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OVERVIEW

Chainlink Is Eating Everyone's Lunch 🥪

Before we dive in, here’s today’s crypto market heatmap:

And here’s a look at crypto’s total market and altcoin market cap charts:

TECHNICAL ANALYSIS
BTC Dominance Continues To Dip 🫳 

Let’s take a quick look at Bitcoin’s Dominance chart. 👀 

Since the mid-July peak of 66%, it’s dipped nearly -10% to the 60% value area.

Saturday’s close (August 9) was the lowest daily close since February 1, 2025 - a little over six months.

The week of July 14, 2025 had a -3.75 point (-5.81%) drop - the biggest since the week of June 22, 2022.

Translation

A 5.4 point drop is progress, not victory for alt season. ETHBTC and a couple high beta pairs need higher highs while BTC.D stalls near 60-61 or this was just a head fake.

Until 60 gives way on a weekly close, call it a wobble with teeth.

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NEWS
Chainlink Is TradFi’s Bestie 🫂 

Chainlink keeps showing up where the money lives, then leaves with the leftovers and the silverware. 🍴

Today’s example: The NYSE’s parent ICE, announced they’re piping their FX and precious metals rates into Chainlink’s Data Streams. In a nutshell, banks, asset managers, and 2,000+ apps can use real market data on-chain without breaking compliance or latency.

LINK Get’s Another Massive Win

This ICE announcement follows a run of deals where banks and market pipes keep choosing Chainlink to do the boring, important work.

SWIFT + Chainlink, 2023

SWIFT proved it could talk to multiple blockchains using Chainlink CCIP, with more than a dozen heavyweights in the loop. Citi. BNP Paribas. BNY Mellon. Euroclear. DTCC. The lot.

One interface in, many chains out. Scaling tokenization without a migraine. 🤔 

Project Guardian, 2024

SWIFT, UBS Asset Management, and Chainlink ran a pilot that settled tokenized fund subs and reds while moving fiat across SWIFT’s 11,500+ institutions. No forcing a new token into payments. Just straight-through processing between funds on-chain and money off-chain. That’s how you get compliance folks to unclench.

Today, 2025

ICE adds its FX and metals feed to Chainlink Data Streams. Institutional data quality. On-chain speed. Same vendors the buy side already pays. Now composable. 👍️ 

What Chainlink Is Doing For Them

Keep it simple.

• Neutral rails
  Not a rival currency. Not a “replace SWIFT” crusade. Chainlink plugs existing systems into multiple chains. Banks keep their stack. They add new distribution.

• Data that clears IRL
  Price feeds and streams that match how markets run. Low latency. Tamper resistant. Vendor relationships already in procurement. ICE choosing to contribute data is the tell.

• Interoperability that doesn’t suck
  CCIP lets assets and messages cross chains without duct tape. SWIFT used it because it reduces integration overhead. “Minimal resources” wasn’t a meme. It shipped.

• End-to-end tokenization plumbing
  Feeds, automation, proof-of-reserve, cross-chain transport. One vendor to call when something breaks at 2 a.m. That alone wins RFPs. 🧑‍🔧 

Timeline: TradFi Choosing Chainlink

• Aug 2023 - SWIFT + Chainlink CCIP experiment with >10 major institutions proves multi-chain access through one interface.

• Nov 2024 - SWIFT, UBS AM, Chainlink pilot tokenized fund subs/reds settled with fiat across SWIFT’s network.

• Nov 2024 - UBS AM launches tokenized money market fund on Ethereum, part of a broader tokenization push banks are clearly exploring.

• Mar 2025 - White House Crypto Summit. Nazarov in the lineup. Policy and optics both tilt pro-tokenization.

• Aug 2025 - ICE x Chainlink. FX and metals on-chain via Data Streams for banks, AMs, and 2,000+ apps. 💹 

Who Got Their Lunch Taken

I don’t want to name drop any tickers here, but there’s a boat load of cryptocurrencies that have the goal of replacing SWIFT, traditional banking, being a major enterprise blockchain, etc, etc etc.

They might need to look for another market, because Chainlink is clearly the, um, link that the big bag fuddy duddy money people are using.

Chainlink is basically the middleware banks are using. 🧠 

NEWS IN THREE SENTENCES
AI, Stablecoins, & Privacy News 🕵️

🔁 Exolix Makes ONT to ONG Swaps Fast, Private, and No-Custody

Ontology users can flip governance (ONT) into gas (ONG) without surrendering keys or patience. The integration is non-custodial, no KYC, and built for the dual-token flow behind DIDs and on-chain ops. More staking, more txs, fewer “out of ONG” facepalms. Ontology.

🧅 Zashi Adds Full Tor Routing, Puts ZEC Traffic in Stealth Mode

Just an FYI, this is all in beta still, but anonymity beats snappy leaks. The Zcash wallet now sends transactions, fetches data, and talks to APIs over Tor, not just price checks. Built on Arti, it cuts IP linkage to lightwallet servers for real network-layer privacy. Zcash.

🤖 Small Models, Big Jobs: SLMs Take the Agent Shift Seriously

FLock argues compact local models do narrow tasks faster, cheaper, and with better privacy than cloud behemoths. The Alan Turing Institute pushed a 3B param model near frontier reasoning with RAG and test-time scaling on a laptop. For agent swarms and edge apps, small and specialized beats bloated and overcaffeinated. Flock.io.

NEWS IN THREE SENTENCES
Real World Asset Tokenization (RWA) News 🪙

📜 Programmable IP Gets Teeth: Story Licenses, UMA Enforces

Story turns art and data into onchain IP assets with programmable licenses, royalty splits, and ERC-6551 wallets. UMA’s optimistic oracle arbitrates disputes so unlicensed remixes and ghost attribution get settled without lawyers. When IP can self-license and bite back via code, you don’t just get royalties - you get IPFi. UMA.

NEWS IN THREE SENTENCES
DeFi, DEX, & Lending Protocol News 🏦

💸 Curve Chops CRV Emissions by 16% - Because the Code Said So

Scarcity maxis get cake while liquidity farmers watch their yield diet. Epoch 5 kicks in and the faucet slows from 4.36 to 3.66 CRV a second, exactly as the 2020 contract predicted. No votes, no multisig, just one permissionless function call that anyone can trigger. Curve Finance.

🛡️ 1inch Adds Token Hazmat Suit and Scores More Wallet Friends

July’s upgrade turns the dApp into a swap cop, flagging shady coins before you baptize them in gas fees. SafePal and other partners now route through the aggregator while Dubai toasted Ethereum’s tenth birthday. Somewhere a scam dev just felt his rug-pull conversion funnel shrink. 1inch.

📊 Metis Taps Nansen so Everyone Sees the Same Tape

Andromeda integrated Nansen dashboards, wallet labels, and Smart Money feeds for real-time transparency. Builders track adoption and flows, investors spot trends, and the community stops guessing in the dark. Metis.

🗣️ dYdX Pays Traders to Complain, Calls It Discovery

The exchange now shells out $50-$200 for 30-minute gripe sessions about slippage and UX quirks. Insights steer marketing and product tweaks, unless you live in the US, UK, or Canada where regulators hate fun. dYdX.

NEWS IN THREE SENTENCES
Protocol News 🏦

⚡ eCash Straps Avalanche to PoW and Claims 3-second Finality

eCash bolted Avalanche pre-consensus onto Nakamoto PoW so payments lock in before your coffee cools. Transactions finalize in about 3 seconds while PoW writes the audit trail later, and Avalanche staking pays around 6% with a 100M XEC minimum and no slashing. To rewrite history you’d need 51% hashrate plus roughly 87% of staked coins, so bring a wallet and a miracle. eCash.

🐶 Truflation Bundles Meme Coins, Lets Degens Bet on the Whole Circus

A new index stuffs DOGE, SHIB, PEPE and five other mascots into one volatility piñata you can punt Above or Below. Weight caps stop DOGE domination while TRUFNETWORK feeds real-time data to Limitless prediction markets. Finally, a way to lose money on eight memes at once. Truflation.

LINKS
Links That Don’t Suck 🔗

🪙 Social Network Zora jumps 43% as token creation surges

🚀 Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin to accept Bitcoin & crypto payments for space trip

🤯 Tether to become largest Rumble shareholder in planned Northern Data acquisition

🏦 Stablecoin issuer Paxos follows Circle and Ripple in applying for US banking license

📱 Toncoin outlook as Coinbase Ventures joins TON’s mission to supercharge crypto adoption

😆 Crypto influencers are replacing VCs, and that’s a good thing

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Author Disclosure: The author of this newsletter holds positions in ADA, IMX, COPI, MIN, AGIX, ALGO, ZEC, XLM, and NEAR. 📋