Report: Rug Pull Incidents in the Crypto Space Have Decreased, but Their Impact Has Grown

Goldman Sachs Chief Economist Jan Hatzius’s latest analysis suggests the market’s pricing of a September FOMC rate hike remains overly hawkish. The bank estimates that unless August data (due early September) shows a clear reversal, the Federal Reserve’s likelihood of raising rates at its September 15-16 meeting is “very low.” Goldman cites reasons including a notable slowdown in job growth, cooling consumer momentum, and inflation trends likely to keep improving. From Goldman’s view, recent data is weakening the case for a rate hike. U.S. July potential employment growth was reportedly only around 5,000, below the level needed to maintain labor market balance; weak retail sales point to consumption growth slowing to 1%-1.5% in the second half; core PCE inflation is still expected to gradually fall, approaching the 2% target by 2027. Hatzius adds that after two consecutive months of soft jobs and inflation data, the threshold for dovish policymakers to back a rate hike is high. However, Fed meeting minutes have introduced new market volatility. The July meeting minutes, released early August 20 (Beijing time), show more officials supporting further policy tightening than in June, with several policymakers noting that higher rates may still be required if inflation fails to cool further. This makes it difficult for markets to directly bet on a “Goldman-style dovish interpretation,” and short-term rates and tech stock valuations will continue to be impacted by shifting policy expectations.

According to YuEmber monitoring, a crypto whale that purchased 10,501 ETH at $1,904 one month ago has started reducing its holdings. The whale took partial profits by cutting half of its position 15 minutes ago, transferring 5,250 ETH (valued at $11.7 million) to Binance. The whale has realized a $3.4 million profit on the ETH it bought last month.

As the market rebounded, whale bc1qsy sold another 2,000 $BTC ($136.48M). Over the past month, the whale has sold a total of 9,513 $BTC ($623.43M).

CZ retweeted his own remarks on Hyperliquid’s entry into the U.S., pointing out that many people are overlooking the bigger picture. He noted that policies cannot be applied to only a single company or project, adding that a policy beneficial to one will benefit the entire industry. Earlier, CZ had commented that the Trump administration might bring Hyperliquid to the U.S. in a compliant, legal manner, which would open more Perpetual Decentralized Exchanges (Perp DEXes) and decentralized services to U.S. users, a huge boon for the broader crypto sector.

F2Pool co-founder Wang Chun posted at 2 AM today that "the bear market is over". Wang Chun, a key early figure in the cryptocurrency sector and co-founder of F2Pool, was earlier reported to have accumulated around 70,600 ETH (valued at approximately $117 million) and 966 WBTC (worth about $60.29 million) in June during the market bottom phase. However, amid July's market rebound, he transferred 36,600 ETH and 160 WBTC to Binance, generating an estimated profit of $3.4 million.

Autonomous AI Security Agent V12 tweeted that the Rabby Wallet crypto wallet extension has a silent signature extraction vulnerability. After users connect to a malicious DApp, if they set the auto-lock time to 10 minutes and re-unlock their wallet after staying connected for roughly 10 minutes, their funds could be drained. Rabby Wallet later responded on Twitter, stating the team released a fix update on August 11 following the vulnerability’s discovery, and users must ensure their Rabby extension is updated to the latest version. The mobile app is not affected. Additionally, the team noted the vulnerability has extremely limited trigger conditions—requiring connection to a malicious website and manual setting of a 10-minute auto-lock—and no actual exploitation cases have been detected to date.