Polymarket gets squeezed from two sides

August 14, 2026

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Reading time: 5 minutes

Polymarket faces Baltimore lawsuit, JPMorgan retreat

Key points:

  • Baltimore sued Polymarket and Kalshi over alleged unlicensed sports betting, seeking an injunction, restitution, disgorgement, and penalties of up to $1,000 per violation per day.

  • JPMorgan reportedly ended Polymarket’s banking relationship in October 2025 over regulatory concerns, although other ties between the two remain.

News - Polymarket’s return to the U.S. market is colliding with pressure on two fronts: Baltimore is challenging its sports contracts, while JPMorgan previously ended its banking relationship with the platform.

Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott and the City Council sued Polymarket and Kalshi on Thursday, arguing that contracts on game winners, point spreads, totals, and player statistics function as sports bets under Maryland law, regardless of the “event contract” label.

Baltimore raises the stakes - The city wants both platforms blocked from accepting transactions from residents and is seeking consumer restitution, disgorgement of profits, and civil penalties of up to $1,000 per violation for each day a violation occurred.

Baltimore also argues that operating without gambling licenses lets the companies avoid taxes, audits, and player-protection requirements faced by licensed sportsbooks. The case follows lawsuits in Kentucky and Wisconsin, while New York City has opened its own probe into prediction markets.

The bank exit happened earlier - Separately, JPMorgan reportedly told Polymarket in October 2025 to find another banking partner because of regulatory concerns. Polymarket has since moved to an unnamed lender.

The split was not absolute. JPMorgan later invited CEO Shayne Coplan to a February 2026 private client conference and is reportedly interested in underwriting a potential Polymarket IPO, meaning the banking relationship ended even as other ties remained.

WLFI’s Maldives token hits a real-world delay

Key points:

  • World Liberty Financial postponed a token sale tied to financing a Trump-branded Maldives resort as the Iran war disrupted regional travel.

  • The token was designed around loan claims financing the development, with investors set to receive a fixed return and a share of lending income.

News - World Liberty Financial’s (WLFI) real-world asset push has run into a very real-world obstacle. The Trump family-backed crypto project delayed a planned token offering linked to a Maldives resort after the Iran war disrupted travel across the region.

No new launch date has been announced, leaving one of WLFI’s more ambitious tokenization ventures without a revised timetable.

From resort loans to tokens - The offering was structured around loan interests used to finance the Trump-branded development, rather than direct ownership of the resort itself. Buyers were expected to receive a fixed return alongside a portion of the lending income.

WLFI tapped tokenization platform Securitize in February to help represent those loan interests as digital tokens tradable onchain. The resort, being developed by UK property developer Dar Global, remains under construction and is planned to include roughly 80 luxury beach and overwater villas.

Tokenization meets geopolitics - The delay ties the token’s launch schedule directly to conditions surrounding the offchain project it was built around. Dar Global CEO Ziad El Chaar said the developer continues reviewing project and launch schedules against market conditions, regulatory requirements, and long-term objectives.

WLFI has explored tokenization beyond real estate, including commodities such as oil and gas. For the Maldives project, however, no revised token sale date has been disclosed.

Crypto’s rulebook stalls at both doors

Key points:

  • The SEC canceled Friday’s meeting on its first crypto-specific rule proposal, citing an “unforeseen scheduling issue,” with no replacement date announced.

  • The delay came after the Senate left for recess without advancing the CLARITY Act, while a separate tokenization exemption also appears set for another setback.

News - Crypto’s U.S. rulemaking push has hit a double pause. Days after the Senate left for recess without moving the CLARITY Act, the SEC canceled a meeting where commissioners were expected to vote on whether to propose a tailored offering regime for certain crypto investment contracts.

The agency said the meeting would move to a later date because of an “unforeseen scheduling issue,” but gave no new timetable.

Reg Crypto waits - The proposed regime would offer exemptions allowing some crypto projects to raise capital without following traditional securities-offering requirements. Friday’s vote would not have made the regime binding. It would only have opened the proposal for public comment, marking the SEC’s first crypto-specific rulemaking effort.

Chair Paul Atkins had previously said the agency was prepared to issue digital asset rules if Congress failed to act.

Congress is paused too - The Senate entered its August recess without voting on the CLARITY Act, with its next procedural test not expected until September.

Tokenization gets another snag - A separate “innovation exemption” for tokenized securities had also been expected to surface around Friday’s meeting. According to industry sources, the concerns involving the White House, SEC staff, and Wall Street firms were contributing to another delay, including questions over legal authority, process, and how blockchain venues fit existing market rules.

Ethereum drops Poseidon after SNARKs catch up

Key points:

  • Ethereum’s future Layer 1 roadmap is moving away from Poseidon toward established hashes such as SHA-2 and BLAKE2s after advances in SNARK design erased much of Poseidon’s performance edge.

  • The change applies to planned architecture, not existing applications, with a production-grade leanVM targeted for 2027 and broader layer deployments penciled in for 2028.

News - Ethereum spent years pursuing specialized hash functions built for zero-knowledge proofs. Now, better proofs are making that specialization less necessary.

Researcher Justin Drake said the Ethereum Foundation is abandoning Poseidon for its future Layer 1 roadmap and turning instead to established hash functions such as SHA or BLAKE. Poseidon had been favored because traditional hashes were comparatively expensive to process inside older SNARK systems.

The bottleneck moved - Newer binary-field SNARK designs can handle the bit-level operations behind standard hashes far more efficiently. Drake said such systems can prove roughly 1 million traditional hash calls per second on a laptop, allowing functions such as SHA-2 and BLAKE2s to match Poseidon’s performance inside a SNARK.

Joint work involving the Ethereum Foundation, Eigen Labs, and Succinct has also increased proving speeds by 2.5 times, according to Eigen Labs CEO Sreeram Kannan.

Old hashes, new roadmap - Drake and Kannan also pointed to the security advantage of hashes that have already undergone years of scrutiny over newer specialized primitives. Still, the shift does not make Poseidon obsolete or require existing rollups, zkVMs, or other projects using it to migrate.

A production-ready leanVM is targeted for 2027, with deployments across Ethereum’s consensus, data, and execution layers planned for 2028. Those dates remain preliminary and subject to further testing.

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.

Crypto scams uncovered

  • The mining profits were real only on the dashboard: HashFlare sold more than $577 million in cloud-mining contracts between 2015 and 2019 while fake online dashboards reported mining activity and returns. DOJ later said the operation lacked the computing capacity to mine the vast majority of the cryptocurrency it claimed to generate.

  • AML Bitcoin promised a shortcut through the Panama Canal. The deal did not exist: Founder Rowland Marcus Andrade falsely claimed the Panama Canal Authority was close to allowing AML Bitcoin to be used by ships passing through the canal. He was sentenced to seven years in prison in 2025 after DOJ said the scheme defrauded crypto investors of about $10 million.

  • The job application allegedly opened the door to the smart contracts: Federal prosecutors allege that a North Korean developer used a stolen identity to get hired by an Atlanta blockchain company, then modified the source code of two employer smart contracts in 2022 to steal about $740,000 in cryptocurrency. The defendant was indicted in 2025, so the allegation has not been proven at trial.

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Top 3 coins of the day

BNB (BNB)

Key points:

  • BNB slipped below its nearly converged 9 and 21 MAs after the rally stalled near $620, weakening its short-term momentum edge.

  • Squeeze Momentum turned slightly negative at -0.50, while volume cooled without showing a major distribution spike.

What you should know:

BNB’s August uptrend did not break, but its momentum cushion thinned after price failed to extend beyond $618-$620. The latest pullback left BNB at $607, below the nearly converged 9 MA at $610.02 and 21 MA at $610, while Squeeze Momentum slipped slightly negative to -0.50.

The consolidation unfolded against a stronger network backdrop, with supplied data putting BNB Chain at nearly 32% of monthly active addresses across major blockchains. Volume also cooled from earlier upside bursts.

$605-$606 is immediate support, followed by $600-$604. Reclaiming $610-$612 would improve the short-term setup, while $614-$616 and $618-$620 remain the resistance zones above.

TRON (TRX)

Key points:

  • TRX’s pullback flipped Parabolic SAR bearish at $0.337, but DMI still kept buyers ahead despite the loss of short-term momentum.

  • ADX held at 44.39, showing that directional strength remained elevated even as the rally cooled.

What you should know:

TRX’s latest pullback changed the signal mix without fully erasing the prior advance. Parabolic SAR flipped bearish at $0.337, but DMI still kept +DI at 23.60 above -DI at 16.42, while ADX held at 44.39, showing that directional strength remained elevated even as momentum cooled.

Fundamentals stayed supportive. TRON’s stablecoin supply reached $89.2 billion, while Q2 USDT transfers totaled $2.1 trillion. Tron Inc. also announced its bid to become a TRON Super Representative.

The $0.333-$0.334 zone is the first support area to watch, followed by $0.331-$0.332. A rebound needs to recover $0.335-$0.336 before the $0.337-$0.338 ceiling comes back into play.

Pump.fun (PUMP)

Key points:

  • PUMP pulled back from near $0.003 as Stochastic RSI rolled over sharply, signaling that the latest upside burst had lost momentum.

  • Parabolic SAR remains bullish at $0.00274, while volume stayed elevated around the highs without showing an extreme distribution spike.

What you should know:

PUMP’s momentum blinked before its trend did. After rallying toward $0.003, price pulled back to $0.00283 as Stochastic RSI %K fell to 60.14 below %D at 81.70, signaling a sharp momentum reset. Parabolic SAR, however, remains bullish beneath price at $0.00274.

The move coincided with Pump.fun introducing Callout Rewards and a limited-time zero-fee trading period. Over the past 30 days, the protocol has also generated approximately $38 million in revenue, with half of that earmarked for systematic PUMP buybacks.

Immediate support sits at $0.00280–$0.00282, with a deeper cushion at $0.00272–$0.00275. On the upside, a recovery would first target $0.00290–$0.00292, while the key resistance zone remains $0.00295–$0.003.

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