Bitcoin Clears $80,000 As Schwab Adds Solana

Bitcoin traded above $80,000 on Thursday as Charles Schwab told clients it will widen the list of tokens available in Schwab Crypto accounts, giving Solana, Avalanche and Chainlink access to a retail brokerage that has offered only bitcoin and ether since May.

The three named tokens outpaced the two Schwab already carries. SOL gained 12.9%, Chainlink 5.5% and Avalanche 3.6%, against 2.1% for bitcoin and 1.5% for ether. U.S. spot Solana ETFs have taken in $1.23 billion since launch and drew $3.6 million on Wednesday.

Bitcoin last changed hands at $80,020, up 2.1% over 24 hours and 10.4% over seven days, after trading between $78,294.85 and $80,793.49, CoinGecko data shows. It closed at $79,018 on Wednesday and had not settled above that level in the prior five sessions. Ether was at $2,504, up 1.5% on the day and 8% on the week. XRP added 6% to $1.46; Solana rose 12.9% to $109.13; BNB gained 1.6% to $710.12. Total crypto market value stood at $2.79 trillion, up 2.22% over 24 hours, on $99.4 billion of volume, with bitcoin dominance at 57.6%.

Among the 100 largest tokens, 71 are neither stablecoins nor tokenized funds or commodity tokens, and 63 of those rose on the day. Across the 150 largest, 16 non-stablecoin tokens declined.

The Crypto Fear & Greed Index read 71, or greed, on Thursday, against 65 on Wednesday and 41 on Aug. 18, according to Alternative.me.

Three New Tickers

Schwab said in a press release on Thursday that Solana, Avalanche and Chainlink will become available in Schwab Crypto accounts in the coming months. The platform has carried bitcoin and ether since its rollout in May, which The Defiant covered at launch.

"These additions are consistent with our approach to provide clients with access to familiar cryptocurrencies backed by an ecosystem of education, tools, resources, and support to make informed decisions about how crypto might fit into their broader investing goals," said Joe Vietri, Head of Digital Assets at Charles Schwab.

The release gives no date and no client or asset figures. Schwab has separately told advisors it is targeting mid-2027 for spot trading and custody in its registered investment advisor channel, which The Defiant reported this year.

SOL traded between $96.47 and $109.67 over 24 hours on $7.43 billion of volume, its market value at $63.7 billion. Chainlink was at $11.89, up 5.5% on the day and 11.7% on the week. Avalanche was at $7.50, up 3.6% and 4.5%.

Ethena Wants 95%

Ethena's research team posted a proposal to activate the ENA fee switch on the Ethena governance forum at 1:59 p.m. UTC on Thursday, and ENA rose 21.9% to $0.1669 on $1.79 billion of volume, its largest one-day gain among the 150 biggest tokens after VeChain.

The post ties the size of the buyback to the supply of Ethena's synthetic dollar. "the share of protocol revenue directed to ENA buybacks increases at each USDe circulating supply milestone," it reads. Once the first milestone is reached, "95% of the net revenue from each of these business lines...would be directed to ENA buybacks." The named business lines are USDe savings, whitelabel stablecoins and a third the post calls Ethena [X].

Buybacks do not begin on approval. "These milestones will be subject to an ENA tokenholder vote, which will follow immediately after this post," the proposal says, and no vote link had been posted in the thread as of Thursday afternoon.

USDe circulating supply stands at $4.05 billion, DefiLlama data shows, against the ">$6bn" supply threshold, one of three conditions the Risk Committee set in its November 2024 fee switch parameters. Ethena holds $4.49 billion of total value locked and generates $310 million of annualized fees, of which $5.3 million currently reaches the protocol as revenue.

The Defiant covered the first attempt to switch on the fee in September 2025 and Wintermute's original call for revenue sharing.

Solana Validators Vote

Solana's first on-chain validator governance vote covers three proposals filed to the Solana Foundation's governance repository: SGP-0001, a Solana constitution authored by Nick Almond of Jito and Tushar Jain of Multicoin; SGP-0002, which raises the disinflation rate from -15% to -30% and cuts emissions by about 18.9 million SOL over six years; and SGP-0003, which endorses a base inclusion fee plus a fully burned resource fee.

The repository's stated policy requires no minimum turnout and sets passage at two-thirds of For plus Against stake, with a three-epoch voting period. The governance FAQ states a one-third quorum and counts abstentions in the denominator. No tally has been published.

Solana Company, the Nasdaq-listed treasury vehicle, disclosed its positions on Aug. 21: for SGP-0001, against SGP-0002 and against SGP-0003. "We strongly believe that institutional adoption is a critical driver of Solana's growth, and institutions make decisions based on consistent, predictable structures," Chairman and CEO Joseph Chee said in the statement.

DeFi Development Corp. said Thursday morning it bought about 19,000 SOL at an average $98.14, taking its holdings to roughly 2,333,432 SOL and SOL equivalents, according to its release. The purchase is worth about $1.9 million.

Hedges Roll Off Friday

Bitcoin options expire on Deribit on Friday, and one market maker says the hedging around that expiry has been adding to the advance.

"Around $6.4bn of Bitcoin options settle on Deribit on Friday, with max pain near $69,000 and spot some 13% above it. Most of the open interest is in calls, so the desks that sold them have been buying spot to stay hedged as price rises. That buying isn't a view on the market, it's an obligation, and it has been adding to the move rather than capping it," said Martin Lee, Market Insights Lead at DWF Labs, in emailed comments.

"The larger event is still the September quarterly, which carries around 65% more open interest and expires in the same week as the Senate's procedural vote on the market structure bill and the Fed decision," Lee said.

Lee's note also said core PCE arrives Friday. The Bureau of Economic Analysis published the July report on Wednesday. The PCE price index rose 0.2% on the month and 3.7% over 12 months, and the core index rose 0.2% and 3.3%, according to BEA.

The Defiant could not independently confirm the $6.4 billion notional or the $69,000 level. A partial read of Deribit's public order book summary for the Aug. 28 expiry showed larger open interest in puts than in calls.

The Kansas City Fed's Jackson Hole symposium runs Aug. 27-29 on the theme "Financial Innovation: Implications for Payments and Policy." The bank has not published a program or speaker list.

Polymarket put the odds of no change at the Sept. 15-16 meeting at 68% and a quarter-point increase at 31%, against 1.1% for a cut, on $54.7 million of volume. Senate cloture on the CLARITY Act ripens Sept. 15, and The Defiant reported this month that traders had pushed passage odds into 2027.

ETFs Keep Buying

U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs took in $232.2 million on Wednesday, bringing the week to $884.1 million, according to Farside Investors. BlackRock's IBIT accounted for $200.8 million of Wednesday's total and Grayscale's GBTC lost $50.4 million. Spot ether ETFs took in $192.4 million on Wednesday and $487.8 million over the three sessions. Thursday's figures publish after the U.S. close.

Spot Solana ETFs took in $3.6 million on Wednesday, down from $32.2 million on Tuesday and $33.5 million on Monday. Cumulative net flow into the six funds stands at $1.23 billion.

DeFi total value locked rose 1.91% over 24 hours to $88.94 billion, DefiLlama data shows. Stablecoin supply grew 0.78% over seven days to $303.9 billion and 0.41% over 30 days, adding roughly $2.4 billion on the week.

Treasury yields were little changed. The 30-year closed at 5.18% on Wednesday and the 10-year at 4.66%, against 5.23% and 4.70% on Monday, Treasury data shows. The two-year held at 4.19%. Thursday's rates publish after the close. The S&P 500 rose 0.72% to 7,730.99 and the Nasdaq Composite gained 1.57% to 26,541.35. The SPDR Gold Shares ETF added 0.27%.

VeChain Runs Without News

VeChain was the largest gainer among the 100 biggest tokens, and no dated announcement accompanied the move. The most recent post on VeChain's site is dated Aug. 6 and covers VIP-255, an upgrade the project calls Interstellar that packages 11 Ethereum improvement proposals; voting on it ran Aug. 10-17 and the activation block is set for September. VTHO, the gas token minted by holding VET, rose 8.2% over the same 24 hours against VET's 24.1%.

Official Trump rose 15.8% with no project news. The token is 96.5% below the $73.43 it reached in January 2025 and set a record low of $1.37 on Aug. 13.

Lighter's LIT extended its run to 40.6% over seven days. Founder Vladimir Novakovski holds one of the 43 seats on the CFTC's Innovation Advisory Committee, which met for the first time on Aug. 20; the agency has published nothing since a readout on Aug. 21, and neither Lighter nor the CFTC has announced a U.S. perpetuals offering. Lighter processed $16.15 billion of perpetual volume over seven days against $633 million of total value locked, third among perpetual DEXs behind Hyperliquid and Aster.

Kamino's KMNO rose 19.6% and Cash Cat 18%, both outside the 150 largest tokens.

Stacks Gives Back

Stacks was the largest decliner among the 150 biggest tokens after an 80.6% week, alongside Falcon Finance's FF at 5.8%. No adverse announcement accompanied the decline. Stacks said Thursday that HashKey Cloud will take part in the first Bitcoin Staking Genesis Bond, and announced BitGo support for sBTC on Tuesday and Fordefi custody on Monday.

"HashKey Cloud brings the largest institutional staking operation in Asia into Bitcoin Staking, and that is exactly the kind of participant the Genesis Bond is built for," said Muneeb Ali, Founder of Stacks. "Institutions want their Bitcoin to earn Bitcoin without giving up custody or moving it off the base layer."

The Genesis Bond launches around Sept. 10 and starts at Bitcoin block 966,350, according to Stacks. Dual stacking ends at the same block. Restaking participation stood at 88% of STX after the PoX-5 upgrade went live on July 31.

Canton, the largest token to fall, has no announcement dated this week. JUST and HTX DAO, both on Tron, were down over seven days as well.

Prices and market data as of 4:45 p.m. ET on Aug. 27, 2026.