Japan’s tertiary activity index falls 0.1% in August, beating forecast

The headline beat matters less than the direction: services activity still slipped sequentially, so the resilience is relative to a pessimistic forecast rather than evidence of expansion. For crypto and RWA markets, Japanese macro data feed mainly through rate expectations and yen-sensitive flows, and a milder contraction offers little reason to shift that calculus either way. The open question is whether the prior month's gain was a one-off and whether service-sector momentum keeps fading into the next print.