s policy that promises to compensate actual trading losses due to system or internal issues, but noted: In some cases, when investors reached out for compensation in relation to the said outage, Binance’s customer service team reportedly offered a low rebate while refusing to comment on “pending legal matters.”

Coinbase has announced a new support phone line for customers who believe their account has been compromised by outside actors. Users will be able to speak to a live support agent, who can kick off an investigation immediately. In an industry where support tickets and emails are the standard method of communication, Coinbase expects that this implementation could help users save valuable time when dealing with this type of crisis. Coinbase also offers its customers additional layers of protection that include two-factor authentication, unknown device recognition and advanced hardware security keys. Account takeovers, or ATOs, involve a malicious actor gaining access and control over a user’s account. They are treated as a form of identity theft, where hackers simulate the credentials of the account holder in order to restore their password and login. Most times, these credentials are a result of previous information leaks or other types of scams such as phishing attacks or keyloggers.

Ethereum scalability infrastructure developer Polygon said it will form a decentralized autonomous organization, or DAO, for all of its community members, as well as projects in decentralized finance, or DeFi.  In a Thursday announcement, Polygon called on its members to express their views on the platform forming a DAO. According to Polygon, it plans to create committees to promote discussion between projects including QuickSwap, Sushi Aave and others to “bring DeFi to the next million users.” “As the Polygon ecosystem grows, the committee members have a front-seat opportunity over others to increase cross-collaboration for their products,” said the project. “Voting for elections of new members could be implemented in multiple ways like by using staked MATIC on PoS or via the DAO tokenholders.”

The Ontario Securities Commission claimed Aux Cayes FinTech Company Limited, a legal entity in the Republic of Seychelles that operates crypto exchange OKEx, has failed to comply with the province’s law governing securities. In Wednesday's notice, the Ontario Securities Commission, or OSC, alleged that Aux Cayes may have engaged in illegal activity and could face regulatory action if it fails to cooperate with authorities. According to the OSC, the crypto asset products offered through OKEx are considered securities and derivatives, and subject to the Ontario securities law. The regulator claims Aux Cayes has failed to comply with the region’s registration and prospectus requirements. The OSC issued a warning to all crypto-asset trading platforms operating in the province in March that they must be in compliance with the securities law by April 19 or face regulatory action. Though the regulator’s enforcement team said Aux Cayes did respond to limited inquiries in June, the platform failed to provide “basic information about its Ontario clients,” including the number of accounts and aggregate holdings.

Bison Trails, an enterprise infrastructure provider for the blockchain and cryptocurrency industry, has extended support to developers of Binance Smart Chain — a move the company says will contribute to the health and security of the rapidly growing DeFi sector.  Through Bison Trails, developers on Binance Smart Chain, also known as BSC, will have access to validor node infrastructure, which allows them to run nodes and contribute to the security of the network. Specifically, Bison Trails is providing BSC with Query & Transact infrastructure, which allows developers to build applications more easily. The partnership with BSC centers around the growth of DeFi and the Chain’s strategic decision to make decentralized finance more affordable through higher gas block limits and accelerated block times. Since launching almost one year ago, BSC has attracted over 180 projects to the platform. BSC daily transactions reached a record high of over 13.1 million on July 29 but have since fallen sharply, according to industry data.