Chainlink’s $200 target has a catch

August 10, 2026

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London’s gold edge gets a tokenization test

Key points:

  • The FCA is discussing standards that could let tokenized gold serve as collateral in U.K. wholesale markets.

  • The work comes as London, which handles about 70% of global gold trading, faces growing competition from China and other Asian hubs.

News - The U.K. is testing whether tokenized gold can help modernize one of London’s most important wholesale markets without requiring a new regulatory framework from scratch.

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has been speaking with major banks and other industry participants about how digital tokens representing ownership of physical bullion could operate in wholesale finance. One focus is whether tokenized gold could qualify as collateral, including for uncleared over-the-counter derivatives.

Existing rules, new wrapper - No standalone FCA rulebook for tokenized gold has been created yet. The discussions build on a May policy paper from the FCA, Bank of England, and Prudential Regulation Authority, which identified tokenized gold as a potential collateral asset and signaled further policy on how tokenized collateral could fit within existing regulation.

That approach could depend on whether legal rights, custody arrangements, and underlying risks remain comparable with conventional assets.

London has something to defend - The timing matters because London still accounts for roughly 70% of global gold trading volume, while Shanghai and Hong Kong are among the Asian financial centers challenging its bullion-market dominance.

Infrastructure moves in parallel - Sixteen firms are already working through Britain’s Digital Securities Sandbox, while the wider U.K. roadmap targets tokenized securities for trading, settlement, and collateral use. Regulators are expected to provide more detail on tokenized gold standards within the next few months.

Key points:

  • Standard Chartered sees LINK reaching $200 by end-2030, but the forecast depends on tokenized assets and DeFi expanding at extraordinary scale.

  • The bank expects $4 trillion in tokenized assets by end-2028 and $2.7 trillion deployed in DeFi by 2030.

News - Standard Chartered’s new Chainlink coverage is less a standalone LINK call than a wager on how large tokenized finance becomes.

Geoff Kendrick, the bank’s global head of digital assets research, set a $200 end-2030 target for LINK, up from around $8 today. The model assumes tokenized assets on-chain rise from roughly $340 billion to $4 trillion by end-2028, while assets deployed in DeFi increase 37-fold to $2.7 trillion by 2030.

Fees carry the thesis - Chainlink earns fees for supplying external data and moving assets across networks. Standard Chartered estimates those fees could grow roughly 25-fold as tokenized funds, bonds, and other assets require pricing data, reserve information, interoperability, compliance tooling, and links to existing financial systems. The bank assumes LINK’s price broadly follows that fee expansion.

Incumbency provides the edge - Kendrick’s note says Chainlink secures roughly 70% of oracle-dependent DeFi value globally and more than 80% on Ethereum. It also names institutions including Swift, DTCC, JPMorgan, Mastercard, UBS, Fidelity, and S&P Global among Chainlink users.

The forecast has weak points - Standard Chartered flagged slower institutional tokenization, pilots failing to become recurring production workflows, specialist competitors gaining share, and technical failures as key risks. LINK’s path to $200 therefore depends not only on tokenization growing, but on Chainlink retaining a large share of the infrastructure demand that growth creates.

Strategy sells Bitcoin as Solstice repackages STRC on Solana

Key points:

  • Strategy sold 1,690 BTC for $108.6 million and used the full proceeds to repurchase STRC preferred shares for a second straight week of Bitcoin selling.

  • Solstice Finance has separately brought STRC-linked exposure to Solana, splitting its income and price risk between senior and junior DeFi tokens.

News - Strategy’s capital structure is now pulling Bitcoin and Solana into the same STRC story from opposite directions.

Between August 3 and August 9, Strategy sold 1,690 BTC at an average net price of $64,262, then used the entire $108.6 million proceeds to repurchase 1.15 million STRC shares. The company still holds 840,447 BTC with an average purchase price of $75,385.

Bitcoin funds the repair - The sale followed another 1,638 BTC disposal the previous week, while Strategy reported no new Bitcoin purchases for the latest period. STRC, its variable-rate perpetual preferred stock, closed Friday near $95 against a $100 par value. Strategy also raised $653.1 million by selling MSTR shares, directing $650 million into a U.S. dollar reserve that reached $4.65 billion.

Solstice slices the same exposure - Solstice Finance’s new strcUSX product does not tokenize STRC shares. Instead, users deposit USX into a vault and choose between two Solana tokens tied to the economics of a portfolio holding STRC.

The senior tranche targets a 7% annual yield and receives income first, while the junior tranche targets more than 20% APY and absorbs losses from STRC price declines first.

One security, two crypto roles - Strategy is using Bitcoin to manage STRC inside its balance sheet, while Solstice is turning STRC’s dividend income and market risk into a structured DeFi product on Solana.

Bitmine nears 5% of ETH, but slows the chase

Key points:

  • Bitmine bought 7,391 ETH last week, its smallest weekly purchase of 2026, while repurchasing another 3 million of its own shares.

  • Its Ethereum holdings reached 5.805 million ETH, about 4.8% of supply, even as cash and marketable securities fell to $104 million.

News - Bitmine is still moving toward its 5% Ethereum ownership target, but the route is changing as ETH purchases shrink and more capital goes toward its own stock.

The Tom Lee-chaired firm added 7,391 ETH over the latest week, down from 10,399 a week earlier and far below the 100,000-plus weekly acquisitions seen earlier this year. Holdings now stand at 5,805,238 ETH, extending Bitmine’s weekly buying streak since launching the strategy in June 2025.

The final stretch gets slower - Bitmine says its stack represents about 4.8% of Ethereum’s 120.7 million-token supply, leaving it short of its “Alchemy of 5%” target. Lee had previously said accumulation would slow as the firm approached that goal.

Buybacks take more capital - Bitmine repurchased another 3 million shares last week, bringing total buybacks since July 1 to 19.1 million under a $4 billion authorization. Meanwhile, cash and marketable securities fell to $104 million from $173 million a week earlier and $482 million a month ago.

Lee turns to the macro picture - Lee expressed disappointment that the CLARITY Act would not receive a Senate vote before the August recess. Still, he pointed instead to softer inflation and jobs data, saying the odds of a September Federal Reserve hike had fallen to 40% from 75% two weeks earlier and that easier financial conditions could support crypto.

Apple’s Starlink Update Sparks Huge Earning Opportunity

Apple just secretly added Starlink satellite support to iPhones through iOS 18.3.

One of the biggest potential winners? Mode Mobile.

Mode’s EarnPhone already reaches 490M+ users that have earned over $1B, and that’s before global satellite coverage. With SpaceX eliminating "dead zones," Mode's earning technology can now reach billions more in unbanked and rural populations worldwide.

Their global expansion is perfectly timed, and investors like you still have a chance to invest in their pre-IPO offering at $0.52/share.

With their recent 32,481% revenue growth and newly reserved Nasdaq ticker, Mode is one step closer to a potential IPO.

Please read the offering circular and related risks at invest.modemobile.com. This is a paid advertisement for Mode Mobile’s Regulation A+ Offering.

Mode Mobile recently received their ticker reservation with Nasdaq ($MODE), indicating an intent to IPO in the next 24 months. An intent to IPO is no guarantee that an actual IPO will occur.

The Deloitte rankings are based on submitted applications and public company database research, with winners selected based on their fiscal-year revenue growth percentage over a three-year period.

Did you know?

  • A $3.6 billion Bitcoin seizure became a museum piece: The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History added IRS-CI agent Chris Janczewski’s MacBook Pro to The Value of Money after it was used in the investigation that helped recover more than 94,000 BTC stolen in the 2016 Bitfinex hack.

  • Researchers unplugged Lightning, and payments kept moving: In a 2023 IEEE proof of concept, researchers cut the internet connection to an eight-Raspberry Pi Lightning network and successfully continued making Bitcoin testnet payments over Bluetooth Low Energy and Wi-Fi mesh links.

  • Ohio’s crypto-payment experiment was stopped by procedure, then revived: Ohio suspended OhioCrypto.com in 2019 after finding that its third-party payment processor required State Board of Deposit authorization. In May 2026, the state launched Buckeye Billfold after completing the authorization process, allowing crypto payments to state agencies while converting the assets into U.S. dollars at the time of payment.

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Top 3 coins of the day

Monero (XMR)

Key points:

  • XMR held near $400 after its breakout, while the widening Madrid Ribbon kept the broader 4H trend firmly bullish.

  • Awesome Oscillator momentum stayed positive but began cooling, as volume also eased after the breakout spike.

What you should know:

XMR’s breakout did not immediately unwind after its sharp August 9 surge. Price held above the upper Madrid Ribbon and returned toward $400, while the ribbon widened higher beneath it. The Awesome Oscillator stayed firmly positive, although its latest red bars showed bullish momentum had begun cooling. Volume also eased after the breakout’s major participation spike.

The move coincided with a newly created wallet opening a 4x leveraged long on 36,000 XMR worth about $14.33 million on Hyperliquid after depositing $3.56 million USDC.

The $400-$402 area remains the immediate resistance test, followed by the recent $419-$420 spike high. On pullbacks, $396-$392 is the first support zone, with $389-$386 below it.

Worldcoin (WLD)

Key points:

  • WLD burst through its bearish Madrid Ribbon, but the slower ribbon layers had not yet completed a bullish reversal.

  • RSI cooled to 63.71 after briefly clearing 70, while breakout volume faded as price retreated from $0.352.

What you should know:

WLD’s rebound moved faster than its underlying trend structure. Price surged from around $0.312 to $0.352 and cleared the full Madrid Ribbon, although several slower ribbon lines still sloped lower as the faster layers turned green.

The move came alongside Eightco Holdings disclosing a 302 million WLD treasury position worth roughly $96 million. Separately, World Foundation had reduced daily linear unlocks by 43%, from about 5.1 million to 2.9 million WLD.

RSI has cooled to 63.71 after briefly entering overbought territory, while volume eased following the breakout spike. $0.35-$0.352 is the immediate resistance zone, while $0.335-$0.328 is the first support area to watch.

Zcash (ZEC)

Key points:

  • ZEC failed a second push into $522-$525, shifting attention from breakout potential to whether the lower Bollinger Band can contain the retreat.

  • CMF remained positive at 0.04 but weakened from recent highs as price slipped below the $510.48 Bollinger midline.

What you should know:

Twice, ZEC tested the $522-$525 ceiling and twice failed to hold it, with the latest rejection sending price below the $510.48 Bollinger midline and back toward $500. CMF also retreated to 0.04 from recent highs, showing that positive money flow had weakened even as it stayed above zero.

The pullback unfolded while Zcash users were navigating the Ironwood (NU6.3) pool migration. The old Orchard pool was shifted to withdrawals-only, while shielded supply in the new Ironwood pool rose 15% over 24 hours.

The $498-$500 area is the immediate support test, with $488-$490 below it. A recovery first needs to reclaim $510-$512, while $522-$525 remains the key resistance zone.

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