Good Morning, Asia. Here’s what’s making news in the markets:

Welcome to Asia Morning Briefing, a daily summary of top stories during U.S. hours and an overview of market moves and analysis. For a detailed overview of U.S. markets, see CoinDesk’s Crypto Daybook Americas.

Rest in Peace, Coinbase Wallet.

No, the app itself isn’t going away, but it is getting a new name.

On its X profile, its name is crossed out and replaced with a ‘TBA’ and a few question marks.

«There’s plenty of speculation about what it means, but I’m leaning toward ‘The Base App.’ That would fit the idea of Base unveiling a range of in-app experiences directly inside its wallet,» Bradley Park, a Seoul-based analyst with DNTV Research, told CoinDesk in an interview.

Base Creator Jesse Pollak was tapped to lead Coinbase’s Wallet team last October, which lends credence to Park’s theory.

In an interview on the sidelines of Devcon in Bangkok last year, Pollak played up the decentralization of Base. It could be that the wallet is due for a rebrand to highlight its decentralized nature and distance from Coinbase itself.

It’s not the first time Coinbase has re-branded its wallet. Originally it was launched as ‘Toshi’, and in 2018 that name was dropped in favor of Coinbase Wallet.

Ethereum’s ZK Upgrade Earns Institutional Praise from Cathie Wood

ARK Invest CEO Cathie Wood says Ethereum is “proposing the right moves for scalability and privacy to maintain its lead in the institutional world,” as the Ethereum Foundation unveils a roadmap to bring zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) directly to its base layer.

While Wood acknowledged she does not grasp all the technical details, her endorsement highlights growing institutional confidence in Ethereum’s long-term vision.

The proposed upgrade would let validators verify cryptographic proofs of block validity rather than re-executing each transaction, dramatically reducing computational overhead. These proofs would be generated by block builders or third-party zk-prover networks and verified in under 10 seconds, using hardware that costs less than $100,000 and consumes no more than 10 kilowatts of power.

The plan would boost network throughput and decentralization, but comes with tradeoffs. Shifting the burden of computation from validators to provers could introduce liveness risks if those provers go offline or collude. The Ethereum Foundation aims to mitigate these risks through prover diversity, protocol hardening, and eventually enabling at-home participants to contribute to proving.

If successful, this would make Ethereum the first major blockchain to integrate ZKPs at the protocol layer, reinforcing its position as the dominant infrastructure for both decentralized applications and institutional adoption. Combined with cheaper data availability via blobs and advances in zk-rollups, Ethereum is positioning itself as the chain most ready for scale.

Market Movements:

BTC: Bitcoin rallied 1% to nearly $119K over the weekend amid triple-normal trading volumes, while BlackRock’s IBIT crossed $80 billion in crypto assets under management, signaling strong institutional demand despite a late-session profit-taking reversal.

ETH: Ethereum surged past $3,000 for the first time since February, rising 3% amid record institutional inflows and heightened trading volumes that signaled strong bullish momentum.

Gold: Gold climbed to $3,371 as central banks continue their historic accumulation spree, over 1,000 tonnes annually since 2022, fueling a bullish breakout above key technical levels and setting sights on $3,578 and beyond.

Nikkei 225: Asia-Pacific markets opened lower Monday as investors reacted to President Trump’s surprise weekend announcement of 30% tariffs on the EU and Mexico starting August 1, with Japan’s Nikkei 225 falling 0.33%.

Elsewhere in Crypto:

• Chart of the Week: ‘Hyperbitcoinization’ May Not Be Just Maximalist Fantasy Anymore (CoinDesk)
• State of Crypto: Previewing Congress’ ‘Crypto Week’ (CoinDesk)
• Coinbase hires pseudonymous poster AlexOnchain as first ‘Crypto Twitter lead’ in bid to expand social media presence (The Block)

Caffeine is an innovative platform built on the Internet Computer (ICP) blockchain that enables users to create decentralized Web3 applications using natural language commands — no coding skills needed. By simply describing what they want, users interact with an AI-powered system that instantly generates fully functional, secure, and scalable apps running entirely on-chain. These apps are deployed as smart contracts (called canisters) on the Internet Computer, ensuring they are tamper-proof and decentralized.

The platform’s interface resembles a chat experience, where users communicate with an AI “builder agent” to specify app features and functionality. This conversational approach allows continuous refinement and customization of apps through simple text prompts, making app development accessible to everyone, regardless of technical background.

Caffeine supports a wide range of applications, including e-commerce websites, social media platforms, blogs, and business tools like customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. It also caters to personal projects and institutional use cases, offering flexibility across sectors.

One of Caffeine’s unique strengths is its fully on-chain deployment on the Internet Computer Protocol (ICP) blockchain. This ensures high security, resilience, and seamless integration with Web3 features such as decentralized identity and token payments. The platform also includes an app store where users can publish, discover, clone, and subscribe to apps, fostering a dynamic ecosystem of self-writing applications.

Caffeine was first publicly demonstrated last month by Dominic Williams, the Founder and Chief Scientist of the DFINITY Foundation, at the World Computer Summit 2025 in Zürich, where he showcased rapid app creation from natural language inputs.

Its official public launch is scheduled for July 15, 2025, at the “Hello, Self-Writing Internet” event in San Francisco. By combining AI-driven code generation with ICP’s blockchain technology, Caffeine aims to revolutionize how decentralized apps are built, making Web3 development intuitive and widely accessible.

At the time of writing, ICP is trading at around $5.48, up 4% in the past 24-hour period, according to CoinDesk Research’s technical analysis model.

Technical Analysis

• Support anchored at $5.14 during opening session.
• High-volume breakout hit at 21:00 UTC on July 12 with 504,468 units.
• Fresh resistance carved at $5.37, subsequently breached.
• Higher lows sequence validated bullish structure.
• Session peaks touched $5.49 on steady buying flow.
• Volume crushed 24-hour average during breakout windows.
• Final hour showed consolidation with volume fade in closing.

Disclaimer: Parts of this article were generated with the assistance from AI tools and reviewed by our editorial team to ensure accuracy and adherence to our standards. For more information, see CoinDesk’s full AI Policy.

«Hyperbitcoinization» — an almost apocalyptic term evoking end-of-days fiat collapse and bitcoin’s parabolic rise to global reserve status — is increasingly being discussed in more serious circles.

For hardcore bitcoin maximalists, it’s long been the ultimate scenario: a financial utopia where individuals, institutions and even nations are all-in on a bitcoin-only system as the fiat-based economy collapses.

While we aren’t there yet, the recent events might suggest something is brewing.

Bitcoin is trading at record highs above $119,000. The market cap of bitcoin is near that of the tech giants. The U.S. dollar is continuing its slow bleed in real purchasing power. Major institutions are allocating capital to BTC with the same risk-adjusted lens they apply to traditional assets. If hyperbitcoinization once sounded like ideological fiction, it’s now likely approaching early-stage reality.

«In prior BTC bull markets, the hyperbitcoinization thesis would have been limited to crypto enthusiasts. More recently, hyperbitcoinization-adjacent conversations have become much more palatable for the broader public,» FRNT Capital said in an emailed note.

From trenches to the front line

Just a few years ago, no one thought the likes of BlackRock would be creating an exchange-traded fund for the masses to buy billions in bitcoin.

Today, the iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) is a juggernaut with 706,008 bitcoin under its belt, worth $82 billion, according to BitcoinTreasuries.Net data.

Large companies are raising funds to buy bitcoin for their balance sheets. Political leaders, including a pro-crypto U.S. president, are floating the idea of national bitcoin reserves (whether that will come to fruition is still up for debate).

Even a U.S. housing regulator is considering whether crypto holdings could be considered for mortgage applications — a potential signal that digital assets are becoming part of core financial infrastructure, or at least that those currently in power would like to see that happen.

And of course, Wall Street has already claimed bitcoin with «Tradification» of the digital assets.

The ownership shift

The chart below makes an interesting observation about a potential «hyperbitcoinization» that may already be well underway.

From 2014 till at least 2020, bitcoin has been held by mostly individuals. But fast forward to today, a massive number of companies, funds and even governments, as opposed to individual crypto enthusiasts, are holders of bitcoin while prices continue to rally to new highs.

This shift in wallet distribution suggests that hyperbitcoinization, while not fully realized, is progressing from an ideological thesis to a potential observable market behavior.

In a market that is increasingly driven by narrative momentum and liquidity rotation, hyperbitcoinization may not just be a theme — it might become the trade.

«Conceivably, as the hyperbitcoinization thesis is validated in practice and gains further mainstream attention, more BTC investors will be motivated to HODL. This does not apply just to individuals, but to institutions and nations alike,» said FRNT.