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Tech Beat · 3 PM Update

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Wall Street is stepping deeper into prediction markets. Cantor Fitzgerald is opening Kalshi's event contracts to roughly three thousand institutional clients, enabling large block trades on real-world outcomes. It's a significant legitimizing move, bringing the speculative mechanics of prediction markets into the mainstream financial infrastructure.

Meanwhile, the SEC is signaling a softer stance on crypto regulation, floating proposed rules that could formalize clearer guidelines for digital assets. If those rules take hold, analysts expect a wave of new initial coin offerings in the United States — a potential reshaping of how startups raise capital in the crypto space.

And in a quieter but meaningful corner of tech, the Tor Project just proved that internet freedom doesn't have to depend on big institutional donors. A quadratic funding experiment drew enough small contributors to raise over two hundred thousand dollars, with the model deliberately weighting the number of backers over the size of any single gift. It's a democratic approach to funding privacy infrastructure, and it worked.

Keep surfing. Tech Beat out.

Sources

  1. https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2026/08/19/cantor-opens-kalshi-prediction-markets-to-thousands-of-institutional-clients
  2. https://www.wired.com/story/why-is-it-absolute-hell-to-buy-a-movie-ticket-now/
  3. https://www.techradar.com/vpn/vpn-privacy-security/forget-big-donors-tor-project-proved-a-crowd-of-small-givers-can-bankroll-internet-freedom-and-raise-over-usd200k
  4. https://decrypt.co/375949/morning-minute-sec-clarity-crypto-token-fundraising
  5. https://www.techradar.com/streaming/peacock-raises-prices-for-the-fourth-time-in-four-years-just-in-time-for-nfl-season-but-these-workarounds-are-helping-users-stay-one-step-ahead
  6. https://www.techradar.com/pro/rethinking-secure-file-transfer-for-a-cross-domain-world
  7. https://www.infoq.com/news/2026/08/whatsapp-scam-alert-beta/?utm_campaign=infoq_content&utm_source=infoq&utm_medium=feed&utm_term=global
  8. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49361945
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