Cointelegraph

Bitcoin’s latest rally has pushed the cryptocurrency above a key long-term technical indicator for the first time in about nine months, offering a potential signal that its broader downtrend is losing momentum.
Charting platform Barchart highlighted on Thursday that Bitcoin’s (BTC) price had crossed above its 200-day moving average for the first time since November 2025, roughly a month after BTC reached an all-time high above $126,000.
The 200-day moving average is widely used to gauge longer-term market trends, with moves above the indicator often viewed as a sign of bullish momentum. A sustained break above the level could therefore suggest that Bitcoin’s months-long downtrend is beginning to weaken.
The move came as Bitcoin climbed to nearly $73,000 on Thursday, according to TradingView data.
Source: Barchart
Bitcoin has gained more than 13% since Wednesday, when the US Treasury Department announced it would at least double the size of liquidity-support buybacks for longer-dated Treasury securities, raising the maximum from $2 billion to at least $4 billion per operation beginning Sept. 9.
The operation aims to improve liquidity at the long end of the Treasury market and initially pushed long-term yields lower, helping bolster risk appetite across financial markets.
Following the Treasury’s announcement, Standard Chartered’s Geoff Kendrick said the move could help fuel a broader Bitcoin rally toward $100,000 by year-end.

Michael Selig, who chairs the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), signaled that the agency would not be idle while Congress continued to debate provisions in a cryptocurrency market structure bill.
In prepared remarks for the inaugural meeting of the CFTC’s Innovation Advisory Committee on Thursday, Selig said that the commission would move forward on crypto regulations even in the absence of the Digital Asset Market Clarity (CLARITY) Act being passed by lawmakers, adding it would “help [Donald Trump] deliver if Congress will not.” According to the chair, he had already directed staff to allow registered and non-registered entities to offer “crypto asset trading on a leveraged or margined basis” and explore developer protections.
“We’re going to give CLARITY its breathing room for a vote, but if the Democrats cannot support a bipartisan work product, which reflects compromises from both sides of the aisle, and ultimately send a fair version of the bill to the President’s desk, then rest assured, I will direct CFTC staff to move swiftly to propose these new rules for the industry,” said Selig.
The market structure bill is effectively paused until the US Senate returns to session in September, when Majority Leader John Thune is expected to hold a cloture vote on the legislation. CLARITY would need 60 votes to pass the chamber and return to the House of Representatives, whereupon it could go to Trump’s desk for final approval or a veto.
Selig’s remarks came just a day after the CFTC chair stood alongside Trump and other crypto industry leaders at a White House meeting. The president urged Congress to pass a “fair version” of CLARITY to keep the country “ahead of China.”
Many Democrats in Congress have been calling for stronger ethics provision in the market structure bill specifically to address the Trump family’s crypto investments, which netted the president $1.4 billion in 2025. Although Trump said on Wednesday that a “lot of Democrats” approved of CLARITY, it’s unclear whether enough lawmakers will support the bill to meet the 60-vote threshold to pass the Senate.
The CFTC chair’s agenda echoed that of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which on Tuesday released proposed rules for digital asset regulation. The securities regulator said the rules could provide crypto companies with a safe harbor policy from tokens being treated as “investment contracts” and certain exemptions for issuers.
CFTC still lacks a full panel of commissioners
Selig spoke alongside Innovation Advisory Committee Chair Walt Lukken and the body’s Designated Federal Officer Michael Passalacqua on Thursday. As the only Senate-confirmed commissioner at the CFTC in a leadership panel expected to consist of a bipartisan group of five members, Selig has been solely responsible for directing the agency’s agenda since December.
The CFTC committee also discussed issues related to artificial intelligence and prediction markets on Thursday. Under Selig, the agency has claimed that it has “exclusive jurisdiction” over prediction markets due to event contracts on the platforms being considered “swaps.” The chair has directed the commission to file lawsuits against state-level authorities challenging this position in cases involving companies like Kalshi and Polymarket.
Magazine: Here’s why the CLARITY Act’s ethics deal may be so hard to reach

Binance has launched Agent OS, a developer platform that allows AI agents to access market data, monitor user accounts and execute crypto trades on the exchange.
According to a company announcement, the platform supports AI tools including ChatGPT, Claude Code, Codex, and Cursor, allowing users to authorize agents to view account information and place trades within configured permissions and limits.
Users can assign agents to dedicated subaccounts to separate funds and trading activity, configure their permissions and revoke access at any time. Binance said it can monitor trades placed through Agent OS but cannot see an agent’s external information sources, interpretation or decision-making, which occur within the user’s chosen AI application.
Agent OS also connects agents to Binance’s payment and onchain tools, allowing them to make payments and interact with wallets and other onchain services.
Crypto exchanges move deeper into AI agents
Binance joins a growing group of crypto exchanges opening their trading infrastructure to AI agents.
Coinbase launched Coinbase for Agents in June, allowing AI models including ChatGPT and Claude to connect to user accounts and autonomously execute crypto trades and strategies. The tool also supports agent-driven payments through Coinbase’s x402 protocol.
Source: Coinbase
Other exchanges have taken different approaches to AI autonomy. In July, Kraken unveiled an AI-powered investing assistant that monitors markets and recommends trades based on users’ financial goals and risk preferences, but requires user approval before executing a trade.
The push has extended beyond trading. OKX launched a beta marketplace where AI agents can find work, transact autonomously and hire other agents for tasks, using stablecoin payments and an onchain reputation system.
Several crypto industry leaders, including Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong and Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire, have argued that AI agents could soon account for a significant share of onchain activity. Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao has expressed a similar view, describing cryptocurrency as the “native currency” of AI agents.
Magazine: 200,000 fake AI ‘victims’ deployed to scam bait online fraudsters

As US federal debt tops $40 trillion for the first time, there is renewed debate over whether mounting government borrowing could strengthen Bitcoin’s case as a scarce, non-sovereign asset.
Interest costs have also climbed, surpassing Medicare to become the federal government’s second-largest budget expense behind Social Security in the first 10 months of fiscal 2026, according to Reuters.
The debt milestone coincided with a Treasury move to calm a bond selloff that’s pushed long-term yields to their highest levels since 2007. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Wednesday the department would double buybacks of 10- to 30-year debt to at least $4 billion per operation, initially pushing yields and the US dollar lower as Bitcoin (BTC) and gold rallied.
Bitcoin is continuing to surge, trading around $72,600 on Thursday morning, up roughly 6% over the past 24 hours and 15% over the past week, according to CoinGecko data.
Source: Yahoo Finance
Treasury buybacks add another potential Bitcoin catalyst
While Bloomberg and others attributed elements of Bitcoin’s rally to optimism over friendlier US crypto policy following President Donald Trump’s meeting with industry executives at the White House on Wednesday, market analysts pointed to the Treasury and broader fiscal conditions as additional factors.
TrendLabs founder and chartered market technician JC Parets pointed to the Treasury’s move to increase purchases of longer-term government bonds, which he said bond-market participants viewed as an effort to push back against rising long-term rates. Parets said:
If the market believes the government is going to push back against rapidly rising long-term rates, that can change the math for everything else investors own. Including Bitcoin.
Bitunix analyst Dean Chen offered another view, saying that the debt milestone is not inherently bullish for Bitcoin. While Treasury buybacks temporarily lowered long-term yields and weakened the dollar, persistent deficits and growing financing needs could eventually push borrowing costs higher again.
Chen said Bitcoin’s near-term direction will depend more on broader financial conditions, pointing to US dollar strength, long-term Treasury yields and inflation expectations as key variables to watch.
Analysts at DeFi protocol Yield Basis took a longer-term view, telling Cointelegraph that continued growth in US debt could strengthen demand for Bitcoin as a hedge against currency debasement because of its fixed supply and lack of a sovereign issuer. They said:
Whether it will actually become a new reserve asset remains to be seen, but as concerns around fiat currency debasement grow, it will definitely stand out more as a straightforward protective instrument (alongside more traditional assets like gold).
Magazine: MiCA cracks down on USDT in Europe... but no one else cares

Bitcoin mining company Bitdeer’s artificial intelligence (AI) division, Bitdeer AI, signed a five-year customer deal covering about 50% of the capacity of its A102 Malaysia facility before its energization.
The deal was signed with an undisclosed customer of “high credit quality” and is expected to bring approximately $400 million in total revenue, Bitdeer revealed in a Wednesday announcement.
Revenue and associated costs are expected to begin in the first quarter of 2027 when services commence. Bitdeer AI is targeting 350 megawatts of AI cloud data center capacity by the first quarter of 2028.
Bitdeer is among the Bitcoin miners that expanded into AI infrastructure and high-performance computing to diversify revenue streams. Earlier in August, Bitdeer signed a 16-year lease valued at $4.7 billion for 121 megawatts of AI computing capacity in Norway.
Other Bitcoin miners that expanded into AI infrastructure include MARA Holdings, TeraWulf, Hut 8 and IREN.
Bitdeer’s stock price rose 7% on Wednesday and nearly 6% in pre-market trading on Thursday, changing hands at $10.2 a share as of 12:16 pm UTC, according to Yahoo Finance data.
Magazine: Bitcoiners turn to dice throws as self-custody setups are re-evaluated

Public Bitcoin miners are spending billions chasing artificial intelligence and high-performance computing revenue, though returns have yet to keep pace, underscoring the massive upfront investment required to diversify beyond Bitcoin mining.
In its latest Miner Weekly newsletter, BlocksBridge Consulting reported that a group of 15 Bitcoin miners and AI data-center companies spent a combined $30.7 billion on capital assets in their latest 2026 reporting periods, already 42.6% more than the $21.53 billion they spent throughout 2025.
Among Bitcoin miners specifically, the gap between capital spending and AI revenue remains significant. Nine comparable miners spent $5.11 billion on capital assets during the first half of 2026 while generating just $341.2 million in directly reported AI and HPC revenue — a roughly 15-to-1 capex-to-revenue ratio.
BlocksBridge calculated capital spending based on cash purchases and allocations to hardware, property, equipment and other productive assets, after accounting for proceeds and refunds from asset sales.
Despite the gap, AI and HPC revenue is accelerating. The nine miners generated $205.8 million from those businesses in the second quarter, up 52% quarter-on-quarter, with Core Scientific, TeraWulf and Bitdeer among the companies reporting gains.
Bitcoin miners’ capital expenditures are vastly outpacing AI and HPC revenue so far. Source: Miner Weekly
The steep cost of pivoting to AI
AI and data centers have been touted as a way for Bitcoin mining companies to diversify amid challenging conditions in the mining sector, but BlocksBridge’s data shows that the pivot comes with substantial upfront costs.
“Power contracts and available land may give miners a starting advantage, but converting those assets into AI-ready capacity requires substations, buildings, cooling systems, networking equipment and, in some business models, GPUs,” BlocksBridge said.
It remains to be seen whether Bitcoin’s latest price recovery will provide relief for companies that still maintain sizable mining operations.
Bitcoin has surged more than 13% this week and climbed back above $72,000 after the US Treasury said it would at least double the maximum size of its long-term bond buybacks to $4 billion per operation, a move aimed at improving liquidity in the Treasury market that initially pushed yields lower and boosted risk appetite.
In a sign of the pivot to AI and HPC, Coinshares this week announced a change in strategy for its industry tracking exchange-traded fund.
Now branded the CoinShares Bitcoin Mining and Digital Power ETF (WGMI), with $222.4 million in assets under management, the fund’s universe includes 29 holdings drawn from bitcoin miners, data center operators, AI semiconductors, power generation, and HPC, which Coinshares describes as “the businesses powering the digital economy.”

Blockchain Optimism’s governance has approved a proposal to repurpose 546.9 million OP tokens previously reserved for user airdrops to support ecosystem growth and institutional adoption.
OP currently has a market cap of roughly $214 million, with a circulating supply of about 2.29 billion tokens, according to CoinGecko data.
The new Strategic Ecosystem Fund will support partnerships with chains, protocols and institutions, as well as incentives to increase activity and liquidity on OP Mainnet and grow OP Enterprise.
The decision drew pushback from some delegates who argued the tokens had been promised to users and questioned how the foundation would measure returns from the fund. Supporters said the allocation would be better used to compete for enterprise deals and drive growth.
Optimism vote to repurpose 546.9M OP. Source: Optimism
Optimism said it has no additional airdrops planned after distributing 269.1 million OP across five rounds, contending that airdrops were better suited to an earlier phase focused on broad user acquisition than its current institutional push.
Optimism is an Ethereum (ETH) scaling project behind OP Mainnet and the OP Stack, the blockchain framework used by networks including Base, Unichain, Kraken’s Ink and Sony’s Soneium. More than 30 OP Stack chains currently contribute revenue to Optimism, according to the project.
OP rebounds 11% but remains 93% below record high
OP traded around $0.09 on Thursday, up roughly 11% over the past 24 hours amid a broader crypto market rally. Despite the rebound, the token remains more than 93% below its all-time high.
At OP’s current price, the 546.9 million-token allocation is worth around $50 million, equivalent to nearly a quarter of the token’s roughly $211 million market capitalization.
Source: CoinGecko
In July, Cointelegraph reported that the blockchain had signed a a memorandum of understanding with Viva Republica, the operator of South Korea-based mobile money transfer app Toss, to on a three-month proof-of-concept to test a Korean won-based stablecoin infrastructure for institutional payments.
Magazine: MiCA cracks down on USDT in Europe... but no one else cares

Bitcoin (BTC) saw multimonth highs after Thursday’s Wall Street open while stocks dipped and bond yields rebounded on US-Iran war nerves.
Key points:
Bitcoin builds on its highest levels in 11 weeks to hit $72,500 on Bitstamp.
US bond yields see volatility after president Donald Trump threatens “economic warfare” with Iran.
Bitcoin market participants question whether the rally has staying power.
US bond yields reverse higher after Trump pledges “economic warfare” with Iran
Data from TradingView showed BTC/USD retesting $71,000 before hitting new 11-week high of $72,505 on Bitstamp, up by more than 4% on the day.
BTC/USD one-day chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
US equities opened lower after US president Donald Trump threatened Iran with the “most crushing economic operation ever taken against any country,” calling it “Economic D-Day.”
“This will be economic warfare and isolation on an unprecedented scale,” he wrote in a post on Truth Social amid frustration over the lack of a deal with the US on the Strait of Hormuz oil route.
WTI crude oil reached $87.69 per barrel on the day, its highest since July 24.
CFDs on WTI crude oil one-day chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
The comments further appeared to cause a rebound in US government bond yields, which had fallen sharply the day prior after the US Treasury announced that it would at least double the size of its bond-market liquidity interventions from September.
The 30-year yield traded as low as 5.179% on the day before rebounding to 5.266% — an increase of 9 bps, which nearly erased the previous downside. The 10-year bond yield also reversed the previous day’s drop.
US 30-year bond yields one-day chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
The Kobeissi Letter cast doubt on whether the intervention would be sufficient to calm markets.
“It’s going to take a lot more intervention to tame this beast,” it wrote in a post on X. The Treasury confirmed in its announcement that it would revisit the size of debt buyback operations on Nov. 4.
US 10-year bond yields chart. Source: The Kobeissi Letter on X.com
Analysis: Too early to call Bitcoin bull-market comeback
After gaining nearly $10,000 over four days, Bitcoin left market participants skeptical about the durability of its newfound strength.
In ongoing X coverage, trader and analyst Rekt Capital argued that BTC/USD would need to sustain its gains to challenge the grip of the bear market.
“Bitcoin will need to rally a lot more than what it has produced thus far if price is to invalidate the ‘weakening support’ idea. At the moment, technicals are pointing to $60k as a weakening macro support,” he wrote on Thursday.
A further post noted that four-year BTC price cycle patterns would allow for a new macro BTC price low until the end of 2026.
BTC/USD one-month chart. Source: Rekt Capital on X.com
Continuing, Ki Young Ju, CEO of onchain analytics platform CryptoQuant, flagged the return of positive demand for Bitcoin on both spot and derivatives markets — a phenomenon not seen since October 2025, when BTC/USD saw its most recent all-time high of $126,200.
“The scale remains modest, but if this holds for another month, it would be reasonable to conclude that the bear market is over and a new bull cycle has begun,” he told X followers.
Previously, Cointelegraph reported on the lack of spot demand as a key missing catalyst for a sustainable crypto market reversal.
Bitcoin demand growth data. Source: Ki Young Ju on X.com

A new poll conducted by Reuters/Ipsos found that a majority of respondents in the US believed it was not “appropriate” for US President Donald Trump and his family to earn through cryptocurrency investments while in office.
According to the results of the poll of 1,166 people between Aug. 14-17, 63% of the respondents said it wasn’t appropriate for Trump and his family to earn money from crypto. Notably, 69% of Republicans polled said it was appropriate, while an overwhelming majority of Democrats, 92%, responded negatively.
Source: Reuters
A June report from the US Office of Government Ethics disclosed that Trump had earned $1.4 billion from investments related to crypto in 2025, including through his family’s World Liberty Financial company and his memecoin, Official Trump (TRUMP). White House spokesperson Anna Kelly has repeatedly said in response to requests for comment on Trump’s crypto investments that there were “no conflicts of interest.”
Several lawmakers have called for investigations and additional information from government agencies over World Liberty and the Trump family investments. In July, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said he had introduced legislation to create an agency focused on addressing corruption at the federal level, calling out the president’s “various, and extremely lucrative, cryptocurrency ventures.”
On Wednesday, Trump spoke about crypto at a White House press conference attended by many C-suite executives and industry leaders. The president and others pushed lawmakers in the Senate to pass the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, a bill expected to establish clear roles for US regulatory agencies to oversee digital assets. The legislation is scheduled for a cloture vote on Sept. 15.

Cybersecurity firm Rapid7 unveiled a new cryptocurrency phishing campaign known as Operation Asterix, targeting roughly 885,000 phone numbers from several countries to steal cryptocurrency investors’ assets.
The phishing campaign led to 5,576 accounts matched to users on crypto exchange Binance, which were queued for attack, while the recovered logs also showed fake emails impersonating Crypto.com, according to a Monday report by Rapid7.
Of the 885,000 phone numbers, the largest file included 316,002 German mobile numbers, with additional directories covering Hong Kong, Bulgaria, the UK, the US, Canadian fintech companies and additional Ledger-related lists.
Phishing attacks and social engineering scams drove the majority of the crypto industry’s losses in the first quarter of the year, accounting for $306 million out of the total $482 million lost, according to blockchain security company Hacken.
As part of the Asterix phishing campaign detailed by Rapid7 analysts Anna Sirokova and Jan Recinsky, attackers drove victims to fake apps impersonating Ledger, Trezor, and Exodus, seeking to steal their seed phrases. Attackers reached out to victims through fake support emails and phone inquiries.
Operation Aseterix kill chain from acquisition to exfiltration. Source: Rapid7.
Cointelegraph has contacted the analysts for further comment on what they found regarding target filtering, hardware wallet spoofing and self-custody vulnerabilities. We will update this article when they reply.
Earlier in August, wallet provider Trezor reported a breach of personal data affecting about 14,000 users through its shipping provider, ShipMonk.
In July, a crypto investor lost nearly $1 million after signing a malicious phishing token approval transaction on Ethereum.
In November 2023, a fake Ledger Live app on the Microsoft Store resulted in the theft of $588,000 across 38 transactions.
Asterix phishing campaign boasts 13% “hit rate”
Attackers matched 43,066 accounts to cryptocurrency users with exchange accounts, validated from the larger German dataset of over 316,000 phone numbers, meaning that the campaign has a “hit rate” of approximately 13.6%, according to Rapid7.
The report also identified a checker for Kraken, which sought to bulk-validate phone numbers against accounts from the cryptocurrency exchange. The cybersecurity company said that the recovered artifacts showed that artificial intelligence tools were used as a significant part of the phishing campaign.
Phishing attacks are a long-standing headwind for the crypto industry, as they enable attackers to exploit human behavior rather than the code of a protocol.
On May 25, onchain analyst “b-block” warned that scammers used Google to deploy malicious phishing ads impersonating decentralized exchange Uniswap, reportedly stealing more than $400,000 from victims.
Leading crypto industry figures, including Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao, have previously called for better wallet security measures to avoid phishing scams, after an investor lost $50 million in an address poisoning scam in December 2025.
Magazine: How a ‘Wrong Number’ message turned into a $3.4M crypto scam

US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) recorded $517.2 million in net inflows on Wednesday, their largest single-day investment since May 4, pushing August net inflows to $1.47 billion.
The funds have taken in about $1 billion since Monday, already their strongest weekly net inflow since the week ended Jan. 16, when they attracted about $1.42 billion.
The inflows came as crypto prices rallied on Wednesday, alongside a US Treasury decision to expand buybacks of longer-dated government debt and renewed attention on crypto regulation after President Donald Trump urged Congress to advance the CLARITY Act at a White House event.
“The Treasury signalling it’ll step in at the long end pushed yields and the dollar lower, and gold and silver outperformed equities on the day, so the market priced this as a currency event rather than a growth one,” Jonatan Randin, senior market analyst at PrimeXBT, told Cointelegraph.
“Bitcoin moved with gold and silver rather than with risk appetite, which is what the debasement trade looks like when it’s working,” he said.
Bitcoin traded near $72,000 at the time of writing on Thursday, up 11% in the last 24 hours, according to CoinGecko. Ether rose 19% to $2,286.
Spot Ether ETFs logged $189.2 million in net inflows on Wednesday, bringing this week’s inflows to about $291.5 million.

Webull said Wednesday that cryptocurrency trading accounted for $2.25 million, or a little over 1% of the platform’s record $198 million revenue for the second quarter of 2026.
Revenue for the period was up 51% year-over-year, according to online brokerage and digital trading platform’s Wednesday earnings release.
That’s as equity and options trading generated $112 million of the quarterly income, or about 56% of the total $198 million.
Webull president and director Anthony Michael Denier during a Wednesday earnings call said the company was in the process of gradually rolling out crypto deposit and withdrawal capabilities.
Online brokerage Robinhood also posted record quarterly results on July 30, but its crypto transaction revenue fell 38% to $100 million, from about $160 million a year earlier.
Cointelegraph has approached Webull for more details about its cryptocurrency trading revenue compared to previous quarters.
The platform’s quarterly revenue came in slightly above Wall Street consensus of $194.5 million, according to analyst estimates compiled by Yahoo Finance. Webull’s stock price rose 8.9% on Wednesday and was up nearly 15% in pre-market activity on Thursday, changing hands at $9.98 a shareas of 10:37 am UTC.
Magazine: Why Ray Dalio says Bitcoin can’t replace gold

Bitcoin (BTC) and altcoins are breaking records as short position liquidations pass $3 billion over two days.
Key points:
Crypto short liquidations since Thursday are in excess of $3.1 billion, per CoinGlass data.
Bitcoin continues its upside reaction to a US Treasury liquidity intervention, approaching $72,000.
Bitcoin short-term holders take profit on previously underwater positions and move 43,300 BTC.
Two-day crypto short liquidations hit $3.1 billion
Data from CoinGlass shows ongoing crypto short liquidations at $3.1 billion for Aug. 19-20. Thursday’s tally was largest single-day wipeout of shorts ever recorded.
Crypto liquidations history (screenshot). Source: CoinGlass
On Wednesday, BTC/USD led the charge by reacting to a liquidity intervention by the US Treasury with a price spike to the highest levels seen since the start of June. At the time of writing, upside continues, with the pair reaching local highs of $71,992 on Bitstamp, per data from TradingView.
BTC/USD one-day chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
CoinGlass shows Bitcoin accounting for just over half of the total short liquidations at $1.65 billion.
The numbers do not represent the largest crypto liquidation event if long positions are included. It is dwarfed by the $20 billion long liquidation cascade that followed Bitcoin’s reversal from the most recent all-time high of $126,200 in October 2025.
In US dollar terms, data from CoinMarketCap puts Thursday’s total liquidations in seventh place historically, calculating the day’s long and short liquidations as $3.25 billion.
Bitcoin speculators take profit as cost basis returns
Bitcoin investors, meanwhile, capitalized on positions that were previously held at an unrealized loss.
Short-term holders — wallets holding a UTXO for less than 155 days — sent a record 43,300 BTC in profit to exchanges in their largest profit-taking move of 2026, per onchain analytics platform CryptoQuant.
Bitcoin STH profit and loss to exchanges (screenshot). Source: CryptoQuant
As of Thursday, the spent output profit ratio (SOPR) metric for the short-term holder (STH) cohort stood at 1.01, its highest since April. This reflects that the majority of coins in UTXOs from STH wallets moved at a higher price than in their previous transaction.
Bitcoin STH-SOPR data. Source: CryptoQuant
Previously, Cointelegraph reported that the STH cohort’s aggregate cost basis, also known as the STH realized price, stood at $68,700. At the time, analysis warned that any price upside could be stifled by the urge of investors in this cohort to exit underwater positions.

GnosisDAO approved Gnosis Chain’s transition from a standalone layer-1 network to a ZK-proven Ethereum Economic Zone (EEZ) rollup.
GIP-153 received 123,158 GNO in support, 115 against and 151 abstaining across 54 voters, Gnosis Chain said in an X post. Turnout reached 123,425 GNO, exceeding the 75,000 quorum.
Under the proposal, Gnosis Chain’s validator set would be retired and the network would settle transactions on Ethereum, making Gnosis Chain a layer-2 (L2) that relies on Ethereum’s validators for settlement.
An initial launch is targeted for late 2026 or early 2027, subject to the required EEZ technology being ready.
The update would enable Gnosis Chain-native smart contracts to call Ethereum and use the result in the same transaction, giving it access to Ethereum mainnet assets and liquidity in an environment “optimized” for consumers, a capability the proposal says is not currently available on existing L2s.
Gnosis Chain to become first production EEZ instance
The EEZ is a framework for building Ethereum-aligned rollups, developed by Gnosis and ZisK, with funding from the Ethereum Foundation.
The initiative aims to unify Ethereum’s fragmented L2 ecosystem by enabling smart contracts across different rollups to execute synchronously without relying on bridges. It targets one of Ethereum’s main scaling trade-offs: improved throughput from dozens of L2 networks, which separate liquidity, infrastructure, and user activity across separate blockchains.
Gnosis Chain would become its first deployed instance while retaining its existing applications, balances and xDAI gas token.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin previously raised concerns about the centralized sequencers and trusted bridging mechanisms as potential weak points in the design of some L2 networks. “The original vision of L2s and their role in Ethereum no longer makes sense, and we need a new path,” Buterin wrote in a Feb. 3 X post.
According to data from L2Beat, 22 Ethereum rollups currently secure $27.82 billion. Including validiums, optimiums and other scaling networks, the platform tracks $34.88 billion in total value secured.
EEZ could reduce reliance on vulnerable infrastructure: Standard Chartered
EEZ could reduce reliance on blockchain bridges and increase activity within the Ethereum ecosystem, according to Geoffrey Kendrick, global head of digital assets research at Standard Chartered.
“The EEZ will have the benefit of reducing the need for bridges (where hacks tend to occur) and increasing the usability of assets in EVM chains,” he wrote in a May 28 report shared with Cointelegraph.
“Both of these are likely to lead to greater activity in the Ethereum ecosystem.”
Kendrick said the EEZ could create greater composability between assets, allowing smart contracts on different participating networks to interact within the same transaction.
Magazine: Ethereum’s EEZ could pull other blockchains into its orbit

BitGo Korea has secured a virtual asset service provider (VASP) registration in South Korea, providing a regulatory foundation to offer digital asset custody services to institutions.
On Thursday, BitGo announced that the Korea Financial Intelligence Unit accepted its local entity’s VASP registration, allowing it to provide virtual asset custody and transfer services to institutional and enterprise clients.
The company said it established the local entity instead of acquiring an existing registered provider and said it had built security, anti-money laundering, internal control and operational frameworks tailored to South Korean requirements.
Hana Financial Group and telecommunications company SK Telecom are strategic shareholders in BitGo Korea.
The registration was accepted on Tuesday, according to Yonhap News Agency, two days before South Korea’s stricter entry requirements for VASPs took effect.
According to the country’s Financial Services Commission, the updated rules expand scrutiny of shareholders and require applicants to satisfy financial soundness, cybersecurity, internal control and AML standards.
BitGo did not immediately respond to Cointelegraph’s request for additional details.

Hyperliquid’s native token surged more than 20% over 24 hours after United States President Donald Trump said regulators were working on a compliant pathway to make the decentralized trading platform available to American users.
HYPE traded around $62 immediately before Trump’s remarks and subsequently jumped as much as 16% to a 24-hour high of $72.28, according to CoinGecko. It later settled to about $70, up approximately 20% in the last day, with 24-hour trading volume reaching $1.4 billion.
“I understand that Mike is also working to bring Hyperliquid into the United States in a fully compliant and legal fashion,” Trump said during a Wednesday White House event, referring to Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Chair Michael Selig. “Working very hard on that.”
The market reaction shows how the prospect of US access could reprice HYPE and publicly traded companies holding the token. However, neither the CFTC nor Hyperliquid has released a formal proposal explaining how US access would work, whether an application has been submitted or when a compliant service could launch.
Hyperliquid’s 24-hour price chart. Source: CoinGecko
$65,000 options bet on HYPE treasury firm raises eyebrows
Meanwhile, shares of Hyperliquid Strategies, a Nasdaq-listed HYPE treasury company trading under the ticker PURR, closed Wednesday at $9.39, up 30.4%, according to Yahoo Finance. Despite sharing the protocol’s name, the company said it is independent and not affiliated with Hyperliquid.
Roughly four hours before Trump spoke, someone reportedly paid about $65,000 for 719 PURR call options with an $8 strike price expiring in mid-October, according to CNBC. The contracts were purchased for approximately $0.90 each and were quoted at $2.45 by the close, valuing the position at roughly $176,000 and producing an unrealized gain of about $111,000.
Delayed market data derived from the Options Price Reporting Authority corroborates the unusually heavy activity in the contract. OptiView data showed 2,575 of the October $8 calls traded during the session, compared with just 67 contracts in open interest beforehand. Volume was more than 140 times the contract’s 30-day average.
The publicly available data confirms elevated trading but does not independently identify the buyer or establish that the reported 719-contract order was based on nonpublic information. There is no clear evidence of insider trading, and the CFTC had previously publicly disclosed a July 15 meeting with Hyperliquid Labs and Hyperliquid Strategies.
Magazine: ‘Fabricated rumors’ about BitMart founder, Binance bStocks dominate: Asia Express

Democratic Senator Ruben Gallego warned that rushing the CLARITY Act to a Senate vote before lawmakers resolve disputes over ethics and stablecoin yield could set United States crypto market structure legislation back.
Speaking at the SALT Wyoming Blockchain Symposium on Wednesday, Gallego said the crypto industry should encourage Senate Democrats and Republicans to continue negotiating instead of pushing for an immediate vote. He said lawmakers still had to address the bill’s Agriculture Committee portion, assemble the broader package and determine how to send it to the House.
The warning complicates the Trump administration’s push for swift passage by suggesting that a procedural vote could arrive before negotiators have assembled the bipartisan coalition needed to reach the Senate’s 60-vote threshold.
“Don’t go for a fast vote,” Gallego said. “A fast vote gets you a fast result, but I’m not sure it’s the result you want.” He added that Congress still had a lot of steps to complete and that “any premature movement is going to set it back further.”
Gallego says White House has not answered ethics proposal
Gallego said he and Republican Senator Thom Tillis submitted compromise ethics language to the White House before the congressional recess but had not received a point-by-point response. He said that sufficiently strong ethics restrictions were necessary to attract Democratic support and advance the bill.
“We’ve been sending offers over and over again to the White House, and they’ve been coming back either blank, or they’ve come back even slightly further back, or we’ve heard nothing,” Gallego said.
Cointelegraph reached out to the White House for comment but did not receive a response before publication.
The remarks follow renewed pressure from the administration. On Wednesday, Trump urged Congress to pass a “fair version” of the CLARITY Act during a White House appearance with crypto executives.
Senate leaders have delayed action until September. On Aug. 7, Senate Majority Leader John Thune confirmed to Cointelegraph that the chamber was “punting” the vote and said CLARITY would be queued up “first thing” after lawmakers returned from recess.
White House crypto adviser Patrick Witt previously said the administration would negotiate with Democrats until the September vote but “can’t afford to wait forever.”
Magazine: ‘Fabricated rumors’ about BitMart founder, Binance bStocks dominate: Asia Express

Bitcoin.com is integrating USDU, a US dollar-backed stablecoin registered with the Central Bank of the UAE, into its self-custodial web and mobile wallet.
USDU is issued by Abu Dhabi-based Universal Digital and is the first and currently only Foreign Payment Token registered under the UAE central bank’s Payment Token Services Regulation. Universal is also regulated by the Abu Dhabi Global Market’s Financial Services Regulatory Authority to issue fiat-referenced tokens.
According to Wednesday’s announcement, the Ethereum-based stablecoin will be available for users to hold, send and receive through the wallet, while swap and buy-and-sell functionality is expected to be added later through third-party providers.
Bitcoin.com said it plans to accept USDU for designated services and work toward enabling payments between users and merchants across its products, though availability will vary by jurisdiction.
Universal launched USDU in January. Under the country’s Payment Token Services Regulation, payments for digital assets and digital asset derivatives may only be made in fiat or a registered Foreign Payment Token.
The Bitcoin.com integration follows a broader distribution push for USDU. Zodia Custody added support for the stablecoin in July, allowing institutional clients to hold and transfer it, while a USDT-USDU liquidity pool launched on Uniswap in August, adding decentralized liquidity for the token.
Magazine: 200,000 fake AI ‘victims’ deployed to scam bait online fraudsters

US President Donald Trump continued to push for passage of a crypto market structure bill as the Senate remains in recess.
In a Wednesday press conference with crypto company executives including Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong and Gemini co-founders Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, Trump said members of Congress should pass “a fair version” of the Digital Asset Market Clarity (CLARITY) Act to keep the US “ahead of China.” The market structure bill, passed by the House of Representatives in July 2025, has been stalled in the Senate for months amid concerns about tokenized equities, stablecoin rewards and the Trump family’s potential conflicts of interest with the crypto industry.
Armstrong, who spoke after Trump and US regulatory heads, said that the bill would make crypto policies in the US “durable into the future, so it could survive for decades and decades to come.” The Coinbase CEO speculated that the bill could have “more than 60 votes” once the Senate addressed a cloture motion on Sept. 18.
“It’s very bipartisan, I would say,” said Trump following Armstrong’s comments. “Lot of Democrats support.”
The president pushed for Congress to pass CLARITY in July following the death of Senator Lindsey Graham. Trump said that Graham had been a “big supporter” of the bill, and lawmakers in the Senate should advance CLARITY in his honor.
Crypto company executives’ remarks to the press came one day before the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) was scheduled to hold an Innovation Advisory Committee meeting. CFTC Chair Michael Selig said the agency would explore moving forward on crypto regulations at the meeting, as Congress wouldn’t be returning to session for another month.
The White House meeting happened the same week that the Securities and Exchange Commission proposed crypto rules offering companies a safe harbor from tokens being treated as “investment contracts” and certain exemptions for token issuance.
This is a developing story and will be updated as more information becomes available.

Four of the five candidates supported by ads funded by the cryptocurrency-aligned political action committee (PAC) Fairshake won their primaries or otherwise advanced on Tuesday, potentially a bellwether for the industry’s influence in the 2026 midterm elections.
On Tuesday, Democratic and Republican candidates supported by media funded by the Fairshake-affiliated PACs Protect Progress and Defend American Jobs, respectively, notched wins across three US states. Altogether, the PACs spent about $3.6 million on House and Senate races in Alaska, Florida and Wyoming.
Democrat Lois Frankel won re-election in Florida’s 23rd congressional district after Protect Progress spent more than $150,000 on supportive media. Defend American Jobs also spent a combined $1.5 million on ads to support Republican Nick Begich in Alaska’s at-large congressional district, Republican candidate Sydney Gruters in Florida’s 16th congressional district and Representative Harriet Hageman for the US Senate in Wyoming. Gruters and Hageman won their primaries, while Begich is expected to advance in Alaska.
All four candidates will likely go on to face challengers in the 2026 midterms in November, but a Democrat in Florida’s 24th district also won despite being the target of more than $2 million worth of negative ads funded by Protect Progress. Oliver Gilbert defeated challengers Shevrin Jones and Kendrick Meek with 34.4% of the vote, in a race that addressed the potential influence of the crypto industry.
Florida’s 24th congressional district results for Democratic primary. Source: The New York Times
According to an Aug. 12 Miami Herald report, Gilbert said “[Donald] Trump’s tech billionaire buddies” were behind the “crypto con artists trying to buy a Democratic primary” through the Protect Progress ads. The news outlet said the ads included fake Miami Herald headlines misrepresenting Gilbert’s policy positions, though a spokesperson for the PAC claimed that “the underlying facts in our ad are true.”
The Fairshake PAC, which reported holding a $193 million war chest as of January, was responsible for funding more than $130 million worth of ads supporting candidates it considered pro-crypto in the 2024 election cycle and opposing many who spoke negatively about the industry or voted against its interests. As of June, the committee had spent more than $82 million on races ahead of the 2026 midterms.
Gilbert did not mention the crypto industry or the ads in his Tuesday night acceptance speech. Fairshake spokesperson Geoff Vetter said that the PAC was “just getting started building the largest pro-crypto Congress in history” following the three state primaries and other candidates winning in 2026.
Makeup of next Congress to impact crypto market structure law?
Both the US Senate and House of Representatives are on recess until September, when the former is scheduled to address a cloture motion on the Digital Asset Market Clarity (CLARITY) Act, a bill expected to establish comprehensive regulations for digital assets. Although the legislation passed the House with bipartisan support in July on a 294-134 vote, many Senate Democrats have been pushing for stronger ethics provisions related to the Trump family’s crypto investments.
Following the 2026 elections, US Congress could shift from a Republican to Democratic majority depending on the outcome of key races potentially influenced by PACs like Fairshake. Lawmakers elected in November could advance or stymie legislation affecting the crypto industry, including CLARITY, if the current session does not address the bill before 2027.
Magazine: 200,000 fake AI ‘victims’ deployed to scam bait online fraudsters