Cointelegraph

Bitcoin (BTC) hit new August highs into Friday’s Wall Street open as markets reacted to weaker US jobs numbers.
Key points:
Crypto and risk assets gained after US nonfarm payrolls fell by 23,000 in July.
Fed interest-rate bets for September shift from a 0.25% hike to a pause on signs of a weaker labor market.
Bitcoin and altcoins stayed “resilient” after a week of bearish surprises, per analysis from QCP Capital.
Crypto, stocks higher on low nonfarm payrolls print
Data from TradingView showed BTC/USD hitting $65,340 on Bitstamp, up 1.3% on the day, as fresh US labour-market data was released.
BTC/USD four-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
The US economy lost 23,000 jobs in July, per nonfarm payrolls data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), with the unemployment rate at 4.1%, numbers it described as “little changed” versus the month prior.
“The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for May was revised down by 66,000, from +129,000 to +63,000, and the change for June was revised down by 37,000, from +57,000 to +20,000. With these revisions, employment in May and June combined is 103,000 lower than previously reported,” an official statement added.
The combination of negative July values and downward revisions appeared to boost both crypto and US stocks, with traders linking weaker labor-market conditions with potential policy softening from the Federal Reserve.
The S&P 500 index opened 0.5% higher, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index added just over 1%.
Data from CME Group’s FedWatch Tool reveals that markets are now expecting the Fed to hold interest rates at current levels at its September meeting. As late as yesterday, majority odds had favored a 0.25% rate hike.
Fed target-rate probability comparison for September FOMC meeting. Source: CME Group
Prior to the employment data release, Ryan Lee, chief analyst at Bitget Research, said that it would “set the tone” for both the September meeting and the Fed’s annual economic Jackson Hole economic symposium, taking place at the end of August.
Fabian Dori, CIO at Sygnum Bank, predicted that Fed chair Kevin Warsh would be influenced by the extent to which payrolls data shifted lower.
“An orderly slowdown supports the liquidity relief case, while a print weak enough to raise growth concerns can still pressure risk assets even as rate odds move,” he said in comments sent to Cointelegraph.
Analysis praises Bitcoin, altcoin “resilience”
In its latest crypto and macro overview released on the day, trading company QCP Capital described the macro picture as “uncertain” for Bitcoin.
“For crypto, the week’s price action points to resilience rather than clear directional confirmation,” it summarized.
QCP noted that the fallout from the Coldcard wallet exploit, along with BTC sales by corporations including Strategy, had only sparked “limited demand for panic protection” on options markets.
Previously, Cointelegraph reported on option traders’ expectations for a BTC price trading-range breakdown to occur next month.

At first glance, this week’s biggest business stories could have come straight from Wall Street. BlackRock launched tokenized money market funds for stablecoin reserves. Tether generated another $1.5 billion in profit from its US Treasury holdings. Tokenized gold continued gaining traction, though its use in decentralized finance remains limited. Even Bitcoin (BTC) mining was defined by production costs, profitability and balance sheet management rather than the price of Bitcoin.
The digital asset industry’s business model is increasingly converging with traditional finance. Stablecoin reserves, tokenized money market funds and onchain collateral are emerging as some of the industry’s most important revenue drivers, signaling that blockchain’s next phase may be shaped as much by financial infrastructure as by digital assets themselves.
BlackRock launches tokenized reserve funds for stablecoin issuers
Asset manager BlackRock has introduced two tokenized money market products designed to help stablecoin issuers meet reserve requirements under the US GENIUS Act, expanding its push into blockchain-based financial infrastructure.
One fund tokenizes shares of BlackRock’s existing Treasury liquidity strategy on Ethereum, allowing approved investors to transfer ownership onchain while the underlying assets remain invested in cash and short-term US government securities. The second is a new institutional money market vehicle built for digital asset markets that supports multiple blockchains and automatically reinvests income, making it suitable for stablecoin reserve management.
The launch deepens BlackRock’s presence in the rapidly growing tokenized Treasury market, where the asset manager already operates BUIDL, the industry’s largest tokenized Treasury fund. The move also reflects a broader shift by Wall Street toward onchain financial products following the passage of the GENIUS Act, which established a federal framework for payment stablecoins.
Tokenized gold’s DeFi footprint remains small despite record trading volumes
A RedStone report found tokenized bullion held up during gold’s sharp sell-off, but DeFi lending adoption remains limited despite surging market growth and trading volumes.
Spot trading volume reached $90.7 billion in Q1 as gold futures rallied above $5,600 per troy ounce, yet only about $63 million of Tether Gold and PAX Gold is used as collateral on Aave v3 and Morpho — just 1.5% of their combined $4.2 billion market cap, according to RedStone. On March 23, Aave processed its largest cluster of XAUT liquidations without disruption after gold fell 10% in a week, the worst weekly performance in more than four decades; JPMorgan’s Greg Shearer described it as an “extremely brutal flush.”
Gold futures have since declined more than 20% from January peaks on expectations of higher US interest rates, and RedStone’s findings suggested tokenized gold was resilient yet faces an infrastructure gap as tokenized real-world assets scale.
Liquidations of tokenized gold collateral spiked across Aave and Morpho during March’s market sell-off. Source: RedStone
Trump-linked American Bitcoin posts record output, narrower Q2 losses
The Trump family-linked Bitcoin miner reported record second-quarter production, generating 932 BTC and narrowing its net loss from the previous quarter.
Nasdaq-listed American Bitcoin, co-founded by Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., reported record quarterly production of 932 BTC, helping lift mining revenue 8% to $67 million from $62.1 million in the first quarter. The company posted a net loss of $57.2 million, improving from an $81.8 million loss in Q1.
Last month, it completed a 1-for-15 reverse stock split to maintain its Nasdaq listing after its share price fell below the exchange’s minimum bid requirement. Majority-owned by Hut 8, the miner held roughly 8,002 BTC as of June 30 and had pledged about 3,090 BTC as collateral under equipment purchase agreements with Bitmain.
While production and revenue improved, American Bitcoin remains unprofitable. Its reverse stock split underscores the challenges facing its public listing, while its pledged Bitcoin holdings expose the company to additional risk if BTC prices decline.
Tether posts $1.5 billion Q2 profit as US Treasury income boosts reserves
Tether generated a $1.5 billion net operating profit in the second quarter, driven primarily by interest earned on its US Treasury holdings and repurchase agreements, according to its latest quarterly attestation.
The attestation reported a reserve buffer of $4.11 billion as of June 30, with assets exceeding liabilities by that amount. Despite a broader stablecoin market contraction, USDT circulating supply rose by $446 million to $184.6 billion, preserving Tether’s share of more than 60% of the global market, which DeFiLlama valued at roughly $307 billion. Tether remains one of the largest holders of US Treasury securities.
The company’s earnings continue to benefit from elevated short-term interest rates, which boost income from Treasury bills and cash equivalents. However, the stronger profit and reserve surplus come amid continued pressure across the crypto sector and a weaker stablecoin market, conditions that could temper future growth if rate environments shift or market contraction deepens.
USDT continues to dominate the stablecoin market by circulating supply. Source: DeFiLlama
Crypto Biz is your weekly pulse on the business behind blockchain and crypto, delivered directly to your inbox every Thursday.

In light of the catastrophic low-entropy bug in Coldcard hardware wallets, linked to publicly observed thefts beginning on July 30, Bitcoin holders have started to re-evaluate the trust assumptions in their hardware wallet setups.
How Coldcard’s entropy flaw worked
The Coldcard devices were equipped with apparently functional STM32 “true random number generators” (TRNGs) that rely on physical processes to produce an unguessable seed phrase.
However, after Coldcard creator NVK decided to initiate a firmware rewrite to switch from a GPL-licensed free software model to a read-only model, a serious vulnerability appears to have been introduced.
Starting with firmware version 4.0.1, released in March 2021, the device used MicroPython’s Yasmarang PRNG instead of properly using the STM32 hardware RNG.
Random number generation is an unsolvable problem in computer science, which is why the generation of secure, unguessable private keys always has to rely on external physical processes to a degree.
The use of the Yasmarang PRNG was widely characterized by analysts in the space as a pre-programmed fallback. However, Coinkite has now disputed this characterization in a recent X post:
https://x.com/COLDCARDwallet/status/2085541034243600805
The conjecture that Coldcards were programmed to default to an obviously insecure method of seed generation has also sparked speculation on X about whether this was a deliberately placed backdoor.
https://x.com/stonychambers/status/2084661509913764306
Investigative Bitcoin journalist Hodlnaut speculated that the bug stemmed from careless development practices and efforts to suppress errors through random changes.
https://x.com/hodlonaut/status/2083885515229573203
Coinkite estimated that Mk2 and Mk3 devices generated seeds with 40 bits of entropy, while the Mk4, Mk5 and Q achieved around 70 bits. Both are well short of the 128 bits required for a secure 12-word seed phrase.
Ever since then, attackers have been successfully brute-forcing private keys, stealing over $100 million worth of BTC. How likely a wallet is to be found depends on whether or not additional dice entropy was added, or a BIP-39 passphrase and non-standard path were used.
Since then, James O’Beirne has set up a website with honeypot addresses, titled cktripwire, in order to estimate which types of wallets attackers are effectively sweeping.
Honeypots tracked by cktripwire. Source: cktripwire.com
How physical entropy saved some wallets
The Coldcard exploit has once again painfully driven home one of the community’s core principles: Don’t trust, verify.
Those users who did not rely on an opaque piece of engineering to generate entropy for the most security critical part of the process, but used a sufficient number of dice throws, saved their coins from the exploit.
Rolling dice is a simple, visibly transparent process an ordinary user can audit themselves and understand intuitively. Verifying the TRNG, on the other hand, would require detailed physical inspection of the electronics and examination of the firmware.
While some have used recent events as a pretext to declare the end of self-custody, following this best practice leaves very few options for a remote attacker.
If the seedphrase is generated through physical entropy without relying on the security of the hardware wallet, the only true single point of failure in wallet generation is removed.
The xpub and receiving addresses derived from the seed can be cross-checked by importing it into other devices.
Nonce exfiltration through an airgap can also be caught by checking if two devices generate the same RFC 6979-compliant signature when given an identical unsigned transaction.
Secure entropy generation is thus the absolute prerequisite for a secure wallet. Various methods and proposals for generating it have been making the rounds on X since the Coldcard exploit was made public.
The most popular method is to cross-check the device’s ability to correctly convert die faces into a BIP-39 seedphrase by applying a SHA-265 hash. Using upwards of 100 dice throws then suffices to generate entropy for a 24-word seed.
Simple paper methods, such as the table published by Bitbox, partition the space of BIP-39 seed words so that a combination of six dice rolls and a coinflip can directly be assigned a seed word without using electronics.
More sophisticated templates such as the codex32 dice de-biasing worksheet use a van Neumann extractor that can be computed by hand to generate a secure seed phrase even with biased dice.
An alternative to throwing dice is to print out the BIP-39 seed words, cut them up into equally sized small pieces of paper, shuffle them thoroughly and then draw random 24 words. Products such as Seedsticks or Entropia make this more convenient and robust.
https://x.com/NEEDcreations/status/2084688145463771230
Specialised hardware such as Frostsnap attempts to verifiably distribute entropy generation across devices.
https://x.com/FrostsnapTech/status/2084040293897076849
Some users have taken to designing their own physical entropy devices that can generate a seedphrase nearly as quickly as a piece of electronic hardware.
https://x.com/L0RINC/status/2083761523424719110

Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) has raided nine unregistered crypto exchange services in Moscow over alleged money laundering involving fraud proceeds that authorities linked to Ukraine-based scam call centers.
The agency said it detained more than 20 employees at the Moscow International Business Center (Moscow City) as part of an operation targeting channels allegedly used to move illicit funds abroad through crypto assets, according to an official statement on Friday.
The FSB said the exchanges converted money stolen from Russian victims of phone scams into cryptocurrency and transferred it to accounts belonging to what it described as Ukrainian handlers.
The operation was carried out jointly by the FSB and Russia’s Interior Ministry. Authorities said some couriers aged 18 to 25 collected cash from victims and delivered it to the exchanges for conversion into crypto. The FSB said young people from Russian regions were recruited to work at the exchanges despite having limited financial literacy.
The Interior Ministry launched a criminal investigation into large-scale fraud, an offense punishable by up to 10 years in prison under Russian law. The FSB said it is continuing to identify victims and assess potential compensation.

Crypto perpetual futures trading volume on centralized cryptocurrency exchanges (CEXs) fell to $4 trillion in July, marking a 31-month low last seen in December 2023.
Binance led CEXs with $1.4 trillion in monthly perpetual futures volume, followed by OKX with $607 billion and Bybit with $300 billion, analytics platform CryptoRank said in a Friday X post.
Perpetual futures volumes briefly recovered between April and June before declining across all major venues in July.
The 31-month low in perpetual futures activity came as daily spot crypto trading volume fell 23.6% between July 1 and July 31, from $17.8 billion to $13.6 billion, according to analytics provider Coinglass.
Source: CryptoRank
Perps volume on DEXs nears one-year low
Perpetual trading volume on decentralized exchanges (DEXs) fell to $531 billion in July, the lowest level since June 2025 and a 21% decline from the $676 billion seen in June 2026, according to data aggregator DefiLlama.
Perpetuals trading volume on decentralized exchanges. Source: DefiLlama
Perps trading volume on DEXs has trended lower since the $1.36 trillion seen in October 2025.
Open interest on DEXs has also fallen to $17.9 billion in July from a peak of $19.4 billion in September 2025. Open interest measures the total value of active, unsettled contracts and can indicate whether new capital is entering or exiting the market.
Hyperliquid was the leading DEX with $199 billion in reported trading volume over the past 30 days. A growing share of Hyperliquid’s trading volume has come from tokenized real-world assets (RWAs), which accounted for 32% of Hyperliquid’s second-quarter trading activity, generating 6.6% of the protocol’s $169 million quarterly revenue.
Tokenized assets became Hyperliquid’s largest trading category for the first time last month, with RWAs accounting for 52% of its total weekly trading volume between July 13 and July 19.
Magazine: How Bitcoin and gold reacted differently to the Iran war shock

Bitcoin (BTC) derivatives trading volumes are now nearly eight times higher than spot markets on Binance.
Key points:
Bitcoin daily spot trading volumes on Binance are diverging from futures more than ever.
Spot demand has declined in recent months, while futures demand is still net positive, per data from CryptoQuant.
Options traders are hedging for downside in September after months of rangebound BTC price action.
Binance sees record split in Bitcoin spot vs. futures trading
Data from onchain analytics platform CryptoQuant released on Friday reveals record readings for Bitcoin futures-to-spot trading volume ratios. The ratio now stands at 7.82, meaning that futures volume outweighs spot nearly eight times over.
Daily futures volume on Binance hit $57.82 billion this week, while spot trailed at $6.08 billion.
“Meanwhile, Bitcoin is trading near $64,000, while futures trading volume continues to grow at a faster pace than spot trading volume,” CryptoQuant contributing analyst Arab Chain commented on the data.
“This trend reflects a shift in market activity, with more investors and traders preferring to use futures for leverage, risk management, and short-term trading strategies.”
Bitcoin futures-to-spot trading volume ratio (screenshot). Source: CryptoQuant
The record comes after months of retreating investor demand, with the exodus particularly noticeable in the retail trading sector. Previously, Cointelegraph reported that AI stocks have become a key destination for retail capital.
CryptoQuant data shows that on a rolling 30-day basis, both spot and derivatives demand continue to deteriorate, with spot showing a more consistent decline since June.
BTC/USD has spent the past two months in a narrow range above $60,000, contributing to a lack of interest among spot traders. Traders initiated a major spike in onchain realized losses in February, when Bitcoin first dropped to the $60,000 mark. However, subsequent retests have seen lower volume as both buyers and sellers have become exhausted.
Bitcoin net realized profit/loss data. Source: CryptoQuant
“Bitcoin spot demand is weakening. Futures demand remains net positive, but is significantly lower than during the rebound three months ago,” CEO Ki Young Ju reported in a post on X late last month.
Bitcoin spot vs. futures demand. Source: Ki Young Ju on X.com
Traders position for September BTC price range breakdown
Examining the odds of a Bitcoin price breakout from its local trading range this week, crypto exchange Bitfinex flagged decaying volume across both spot and derivatives markets.
“For now, volumes cluster in the middle of the range and thin out near the extremes. Taker volume especially is a sign that neither side is pushing hard to break the range in either direction,” its analytics arm, Bitfinex Research, wrote in an update.
Bitfinex said that options traders were positioned for rangebound conditions to continue in August, following a 7.4% gain for BTC/USD in July. In September, meanwhile, they expect the range to resolve to the downside, following familiar Bitcoin bear-market behavioral patterns.
“Options traders are effectively pricing in a continuation of the range and, on aggregate, hedging for a downside resolution of it several weeks from now,” it added alongside data from onchain analytics platform Glassnode.
Bitcoin options composite chart. Source: Bitfinex

Nasdaq-listed Bitcoin mining company CleanSpark reported $138 million in revenue for the third quarter of fiscal 2026.
The $138 million represented a 30.5% year-over-year decrease from $198 million, according to its quarterly results published on Thursday.
CleanSpark also reported a net loss of $239 million, or $0.89 per basic share, for the three months ended on June 30, compared with $257 million in net income, or $0.90 per share, for the same period last year.
The revenue narrowly missed analysts’ consensus estimate of $142.2 million, according to analyst estimates compiled by Yahoo Finance.
CleanSpark’s shares fell 5.5% on Thursday, but staged a 3% pre-market recovery on Friday to trade above $13.10, Yahoo Finance data showed.
CleanSpark is among the companies that have expanded beyond their core Bitcoin (BTC) mining operations into AI and high-performance computing infrastructure.
On July 14, CleanSpark signed a 20-year data center lease with an undisclosed investment-grade global technology company for a 175-megawatt data center at its Sandersville, Georgia, campus. The company estimated the deal would generate $6.6 billion in contracted revenue over the initial term.
Magazine: How Bitcoin and gold reacted differently to the Iran war shock

Bridge Building, the Luxembourg-based entity behind Stripe-owned stablecoin infrastructure company Bridge, has joined the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) register after receiving regulatory approval in Luxembourg.
Bridge’s inclusion brings the number of MiCA-authorized electronic money token (EMT) issuers in the EU register to 42, according to the latest European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) update published on Wednesday.
The addition came weeks after Bridge announced on July 2 that it had secured a Crypto-Asset Service Provider (CASP) authorization under MiCA and an Electronic Money Institution (EMI) licence from Luxembourg’s Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier. Bridge’s Head of Product, Mai Leduc Blount, said the approvals allow businesses in the EU to build stablecoin and payment products under a regulated framework.
The same ESMA update added three new CASP entries from Germany, including Volksbank Die Gestalterbank, VBU Volksbank im Unterland and VR-Bank Erding, bringing the total number of authorized CASPs in the EU register to 324.
The update showed no changes to asset-referenced token authorizations, with no ART issuers listed. The list of non-compliant crypto asset companies was also unchanged.
ESMA has published more frequent updates to its MiCA register in recent weeks, with several updates in July.

The US Senate’s delay of a vote on crypto market structure legislation could give Hong Kong and Singapore more time to strengthen their positions as digital asset hubs, according to First Digital founder and CEO Vincent Chok.
On Friday, Thune’s office confirmed to Cointelegraph that the Senate would not vote on the legislation before the August recess. Thune cited Democratic opposition and said the bill would be a priority when senators return in September.
Chok, whose company issues the FDUSD stablecoin, said the delay could give jurisdictions with clearer regulatory frameworks an advantage in attracting capital and talent as US uncertainty weighs on institutional adoption.
He said the postponement leaves institutions without clear rules on market structure, custody and oversight. “Markets can adapt to slower timelines, but what they struggle with is prolonged uncertainty,” he said in a statement sent to Cointelegraph.
Delay fuels concerns over enforcement and offshore innovation
Chok said regulatory progress outside the US would continue regardless of the CLARITY Act’s timetable.
“For Asia, this delay gives regional financial hubs like Hong Kong and Singapore additional time to demonstrate that clear regulation can coexist with innovation,” he said.
Maylea Ma, deputy general counsel at decentralized exchange aggregator 1inch, said that if Congress ultimately failed to enact the legislation, the industry could face a return to “regulation by enforcement.” Market participants would remain dependent on agency interpretations, case-by-case enforcement and a fragmented patchwork of state money transmitter and securities rules, she said.
Ma contrasted that uncertainty with the European Union, where the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) is already in force. She said 1inch would continue operating under its conservative, non-custodial and self-custody-focused model while awaiting greater legal certainty in the US.
Wellington-Altus chief market strategist James E. Thorne offered a more politically charged response, calling the postponement a “fold” by Thune and a victory for Senator Elizabeth Warren and the regulatory status quo. He said continued ambiguity would push innovation offshore while other jurisdictions develop clearer regimes.
“Regulation should have been passed years ago,” he wrote on X. “Instead, Washington chose to live in ambiguity, letting Warren and the bank lobby weaponise uncertainty, the SEC and the Fed went along for the ride, and now Thune is keeping the CLARITY Act stuck in procedural limbo.”
Magazine: 10 weirdest things ever tokenized... including farts

July emerged as the second-worst month of 2026 for cryptocurrency thefts, largely due to the recent Coldcard exploit.
Hackers stole $247.4 million in crypto in July, the most this year after the $644 million stolen in April, according to DefiLlama data. The total was more than triple the $75 million stolen in June and the $60 million stolen in May.
The Coldcard exploit was the month’s biggest exploit, with at least $100 million in Bitcoin (BTC) stolen from 7,300 wallets across three confirmed attack waves, according to Galaxy Digital. The company also identified a suspected fourth wave that could bring total losses to about $130 million. DefiLlama’s hack tracker estimates losses tied to the Coldcard exploit at $115 million.
“July showed that even cold storage does not eliminate technological risks, which can put thousands of wallets at risk simultaneously,” research platform CryptoRank said in a Thursday X post.
Other notable July exploits included a $9 million hack against decentralized finance protocol Bonzo Lend, $2.6 million stolen from Cardano-based wallet SecondFi, $24 million stolen from Arbitrum-based perpetual exchange AFX and $7.5 million stolen through the Verus Ethereum Bridge.
Magazine: Inside the ‘fake police raid’ that forced a $1M Bitcoin transfer

Japan’s financial regulator has asked crypto exchanges to introduce withdrawal delays and other safeguards as authorities respond to increasingly sophisticated scams involving digital assets.
On Thursday, the Financial Services Agency (FSA) said it had jointly requested the measures with the National Police Agency amid growing losses among crypto exchange users and cases where funds obtained through fraudulent schemes are being transferred to exchange accounts.
The request calls on exchanges to restrict crypto withdrawals for a specified period after customers deposit fiat currency or purchase digital assets. Platforms were also asked to require users to pre-register crypto withdrawal addresses and impose a waiting period before newly added addresses can be used.
The request was submitted to the Japan Virtual and Crypto Assets Exchange Association, the country’s self-regulatory body for crypto exchanges.
Other proposed safeguards include customer-specific withdrawal limits, stronger transaction and access-environment monitoring, phishing-resistant multifactor authentication and checks to ensure that the name of a bank remitter matches the crypto account holder’s name.
The measures are not binding rules. The FSA said exchanges should determine how to implement these based on their operations, services and exposure to misuse.

A bipartisan ethics proposal pitched to US President Donald Trump to secure passage of the crypto market structure bill in Congress could create a significant tax benefit for the president, Bloomberg reported Thursday.
The ethics addendum, which has not been made public, includes a provision requiring the president to divest from crypto-related businesses, according to people familiar with the matter. The proposal would reportedly allow Trump to defer capital gains taxes on any required divestitures, potentially leading to tax savings in the millions.
Democratic concerns over Trump’s crypto conflicts have been a central obstacle to passing the market-structure bill. Senators have been working on an ethics addendum meant to break that impasse, though the reported tax-deferral benefit could become another point of contention for Democrats to question whether the president’s financial interests are genuinely curbed.
Cointelegraph reached out to the White House for comment but did not receive an immediate response.
Trump’s annual financial disclosure report for 2025, released at the end of June, revealed the US president saw $1.4 billion in income from crypto-related ventures last year.
According to the 927-page disclosure, the licensing and sale of memecoins such as Official Trump (TRUMP) generated the most income for Trump, with about $635 million coming from “royalties” in a “license agreement with Celebration Coins.”
Meanwhile, the Trump family’s DeFi platform, World Liberty Financial, was the second-biggest earner, generating about $588 million from “proceeds from token sales.”
The disclosure also revealed that Trump earned $197 from the sale of an equity interest in a stablecoin venture.
Meanwhile, disclosures on World Liberty’s website show that DT Marks DEFI LLC, an entity affiliated with Trump and certain family members, owns “approximately 38% of the equity interests” in World Liberty’s parent company.
Magazine: CLARITY hopes fade, BitMEX shuts as lawsuit looms: Hodler’s Digest, July 26

Senate Republican leaders are expected to leave Washington, DC, for the August recess without voting on crypto market structure legislation, pushing the bill’s consideration to September, according to a report from Politico.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune on Friday reportedly confirmed a Politico report that the chamber was “punting” the vote until September and planned to tee up the legislation.
Citing two people with knowledge of the matter, Politico reported that the CLARITY Act lacks Democratic support. Negotiations remained underway, and the schedule could change if lawmakers reach a bipartisan breakthrough.
Thune may still file cloture before the recess. This procedural step could position the bill for a vote when senators return in mid-September, but it would not constitute a vote on the legislation, according to sources.
They said Democrats have declined to approve a time agreement that would expedite the Senate’s remaining pre-recess business and allow the crypto bill to reach the floor.
According to the report, Republican leaders would need unanimous consent from all 100 senators to complete the outstanding items without extending the session deep into next week,
Cointelegraph contacted Thune’s office to confirm the timetable and ask whether he plans to file cloture before the recess, but had not received a response by publication.

Wintermute’s US arm has registered as a broker-dealer, enabling the crypto trading firm to expand into traditional financial services in the US.
On Thursday, Wintermute announced its affiliate Wintermute USA LLC has registered with the US Securities and Exchange Commission and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA). The registration allows Wintermute USA to trade stocks and stock options and act as an authorized participant for exchange-traded products “including those tied to digital assets.”
Wintermute said the registration allows the firm to position itself for the emerging tokenized securities landscape.
“Our long-term conviction has always been that digital asset markets will evolve in more than one direction,” said Evgeny Gaevoy, founder and CEO of Wintermute.
“Digital assets and traditional finance will continue to develop in parallel, intersect in new ways, and ultimately integrate more deeply. As the landscape evolves, the firms that succeed will be those that have technical and operational know-how to operate in both.”
A broker-dealer is a financial entity that assists in the trading of securities on behalf of customers, on its own account, or both. Authorized participants are the capital market’s facilitators of the ETF creation and redemption process.

Brazil’s B3 stock exchange made headlines last month when its tokenized cows went viral.
A farmer in southern Brazil was able to use 10 cows as collateral for a 100,000 Brazilian real ($19,600) loan by virtually herding them into a blockchain based holding pen, demonstrating how farmers can literally milk their assets to access credit.
And it raises an obvious question: if cows can be tokenized, what can’t be?
From dairy cows to a year’s worth of farts, here are 10 of the strangest things to be tokenized onchain.
1. A year’s worth of farts
When BlackRock chief executive Larry Fink said every asset will eventually be tokenized, he probably wasn’t thinking about flatulence. Yet, that’s exactly what happened here.
Every bit as appealing as, well, a year’s worth of farts, it has to be a contender for the strangest thingever to make it onchain.
It was during the pandemic, when most people were baking bread or leveling up on Duolingo, that filmmaker Alex Ramírez-Mallis recorded his own farts and minted each one as a nonfungible token (NFT).
They say farts are like children, and you only love your own. But the novelty factor meant that Ramírez-Mallis was able to sell his for 0.05 ETH each (about $85 at the time), proving that every asset has its price.
2. Cows
Better known as a prime source of protein in Bitcoin circles, the idea of turning 10 Brazilian cows into tokenized cattle... er, tokenized collateral, is not the most obvious use case.
The deal was structured by Brazilian investment fund Target FIDC, giving each cow a unique digital token linked to an encrypted digital identity.
Larry Fink says every asset can be tokenized. Source: BlackRock
The first loan may have been worth just $19,600, but it was a proof of concept that shows the potential to eventually support around $80 million in livestock-backed financing across its farms.
While it sounds somewhat bizarre on first glance, the agriculture industry generated around $4 trillion in global value added in 2023, so watch out for tokenized sheep, goats and chickens as collateral next.
3. Whiskey barrels
When you think of sharing a whiskey, you probably have the liquid gold kind in mind, but whiskey barrels are a natural candidate for tokenization.
That’s because, like high-end art and collectibles, Scotch whisky typically increases in value as it matures — talk about lifting your spirits!
Several projects are experimenting with putting whisky casks onchain so investors can buy whole units or fractional ownership of tokenized whisky stored in bonded warehouses.
Just remember that if the market crashes, you can’t actually drink a digital JPEG of a barrel.
4. Racehorses
Racehorse ownership has long been reserved for the ultra-wealthy, those with deep enough pockets to cover hundreds of thousands of dollars in breeding, training and upkeep, and a fancy hat to wear at the racetrack.
But tokenization is beginning to chip away at those elitist barriers, dividing ownership of real thoroughbred racehorses into digital shares.
Investors can buy a stake in an animal and share in any prize money, breeding income, or future sale proceeds, without purchasing an entire horse.
Own part of a racehorse. Source: Stablemans
A word of caution for would-be investors in this style of asset, though, whether its watches or whiskeys or large four legged animals, from Chris Turner, co-founder of impact investment firm KULA:
“Putting a collectible or luxury item on a blockchain doesn’t automatically make it more liquid or valuable if the legal rights, transfer process, and market structure remain unchanged.”
5. Uranium
If your mind turns to treasuries and private credit when thinking about tokenized real-world assets (RWAs), it might be a shift to consider uranium, the radioactive metal better known for its role in nuclear power.
But that’s what Tezos-backed metals.io is doing. Tezos co-founder Arthur Breitman says blockchain technology excels at building “reliable, auditable and cost-efficient financial rails for any asset,” but is particularly aligned with “technology-flavored commodities” like uranium.
Breitman says trading volume between November 2024 and July 2026 was $21.5 million over approximately 18,200 trades and around 7,400 unique wallets.
He acknowledges that growth remains modest, telling Magazine that institutional players have shown interest but are “still shy about tokenized rails.”
6. Fishy revenue
One of the most unusual proposals tokenization platform Brickken received came from a Chilean fish-processing company that wanted to issue tokenized debt with returns tied to the value of the fish it sold.
“The token represented the lender’s contractual claim, while the interest payable adjusted according to the company’s verified sales performance. In effect, it was a tokenized, revenue-linked debt instrument,” explains Edwin Mata, chief executive of Brickken.
Mata argues that the idea highlights an important principle:
“Almost any cash flow can support a tokenized financial instrument, provided the underlying rights and data can be independently verified.”
In the end, the fish never made it onchain. The underlying fish sales still relied on audits, commercial reporting and legal agreements that couldn’t yet be automated, proving that, sometimes, the biggest obstacle to tokenization isn’t the blockchain; it’s the real world.
7. Music royalties
Music royalties have also found their way onchain, with one of the earliest high-profile examples in 2021, when DJ and producer 3LAU gave fans 50% of the streaming rights to his single Worst Case through his blockchain platform Royal.
Then, in 2022, rapper Nas used Royal to sell streaming royalty rights to two of his songs, Ultra Black and Rare.
While the idea of onchain royalties gained traction during the NFT boom, tokenized music royalties have yet to become a mainstream asset class. Maybe that’s because the streaming platforms pay peanuts.
Nothing says “financial freedom” quite like owning 0.001% of a track and realizing it needs to be played five million times just to buy a cup of coffee.
8. Human Skin
If tokenizing farts and cattle wasn’t weird enough, what about parts of your own body? That’s exactly what Croatian tennis player Oleksandra Oliynykova did in 2021, when she auctioned the advertising rights to a 15-by-18-centimeter patch of skin on her right arm as an NFT.
The winning bidder paid 3 Ether (around $5,400 at the time) for the right to choose which tattoo she would wear during tournaments for a year.
Athletes have long sold sponsorship space on shirts, helmets and race cars. Oliynykova just took the idea one step further, giving a whole new meaning to having skin in the game.
9. A Burned Banksy
Most art collectors try to preserve masterpieces; crypto collectors set them on fire to make a point about “digital ownership.” In 2021, a group calling itself Burnt Banksy bought a Banksy print titled Morons (White) for around $95,000. They livestreamed themselves burning it, and then minted the destruction.
If that leaves you scratching your head, there was method in the madness; the idea was that while the physical artwork no longer existed, ownership would live on forever through the blockchain.
The NFT sold for around $382,000, sparking fierce debate over whether the group had destroyed a valuable work of art or simply transformed it into a new one. It was probably the first time in history someone made a 300% profit from a “fire sale.”
10. The first tweet
Also in the year of our NFT Lord, 2021, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey tokenized his first-ever tweet — “just setting up my twttr” — and sold it as an NFT to crypto entrepreneur Sina Estavi for $2.9 million, quickly becoming a symbol of the NFT boom.
The first-ever tweet sold for $2.9 million. Source: Jack Dorsey
One year later, Estavi tried to resell it for $48 million, but only received bids worth a tiny fraction of the asking price, with the highest reported offer coming in at just $6,800.
While anyone can still read the tweet on X, only one person owns the blockchain certificate tied to it. Whether that’s valuable or not remains an open question. As Mata says:
“Tokenization can improve access, administration, settlement and transferability, but it cannot transform a poor investment into a good one.”
Magazine: The 100x obsession: Fundamentals grow in importance as crypto matures

Two groups affiliated with the cryptocurrency company-backed political action committee (PAC) Fairshake disclosed spending more than $1.5 million on media to support House of Representatives and Senate candidates in Florida, Alaska and Wyoming after suffering a primary loss in Michigan on Tuesday.
According to Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings as of Thursday, Fairshake PAC affiliates Defend American Jobs and Protect Progress spent a combined $1.5 million on ads for Republican and Democratic candidates, many of whom voted in favor of the Digital Asset Market Clarity (CLARITY) Act while serving in Congress.
In Alaska’s at-large congressional district, scheduled to hold a primary on Aug. 18, Defend American Jobs spent more than $500,000 on media supporting the re-election of Representative Nick Begich. The Super PAC spent about the same amount on Republican candidate Sydney Gruters in Florida’s 16th district, and Representative Harriet Hageman, running for the soon-to-be-vacant Wyoming Senate seat now occupied by Cynthia Lummis. Both US states will also hold primaries on Aug. 18.
The reported expenditures follow a primary loss for a Protect Progress-supported candidate in Michigan’s 13th Congressional District. On Tuesday, Democratic incumbent Shri Thanedar lost a primary to State Representative Donavan McKinney after the Super PAC poured more than $2 million into media supporting the former. The final day of Thanedar’s current term in Congress will be in January 2027.
On the Democratic side, Protect Progress reported spending more than $50,000 for the re-election of Lois Frankel in Florida’s 23rd district. Frankel, Begich and Hageman all voted in favor of the GENIUS Act and CLARITY Act while serving in Congress, while Gruters did not appear to have made any public statements on crypto or blockchain, with the exception of saying she supported the crypto market structure bill in a questionnaire conducted by the advocacy organization Stand With Crypto.
The expenditures were the latest examples of Fairshake and cryptocurrency industry-aligned groups attempting to influence US elections through media. The Super PAC reported spending more than $170 million in the 2024 US election cycle on House and Senate races, potentially changing the makeup of the current Congress.
CLARITY votes to influence 2026 midterms?
While it was still uncertain as of Thursday whether the US Senate would hold a vote on the CLARITY Act before the chamber broke for a month-long recess, how lawmakers cast their ballots could affect whether the crypto industry actively supports or opposes their re-election bids. All 435 House seats are up for grabs in 2026, as are 33 seats in the US Senate.
In January, Stand With Crypto said that its “primary goal” in 2026 was getting crypto market structure legislation through Congress. The organization’s community director, Mason Lynaugh, told Cointelegraph in November that how lawmakers vote on the bill could impact their re-election chances. Stand With Crypto rates political candidates on a scale of “strongly supports crypto” to “strongly against crypto” depending on their voting records and public statements, which may be used by PACs and organizations deciding where to allocate funds.
Magazine: 10 weirdest things ever tokenized... including farts

Demand for US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) has accelerated over the past week, with a string of daily inflows coinciding with the Coldcard wallet hack — timing that has prompted speculation about whether some investors are reconsidering self-custody.
According to Bloomberg senior ETF analyst Eric Balchunas, BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT), Fidelity Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund (FBTC), Bitwise Bitcoin ETF (BITB), ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF (ARKB) as well as Defiance Daily Target 2X Long MSTR ETF (MSBT) have recorded inflows every trading day since the weekend exploit, totaling roughly $620 million. The cumulative figure is consistent with Cointelegraph’s recent reporting on the ETF inflow streak.
The Coldcard exploit drained more than $116 million worth of Bitcoin from over 5,200 wallet addresses, according to blockchain intelligence firm TRM Labs.
“I’m not saying it’s connected, we just don’t know,” Balchunas said in a post on X. “[Although] long-term I can’t imagine there aren’t some who migrate over.”
Source: Eric Balchunas
Coldcard exploit renews debate over self-custody risks
The Coldcard hack renewed concerns that even hardware wallet users can be exposed to firmware flaws and software vulnerabilities, highlighting the operational risks that come with self-custody.
The incident also reignited debate over the trade-offs between holding Bitcoin directly and gaining exposure through regulated investment products such as spot Bitcoin ETFs, where asset custody and security are handled by institutional providers.
Binance co-founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao also weighed in on the debate, arguing that storing crypto on centralized exchanges may now be “statistically safer” than self-custody, citing data from analyst Willy Woo that cumulative Bitcoin losses from self-custody incidents have surpassed those from exchange hacks.
Source: Changpeng Zhao
“Hack data is easier to collect on the CEX side, usually major news. It is harder on the self-custody side, where hacks, lost coins, etc are often not reported,” CZ said.
The debate comes as AI-assisted cyberattacks are becoming increasingly sophisticated. On Monday, Bitcoin swap service Boltz suspended its non-custodial bridge, citing a steady rise in AI-assisted exploits that were allowing attackers to identify and exploit vulnerabilities faster than its team could patch them.
Magazine: Do the Coldcard attacks mean all hardware wallets are now insecure?

The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit issued a formal mandate upholding the conviction and sentence of former FTX CEO Sam “SBF” Bankman-Fried, reducing the number of potential opportunities for being released from prison early.
On Tuesday, the Second Circuit filed a mandate following its June 12 ruling affirming a lower court decision convicting the former CEO on seven felony counts and sentencing him to 25 years in federal prison. Three circuit judges disputed Bankman-Fried’s claims in appeals that FTX had “sufficient liquidity to ensure that investors were made whole and would not experience any losses” and also upheld a New York court’s $11 billion forfeiture order as part of the criminal case.
“As the district court recognized, any contention that Bankman-Fried lacked an intent to defraud because he intended to eventually repay his customers was legally misleading and prejudicial because the wire fraud statute encompasses temporary misappropriation of money or property,” said Circuit Judge Barrington D. Parker in the court opinion. “As the district court made clear, FTX customers were defrauded as soon as Bankman-Fried transferred their money to Alameda regardless of how strongly he believed he might later return the money.”
With the appellate mandate now official, Bankman-Fried has few legal routes to seek a potential early release from prison, including through a pardon from US President Donald Trump or an appeal to the Supreme Court. Trump said in January that he had no plans to issue a pardon, and last month the US Senate unanimously adopted a resolution opposing clemency for the FTX CEO.

Senator Tim Scott, who chairs the Senate Banking Committee, said that the chamber would vote on the Digital Asset Market Clarity (CLARITY) Act before it broke for an August recess, giving lawmakers just a few days to take action on the crypto bill.
In a Thursday Fox Business interview, Scott said that the Senate “should have the first vote” on the CLARITY Act before lawmakers leave for state work periods this week. He added that Senate Majority Leader John Thune, who has the authority to set the agenda and schedule floor votes, still had time to announce a cloture vote on the crypto bill in the next few days.
“The good news is we have the time to get it done,” said Scott.
The South Carolina lawmaker’s statement echoed comments from Senator Cynthia Lummis, who on Wednesday urged the Senate to take up a vote on CLARITY before the chamber’s August recess. Should Republican leaders schedule a vote, the bill would need support from 60 lawmakers to pass the Senate and advance in Congress.
Among the issues still under discussion as of Thursday were concerns from many Democrats regarding US President Donald Trump’s crypto investments and heads of the banking industry calling for the bill to address licensing and restrictions for crypto companies handling stablecoins. Should lawmakers reach an agreement on how to potentially adjust the CLARITY Act for these provisions and how to handle the Senate’s agenda before the recess, there could still be time to schedule a vote.

Bitcoin miners’ pivot into artificial intelligence and high-performance computing (HPC) is reshaping their business models, but investors are no longer rewarding new infrastructure deals with the same enthusiasm they once did, suggesting the market has become more discerning as AI hosting strategies move into the mainstream.
According to new analysis by Blocksbridge Consulting published in TheEnergyMag’s Miner Weekly, the market reaction to AI infrastructure announcements has weakened significantly over the past two years. Reviewing 25 AI and HPC infrastructure deals announced between June 2024 and August 2026, the report found that the average announcement-day stock move fell from roughly 24% for the earliest deals to about 10% for the most recent ones. Median gains also dropped by roughly half over the same period, even as the size and value of the contracts increased.
The report found that annualized revenue per contracted megawatt has edged higher over time, indicating that AI hosting agreements are becoming more lucrative. However, as such deals become increasingly common, investors appear to be placing greater emphasis on execution, financing and long-term profitability than on headline contract values alone.
AI infrastructure deals are becoming more valuable, but less market-moving. Source: TheEnergyMag
That shift is evident in how the market has responded to major announcements. Core Scientific’s initial hosting agreement with CoreWeave sent its shares up more than 40%, while Applied Digital’s first CoreWeave lease gained nearly 49% and TeraWulf’s first Fluidstack deal surged almost 60%.
More recent mega-deals have drawn a much more muted response. TeraWulf’s 401-megawatt lease with Anthropic lifted its shares by about 5%, CleanSpark’s $6.6 billion AI hosting agreement gained nearly 9%, and Bitdeer’s new Tydal contract briefly pushed the stock up roughly 12% before those gains disappeared by the market close.
Bitcoin mining stocks reflect cooling AI enthusiasm
The performance of Bitcoin mining stocks that have embraced AI and high-performance computing workloads also reflects the market’s cooling enthusiasm.
TheEnergyMag’s TEM AI Infrastructure Growth Index, which tracks publicly traded companies developing AI data center and digital infrastructure businesses, is down roughly 28.5% from its June peak, suggesting investors have become more cautious even as AI infrastructure demand remains strong.
While the TEM AI Infrastructure Growth Index remains sharply higher over the past year, its momentum has slowed in recent months. Source: TheEnergyMag
The slowdown mirrors a broader pullback in AI infrastructure stocks, with the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index falling nearly 17% from its July peak.
Magazine: A quantum roadmap would push Bitcoin much higher: Charles Edwards