The crypto and tech industries saw another eventful week, with major moves across AI, institutional crypto adoption, derivatives, and DeFi security. NVIDIA agreed to acquire Hugging Face for $12.93 billion, while Standard Chartered expanded its digital asset services in the UAE and Coinbase brought regulated crypto derivatives to Canadian traders. Meanwhile, a Switchboard oracle exploit forced Sui-based DeFi protocol Full Sail to begin shutting down. Here are the biggest crypto and blockchain stories you need to know this week.
Top gainers and losers of the week
- Pons (PONS) – staged a massive rally, exploding by 456.51% over the last seven days to reach a price of $0.7441;
- Arbitrum (ARB) – picked up strong bullish momentum, surging 48.69% during the week to lock in at $0.1336;
- Uniswap (UNI) – enjoyed a solid upward push, climbing 37.51% across the seven-day period to settle at $6.37.
- Polygon (prev. MATIC) (POL) – faced selling pressure over the week, sliding 12.59% to land at $0.09476;
- OFFICIAL TRUMP (TRUMP) – drifted lower throughout the seven-day stretch, dropping 12.29% to close at $2.39;
- Pump.fun (PUMP) – experienced a pullback after its previous rallies, losing 11.26% of its value to trade at $0.004215.
NVIDIA acquires Hugging Face for $12.93 billion
NVIDIA has agreed to acquire Hugging Face for $12.93 billion, Jensen Huang announced on September 3 in a post on NVIDIA's website. The deal brings one of the most widely used AI development platforms into NVIDIA's portfolio at a moment when open-weight models have become central to how companies build and deploy AI systems.
Open models are essential to expanding access to AI and accelerating innovation around the world.
— NVIDIA (@nvidia) September 3, 2026
We're excited to help @huggingface scale its platform and community while preserving the openness, neutrality, and choice that have made it a trusted home for AI builders.
🤗💚 https://t.co/OT4fIX22Rw
Hugging Face hosts more than 3 million models, 500,000 datasets, and 1 million applications used by more than 18 million developers and over 200,000 companies. NVIDIA is already the platform's largest contributor of open models and data, with more than 500 models and 250 datasets published on the platform.
Huang committed to keeping Hugging Face open.
"NVIDIA compute will not be required to build on or deploy through Hugging Face," he wrote, adding that the platform will continue to support multi-cloud and multi-accelerator development regardless of hardware provider.
Hugging Face's founders, Clem Delangue, Julien Chaumond, and Thomas Wolf, will remain with the company. The acquisition gives NVIDIA direct ownership of infrastructure that sits at the center of the open-source AI economy, covering model discovery, evaluation, and deployment across the industry.
Standard Chartered launches spot BTC and ETH trading in UAE
Standard Chartered launched spot Bitcoin and Ether trading for institutional clients in the UAE on Thursday, operating through its entity regulated by the Dubai International Financial Centre. The bank described itself as the first global bank and the first Global Systemically Important Bank to offer institutional digital asset spot trading in the region.
Eligible institutional clients can access BTC and ETH trading through Standard Chartered's electronic trading channels, integrated into the bank's existing platforms. The launch follows the bank's earlier steps into the regional crypto market. It introduced digital asset custody services in the UAE in September 2024 and signed a banking agreement with crypto exchange CoinMENA in June 2026, supporting fiat on- and off-ramps and client money accounts.
Coinbase launches regulated crypto derivatives in Canada
Coinbase launched regulated derivatives contracts for eligible Canadian traders on September 2, making it the first major crypto-native platform to offer direct crypto futures in Canada through Coinbase Financial Markets, a registered futures commission merchant with the CFTC.
The offering covers 23 perpetual and dated futures contracts across Bitcoin, Ether, and Solana, five commodity futures including gold, silver, and oil, and index futures through the COIN50 product. Contracts carry up to 10x leverage with nano-sized positions designed for lower upfront capital requirements.
Canadian traders have historically relied on unregulated or offshore platforms to access crypto derivatives. Coinbase described the launch as filling a regulated gap that left sophisticated investors without domestic options for hedging or speculation.
The move carries context beyond Canada. Globally, crypto derivatives volume runs at approximately 4.4 times the volume of spot trading, according to figures cited by Coinbase. The Bank of Canada has noted that one-third of publicly listed Canadian non-financial corporations actively use derivatives to hedge earnings. Regulated access to similar instruments for crypto had not previously existed at a major domestic platform.
Full Sail shuts down after Switchboard oracle hack on Sui
A Sui Network-based DeFi protocol called Full Sail announced it will shut down on September 2, days after an attacker exploited a vulnerability in Switchboard's oracle infrastructure to drain approximately $91,000 from three Full Sail vaults on August 29.
1/12
— Full Sail ⛵ (@FullSailFi) September 1, 2026
Full Sail is sunsetting on @SuiNetwork.
This was a difficult decision. Our immediate priority is returning what affected users lost and completing an orderly wind down.
The attacker targeted Switchboard's production code controlling who could authorize oracle price updates. By adding a key they controlled to a live oracle, the attacker gained the ability to publish false prices that appeared valid to the protocol. They pushed asset prices to roughly 100 times below market value, deposited into the affected vaults at those distorted values, restored prices to normal levels, then withdrew more than they had contributed. Direct liquidity pool positions were not affected.
Full Sail was not the only protocol hit. Virtue Money separately reported approximately $455,000 in losses connected to the same Switchboard incident, with 45 users liquidated and 23,215,117 IOTA-equivalent in collateral seized to clear debt.
Full Sail said Switchboard had not provided technical details about how its production code failed or committed funds toward compensation as of September 1. Mysten Labs, the team behind Sui, declined a request for financial support. Full Sail said all remaining protocol-owned liquidity will go to affected users, with the team absorbing any shortfall.
Anastasiia G
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