Analysis: Bitcoin's low volatility may signal a major market move, with a potential 30% price swing in the next 60 days.

The Ethereum Foundation (EF) has warned developers that upcoming gas model changes in the Glamsterdam upgrade may cause compatibility issues for some wallets, indexers, and gas estimation tools. The EF’s Protocol Development and Operations team stated that any tools relying on hard-coded maximum gas limits will be affected and require updates. The team advised developers to test relevant systems in advance on the Plataberget public testnet, which will run for several months to prepare for the Glamsterdam upgrade. According to upgrade tracking platform Forkcast, Plataberget launched on August 13, and the Glamsterdam fork is scheduled to activate on the network this Thursday, followed by deployments on the Sepolia and Hoodi testnets. This upgrade involves EIP-8037, which introduces an independent "state gas" dimension for operations that create new blockchain states. Post-upgrade, standard ETH transfers to existing accounts will still require 21,000 gas, but sending ETH to new accounts will incur additional state gas fees. The Ethereum Foundation noted that developers need to re-audit software that defaults to "all ETH transfers only cost 21,000 gas" or uses a single gas dimension to estimate transaction costs. In addition to gas model adjustments, Glamsterdam will also include native Proposer-Builder Separation (PBS), block-level access lists, and improvements such as increasing size limits for contracts and initialization code.

According to National Business Daily, after requiring new account applicants to confirm their funds come from legal overseas sources, some Hong Kong banks have begun initiating fund source declaration procedures for existing mainland Chinese investment clients. Reporters learned that HSBC Hong Kong has recently sent notices to some of its existing mainland Chinese investment clients, requiring them to submit the "Account Opening/Maintenance Declaration" via the HSBC Hong Kong App by September 12 and update their contact information. The declaration requires confirmation that investment funds originate from legal sources outside mainland China, and that the bank may disclose personal information upon request from law enforcement or regulatory authorities. The notice also states that failure to submit the declaration by August 20 may lead to suspension of investment-related services, while non-submission by September 12 may result in termination of such services. In an exclusive response to National Business Daily on August 18, an HSBC spokesperson said: "When managing investment client relationships, we adhere to relevant regulatory requirements. We are therefore inviting relevant mainland Chinese investors to provide self-declarations and confirm that the information they submitted under 'Know Your Customer' and 'Customer Due Diligence' is up-to-date and valid. This move helps us continue to deliver uninterrupted services to our clients." HSBC emphasized that the latest declaration requirement only applies to investment service clients.

Mitsui Sumitomo DS Asset Management strategist Masahiro Ichikawa stated that if the Japanese government demonstrates a commitment to fiscal discipline and maintains an appropriate pace of interest rate hikes by the Bank of Japan, repeated exchange rate interventions would not be necessary to curb further yen depreciation. Ichikawa added that while government interventions typically struggle to shift overall market trends, recent interventions have been effective because they successfully halted the yen’s rapid, disorderly decline toward the 164 threshold against the U.S. dollar. (Jinshi)

According to Bitget's market data, South Korea's KOSPI index fell more than 2% in late trading.

Alibaba Cloud has officially launched its third data center in South Korea, alongside the simultaneous rollout of Agentic AI-related services, to further meet the local market’s growing demand for AI and cloud computing. Recently, Alibaba Cloud has been steadily expanding its AI and cloud infrastructure footprint in markets including France, Japan, Malaysia, and Mexico. After this round of expansion, Alibaba Cloud’s global infrastructure will cover 30 regions and 104 availability zones, with plans to further extend its reach to countries and regions such as Brazil.

The European Union (EU) has adopted its 21st round of sanctions against Russia, expanding restrictions on the crypto industry. New measures will allow the EU to impose comprehensive transaction bans on third countries that fail to prevent Russia from using crypto assets to evade sanctions. The sanction package was approved on July 23, including restrictions targeting the Russian ruble stablecoin network A7 and related entities, and placing 14 crypto service platforms based in Georgia, Panama, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the Marshall Islands, Kyrgyzstan, Belarus and other regions under transaction restrictions. Additionally, the new rules will ban Russian and Belarusian citizens from holding ownership, control or management positions at crypto service providers in the EU subject to MiCA (Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation). The restrictions will take effect on August 25, applying to more services including crypto asset advisory, portfolio management and client asset transfer services. The EU has also added a new crypto transaction ban mechanism targeting third countries. Under the revised regulations, if a country is deemed to have "systematically and persistently failed" to prevent its domestic crypto service providers from helping evade EU sanctions, the European Commission can add it to a restricted list and ban transactions with crypto platforms in that country. Economic sanctions expert Nick Turner said this means the EU is moving toward "secondary sanctions," which require third-country regulators to block EU sanctions targets from conducting activities via local crypto platforms. However, he noted that such measures could trigger regulatory conflicts between different jurisdictions in the future. To date, the EU has not announced any countries added to this third-country list.