S&P 500 Index Futures Extend Losses, Hit New Intraday Low

On August 21st, the Nasdaq-listed U.S. coffee chain Reborn Coffee announced its intention to conduct pilot cryptocurrency payments at some of its Southern California stores in 2025 and integrate this feature into its existing Point of Sale (POS) platform. Previously, Reborn Coffee had announced the start of a strategic assessment to consider incorporating regulated digital assets into its financial management framework. The company plans to explore blockchain assets such as Bitcoin and Ethereum in order to optimize fund management efficiency and achieve the diversification of non-operational capital reserves.

August 21st. In the US last week, initial jobless claims witnessed the largest rise in nearly three months, suggesting a rising trend in layoffs and further intensifying signs of labor market weakness. The Labor Department stated on Thursday that for the week ending August 16th, seasonally adjusted initial jobless claims increased by 11,000 to 235,000, marking the largest jump since late May. As businesses were dealing with Trump's protectionist trade policies, the labor market was characterized by "low layoffs and weak hiring." Earlier this month, the government reported that over the past three months, employment had been increasing by an average of 35,000 jobs per month. The second-quarter domestic demand growth rate had slowed down to the lowest level since the fourth quarter of 2022. The report showed that for the week ending August 9th, continuing jobless claims rose by 30,000 to 1.972 million, reaching the highest level since November 2021. (FX678)

On August 21st, as per Decrypt, representatives from Tether and Circle are slated to hold meetings with the CEOs of several leading financial groups in South Korea this week. These include CEO Jin Ok-dong of NewHan Financial Group and CEO Ham Young-joo of Hana Financial Group. The meetings will center around the potential distribution and utilization of the US dollar stablecoin within Korea, as well as the issuance of a stablecoin backed by the Korean won. This meeting takes place as South Korea is gearing up to launch a stablecoin regulatory framework in October of this year, with the ruling party and the opposition party holding divergent views on stablecoin regulation.

On August 21st, the NYSE-listed company DDC Enterprise announced that it has increased its holdings of 100 BTC and now its total Bitcoin holdings amount to 688 coins.

August 21st: The number of US jobless claims has gone up, and US Treasuries have wiped out their losses. (FXStreet)

On August 21, as monitored by Onchain Lens, a certain Bitcoin ancient whale has transferred 22,344 ETH (approximately $95.6 million) into Aave V3. The whale still retains 8,023 ETH (about $34.49 million) in other wallets.