Digital investment products recorded net inflows of USD 572 million last week, according to CoinShares' research department. This made up for part of the outflows of USD 1 billion in the previous week, which were triggered by weak US labor market data.

The turnaround followed the US government's decision to allow cryptocurrencies in 401(k)-type funded retirement plans. Ethereum dominated the market with inflows of USD 268 million, bringing year-to-date cumulative inflows to a record USD 8.2 billion. Assets under management (AUM) rose to USD 32.6 billion, an increase of 82% in 2025. Bitcoin also recovered with inflows of USD 260 million, while short Bitcoin products recorded outflows of USD 4 million.

Diversification into altcoins

Trading volumes in digital asset ETPs were down 23% month-on-month, reflecting the summer slowdown. By region, the US led with USD 608 million in inflows, followed by Canada with USD 16.5 million, while Europe saw combined outflows of USD 54.3 million in Germany, Sweden and Switzerland.

Altcoins also gained, indicating continued diversification beyond Ethereum and Bitcoin:

• $SOL (+0,24%) (+21.8 million US dollars)

• $XRP (+0,78%) (+18.4 million US dollars)

• $NEAR (+0,52%) (+10.1 million US dollars)

The decision on 401(k) plans represents an important step for mass adoption and should boost long-term demand. Together with the Ethereum record and the Bitcoin recovery, the market is entering August in a positive mood - despite the continued uncertain macroeconomic environment.

Hi guys, I have decided to start investing in 2025 after thinking about it for a long time.

Since I personally only have a basic knowledge in this area, I think it's great that you can exchange ideas with experienced people here.

Since I am very interested in crypto myself and find the history very exciting, the area looks like this for me $BTC (+0,38%) , $ETH (+0,62%) and $NEAR (+0,52%)

why I have included NEAR is a very funny story that would go beyond the scope for the beginning.

Commodities: Gold and silver to fight inflation

ETF: MSCI WORLD, MSCI EMERGING MARKETS and the NASDAQ 100

I have also added NVIDIA as an individual share in the conviction that many innovative ideas are still emerging in the AI sector.

I am happy to be part of it and look forward to the exchange with the community

After Solana, the next profit-taking 👀

Hello everyone,

Today I would like to introduce you to my portfolio. As you probably know, it's just too much fun to expand my portfolio with new stocks. There are now a few too many, but I still can't really part with my worst-performing stocks ($NVM (-0,13%) , $ENPH (-6,12%) , $WAC (+2,58%) ). I'm hoping that I'll be able to sell them in positive territory at some point, or am I on the wrong track and in your opinion should I sell at a loss and try to make up the loss with other stocks?

I have been investing since the end of 2022 and at 29 years old, I still have a long time to go. My strategy is to be as desertified as possible in sectors and to beat the market in the long term (just let me believe that it works :D), hence so many individual stocks. I want to hold these for many years (esp. $AMZN (+3,53%) , $GOOGL (+1,28%) , $QCOM (+1,24%) , $MSFT (+0,86%) , $V (+1,07%) , $MC (+0,55%) , $SALM (-0,55%) ) but I'm also not too keen to pocket the profits. Are there any stocks in my portfolio that you would view critically for the next few years and would be worth considering selling? Recession and all that...

Priority is on growth, which is reasonably safe, so only a few small caps - but a few bets have to be in there :) ($AIDX (-5,78%) , $NRX (-0,73%) , $ITM (+3,71%) , $F3C (+0,82%) , $MITK (+0,35%) ). But with rather small amounts, probably too small or what do you say?

At the same time, I would also like to claim a €900 allowance via dividends ( $BATS (+1,13%) , $ENB (+1,29%) , $BNPQY (+0,97%) , $STLAM (+0,57%) , $ENGI (-0,59%) , $RIO (-3,57%) ) and secure a trade or two.

Recently I have been investing 240€/m in the $XDWD (+0,48%) and between 200 - 500€/m in individual shares (depending on what is left). Actually, I want to increase the existing shares properly now, but somehow there are always nice entry options in solid companies like $0L2T (+2,32%) , $ZTS (+0,91%) , $ADM (-1,21%) , $PANW (-1,59%) , $ENR (-1,46%) . Help what to do? :D

And then there's also crypto $BTC (+0,38%)
$NEAR (+0,52%)
$ADA (+2,86%)

And Japan, they're doing well too $4063 (+1,86%) , $6501 (-1,76%) , $8001 (-1,23%)

Looking forward to your feedback and advice!

Super interesting overview of cryptos

https://app.artemis.xyz/chains

I find the overview of trading volumes / transactions of $SOL (+0,24%)
$ETH (+0,62%)
$TRX (+0,08%)
$NEAR (+0,52%)
$BTC (+0,38%) etc. very interesting.

I hadn't thought that NEAR and Solana are sometimes much higher than Bitcoin, for example.

On Wednesday, the NEAR blockchain token gained a whopping 40%.

Let's take a look together at what caused the movement and what makes the NEAR Protocol one of the most exciting projects in crypto.

AI hype as a catalyst

The reason for the rise in the share price of $NEAR (+0,52%) was, among other things, the announcement that NEAR founder Illia Polosukhin will be speaking on the topic of "Transforming AI" at NVIDIA's upcoming GTC24 conference.

Illia himself is a true AI OG.

He worked as a machine learning researcher at Google for ten years, where he was instrumental in developing the Transformer, the AI model behind ChatGPT.

Background on NEAR

Initially founded in 2017 as an AI start-up, NEAR dedicated itself to building its own blockchain network just one year later.

The original goal was to develop a blockchain that would be a cheaper and more performant alternative to Bitcoin and Ethereum.

To achieve this, NEAR relied on sharding, in which the blockchain is divided into smaller, separate blockchains in order to execute transactions in parallel and thus increase throughput (the
number
executed
transactions per second) can be increased.

NEAR today

NEAR is now also developing further blockchain infrastructure.

In addition to its own data availability layer, which is said to be up to 30 times cheaper than Celestia, the company has focused primarily on the topic of chain abstraction.

The most important feature here, and also NEAR's core USP, is called Account Aggregation.

It should enable Web3 users to connect to dApps (decentralized applications) on different networks - including Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana - without having to transfer their assets back and forth.

This form of abstraction is made possible by a combination of...

• Chain Signaturesthat allow NEAR accounts to control addresses on other networks and...
• a network of smart contracts and third partiesthat execute the user's trading intentions on other blockchains.

Traction

With an average of 1.2 million daily active users, NEAR is the most used blockchain network in crypto after Tron.

NEAR owes these figures in particular to its integration with the payment system of the Singaporean retail shopping app KaiKai.

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Did you enjoy this short deep dive?

Then take a look at the other topics in today's edition of Blockstories:

• Ethereum: Everything you need to know about the Dencun upgrade
• BlackRock submits next application
• German stock exchange launches crypto trading venue
• 73 million USD for privacy startup
• Details of to the Kamino and Wormhole Airdrop

This way: https://blockstories.beehiiv.com/p/ethereums-dencun-upgrade

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Sources:

NEAR Sharding explained: https://near.org/blog/blockchain-scaling-approaches-near-sharding-vs-layer-2s

NEAR's Data Availability Layer: https://pages.near.org/blog/why-near-data-availability

Chain Abstraction: https://pages.near.org/blog/why-chain-abstraction-is-the-next-frontier-for-web3

Account Aggregation: https://pages.near.org/blog/unlocking-web3-usability-with-account-aggregation

NEAR user numbers: https://app.artemis.xyz/chains

Our report on NEAR's partnership with KaiKai: https://blockstories.beehiiv.com/p/die-wichtigsten-erkenntnisse-vom-rwa-summit