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With trembling hands, MEI Pharma-whose name once resonated only in sterile labs and sterile minds-announces it has swallowed its doubts and swallowed Litecoin: 929,548 tokens at an average of $107.58. It’s a gamble, a theatrical act in the grand spectacle of modern finance, where GSR, the market manipulators’ puppeteers, and Charlie Lee, the cryptic creator himself, whisper from the shadows, “Trust us, we know what we’re doing.”

On August 5, 2025 (darling, do mark your calendars-history may choose to remember this date, or not), XRP trades at the altogether fashionable price of $3.04, a 2.20% daily gain. Some say this is ‘healthy consolidation’-a phrase as reassuring as a fainting couch in a thunderstorm. Others wonder: does this mark the final ascent, or just another melodramatic curtain call? Enter the esteemed EGRAG Crypto, who assures us that XRP’s current mood resembles those halcyon days before all logic exploded and prices followed suit.

But let’s not get too excited just yet. The road ahead is bumpy, with the $116K retest zone looking like a particularly rocky patch. A successful breakout from this consolidation could be the catalyst for a bullish rally that would make a bull itself blush. However, it’s also where things could go south faster than a dropped ice cream cone on a hot summer day.

Say hello to Verb Technology (NASDAQ: VERB), the company formerly known for slick video and sales gizmos, now sporting a new alias-TON Strategy Co. Because nothing says diversification like pivoting entirely to a cryptocurrency backed by a messaging app. The company raised a staggering $558 million-yes, with a ‘M’-and now acts as the first public company to bet big on Toncoin [TON]. Think MicroStrategy, but swap Bitcoin for Telegram’s blockchain baby.

On his digital chaise longue (the social platform formerly known as Twitter, now suffocatingly called “X”-I know, darling, how chic), Armstrong twirled his pen to declare that the ad was less agitprop, more gentle nudge at the venerable British finance system teetering about in its moth-eaten waistcoat. Regulators, he suggested, mistook it for a rowdy political skirmish, or simply have a severe allergy to cryptocurrency-and a fondness for misinterpretation.

Capital, that fickle mistress, lavished crypto startups with a month-over-month surge of 88%, totaling $5.36 billion. Such munificence! The blockchain, that digital tapestry of trust, and its assets shimmered with renewed vigor, as if kissed by the dawn of a new era. AI, the modern Prometheus, played its part with a flair that would make even the most jaded investor swoon. 🕺💸

Now, why would they do such a thing, you ask? Well, it seems our friends in Indonesia are quite taken with the idea of stuffing their national reserves with a sprinkle of Bitcoin magic! Imagine that! A country with a treasure chest full of shiny, virtual coins instead of dusty old gold bars! How positively thrilling! 💰😄

As tremblings set into the hands of analysts (those tireless monks of Wall Street, forever calculating salvation in spreadsheets), Fortune delivers their latest gospel. The jobs report, much awaited, arrived like an aging czar-tardy and disappointing. Seventy-three thousand jobs, they say! Not even a hundred thousand-oh, how the mighty have fallen. May and July, our former heroes, have been demoted too: their numbers revised downward, puncturing the brave faces of forecasts past. Who revised them? Is it an act of accounting, or a Dostoevskian confession?

Whale Alert, our diligent blockchain Sherlock, spotted 20 million XRP-roughly $60.6 million, because why not throw in a fancy number-to be transferred from the illustrious South Korean exchange Upbit into the ether of black boxes. Or, you know, an unknown wallet. Because what’s a whale’s treasure if not a mystery wrapped in an enigma wrapped in blockchain? 🚢🔍

Thankfully, the hiccup was brief – like a bad joke at a family dinner – but it did turn the spotlight back onto the magical mystery tour of centralization. And everyone loves a good mystery, especially when it involves a chain stopping dead in its tracks.