Cointelegraph

Edward Zimbardi, the alleged mastermind of a $165 million crypto Ponzi scheme, was returned to the United States after being deported from Fiji to face federal fraud and money laundering charges.
On Monday, the US Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Georgia said that Fijian authorities deported Zimbardi on Friday in coordination with the FBI and State Department. He was scheduled to appear before a federal magistrate judge in Los Angeles, with prosecutors seeking his detention pending proceedings in Georgia.
Prosecutors allege Zimbardi promoted a scheme called “The Crypto Program” from June 2022 to August 2023 as an advertising-package investment promising guaranteed returns of 25% monthly. Thousands of investors allegedly sent over $165 million in crypto to wallets he secretly controlled.
Instead of purchasing advertising packages, Zimbardi allegedly placed more than $34 million in risky foreign currency trades, used later investments to pay off earlier investors and spent at least $10 million on personal expenses, including a house, luxury vehicles and alimony.
Zimbardi was indicted July 8 on 12 counts of wire fraud, 12 counts of money laundering and one money laundering conspiracy count. Prosecutors allege he fled to Fiji after learning of the FBI investigation and remained there for more than a year.

CLARITY odds narrow as bill enters the final straight
Galaxy Digital has lowered its estimate of the CLARITY Act’s chances of passing in 2026 to just 10%. In May it had estimated the chance of passage at 75%.
Multiple political issues remain unresolved and the Senate only has 14 days in session to pass the bill after it reconvenes on Sept. 14.
Unless an initial motion to proceed vote occurs immediately upon lawmakers’ return to Washington, there would only be enough time for the CLARITY Act to pass if it “dominates basically the entire working session,” wrote Galaxy head of research, Alex Thorn.
If the bill doesn’t pass, the SEC and CFTC plan to step into the breach by issuing their own rules for crypto markets. The SEC scheduled an open meeting on Friday to unveil its “clear rules of the road” but then cancelled it due to an “an unforeseen scheduling issue.” The White House was reportedly unhappy that the SEC going rogue on crypto rules could anger Democrats and scuttle the delicate negotiations underway to pass CLARITY.
SEC chair Paul Atkins, President Donald Trump and a series of big wigs from Coinbase, a16z, Ripple, Chainlink, NYSE and Nasdaq will meet at the White House on Wednesday to discuss crypto regulation and explore ways to get the bill over the line.
The following day the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s new Innovation Advisory Committee will meet to discuss regulation of crypto, AI and prediction markets.
Crypto companies seek access to frontier AI cybersecurity capabilities as fears of more hacks grow
Cryptocurrency companies including Anchorage Digital, BitGo, Bitwise, Blockstream, Ledger and Trezor have urged frontier artificial intelligence (AI) labs to give Bitcoin developers early access to their most capable models.
An open letter, published by the Bitcoin Policy Institute said Bitcoin Core devs and other crypto developers are being blocked by guardrails on publicly available frontier systems, leaving them to rely on less capable open-weight models.
“Without dedicated access programs, defenders may lack the tools needed to keep pace with evolving threats to the infrastructure they maintain.”
The threat from AI identified exploits has become a key focus after $116 million was stolen from Coldcard hardware wallets. The Bitcoin Red Team subsequently used AI to identify thousands of potential cybersecurity issues using open source Chinese models.
New threats to hardware wallet owners have continued to emerge over the past few days, with the personal details of more than 50,000 users leaked in two separate incidents. Trezor reported a breach of personal data affecting about 14,000 users through its shipping provider, ShipMonk. Users who received its products from the US, UK, Sweden, Colombia, Brazil, Italy, and Portugal between May 10 and Aug. 8 are now at high risk from potential phishing attacks using their personal information.
Cryptocurrency wallet provider SafePal has also just disclosed its own data breach that saw unauthorized access to almost 40,000 customers’ order information, including names, addresses and purchasing data. It has since identified and taken down more than 30 fraudulent websites and phishing links tied to the breach.
CFTC and states battle over who gets to regulate prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket
The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has ordered prediction market Kalshi to ignore New York’s restraining order and continue operating normally.
The CFTC said that New York’s enforcement action against Kalshi for operating an illegal gambling business constituted a market emergency as it would bar Kalshi from operating prediction markets nation-wide. It believes the Commodity Exchange Act requires the CFTC to provide a uniform national derivatives market. CFTC Chair Michael Selig said that Congress did not intend derivatives exchanges to face a “patchwork of state gaming laws.”
A few days later a Washington state judge ordered prediction market platform Kalshi to stop operating in the state and rejected its argument that federal commodities law preempts Washington gambling law. Kalshi has been ordered to implement IP-address and residency-based geofencing by Aug. 19 and a GeoComply multi-source geofencing system by Sept. 2.
Even the New York City Council wants to regulated prediction markets and it has launched an investigation into prediction market firms to examine if they are using “false and deceptive marketing” through influencers to target young adults.
Ethereum Foundation revamps post-quantum plan and narrows scope for Hegota hard fork
The Ethereum Foundation is moving away from the Poseidon hash function in its planned post-quantum architecture, according to researcher Justin Drake.
On Thursday, Drake said the foundation would instead rely on established and battle tested alternatives such as SHA or BLAKE.
Poseidon is a relatively new hash function tailored to work better with zero knowledge proofs, which will help compress large post quantum signatures sizes. However, Drake said new developments mean that SNARKS can be tailored to work better with existing hash functions.
A production-ready leanVM is targeted for 2027, followed by deployments across Ethereum’s consensus, data and execution layers in 2028.
Ethereum developers are also reviewing 66 proposals to narrow them down as part of scoping the next major Ethereum upgrade to follow Glamsterdam called Hegotá
Censorship resistance proposal FOCIL is currently the only Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) scheduled for inclusion. A number of other EIPs are focused on privacy.
Core developers aim to ship the Hegotá upgrade next year, while Glamsterdam is expected in the coming months.
Tether completes first full financial audit, receives clean KPMG opinion
Tether has finally completed the first full independent audit of its annual financial statements, with KPMG US issuing a clean opinion on the stablecoin issuer’s 2025 accounts.
The audit covered Tether’s balance sheet, income statement and cash flows for the year ended Dec. 31, 2025, including the assets backing its issued tokens and the liabilities they represent. Tether said the audited statements showed reserves exceeding liabilities by $6.814 billion.
Unlike Tether’s quarterly reserve attestations, which it has published for years, the full audit subjected the company’s broader financial statements and underlying evidence to independent examination.
Winners and Losers
At the end of the week, Bitcoin (BTC) is down 3.3% to trade at $62,842, Ethereum (ETH) is down 2.3% to trade at $1,872 and XRP (XRP) is down 4.2% to 99 cents. The total market cap is at $2.16 trillion according to CoinMarketCap.
Among the biggest 100 cryptocurrencies, the top three altcoin winners of the week are Velvet (VELVET) with a 131% gain, Ether.fi (ETHFI) on 31%, and Chainlink (LINK) on 14%.
The top three altcoin losers of the week are Uniswap (UNI) which was down 18%, Aptos (APT) down 12% and Pepe (PEPE) down 11%.
Top Prediction of the Week
Bitcoin could bottom in October, altcoins are ‘basically dead,’ Swan CEO says
Bitcoin could bottom in October before recovering to around $130,000 in 2028, according to Swan Bitcoin CEO Cory Klippsten.
He argued that Bitcoin has so far bottomed about 12 months after each previous bull market peak, and the previous peak was in October last year.
He told Cointelegraph that Bitcoin could fall to $57,000, or even $53,000, before a quick recovery, and could reach around $130,000 ahead of the 2028 halving.
Top FUD of the Week
Bitcoin to $1M by 2030 is ‘mathematically impossible’ says Markus Thielen
The numbers behind the oft-cited prediction that Bitcoin will reach $1 million by 2030 simply don’t add up, according to Markus Thielen, head of research at 10x Research.
“It’s mathematically impossible,” Thielen told Trade Secrets, arguing that Bitcoin would need to attract another $15 trillion in capital to reach a per Bitcoin price of $1 million. This is equivalent to roughly 25% of the US stock market’s total value flowing into Bitcoin over the next four years.
“We have seen $1 trillion US dollars of inflow to bring the market cap really to $1 trillion. To $1 million [per] Bitcoin. It’s 15x, I think, from here.”
Bitcoin price-metric basket sees longest capitulation since FTX blow-up: Glassnode
Bitcoin is seeing its longest capitulation since the end of the 2022 bear market, onchain analytics platform Glassnode reported on Monday.
The firm said that forty-five Bitcoin (BTC) price metrics it tracks under the Bitcoin Cycle Position Heatmap show the longest “capitulation” phase since the collapse of FTX in late 2022. But it warned that aggregate readings will have to get even worse to match areas that marked previous bear-market bottoms, says creator Rafael Schultze-Kraft.
“Today it sits in its coldest stretch since FTX: late in the bear, but not yet the unanimous deep blue that previously marked a floor,” he commented.
Missouri trio charged over alleged Bitcoin kidnapping plot
Three Missouri men were charged over an alleged August 2024 plot to kidnap a Bitcoin holder and steal his holdings.
Sedric Louis, John Davis and Martel Williams were allegedly hired to kidnap and force a Bitcoin holder to transfer cryptocurrency to accounts controlled by organizers, according to a Tuesday press release by the US Attorney’s Office. They traveled from St. Louis to Connecticut, where they rented vehicles and obtained air rifles to stake out the victim.
After staking out the intended target for two days, they abandoned the plan for fear of being caught on home security cameras. Shortly afterward, another crew from Florida arrived to carry out the plan.
Top Magazine Features of the Week
El Salvador’s Bitcoin experiment turns 5: ‘It was for us, not them’
Five years after El Salvador made Bitcoin legal tender, the experiment has fallen short of its original promises for locals, but it’s been great for Bitcoin’s global profile.
Inside the fake crypto startup that fooled North Korean IT workers
Suspected North Korean IT workers joined a fake crypto startup — without realizing their every move was being tracked to extract valuable intel.
Solana’s fee overhaul increases burn and makes resource hogs pay
Solana’s proposed fee overhaul would make resource-heavy transactions more expensive while cutting costs for simpler activity, and it increases the amount of SOL burned.

Amid scrutiny and accusations of conflicts of interest from many lawmakers, the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) gave conditional approval for World Liberty Financial’s application for a national trust bank.
In a Friday notice, the OCC said the conditional approval for World Liberty’s charter application, subject to certain regulatory and policy requirements, would allow the company to operate under the title World Liberty Trust Company, National Association. According to its application, the World Liberty bank proposed issuing US dollar-backed stablecoins and custodying digital assets related to the company’s USD1 token.
The OCC approval came amid concerns about potential conflicts of interest between World Liberty and US President Donald Trump’s family. The president and his three sons are affiliated with the company, and the head of the OCC, Jonathan Gould, was nominated by Trump in 2025. World Liberty’s website also said a Trump family entity controlled 38% of the company’s equity interests.
According to the agency, “the Comptroller and staff acted consistently with their statutory duties and ethical obligations with respect to the Application.” Gould previously said that the application would be reviewed in an “apolitical and nonpartisan process” following a letter from Senator Elizabeth Warren.
In response to the approval, Warren said on Friday that she had introduced legislation “to stop this kind of unprecedented corruption,” calling the OCC’s move “the most brazen act of self-dealing our financial system has ever seen.” She and nine senators introduced the Ending Presidential Corruption in Banking Act following the approval.
Under the Trump administration and Gould, the OCC has approved or conditionally approved multiple applications from crypto companies seeking trust charters to expand their services in the US. In December, the agency approved applications from Circle, Ripple Labs, Crypto.com and Coinbase following passage of the GENIUS stablecoin bill in Congress.
World Liberty’s UAE ties under scrutiny in US Congress
Amid the OCC approval, many lawmakers are continuing to call for investigations into World Liberty’s ties to foreign entities potentially influencing US policy through Trump.
An Abu Dhabi investment company backed by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the United Arab Emirates’ national security adviser, reportedly purchased a 49% stake in World Liberty in January 2025 for $500 million. Another UAE entity, MGX, used World Liberty’s USD1 stablecoin to invest $2 billion in crypto exchange Binance. Trump later issued a presidential pardon for former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao.
A White House spokesperson has repeatedly said that there were “no conflicts of interest“ with Trump’s investments.
Magazine: El Salvador’s Bitcoin experiment turns 5: ‘It was for us, not them’

Cryptocurrency exchange Binance is reportedly planning to apply for a license with the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in a move expected to relaunch certain services for residents in 2027.
According to a Saturday report from The Telegraph, Binance will apply for the UK license as new digital asset laws are set to take effect in the country. The FCA said in June 2021 that Binance’s UK arm, Binance Markets Limited, was “not permitted to undertake any regulated activity in the UK,” and the exchange announced in 2023 that it would halt onboarding of new users in response to the UK watchdog’s rules on financial promotions.
A Binance spokesperson told Cointelegraph that the exchange “does not comment on speculation surrounding potential licence applications.” The company did not respond to questions on its existing operations in the UK.
Under the FCA’s crypto regulatory framework, announced in June, companies will have from September until Feb. 28, 2027, to submit applications before the regime goes live on Oct. 25, 2027. David Geale, executive director of payments and digital finance at the FCA, said the framework would hold crypto companies to “similar standards” as other UK financial service providers.

The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is preparing to solicit public comment on futures contracts tied to computing capacity, a critical resource for artificial intelligence development, as major exchanges move to launch products tied to the emerging asset class.
Bloomberg reported Monday that the regulator sent a request for comment to the White House Office of Management and Budget for review. The move could complicate the timeline for planned compute futures from CME Group and Intercontinental Exchange, whose products remain subject to regulatory approval.
Once the White House review is complete, the CFTC is expected to open a public comment period, typically lasting 30 or 60 days, according to Bloomberg. The review signals that regulators are still weighing questions around a market that would allow participants to trade and hedge the cost of computing power.
CME announced last week that it plans to launch two compute futures contracts on Oct. 5, pending regulatory approval, effectively turning AI computing capacity into a tradable commodity alongside oil and electricity. Market intelligence firm Silicon Data will provide the benchmarks used to price the contracts.
The products are being launched as artificial intelligence reshapes the economy and investment landscape, driving a historic buildout of data centers and computing infrastructure. Recent estimates from TD Lombard, Goldman Sachs and Bridgewater Associates put AI infrastructure spending at roughly 2% to 2.5% of US GDP this year.

The US Department of the Treasury issued a notice of proposed rulemaking related to the implementation of the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act, a bill to establish a framework for payment stablecoins signed into law last year.
In a Monday notice, the Treasury Department said that it was opening a proposed rule up to public comment ahead of the January 2027 implementation of the GENIUS Act. Under the terms of the bill, the stablecoin law had been scheduled to go into effect 120 days after agencies finalize rules, or 18 months after it was passed in July 2025, making its effective date Jan. 18, 2027.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that the department “welcomes input from stakeholders as [it works] to provide the regulatory certainty businesses need to innovate and grow in America.”
Together with the Treasury Department, other US government agencies including the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and the Federal Reserve Board have issued notices of proposed rules in 2026 related to the implementation of GENIUS. However, all departments reportedly missed the 120-day deadline in July to finalize regulations before January, signaling that GENIUS could go into effect without clear guidance.
According to Treasury, once the GENIUS Act goes into effect, an entity generally may not “issue a payment stablecoin” in the US without a related federal or state license. Public comment on the department’s proposed rules is open for 60 days following publication in the Federal Register.
US-UK regulators discuss GENIUS progress
In July, the UK-US Financial Regulatory Working Group met in London to discuss cooperation between the two country’s financial agencies, including implementation of the GENIUS Act.
Although UK authorities have taken steps to address stablecoin regulation, the pending implementation of GENIUS has some crypto industry insiders arguing the country is falling behind the US.
Magazine: Data of 54,000 wallet users leaked, CLARITY odds just 10%: Hodler’s Digest

Bitcoin (BTC) returned to $64,000 after Monday’s Wall Street open as US stocks gave way to gold.
Key points:
Bitcoin continues a rebound from Sunday’s weekly close, gaining 2% on Monday.
Oil stays steady after US president Donald Trump threatens to bomb Oman over the Strait of Hormuz.
Bitcoin funding rates hit 20-month highs of 0.022 last week, data reveals.
Bitcoin inches up as US-Iran rhetoric spreads to Oman
Data from TradingView showed BTC/USD up by more than 2% on the day, rebounding from Sunday’s weekly close.
BTC/USD one-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
US equities turned lower as an agreed 60-day ceasefire between the US and Iran was set to expire, with the S&P 500 index down 0.5% from Thursday’s all-time highs.
S&P 500 one-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
Speaking to Fox News, Trump threatened Oman with military action amid an ongoing dispute over the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz oil route.
“If Oman gets in the way, we’ll bomb the s*** out of them,” he told the network.
Oil markets appeared unfazed by the tensions, with WTI crude flat at $82.35 per barrel at the time of writing.
Safe haven gold was more volatile, gaining just over 1% to start the week to reach a daily high of $4,427 per ounce. Earlier, Cointelegraph reported on a combination of retail and government interest fueling gold’s multiweek highs.
XAU/USD one-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
Data from investment research platform Bytetree tracking the 30-day change in inflows to gold-backed exchange-traded funds (ETFs) put the figure at nearly $12 billion through Aug. 13.
In a note on Monday quoted by Investing.com, Bank of America strategist Michael Hartnett wrote that long gold remained the trade, describing it as “still [sic] best hedge against dollar debasement, bond collapse, asset inflation, capitalist populism vs socialist populism politics of 2020s.”
Funding rates hit levels not seen since late 2024
In its latest Market Color bulletin published on Monday, trading company QCP Capital noted Bitcoin’s continued ability to weather macro tailwinds without a major breakdown from its current range.
“Rather than treating individual price levels as directional signals, the more useful observation is that BTC remains close to the lower end of its recent range. A sustained move outside that range would provide more information about market positioning than the relatively contained moves seen within it,” it wrote.
Earlier, Cointelegraph reported on expectations that a return to $61,000 would trigger an unwinding of BTC long positions, adding to downside BTC price momentum.
The latest data from CoinGlass showed liquidations remaining muted as BTC/USD returned toward $64,000, with 24-hour cross-crypto liquidations at $180 million.
Crypto liquidation history (screenshot). Source: CoinGlass
In a sign of long BTC becoming an increasingly crowded trade, derivatives market funding rates hit 20-month highs of 0.022 on Aug. 14, per data from onchain analytics platform CryptoQuant.
“The derivatives market sentiment is positive within the current BTC price range, indicating that most traders are taking long positions,” it commented on the readings.
CryptoQuant previously noted that futures trading volume on Binance was outweighing spot markets by almost eight times.
Bitcoin funding rates chart. Source: CryptoQuant

Tom Lee’s Bitmine Immersion Technologies, an Ethereum treasury company, resumed its Ether purchases last week, bringing it closer to a key business target of owning 5% of the second-biggest cryptocurrency’s supply despite challenging market conditions.
The company disclosed Monday that it acquired 9,926 Ether (ETH) during the week ending Aug. 16, bringing its total holdings to roughly 5.82 million ETH, or about 4.8% of Ethereum’s circulating supply. At an ETH reference price of $1,893, Bitmine’s Ether holdings were valued at roughly $11 billion. However, much of the company’s ETH was acquired at significantly higher prices.
Ether’s price was little changed on Monday, sitting just above $1,900.
The latest purchase puts Bitmine within striking distance of its long-term “Alchemy of 5%” target of holding 5% of the total ETH supply.
Bitmine’s conviction has been tested by a prolonged bear market for Ether, which has sharply eroded the value of its digital asset treasury. The company is sitting on more than $8.4 billion in unrealized losses on its ETH holdings, according to industry data.
With a portfolio value of more than $11 billion, BitMine’s unrealized losses are around 43%. Source: DropsTab
Still, Bitmine has continued accumulating Ether, making purchases every week since launching its ETH treasury strategy in June 2025.
Bitmine’s staked Ether approaches $10 billion in value
Although Bitmine is sitting on large unrealized losses on its Ether holdings, its staking operations continue to generate yield. The company said it is staking more than 5 million ETH, worth roughly $9.6 billion at current prices.
That staking has enabled Bitmine to earn protocol rewards for helping secure the Ethereum network, providing a predictable source of yield regardless of short-term ETH price movements. Based on a seven-day staking yield of 2.61%, Bitmine projects annualized staking rewards of roughly $287 million, according to Lee.
Related: Crypto Biz: Bitcoin’s $116M self-custody wake-up call

Strategy raised $333.7 million through common stock sales last week but made no Bitcoin purchases, leaving its holdings unchanged at 840,447 BTC.
The company sold 3.46 million MSTR shares between Aug. 10 and Aug. 16 through its at-the-market offering program, according to a Monday 8-K filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
Of the proceeds, $52.4 million was used to fund the twice-monthly dividends on STRC preferred stock, while $132.2 million funded repurchases of the same security. Another $149.1 million was added to the company’s US dollar reserve.
Strategy repurchased about 1.39 million STRC shares for $132.2 million during the week. It made no repurchases of its other preferred securities or MSTR common stock.
STRC was down 0.12% in premarket activity Monday at $94.67 after closing Friday 1.03% lower at $94.78, according to Yahoo Finance.
The company reported no Bitcoin purchases or sales during the period. Its 840,447 BTC were acquired for an aggregate $63.36 billion, including fees and expenses, at an average purchase price of $75,385 per coin.
Strategy’s US dollar reserve stood at $4.80 billion as of Sunday, including expected proceeds from stock sales that had not yet settled. The reserve is intended to support preferred-stock dividends and interest payments on outstanding debt.

Harmony plans to roll back its blockchain to Aug. 11 following an exploit that created forged ONE tokens, discarding more than 109,000 transactions confirmed after its chosen checkpoint.
The layer-1 network said Monday that validators would revert to blocks recorded at 11:25 pm UTC on Aug. 11. New blocks will be produced from the next heights using replacement databases.
The discarded window includes 109,126 regular transactions and 315 staking transactions. Harmony said selectively restoring transactions was unsafe because balances, contract states, nonces and other conditions would differ on the replacement chain.
Harmony was considering a rollback last week after reports that unauthorized ONE had been minted and sent to exchanges.
It said Monday that investigators had traced nearly all of the forged ONE to wallets or service boundaries and were working with exchanges, bridges and law enforcement. At last look, the token had a market cap of roughly $10.8 million, according to Coingecko data.
Harmony’s plan puts it alongside Ravencoin among networks seeking to reverse already confirmed blockchain activity after an exploit.
Ravencoin faced a potential three-day blockchain reorganization after a consensus flaw was exploited. Mining pools controlling most of Ravencoin’s hash rate began building a competing chain that could reverse previously confirmed transactions.
Ravencoin recent price of $0.002819 showed a market cap of $46.3 million.

Bitcoin (BTC) is starting the new week at around $63,000, but bear-market history continues to repeat with weekly close below a key long-term trend line.
Key points:
Bitcoin has been trading in a range between $57,700 and $67,300, but last week’s close came with a drop below the key 200-week moving average at $64,216.
Markets are pricing in near-70% odds of a hold by the Federal Reserve in September, as July meeting minutes are due this week.
Japan Q2 GDP figures fall short of expectations at 1.1% as analysis warns of “global tightening” that could impact Bitcoin and risk assets.
Bitcoin sees weekly close below 200-week moving average
Bitcoin price action enjoyed a modest rebound after Sunday’s weekly close, seeing local highs of $63,655 on Bitstamp.
BTC/USD one-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
Data from TradingView shows BTC/USD continuing to tread water as the week begins, failing to challenge either side of a narrow trading range.
Analyst Benjamin Cowen, however, drew attention to the fact that BTC/USD is now back below its 200-week simple moving average (SMA). As Cointelegraph reported, this moving average was a defining feature in the 2022 bear market, when it turned resistance in August before BTC entered its long-term bottoming phase.
“What is interesting is how in both summer 2022/2026, Bitcoin capitulated below the 200W SMA, then bounced, then gave it up in mid-August,” he wrote in a post on X.
BTC/USD one-week chart with 200 SMA. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
Commenting, trader and analyst Rekt Capital added that price had failed to reach his own weekly-close target of $63,220, thus positioning for further downside in future.
“A rejection from $63,220 would fully confirm the breakdown and send price lower within the current ~$58,000-$66,000 Range (blue-blue)” he told X followers alongside an explanatory chart.
BTC/USD one-week chart. Source: Rekt Capital on X.com
Fed minutes due amid policy dissent
Friday sees the release of preliminary Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) data for the manufacturing and services sectors. The data has recently been in an uptrend diverging from relatively weak employment figures, which have seen several months of downward revisions.
Last week’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) and Producer Price Index (PPI) releases, meanwhile, painted a softer-than-expected picture of US inflation trends. This sparked a rethink on future interest-rate hikes by the Federal Reserve.
The latest data from CME Group’s FedWatch Tool shows near-70% odds that the Fed will hold rates at their current 3.50-3.75% range, compared with 42% odds a month ago.
Fed target-rate probability comparison for September FOMC meeting (screenshot). Source: CME Group
“A pair of reports showing moderating inflation is helping keep the outlook for monetary policy from turning too hawkish,” trading resource Mosaic Asset Company summarized in analysis released on Sunday.
Mosaic noted that while CPI came in at 3.4% year-on-year, this was still far above the Fed’s 2% target — a goal that chair Kevin Warsh continues to state will be achieved. On Wednesday, the Fed will publish the minutes of its July meeting. Rate hikes were paused in the prior meeting with the largest split among officials over the move since 1970.
Last week, Cleveland Federal Reserve Bank president Beth Hammack, who was one of three dissenting voices calling for a 0.25% rate hike in July, questioned whether public patience would tolerate it if the return to 2% rates took several years.
“Maybe we’d get there, but if it takes another three to four years to get there, is that OK? Is that enough?” she said at an event with the Dayton Area Chamber of Commerce in Kettering, Ohio, quoted by Bloomberg.
Japan on the radar as GDP disappoints
Japan’s central bank is on the radar for risk-asset traders this week after Q2 GDP figures significantly missed expectations. Quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year GDP increased 0.3% and 1.1%, respectively — below the anticipated 0.5% and 2.0%.
The timing of the print comes as markets see the Bank of Japan (BoJ) hiking rates from current 1.0% levels in September amid surging bond yields and continued weakening in the yen. Previously, Cointelegraph reported on a rare joint intervention in yen currency markets by Japan and the US after JPY/USD weakened to new 40-year lows.
BoJ interest-rate probabilities (screenshot). Source: RateProbability
The GDP print, meanwhile, included the first drop in private consumption in eight quarters, signaling that existing stimulus measures were failing to prop up consumer confidence.
“The boost to consumption from policy measures is already fading, and inflation will increase in H2 as firms will pass on increased costs, deteriorating consumers’ purchasing power,” Norihiro Yamaguchi, lead Japan economist at Oxford Economics, told CNBC.
The yen avoided major volatility on the back of the GDP data, lingering near 159 per dollar on Monday.
USD/JPY four-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
Responding to the aftermath, Axel Adler Jr., a contributor to onchain analytics platform CryptoQuant, noted potential implications for risk assets to come. Japan’s 10-year bond yield hit 2.93% on Monday, its highest levels since 1996.
“For now, this is not a signal to sell risk assets. But the market is approaching an important point: JGB > 3% + further BOJ rate hikes + a stronger yen + rising US Treasury yields,” he wrote in an X post.
“If these factors align, Japan’s rate normalization could turn into a global tightening of financial conditions and hit stocks and Bitcoin.”
Japan 10-year bond yields one-day chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
Bitcoin forgotten as consumer sentiment lows contrast with stocks gains
Rising stocks paired with record-low consumer sentiment are flashing a new warning sign for Bitcoin, which is increasingly being overlooked.
In the latest edition of its regular newsletter, The Week Onchain, crypto analytics platform Glassnode revealed a striking divergence between Bitcoin and equities in terms of sentiment.
“Consumer Confidence remains among the weakest readings of the past decade even after two consecutive improvements, while the US Stock Market Index set a fresh all-time high on August 7 and holds just beneath it,” it summarized.
The softer US inflation prints helped send the S&P 500 to all-time highs of 7,816 on Thursday. At the same time, the consumer sentiment survey by the University of Michigan is expected to drop 7.6% in August.
“Weak sentiment next to record prices looks like a contradiction until the driver is named: households that expect living costs to rise and the economy to soften are moving out of cash and into assets. The equity market, carried above all by the AI trade, is where that capital lands,” Glassnode commented.
US consumer sentiment data. Source: University of Michigan
Bitcoin continues to be left out of this capital rotation. A sign of change, Glassnode argued, would be a sustained rebound in institutional inflows to the US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs).
Last week, these saw net outflows of $267.2 million, per data from UK-based investment company Farside Investors. Just one out of five trading days finished with net inflows, totaling a mere $7.8 million.
US spot Bitcoin ETF netflows (screenshot). Source: Farside Investors
Exchange BTC reserves grow with whale inflows in focus
Bitcoin supply dynamics are the latest troubling feature for its price trajectory, CryptoQuant analysis reports.
Whales have started to dominate exchange inflows, exacerbating an existing absence of retail interest and causing exchange BTC reserves to reverse higher. Binance’s whale ratio reached 0.71 on Aug. 10, its highest since early March.
“Exchange deposits do not necessarily mean immediate selling, but they increase the amount of BTC available for trading or hedging,” CryptoQuant commented.
Binance exchange whale ratio. Source: CryptoQuant
Binance’s BTC reserves totaled 674,332 BTC on Sunday, up 2.57% month-to-date and at their highest since November 2025.
“The long-running trend of BTC leaving exchanges may therefore be weakening,” CryptoQuant continued.
Binance BTC reserves. Source: CryptoQuant
As Cointelegraph reported, exchange activity has been driven by derivatives markets as BTC/USD trades in a tight range since early June. On Binance, futures trading volume was eight times that of spot markets in early August.

Binance reportedly provided Russian authorities with transaction records and personal information belonging to a customer accused of financing terrorism via cryptocurrency donations to Ukrainian fundraising campaigns.
Russian investigators used information supplied by Binance as evidence against IT specialist Yuri Belenkiy, who was detained in September 2025 and is awaiting trial in Russia, according to law enforcement documents reviewed by Reuters.
Russia’s Investigative Committee alleged Belenkiy sent more than $700 in crypto between January 2023 and March 2024 to the Ukrainian military and a banned organization that Reuters identified as the group known at different times as the Azov Brigade and the Azov Regiment.
Reuters’ review found that Russian authorities asked Binance for Belenkiy’s transaction history and received information linking him to the transfers, along with his date of birth, address, phone number and passport number. The response also included copies of his Russian passport and Bulgarian residency permit.
Binance announced a full exit from Russia in September 2023, selling its local business to CommEX.
A Binance spokesperson declined to comment on specific confidential law enforcement requests or individual cases.
“Binance does not make or enforce the laws of any jurisdiction, determine charges, or decide how any government uses information in legal proceedings. Like other global financial institutions, we cooperate with lawful information requests from law enforcement globally, subject to applicable legal, privacy and regulatory requirements,” the spokesperson told Cointelegraph.

BitMart’s official Chinese-language X account has publicly demanded that founder Sheldon Xia explain the whereabouts of user funds and produce a repayment plan by Wednesday.
The account said in a Monday post that some users remained unable to withdraw funds and that some employees had not received their final salary or compensation, while calling on Xia to disclose BitMart’s wallets, assets, liabilities and available reserves, according to a machine translation of the post.
The post said if Xia does not provide a verifiable asset disclosure and repayment plan by the deadline, it would continue to submit evidence to regulators, law enforcement, lawyers and the media.
It was unclear who authored Monday’s post or whether the account remained under the company’s control. Cointelegraph contacted BitMart for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
BitMart announced on July 26 that it would wind down its exchange as its BMX token plunged and users reported withdrawal delays. The company said trading on the platform will end on Aug. 26 and operations will cease on Jan. 31.
The exchange has stopped accepting new deposits and registrations as part of the shutdown and warned that some withdrawals could face additional compliance and security reviews.
Claims on official account called “fabricated”
Xia responded in an X post on Monday, calling the claims in the post “fabricated rumors” and saying evidence had been preserved, according to a machine translation.
“We have collected full evidence of the content on X, all of which is fabricated rumors. During daytime US time, we will file a police report and send a lawyer’s letter to X, demanding technical and data forensics,” Xia said.
Xia also said employees were not being prioritized over customers in the handling of assets, adding that “everyone is a client” and there were no privileges.
He previously denied that BitMart had misappropriated user assets. On Aug. 8, Xia told users not to believe unverified claims or screenshots purportedly provided by current or former employees.
Wallets attributed to BitMart by Arkham held about $36.5 million in crypto assets as of Monday, down from roughly $71 million on July 26 and $102 million on July 6.
The tracked wallets may not represent all assets controlled by BitMart, and it is unclear how much of the decline reflects customer withdrawals, asset consolidation or transfers to other wallets.
This is a developing story.
Hodler’s Digest: Data of 54,000 wallet users leaked, CLARITY odds just 10%

Austria’s financial regulator has fined crypto platform Bitpanda 70,000 euros ($82,000) for violating the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation, in the watchdog’s first published final penalty under MiCA.
The Austrian Financial Market Authority (FMA) said Friday that Bitpanda failed to submit a crypto-asset white paper to the regulator at least 20 working days before its publication, as required under MiCA.
Bitpanda also distributed a marketing communication before publishing the required white paper, according to the regulator.
The FMA said another marketing communication omitted mandatory disclosures stating that it had not been reviewed or approved by a competent authority and that the crypto-asset provider was solely responsible for its contents. It also lacked a required telephone number and email address.
The proceedings were concluded under an expedited procedure, and the penalty decision is final.
Cointelegraph contacted Bitpanda for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
MiCA established a harmonized regulatory framework for crypto assets across the EU, including disclosure, marketing and authorization requirements for crypto companies.

Greenlane Holdings’ BERA-focused crypto treasury ended the second quarter valued at $16.4 million, less than a quarter of its $70 million cost basis, according to a regulatory filing.
On Friday, the company said it held 81.3 million BERA and BERA-equivalent tokens as of June 30. The $53.8 million gap between their cost and fair value left the portfolio 76.6% below cost.
Greenlane reported a $19.1 million noncash fair-value loss on digital assets during the quarter, contributing to a net loss of $24.8 million. Meanwhile, its digital asset segment generated $309,000 in staking and yield revenue over the same period.
Greenlane Holdings is a Nasdaq-listed former cannabis accessories company that shifted to a digital asset treasury strategy centered on Berachain’s BERA token.
The company adopted BERA as its primary treasury reserve asset in October 2025, after completing a $110.7 million private placement. It increased its holdings from 77.7 million BERA and equivalent tokens at the end of March despite the declining valuation.
BERA has fallen 75.9% year to date and was trading at about $0.146 at the time of writing, according to CoinGecko. The token briefly traded above $1.20 earlier this year before declining steadily toward $0.15.

Blockchain analytics company Chainalysis has sued the United States government over an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) decision to award a sole-source contract to competitor TRM Labs.
On July 27, Chainalysis Government Solutions filed the challenge in the US Court of Federal Claims. The relevant motion became publicly accessible through CourtListener’s RECAP archive on Sunday.
A federal award notice values the contract at about $94.6 million and says it covers forensic software and support services for Homeland Security Task Force investigations. The one-year award runs from July 1, 2026, through June 30, 2027.
Chainalysis alleged that ICE’s decision was “arbitrary, capricious, and unreasonable.” It said it had submitted a capability statement in response to ICE’s notice of intent to obtain forensic software and support services from TRM, but that its economic interests would be affected by the decision.
Both companies provide blockchain analytics tools that government agencies use to trace cryptocurrency transactions and investigate crime.
According to the motion, the complaint remains under seal because it contains Chainalysis’ confidential and proprietary information and trade secrets. The court granted Chainalysis permission to maintain the complaint under seal on July 31.
TRM intervened in the case on July 28. The court has scheduled responses from the government and TRM for Friday and oral argument for Sept. 2. The government requested a decision by Sept. 10. The public filings do not detail Chainalysis’s specific objections or requested remedy.
TRM Labs declined to comment. Chainalysis and ICE did not respond to requests for comment before publication.
Magazine: Data of 54,000 wallet users leaked, CLARITY odds just 10%: Hodler’s Digest

DefiLlama delayed the launch of its mobile app while it spent months trying to get Apple to remove phishing apps from its App Store that impersonated the analytics provider, according to the company’s pseudonymous founder, 0xngmi.
“We waited ‘till all the fake apps were taken down before we launched ours to avoid any user getting scammed,” 0xngmi said in a Saturday X post.
DefiLlama had tried for months to get one malicious app removed, but Apple took it down “in days” after the team downloaded the app and documented a small wallet being drained, 0xngmi added.
Cointelegraph has approached Apple for comment.
Fake apps impersonating major crypto brands have appeared on the App Store before, including those impersonating Rabby wallet and Curve Finance in 2024.
In November 2023, a fake Ledger Live app on the Microsoft Store resulted in the theft of $588,000 across 38 transactions.
Magazine: How a ‘Wrong Number’ message turned into a $3.4M crypto scam

Ethereum developers are currently reviewing 66 proposals to narrow them down as part of scoping the next major Ethereum upgrade, Hegotá, with several proposals aimed at bringing more privacy capabilities into the protocol.
FOCIL is currently the only Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) scheduled for inclusion in the upgrade. Frame Transactions (EIP-8141), Keyed Nonces (EIP-8250) and Recent Roots for Frame Transactions (EIP-8272) should also be included to “unlock native privacy, allowing privacy apps to work without having to rely on intermediaries,” wrote Ethereum Foundation contributor Toni Wahrstätter in a Sunday X post.
FOCIL, short for Fork-choice enforced inclusion lists, seeks to allow a committee of validators to force pending transactions into blocks to boost the network’s censorship resistance, while the other proposals could provide protocol primitives for privacy applications.
Core developers aim to ship the Hegotá upgrade next year. The next Ethereum core developer calls will shape a significant part of Ethereum’s development trajectory for 2027. Proposals that do not make the cut for Hegotá could be reconsidered for a later upgrade.
The next Ethereum developer call is scheduled for Monday at 2:00 pm UTC.
Meanwhile, Ethereum developers are preparing to first ship Glamsterdam, arguably one of the most consequential upgrades this year. Glamsterdam is designed to improve scalability, harden the layer-1, and make the network easier to use, with a mainnet launch expected sometime in the second half of 2026, according to Ethereum’s public roadmap.
Magazine: Ethereum’s EEZ could pull other blockchains into its orbit

The number of tokenized stock holders has more than doubled over the past month to 1.31 million, according to RWA.xyz data.
Monthly transfer volume surged nearly 180% over the same period to $23.13 billion, while monthly active addresses increased 34.62% to nearly 572,000. The total distributed value of tokenized stocks also rose 5.9% to $2.38 billion.
At the time of writing, Ondo leads the market with about $872 million in distributed value, followed by Kraken’s xStocks at $557.8 million and Binance’s bStocks at $521.8 million. BStocks launched in June and is already within roughly $36 million of xStocks in distributed value.
According to RWA.xyz, the largest individual tokenized assets by distributed value include Securitize at $145.2 million, Strategy PP Variable xStock at $135.6 million and Ondo’s tokenized Circle shares at $99.7 million.
Source: RWA.xyz
Related: Hyperliquid RWA contracts grow to 32% of trading activity in Q2
Tokenized stocks push into private markets
The recent growth in tokenized equities follows a wave of crypto platforms pushing into private-market and pre-IPO products earlier this year, particularly around SpaceX ahead of its June 12 public-market debut.
In the months leading up to the listing, Binance, Coinbase, Kraken, Bybit, Bitget and Blockchain.com rolled out products tied to SpaceX, ranging from tokenized pre-IPO exposure to perpetual futures and proxy tokens.
Despite substantial demand, including $557 million drawn by a Binance campaign ahead of the listing, the push did not go entirely to plan. Binance, Bybit and Bitget Wallet canceled their tokenized SpaceX IPO campaigns after xStocks failed to secure enough underlying shares to meet demand, triggering refunds for subscribers.
Despite the failed pre-IPO allocations, tokenized SpaceX exposure through Binance’s bStocks has grown to $67.9 million in distributed value since the company’s June 12 listing, ranking seventh among individual tokenized assets tracked by RWA.xyz data.
The growth in tokenized equities comes amid a broader expansion in real-world asset tokenization, which Standard Chartered forecasts could become a $4 trillion market by the end of 2028.
Top tokenized stocks by distributed value. Source: RWA.xyz
Magazine: Bitcoin to $1M by 2030 is ‘mathematically impossible’ says Markus Thielen

Bitcoin could bottom in October before recovering to around $130,000 ahead of the 2028 halving, according to Swan Bitcoin CEO Cory Klippsten.
Bitcoin’s (BTC) price peaked above $126,000 in early October 2025, meaning that the “market should bottom in October,” Klippsten told Cointelegraph.
He argued that Bitcoin has so far bottomed about 12 months after each previous bull market peak, while cautioning against extrapolating from only a few previous cycles.
Klippsten’s prediction for an October bottom builds on a June interview with Cointelegraph, when he said Bitcoin may bottom earlier than in previous cycles as long-term holders accumulated a record share of supply, or 14.7 million BTC.
In the latest interview, Klippsten said Bitcoin could fall to $57,000, or even $53,000, before a quick recovery, and could reach around $130,000 ahead of the 2028 halving.
Other analytics providers are eyeing an earlier bottom. Markus Thielen, founder of 10x Research, said that Bitcoin could confirm a bear-market bottom in August with a monthly close above $63,000, which would turn several of the analytics firm’s cycle indicators bullish.
Altcoins are dead as money, crypto will become TradFi
Klippsten said altcoins are “basically dead” as competitors to Bitcoin as money, arguing that the best outcome for crypto and decentralized finance (DeFi) is to “become part of TradFi.”
When asked about his thoughts on altcoins that may outperform the broader market, Klippsten pointed to Hyperliquid, arguing that centralized crypto businesses will eventually be brought under traditional finance regulation.
“Hyperliquid is a business and it has a token. If it’s a business that’s centralized, it will eventually just get sucked up by TradFi and be thought of as an exchange and a bank.”
Hyperliquid generated $5.9 million in revenue during the past week, ranking as the industry’s fifth-largest DeFi protocol by weekly revenue, according to DefiLlama.
The Hyperliquid (HYPE) token rose 130% year-to-date, while Bitcoin’s price fell 28% during the same period, TradingView data shows.
BTC and HYPE tokens, year-to-date chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
In a July report, crypto market maker Wintermute argued that the growing presence of institutional investors has changed the dynamics of altcoin markets, resulting in altcoin rallies becoming narrower and more selective. Wintermute said liquidity was concentrating in the assets institutions favored while activity across the market’s “long tail” weakened.
Magazine: Bitcoiners turn to dice throws as self-custody setups are re-evaluated