Kalshi recorded $37.17 billion in trading volume in August, down 7.3% from July’s $40.1 billion. Polymarket, together with the U.S. platform, accounted for an additional $8.16 billion, compared to $12.89 billion the previous month—a 36.7% decline, according to the Fixygen portal.
At the same time, after record activity in the summer, trading volume fell by 14.5% compared with July. This was the first monthly decline in approximately a year, according to data from The Block.
Kalshi accounted for $37.17 billion in turnover in August, which was 7.3% less than July’s $40.1 billion. Polymarket together with the U.S. platform generated another $8.16 billion compared with $12.89 billion a month earlier, meaning volume declined by 36.7%.
However, even after the decline, the August market remained significantly larger than in May, when combined turnover amounted to around $25.66 billion.
This segment is developing especially rapidly within traditional brokerage platforms.
Robinhood reported on September 8 that in the second quarter alone, 13.6 billion event contracts were traded through its service, while in the first eight months of 2026 more than 30 billion contracts were traded. Since the launch of the business about two years ago, Robinhood clients have entered into more than 45 billion such contracts.
The company is expanding the number of venues through which trades are executed. In addition to Kalshi and ForecastEx, Robinhood uses Rothera, and from September 8 began routing some contracts to the Crypto.com platform through CFTC-regulated infrastructure.
The company is also launching a separate prediction markets section for the U.S. midterm elections and expanding its offering of contracts on American football.
Prediction markets allow participants to buy and sell contracts whose payouts depend on the occurrence of a specific event — the result of a sports match, an election, an economic indicator or another measurable event.
In terms of their economic structure, such instruments lie between financial derivatives and traditional betting, which simultaneously ensures their rapid growth and creates regulatory disputes.
In the United States, more than ten states have already taken legal or administrative action against Kalshi or Polymarket, primarily over sports contracts.
CRYPTOCURRENCY, KALSHI, Polymarket, PREDICTION MARKETS, ROBINHOOD
Law enforcement officials have uncovered a large-scale scheme involving the illegal production and distribution in Ukraine of the counterfeit weight-loss drug “Biopatid,” in connection with which 27 individuals have been notified of their status as suspects, according to a Sunday announcement by the press service of the Office of the Prosecutor General on its Telegram channel.
According to the investigation, the suspects include the scheme’s organizer and owner of the underground laboratory, the owner of a well-known Kyiv clinic, a customs broker, laboratory workers, packagers, sales and advertising managers, as well as other participants in the criminal activity.
The cost of the main ingredients was about $17, while the finished product was sold for up to $1,200. According to preliminary data, products totaling more than $5 million have been manufactured since the beginning of this year.
“The mastermind behind the scheme, aware of the high demand for weight-loss drugs and the high cost of medications containing the active ingredient tirzepatide, decided to set up his own illegal ‘pharmaceutical business.’ To this end, he set up an underground laboratory where a generic version of the drug was manufactured without any permits or quality control,” according to a statement released by the press service.
The raw materials were subsequently used in the underground laboratory. The participants in the scheme created a website and social media pages, recruited sales managers, and actively advertised the drug.
They offered it to beauty salons, clinics, and healthcare professionals in various regions of Ukraine. Bloggers, actors, and other public figures were also enlisted to promote the product.
As part of the criminal investigation, law enforcement officers conducted more than 250 authorized searches at locations where the counterfeit drug was manufactured, stored, sold, and distributed, as well as at hospitals and cosmetic clinics.
Investigative actions were carried out in Kyiv and the Kyiv region, Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia, Odesa, Poltava, Vinnytsia, Zhytomyr, Mykolaiv, Rivne, Kharkiv, Khmelnytskyi, and Chernihiv.
During the searches, investigators seized the counterfeit drug and raw materials used in its production, equipment from an underground laboratory, packaging materials and finished printed materials, documentation and drafts, as well as cell phones and computer equipment.
Law enforcement officers also seized cash in various currencies totaling nearly 15 million hryvnias, luxury cars, and other property.
The issue of imposing preventive measures on all suspects is currently being resolved.
The investigations were conducted by prosecutors in collaboration with SBU officers.
In accordance with Article 62 of the Constitution of Ukraine, a person is presumed innocent of a crime and may not be subjected to criminal punishment until their guilt has been proven in accordance with the law and established by a court conviction.
Perfect Group plans to expand its rental real estate business in Kyiv and transfer some of the apartments in its complexes to professional management by hotel operators.
As the company’s CEO, Oleksiy Koval, stated in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine on September 1, 2026, the first such project is being developed in the LA MANCHE residential complex at 46 Shchekavitska Street in Podil. Forty apartments have been allocated for this income-generating real estate project.
The operator will focus primarily on long-term rentals.
Another project is being developed as part of the Stanford residential complex at 35 Predslavinskaya Street. Here, a separate section is planned for short-term rentals, and Perfect Group is in negotiations with a major professional operator.
The developer also plans to extend some hotel services to the other residents of the residential complexes. These include concierge services, babysitting, children’s playrooms, dog-walking, and other additional services.
According to Koval, after a period of competition among developers based on price, architectural concept, and infrastructure, the next key factor in market competition will be service quality.
For comfort-class housing, the company intends to develop a similar approach through digitalization. Perfect Group is developing an app to facilitate communication between residents and the management company, process requests, and vote on additional services. Its launch is planned for before the end of 2026.
In addition to income-generating real estate projects in Kyiv, Perfect Group is building the VELMY aparthotel in Polyanytsia near Bukovel.
Bitcoin mining profitability rebounded significantly in August 2026 thanks to a sharp rise in the price of the largest cryptocurrency, but the industry’s economics remain substantially weaker than last year’s levels, according to Fixygen.
According to the monthly Luxor Hashrate Index report published on September 8, the dollar-denominated hashprice—the estimated miner’s revenue per unit of computing power—started August at $31.63 per PH/s per day and ended the month at $39.33, an increase of 24.4%.
This marked the strongest monthly growth in the metric since November 2024. On August 27, the hashprice temporarily rose above $40 for the first time in 220 days.
Bitcoin was the main driver behind the improvement in mining economics. In August, its price rose from $62,889 to $78,312, an increase of 24.5%. The average BTC price for the month increased by 8.7% to $69,263.
The average hashprice for August was $34.63, compared to $31.21 in July, an increase of 10.9%.
However, even after this recovery, profitability remains significantly lower than last year’s levels. The average August hashprice was approximately 32% lower than the 2025 average of $50.68 per PH/s per day.
Relatively stable network difficulty provided additional support to miners. In August, two adjustments nearly offset each other, and the net change amounted to approximately minus 0.34%. The average difficulty was 2% lower than in July.
However, as early as September 5, network difficulty rose by 1.31% as some of the computing power that had previously been taken offline began returning to the network. Luxor notes that mining activity is recovering following the hashrate decline in June and July.
The increase in computing power could once again put pressure on profitability. The more equipment competes for a fixed block reward, the smaller the share of revenue per unit of hashrate.
The situation also remains challenging for less efficient equipment. According to Luxor’s estimates, devices with energy efficiency of 25–38 J/TH generated an average energy yield of about $45 per MWh in August, while the average grid electricity cost was about $48 per MWh. This means that some older equipment remains at or below the break-even point.
As a result, August provided miners with a noticeable respite, but the sustainability of the recovery will depend on three factors at once: Bitcoin prices, network difficulty, and the cost of electricity.
In August of this year, Ukraine increased its manganese ore exports by 30% compared to the previous month—to 3,511 thousand metric tons from 2,701 thousand metric tons.
According to statistics released by the State Customs Service (SCS), a total of 28,158 thousand metric tons of manganese ore were exported over the first eight months of this year, compared to 8,014 thousand metric tons during the same period last year.
In July of this year, Ukraine increased its manganese ore exports by 14.9% compared to the previous month—to 2,701 thousand metric tons from 2,350 thousand metric tons; in June, exports rose by 36.6% compared to May—to 2,350 thousand metric tons from 1,720 thousand metric tons; in May, it reduced exports by a factor of 3.1 compared to April—to 1,720 metric tons from 5,319 metric tons; in April, it increased exports by a factor of 2.8 compared to March—to 5,319 metric tons from 1,932 metric tons; in March, exports fell by a factor of 3.1 compared to the previous month—to 1,932 thousand metric tons from 6,072 thousand metric tons—and by a factor of 2.4 compared to January, when 4,553 thousand metric tons were exported.
In monetary terms, exports of this raw material amounted to $4.843 million in January–August (for the first 8 months of 2025 – $1.329 million).
In January–August 2026, Ukraine imported 23,099 thousand metric tons of ore worth $3.578 million, whereas there were no imports last year.
As previously reported, Ukraine reduced its manganese ore exports by 50.4% in 2025 compared to the same period last year—to 22,281 thousand metric tons—but stepped up shipments in August–December. While shipments totaled 2,977 thousand metric tons over the first seven months of 2025, exports more than doubled in August, when 5,037 thousand metric tons were shipped; in September, they amounted to 1,725 thousand metric tons; in October—3,993 thousand metric tons; in November—3,860 thousand metric tons, and in December—4,689 thousand metric tons.
In monetary terms, exports for the entire year 2025 fell by 45.2% compared to 2024—to $3,599 million. The majority of exports went to Slovakia (99.22% of shipments in monetary terms) and Poland (0.78%). Over the course of the year, the country imported 37,006 thousand metric tons from Ghana worth $5.546 million. All shipments took place in November. In 2024, 84,293 thousand metric tons of ore worth $18.302 million were imported.
The Pokrovsk Mining and Processing Plant (PGZK, formerly the Ordzhonikidze Mining and Processing Plant) and the Marganetsk Mining and Processing Plant (MGZK, both located in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast), which are part of the “Privat” Group, ceased the extraction and processing of raw manganese ore in late October–early November 2023, while the NZF and ZZF plants halted the smelting of ferroalloys. In the summer of 2024, the ferroalloy plants resumed production.
PGZK and MGZK did not produce any output in 2024, whereas in 2023, PGZK produced 160.31 thousand metric tons of manganese concentrate, while MGZK was idle.
In 2025, PGZK produced 63.9 thousand metric tons of manganese concentrate worth 342.138 million UAH and sold 25.4 thousand metric tons worth 216.309 million UAH. In 2026, the plant plans to increase manganese concentrate production by 3.44 times compared to the previous year—to 220 thousand metric tons.
In Ukraine, manganese ore is mined and processed by the Pokrovsk and Marganets Mining and Processing Plants.
The consumers of manganese ore are ferroalloy plants.
On September 10, 2026, the Switzerland-Ukraine Municipal Cooperation Forum was held in Basel, focusing on the development of partnerships between Ukrainian and Swiss cities and the implementation of joint projects to rebuild and strengthen the resilience of communities, according to the Embassy of Ukraine to the Swiss Confederation and the Principality of Liechtenstein.
The forum brought together representatives of central and local authorities from Ukraine and Switzerland, as well as relevant organizations from both countries. It was jointly organized by the Swiss government, the cities of Basel, Bern, and Zurich, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, the Embassy of Ukraine in Switzerland, the Ukrainian Association of Switzerland, and the Support and Recovery Platform.
Konradin Kramer, President of the Government of the Canton of Basel-Stadt; Iryna Venediktova, Ambassador of Ukraine to Switzerland; Vitaliy Bezgin, Minister of Community and Territorial Development of Ukraine; and Jacques Herber, the Swiss Federal Council’s delegate for Ukraine, delivered welcoming remarks to the participants.
Under the slogan “Building Partnerships. Achieving Results,” participants discussed the transition from inter-municipal contacts to specific investment and infrastructure projects. The main areas of cooperation identified were energy supply and energy efficiency, water infrastructure, local governance, and the development of public services.
The forum’s program included two panel discussions—one on the political foundations of municipal partnerships in reconstruction and the other on practical models for implementing such projects. Separate City Labs working sessions were held, during which representatives of Ukrainian and Swiss cities jointly developed specific proposals for further cooperation.
Municipal partnerships are one of the areas of Switzerland’s long-term support for Ukraine. The Swiss cooperation program with Ukraine for 2025–2028 specifically provides for support to local and regional authorities in the reconstruction and modernization of urban infrastructure and the provision of basic services, particularly in the areas of transportation, energy, water supply, healthcare, and education.
Swiss cities are already participating in practical projects in Ukraine. In particular, Basel is transferring up to 25 trams to Lviv as part of a program that Switzerland is funding with CHF 2.5 million from 2024 to 2028. Previously, Bern also donated trams to Ukraine.
Switzerland views the development of direct ties between cities as one of the mechanisms for Ukraine’s reconstruction. The country’s national program notes that Vinnytsia, Odesa, Sumy, and Kharkiv, among others, have previously expressed interest in partnerships with Swiss cities.
Holding the forum in Basel is intended to facilitate the transition from general agreements between communities to specific joint projects that can leverage Swiss technology, municipal expertise, and funding for the reconstruction of Ukraine’s infrastructure.
