"Tether says 'clean' audit rating comes back from KPMG." Aug 14, 2026

Tether International received an unqualified audit opinion from KPMG US on its full 2025 financial statements, the first completed independent financial audit in the company's history. KPMG conducted the engagement under AICPA standards and covered Tether's complete balance sheet including reserve assets and USDT liabilities, its income statement, changes in equity, and cash flows. The audit involved testing transactions, systems, ownership records, valuations, and counterparties, and included a physical inspection and count of every gold bar held by Tether. Audited statements showed reserves exceeding liabilities by 6.8 billion dollars at the end of 2025.

MSCI is considering an eligibility framework that could remove Strategy and Metaplanet from its global investable market indexes by screening out companies that function more like asset-holding vehicles than operating businesses. A simulation using May 2026 data would have removed Strategy, Metaplanet, and uranium investment company Yellow Cake under the proposed framework, while Sharplink, Center Laboratories, and Lydia Holding would have been placed on a watch list. The proposed test first evaluates whether a company has sufficient operating assets, then applies five metrics requiring at least four flags to trigger ineligibility. No index changes have been made yet and MSCI is accepting feedback through September 30.

A Washington state court ordered Kalshi to stop offering most prediction markets in the state after finding the company likely violated state gambling laws. The restrictions cover contracts tied to sports, elections, politics, entertainment, culture, technology, and science, while markets related to commodities, climate, economics, and finance may remain available. Kalshi must implement IP and residency-based geofencing by August 19 and a multi-source geofencing system by September 2, and is barred from advertising restricted markets to Washington consumers. Kalshi is arguing for federal preemption over state gambling laws, a position several states are contesting, particularly for contracts tied to outcomes such as sports.

A hyperliquid user lost approximately 550,000 dollars in USDC after clicking a malicious Google search ad leading to a fake hyperliquid website, with blockchain data showing three transfers to attacker-controlled addresses. Google suspended the responsible advertiser and stated it blocks 99 percent of policy-violating ads before they run and removed more than 602 million scam ads last year. The crypto security nonprofit Security Alliance had blocked 356 malicious Google ad URLs over several weeks in April, including multiple hyperliquid impersonators, with scammers also targeting major Ethereum and Solana apps including Jupiter, Radium, and Pumpfun.

Gemini reported a 107 million dollar net loss for the second quarter and its shares fell more than 7 percent in after-hours trading. Tyler Winklevoss acknowledged Gemini still has work to do while shares trade near record lows below 4 dollars.

Nearly 14,000 Trezor customers had personal information exposed after unauthorized access to order data held by shipping provider Shipmonk, with 11,742 customers having names, email addresses, phone numbers, and shipping addresses revealed. Trezor stated its own systems were not compromised and its hardware wallets remained secure, but warned affected customers face increased phishing and impersonation risks.

More than 30 million dollars in crypto had been stolen through violent attacks in the first half of 2026, putting the year on pace to exceed the 58 million dollars stolen through such attacks in all of 2025.