Bitcoin retail investor demand is near its highest level in two years, signaling renewed downside risk.

According to market data from BIT (Bit.com), SK Hynix's night session share price gain has widened to 1.8%, after earlier falling more than 3%. In related news, SK Hynix will allocate at least 50% of its free cash flow generated between 2025 and 2027 to shareholder returns. The company will continue to carry out additional share repurchases and cancellations. More shareholder return plans will be announced when it releases its third-quarter earnings results. It is considering dividend schemes including regular dividends and special dividends. SK Hynix will repurchase 40 trillion won (equivalent to about $28.6 billion) of treasury stock, with the repurchase aimed at cancelling shares to boost shareholder returns.

According to monitoring by TradingBeats (formerly Hyperinsight), as of press time, UNITREE’s hourly funding rate stands at approximately -0.3544%, meaning shorts pay longs. A whale address (0xfe4), which booked unrealized profits from a top-buy position, has now opened a 10x-leveraged short worth around $728,000 at an average entry price of $125.04, with current unrealized gains of ~$58,000 and a liquidation price of ~$130.44. Since opening the position, the whale has paid ~$5,448 in total funding fees. If the current rate remains unchanged, its hourly funding cost will hit ~$2,579, translating to ~$60,000 per day. After deducting already paid funding fees, the unrealized gain from the current price is ~$55,000, which could be entirely eroded by funding fees in less than a day. In a static scenario, the position may gradually enter liquidation territory solely due to ongoing funding fee payments. On-chain perpetual and address analysis tool TradingBeats is now live, enabling real-time access to Hyperliquid data, tracing whale operations from addresses, and delivering in-depth, comprehensive insights.

Cross-chain liquidity protocol Maya Protocol has fallen victim to a security breach, with its MAYAChain network forced to suspend trading due to a series of software flaws. The attacker exploited a combination of six vulnerabilities to manipulate the network’s accounting, inflating roughly 49 million CACAO tokens in one liquidity pool—while the pool’s actual reserves stood at only around 168,000 CACAO. The attacker then deposited assets at low cost to gain over 99% of the pool’s share, withdrew approximately 48.87 million CACAO, and converted it into assets including BTC and ETH. On-chain data shows the attacker transferred out around 20.83 BTC (valued at ~$1.34 million) plus other assets, with total direct profits of roughly $1.65 million, though about 8.87 million CACAO remains in the attacker’s wallet. The attack caused the MAYAChain pool’s value to plummet by approximately $10.9 million. However, analysis indicates not all losses were stolen funds: ~$6.4 million stemmed from CACAO’s price crash, and ~$2.9 million from fund outflows due to arbitrage activities. Post-attack, CACAO’s price dropped from ~$0.115 to a low of $0.013, an almost 89% decline, before rebounding to around $0.03. Maya Protocol’s founder stated the team has suspended all trading to contain losses, is working to fix the vulnerabilities, and hopes the attacker returns funds via the bug bounty program. If the funds cannot be recovered, the team plans to cover the ~20 BTC loss through investments in projects such as Aztec Chain.

SK Hynix announced that it will allocate at least 50% of its free cash flow generated between 2025 and 2027 to shareholder returns, and will repurchase 40 trillion won (approximately $28.6 billion) in treasury stock. The share repurchase is intended to cancel shares to boost shareholder returns. SK Hynix’s stock decline narrowed in after-hours trading.

SK Hynix announced it will repurchase 40 trillion South Korean won worth of treasury stock.

According to Bitget market data, the Nikkei 225 index closed down 2134.31 points on Wednesday, August 19, with a 3.16% drop, ending at 65326.42 points. South Korea’s KOSPI index fell 398.66 points, or 5.8%, to close at 6471.17 points on the same day.