August began with BTC trading below the 120k price mark. It was trading between 115k and 118k. It later had a breakout and reached the peak price of 123k, but could not break the 124k price level. Ethereum, on the other hand, had also an interesting and bumpy month, where it reached almost k5 (4,934 on 24 August, to be exact) but could not maintain the price and started to fall, currently trading at the 4,300 level. This price action craziness has paved the way for crypto markets to experience rapid price movements across different digital platforms. Earlier, Fed Chair Powell hinted at potential rate cuts, which sparked a price spike of BTC up to 116.5k, and altcoins like ETH and Sol climbed. The rate cut probability is heavily dependent on the inflation rates from the USA, which were not significant, and BTC started to fall immediately after those numbers were released. As a result, the overall month was highly volatile, and many cryptos experienced both up and down swings. Top 5 Gainers The CEO of Edge Hound, an expert in AI and trader, Peter Pavlov: “August was a textbook example of how sentiment, fundamentals, and investor buzz intersect in the crypto space. BTC’s brief push above 123k showcased that buyers are still willing to step in on any sign of dovish Fed commentary. However, the failure to hold above 124k really proved that resistance remains heavy unless a strong catalyst is introduced. What impressed me the most were projects like OKB and Cronos, which were not random pumps but supported by strong fundamentals.” Among the top 5 gainers of prominent projects, OKB and Cronos had significant bullish price swings, enabling hodlers to gain 100% and even more. The second half of August was mostly bearish for large projects due to market-wide corrections and profit-taking from earlier gains. The top 5 tokens that gained the most value were OKB, Cronos, Pump.fun, Rayium, and Arbitrum. OKB (+249%) OKB had an explosive jump in August. It started at 47 dollars on the 1st of August and launched all the way up to a 255 dollar price tag, which is a staggering achievement. The main drivers behind this otherworldly spike were the token burn event and becoming an exclusive gas token and utility in Polygon’s zkEVM. These bullish events throw the OK Blockchain Foundation and Maltese crypto exchange, OKEx, crypto coin OKB to the moon. 65.25 mln tokens were burnt, which not only reduced the amount of coins in circulation but also caused major bullish sentiment among investors and holders. This sharp upward spike was then followed by a correction, which lasted till the end of August. It lost more than 100 dollars in price during this correction and is currency trading near 150-160 price mark. Cronos (94%) Cronos' price doubling was not a coincidence. It has partnered with Trump Media and crypto.com, forming a $1 billion digital asset treasury. It will be integrated with Truth Social’s new rewarding initiative, strengthening its utility and development. The project employs AI models, tokenization, and defi to capitalize on crypto.com’s integration to increase institutional adoption using crypto.com’s large network. These activities mark serious efforts from the project’s admins to achieve even more popularity, and it was noticed by investors. As a result, Cronos started at 0.14 and quickly rose to 0.37 in several days. After the spike, it started to correct and was trading around 0.27 at the end of August as investors locked in profits. Pump.fun (38%) Pump Fun remains a popular platform to create and launch meme coins with a few clicks of a button, and with its significant strides to make its services even more refined, its price experienced a spike of around in August. Main reasons? Aggressive token buybacks, record-breaking revenue, market dominance, and altcoin season hopes are driving ecosystem sentiment. Pump.fun conducted a massive buyback operation where it bought back 33 mln dollars worth of PUMP tokens. This accounted for around a 20% price surge. With 60% of purchased tokens burned and 40% allocated to staking rewards, the price climbed further. Mid-August was the highest weekly revenue of 2025, pump.Fun generated 13.48 million dollars. The platform regained dominance as a result among Solana meme-coin launchpads. Raydium (23%) Raydium RAY token buybacks supported the token’s price surge this month. The total price pump was around 23%, which is a significant rise for 30 days. Buybacks reduce token supply and cause scarcity, which immediately results in price spikes. Raydium also generated high volumes of trading and revenue. It sustained daily buybacks, which boosted the demand for the coin. Daily protocol fees from LaunchLab hit around 900,000 dollars, which was higher than standard swap fees for the first time. On the other hand, the platform is expanding beyond just a meme-coin launchpad. It was integrated with xStocks, which made it the primary liquidity provider for tokenized equities such as $TSLAx and $SPYx. All of this ultimately resulted in a more than 20% jump. At the end of August, RAY was trading near the $3.60 price mark. Arbitrum (20%) Arbitrum started the month at $0.42 but quickly experienced a dip to 0.36, which marked the lowest point for the crypto price. After this, it started to cruise to 0.57 and then 0.61 later this month. The bullish movement was supported by a combination of factors like PayPal integration, timeboost upgrade, increased network activities, and institutional and public adoption. Timeboost upgrade boosted transaction speed and reduced latency, improving user experience. However, the main boost was a PayPal integration with PYUSD stablecoin integration onto an Arbitrum network, which seriously boosted holder confidence. A 10% uplift was experienced in July, which continued in August after the aforementioned dip. Arbitrum’s integration of US Government Commerce data on-chain via Chainlink and $PYTH oracles increases the reliability of DeFi. Top 5 Losers Among the top losers, Moero presented the most intriguing yet scary case of what happens when someone takes 51% of a network's hash rate. Other losers were mainly in a bearish momentum after profit-taking or overall price correction. Tokens that lost the most value were Floki, Monero, Pepe, Stellar, and Sui. Let's analyze each of these tokens in more detail to find out what happened. Floki (-20%) This meme token has its Ecosystem and has been working to become not only known as a meme but also a token with real-world usage. The token experienced a sharp decline after a massive developer wallet dump. Generally, when developers sell their crypto, the price typically tanks, and this was the case for FLOKI as well. On the other hand, technicals were also mostly bearish with this meme coin. As a meme coin, FLOKI is very vulnerable to investor sentiment and mood. It also reacts profoundly to market cycles. Another factor is that August is typically a bearish month, as many investors are just trying to escape from their jobs and have a holiday, and without strong fundamentals, prices usually fall. Couple this with developer dumb, and the result was around -20%. Monero (-15-20%) From 15 to 259 USD, Monero was yet another loser, only slightly below FLOKI. It experienced -15% in August and was trading near 250 levels at the end of August. There was a significant fundamental reason behind this fall: Qubic, a project led by former IOTA co-founder, acquired 51%+ of the Monero network hashrate, which is a disaster by crypto standards. This is because, with a 51% attack, the attacker can double-spend coins, reverse transactions, and compromise the integrity of the blockchain, undermining trust and triggering a sharp market sell-off. While the Qubit might not attack and double-spend coins, it is still a very negative event, and holders lost trust in the project. This caused sell-offs of the Monero coin and damaged its trust, resulting in a -15-20% decline. However, Monero’s community is actively discussing solutions to eliminate this 51% attack by a hard fork. Pepe (-15%) PEPE experienced a -15% decline in August. Pepe is a memecoin, and it is sensitive to market dynamics and trading speculations. Social media trends are also very impactful because Pepe does not have a significant utility or real-world applications. Historically, when there is uncertainty in financial markets, investors try to unload their highly risky assets for stable asset classes. Overall, Pepe was vulnerable to a market-wide correction, and it is natural for it to experience extreme price swings up and down. There were not many fundamentals happening from the project’s side to boost its price and increase holder confidence. Stellar (-13%) Stellar’s native XLM coin showed bumpy movements in August. It started at $0.41, rose all the way up to $ 0.47, but could not maintain its growth and went into a correction. XLM is the most interesting case in our analysis because it had a 68% rally in July, which was caused by several key factors. It integrated NEAR Intents, collaborated with Telegram to expand its reach, and leveraged blockchain and stablecoins to offer fast and cheap payment solutions in Latin America. This caused its price to rise significantly, and August was the month of profit-taking, and as investors locked in their earnings from the previous month, August was mostly sideways price action for XLM. Over 60 million XLM were sold by institutional investors, which strengthened the downward pressure even more. Sui (-13%) Following the XLM, Sui was also down this month overall. Token unlocks are damaging to the crypto’s price, and this was exactly the case with Sui in August. It started the month with a 3.80 price market, went all the way up to $4.15, and then started to go down, trading around 3.2 at the end of August. Despite its efforts to grow adoption, scalability, and a robust ecosystem, Sui experienced a significant downturn after token unlocks and increased supply. More coins in circulation equals inflation, and as a result, prices tank. A major release of 44 million tokens valued at $171 created excessive supply pressure, increasing selling activities. This event was so significant that the price could not break the resistance. As BTC also fell, most cryptos followed suit. The bottom line August of 2025 was shaky for crypto markets and showed us once more that this market is very volatile and extreme price swings are highly likely. Top gainers were mostly supported by strong fundamentals, scarce supply, and increased adoption. Losers mostly experienced the opposite. As developers dumped their token holdings, they increased the tokens in circulation, which ended up in losses. Some coins were just bearish because investors were taking their profits made in previous months. August's top performers, including OKB, Cronos, and Arbitrum, showed once more how strategic developments can seriously boost investor confidence and drive large gains. Losers like Floki, Monero, and Sui reminded us that vulnerabilities, developer actions, and token unlocks can quickly erase value, even for strong projects with powerful ecosystems and communities. In the end, fundamentals, utility, and strategic project developments were key drivers, but macroeconomic conditions, sentiment, and investor behavior can swing prices sharply, especially for crypto projects without strong real-world utilities.