The money moved this week. All of it. In every direction at once.
Crypto ripped. Bitcoin blew past 78,000 dollars, up more than 24 percent on the week. Ethereum crossed $2,500 and $XRP ran 56 percent.
The rulebook opened. Citi will custody bitcoin, the SEC, Treasury and OCC all moved, and the CFTC said crypto market structure rules are coming with or without Congress.
Hunger set records. JPMorgan warned food inflation could nearly double by 2027, 1 in 4 Texas children now go hungry, and a record 907 aid workers were killed, injured or kidnapped last year.
$EAT ( ▲ 0.64% ) rode the same rally to become the largest charity token by market cap.
Two economies, one week. One is flooding with capital. The other is running out of food. WYDE lives in the gap between them.
THE BUILD
The $10,000 EAT Clippers round is still open. We pay creators in cash or $EAT ( ▲ 0.64% ) for verified short clips about the EAT Card and the mission, funded by real card spending rather than a brand budget. Apply at creators.eat.ong.
The EAT Card app is live on the App Store, the docs live at WYDE Hub, and our co-founders laid out the longer version of the mission on the Crypto Altruists podcast.
HUNGER AND PHILANTHROPY
Nearly 800,000 people are food insecure across the 12 counties the food bank serves, and 291,310 of them are children. Its 13th annual peanut butter drive opens in September during Hunger Action Month. Read the full story →
The bank sees food inflation climbing toward 9 percent as fertilizer costs, weather and shipping through the Strait of Hormuz stack on top of each other. The people who feel that first are the ones already skipping meals. Read the full story →
Bill Ackman and Neri Oxman pledged $400 million to launch a New York brain and longevity institute. The gift funds a new research center focused on the brain, aging and human health, one of the largest private science commitments of the year and a bet that basic research still moves faster with patient money behind it.
More in hunger and philanthropy
Shakira and Howard Buffett committed $1.25 million and 10 rebuilt schools to Colombia’s Chocó after the earthquake, pairing a pop star’s reach with a foundation that has spent years on food security in the region.
A record 907 aid workers were killed, injured or kidnapped in 2025 as armed drones spread into conflict zones, the deadliest year on record for the people who deliver food and medicine.
Uber-Zipline and Serve-Grubhub deals push drone and robot food delivery toward mainstream scale, the clearest sign yet that getting food the last mile is becoming an automation problem as much as a logistics one.
INSTITUTIONAL CRYPTO
One of the largest custody banks in the world is putting bitcoin next to stocks and bonds on the same shelf, which is how an asset class stops being exotic and starts being infrastructure. Read the full story →
The SEC proposed Regulation Crypto Assets with a $5 million startup exemption and a $75 million fundraising path. It is the agency’s first real attempt to write crypto capital-raising rules rather than enforce them case by case, a tailored regime that could let small token projects raise money without a full securities registration.
More in crypto
The Treasury proposed its first major GENIUS Act stablecoin rule, one month after the law’s own deadline passed, opening a comment window on who gets to issue a regulated dollar token.
The OCC granted Trump-backed World Liberty Financial a conditional national trust bank charter to issue its USD1 stablecoin, a fast track from startup to federally chartered issuer.
CFTC Chairman Mike Selig said he will write crypto market structure rules if the CLARITY Act stalls, signaling the agencies will move even if Congress does not.
Kraken launched a 2% cash-back crypto debit card in the US, the latest exchange trying to turn crypto balances into everyday spending, the same lane the EAT Card runs in.
FRAUD AND ACCOUNTABILITY
The agency says the executives backed $1.9 billion in bonds with auto loans that were pledged to more than one lender at once, a double-pledging scheme that left investors holding collateral that was never really theirs. Read the full story →
The CFTC closed its FTX cases with five-year trading bans for Caroline Ellison and Gary Wang and no fines. It is the quiet end of the biggest crypto fraud of the cycle, and the terms show how much of the accountability has already been spent in criminal court.
More in accountability
The DOJ charged 17 Mabna Institute hackers with stealing 31 terabytes from 144 US universities for Iran’s IRGC, one of the largest state-linked academic theft cases ever brought.
A judge tossed the economic espionage case against ex-Google AI engineer Linwei Ding, a setback for prosecutors trying to police the theft of frontier AI secrets.
THE AI MONEY
The chipmaker is again backstopping the capital that buys its own hardware, and even the trimmed number is larger than the annual budget of most US states. Read the full story →
Meta’s 29-state social media addiction trial opened in Oakland with penalties that could reach $200 billion. It is the first time a jury will weigh whether a platform’s own design choices harmed a generation of kids, and the number on the table is large enough to change how products get built.
More in the AI money
Databricks raised $5 billion at a $190 billion valuation after investors offered $15 billion, a reminder that private AI money is still chasing more deals than there is room for.
Groq raised $350 million at a $3.5 billion valuation, half its worth before Nvidia licensed its technology and hired its founder, the flip side of the same boom.
Pennsylvania barred AI data centers from shifting grid costs to households, an early move to keep the AI buildout from landing on ordinary power bills.
POLICY AND THE WORLD
The last-minute pause on a major trading partner touches everything from lumber to groceries, and food prices are one of the first places a tariff fight shows up. Read the full story →
A 7.7 magnitude earthquake on Indonesia’s Flores Island killed 48 as 5,000 evacuees waited for food and water. It is the kind of disaster where the gap between a pledge and a delivered meal is measured in days, and days are what people do not have.
More in policy and the world
The 60-day US-Iran memorandum expired with no deal as Iran said it agreed a Hormuz route map with Oman, keeping the shipping lane that moves food and oil in play.
A federal judge blocked Trump’s mail-in voting order nationwide ahead of the November midterms, freezing a fight that will define how millions vote.
The Pentagon told Congress US strikes in Yemen killed 153 civilians in 2025, up from two the year before, a toll that lands hardest on people already short of food.
$EAT BY THE NUMBERS
Meals funded: over 65,400, as of August 22, against the next milestone of 100,000. That is the number we actually measure, and it only moves one direction.
EAT is now the largest charity token by market cap on CoinGecko at about $24 million, ahead of Araracoin and GIVEBACK, and it traded near $0.000241, up about 10 percent on the day. The reason is the same one moving the whole market. Bitcoin blew past 78,000 dollars, Ethereum ran more than 30 percent on the week, and the CFTC signaled that crypto market structure rules are coming either way, which is exactly the kind of regulatory clarity that pulls capital off the sidelines. EAT runs on Base and tracks Ethereum, so when the market turns risk-on, EAT moves with it. Volume stays thin near $17,600, the token is small and volatile, and none of this is investment advice.
Every trade and every swipe routes a fee to hunger relief.
JOIN US
The EAT Card app is on the App Store and the beta list is open ahead of the public launch. If you create, our creator program pays on verified results rather than follower count, and the $10,000 EAT Clippers round is live at creators.eat.ong. If you run a business, the cause card extends to business spend too.
Record hunger and record capital arrived in the same seven days, which is exactly the gap we built WYDE to close. Every trade routes a share of the fee to meals, and the receipts are onchain so nobody has to take our word for it. Worth watching.
Onward,
The WYDE Team
Last edition: A Court Stripped Section 230, the FDA Killed Self-Certified Food Ingredients, and Wall Street Put $500 Billion Behind AI. Read every story as it lands at newsroom.wyde.org.