Cointelegraph

Bitcoin price-metric basket sees longest capitulation since FTX blow-up: Glassnode
Bitcoin (BTC) is seeing its longest capitulation since the end of the 2022 bear market, onchain analytics platform Glassnode reported on Monday.
Key points:
45 Bitcoin price metrics tracked by Glassnode are in their longest “capitulation” phase since the collapse of FTX in late 2022.
Aggregate readings still have to turn colder to match areas that marked previous bear-market bottoms, says creator Rafael Schultze-Kraft.
45 Bitcoin price metrics spend 2026 in “capitulation” zone
Glassnode’s Bitcoin Cycle Position Heatmap, a composite BTC price metric overview tool, has signaled capitulation throughout 2026.
The tool, created by the platform’s co-founder, Rafael Schultze-Kraft, combines data from 45 indicators to present an overall picture of market health as Bitcoin price cycles repeat. A majority blue heatmap indicates a period of “capitulation” within the cycle, with red pointing to the euphoria characteristic of momentum toward cycle peaks.
After a euphoric phase in November 2021, the heatmap flipped to blue for the majority of 2022. In November that year, cryptocurrency exchange FTX collapsed, an event that coincided with Bitcoin’s last bear-market bottom of $15,600.
“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,” Schultze-Kraft commented on the Heatmap’s latest readings.
Bitcoin Cycle Position Heatmap. Source: Rafael Schultze-Kraft on X.com
In addition to basic price gauges such as market cap, the heatmap puts a considerable focus on the profitability of the Bitcoin investor base, dividing it into short-term (STH) and long-term (LTH) holders.
Certain metrics, Schultze-Kraft notes, change their behavior over time, requiring a more nuanced reading when used for cycle signals. Among these is dormancy — the number of days a unit of BTC has spent idle when used in an onchain transaction. Here, the ageing investor base means that dormancy increases over time, differing between cycles.
Coldcard hack spikes sub-1 BTC transactions
In its latest Market Pulse report released on Monday, Glassnode was complimentary regarding the resilience of market participants.
“On-chain activity strengthened materially. Daily active addresses and entity-adjusted transfer volumes moved above their upper statistical bands, indicating a notable increase in network engagement and economic throughput,” it reported.
Stabilization of capital outflows remained despite a knee-jerk reaction by certain investors in the wake of the low-entropy bug exploit in Coldcard hardware wallets.
Data from analytics platform CryptoQuant likened the uptick in onchain transactions of 1 BTC or less to the aftermath of the FTX implosion. On July 31, the daily tally reached 39,600 BTC, compared with 39,900 on Nov. 16, 2022.

BlackRock will offer tokenized versions of select European money market funds using JPMorgan’s blockchain infrastructure.
According to a Tuesday Bloomberg report, the offering will include pound sterling, euro and US dollar share classes from BlackRock’s Institutional Cash Series, which collectively manage about $311 billion. The figure refers to the broader fund range, not the assets that will be tokenized.
Each token will represent a share in an underlying money market fund and can be transferred around the clock between approved digital wallets.
JPMorgan’s Kinexys will provide the tokenization infrastructure, while the bank will continue to serve as the transfer agent for the funds.
Beccy Milchem, BlackRock’s global head of cash distribution and head of international cash management, said the asset manager has seen interest from digital wallet providers, corporate treasurers and capital markets participants seeking more efficient collateral.
Hannah Winter, BlackRock’s head of digital cash, said the ability to make peer-to-peer transfers had appealed to companies exploring intracompany payments.
BlackRock previously entered the tokenized cash-management market with BUIDL, its US dollar-denominated institutional liquidity fund, in 2024. The fund has since grown to $2.67 billion in assets, according to RWA.xyz.

Blockchain game developer Proof of Play will cease operations after failing to build a sustainable business around its decentralized gaming thesis.
The a16z-backed studio said Tuesday it could not develop a product that proved blockchain-based games could help usher in a decentralized internet at scale. It will open-source much of its code and artwork, including the Pirate Nation game, smart contracts and internal software-development tools.
Proof of Play said the independent Pirate Nation Foundation will continue supporting the PIRATE token and keep its website operational. However, Proof of Play points will not be redeemable for anything.
The studio also made the artwork and intellectual property associated with the Founder Pirates non-fungible tokens and Pirate Nation available under a CC0 license. Its Shiba Story Go! game was acquired by an unnamed third party and will continue operating independently.
At their peak, Proof of Play’s Apex and Boss networks were the two largest gas consumers tracked across Ethereum’s rollup ecosystem

Crypto analytics platform DefiLlama has integrated Forgd’s market-maker leaderboard, giving users access to data on spreads, market depth, trading volume and uptime.
In an announcement sent to Cointelegraph, Forgd said that the dashboard ranks crypto market makers using standardized measures of pricing, depth, reliability and execution quality. The data comes from more than 500 token projects and 35 market-making firms that use Forgd’s tools to monitor liquidity across active engagements, according to the company.
The integration allows DefiLlama users to compare market makers across exchanges and assess the liquidity supporting individual tokens. Forgd first launched the leaderboard in May as a tool for token projects selecting and monitoring liquidity providers.
Ryan Celaj, DefiLlama’s head of research, said the integration adds another signal for evaluating execution quality and market resilience alongside metrics such as volume and liquidity.
However, the ratings do not solely reflect observed trading performance. “A lower grade on the index is not necessarily a judgment of a firm’s trading,” Forgd CEO Shane Molidor told Cointelegraph.
“It reflects that they haven’t yet fully opted into performance verification.” This means that the leaderboard ratings may also reflect the amount of data a market maker provides to Forgd.
Forgd and DefiLlama did not disclose financial terms for the integration. Cointelegraph reached out for further comment.

Boerse Stuttgart Digital and institutional crypto trading firm Tradias have completed their merger after clearing the required ownership control procedure, creating a combined digital asset infrastructure unit with about 300 employees.
The transaction was first announced in February, when the companies agreed to combine their regulated crypto businesses and expand their services for banks, brokers and other financial institutions across Europe.
The merged business will operate under the Boerse Stuttgart Digital name, while Tradias will remain the brand for trading services, according to a Wednesday announcement.
The unit will provide trading, custody, staking and tokenization services and will be headquartered in Frankfurt and Stuttgart, with additional locations in Athens, Beirut, Berlin, Dubai, Madrid, Milan and Ljubljana.
Tradias founder Christopher Beck and Boerse Stuttgart Digital managing director Ulli Spankowski will serve as co-CEOs.
Boerse Stuttgart Digital serves institutions including DZ Bank, DekaBank, Intesa Sanpaolo and Société Générale-FORGE. Tradias works with clients including flatexDEGIRO, dwpbank and European government institutions.
Tradias provides trading and market-making services for more than 150 cryptocurrencies and other digital assets. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) added 12 companies to its Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) register in its fourth update since the July 1 transitional deadline.
Published on July 31, the update brings the total number of authorized crypto-asset service providers (CASPs) listed under MiCA to 321. The latest additions include three German cooperative banks: Volksbank Raiffeisenbank Oberbayern Südost, VR Bank Schleswig-Holstein Mitte and VR-Bank Landau-Mengkofen.
The list also includes two companies in Spain — Basque Pay and Fintech Payments — and four in France — Finary, Woorton, Blockchain Process Security and Shares Financial Assets.
Twelve CASPs added in ESMA’s July 31 MiCA register update. Source: ESMA
ESMA’s update also added three companies to its non-compliant entities register: Cervo Rendisco, Flandenzo and Corona Fondenza, flagged by Italy’s Commissione Nazionale per le Società e la Borsa (CONSOB). The non-compliant entities register now includes 167 entries.
The latest update did not include changes to other MiCA-related registers. The number of authorized e-money token (EMT) issuers remains at 41, while no asset-referenced token (ART) issuers are currently listed on the register.

Taiwan’s financial regulator plans to require crypto platforms to transmit customer information on all domestic platform-to-platform transfers starting in October.
On Tuesday, the Financial Supervisory Commission said its proposed amendments would apply the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) Travel Rule regardless of value.
Transfers exceeding 30,000 New Taiwan dollars (about $930) would trigger additional data requirements, including an individual sender’s date of birth and residential address, or a corporate sender’s official identification number and registered address. Receiving VASPs would also be required to compare beneficiary information supplied by the originating platform with their own records.
The FSC plans to extend the framework to transfers between domestic and overseas VASPs by the end of 2027.
Taiwan introduced Travel Rule provisions in its AML regulations in 2021 but did not implement them, citing differences among countries’ regulatory requirements, incompatible information-transmission standards and difficulties connecting cross-border systems. The FSC said the proposed amendments would soon enter a 30-day public consultation.
The proposal comes as Travel Rule adoption advances globally but remains uneven. In July, the FATF said 83% of surveyed jurisdictions had enacted Travel Rule legislation, up from 73% in 2025, while warning that significant implementation and enforcement gaps remained.

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.
The three were charged with conspiracy to interfere with commerce by robbery under the Hobbs Act, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years. Louis and Davis have been detained since their arrest on June 25, 2026. Williams was released on bond. All three pleaded not guilty.
Home invasions were the most common type of physical attack targeting cryptocurrency investors in the first half of 2026, according to blockchain security company CertiK. Crypto home invasions rose to 20 reported incidents in H1, up from a single case a year earlier.
Magazine: Inside the ‘fake police raid’ that forced a $1M Bitcoin transfer

Cloudflare introduced Cloudflare Wallets on Tuesday, a programmable wallet for artificial intelligence (AI) agents designed to support stablecoin payments.
The US cloud infrastructure company said in a blog post that the product aims to simplify how AI agents identify themselves and pay for application programming interfaces (API) and digital content through stablecoin micropayments, enabling what it calls “agentic commerce.”
Cloudflare said users can claim a Cloudflare Wallet handle immediately, while payment features will roll out later.
The company plans to integrate the wallets with its recently announced Monetization Gateway, which uses Coinbase’s x402 protocol to enable stablecoin micropayments.
“Stablecoin micropayments via x402 will make it simple to try an API without an account, allowing agents to test new options with little friction,” Cloudflare software engineer Will Papper wrote in the blog post. He added that the wallets will also let users store stablecoins and receive payments across the web.
Cointelegraph contacted Cloudflare for comment on the rollout timeline and additional details but had not received a response by publication.

BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes said the debt-fueled artificial intelligence infrastructure boom could end in a 2008-style credit crisis and predicted the resulting government liquidity response could drive Bitcoin (BTC) to $1 million or higher.
In a Tuesday blog post, Hayes said investors have mistakenly treated spending on data centers and power infrastructure as high-growth technology investment rather than leveraged real estate. He said he expects lenders to finance excessive construction before a slowdown in AI capital expenditure exposes weaker borrowers.
The thesis connects the trillion-dollar expansion of AI infrastructure to a potential new source of crypto-market liquidity. However, Hayes’ predicted crisis, government bailout and subsequent BTC rally remain speculative.
Hayes described the AI boom as a “credit story like 2008 and not an earnings story like 2000.” He said BTC could remain between $60,000 and $70,000, with possible downside to $50,000, before the credit cycle and resulting liquidity response drive a recovery. Hayes also forecast that Ether (ETH) would reach $5,000 by year-end and said Maelstrom intends to build a significant position while selling out-of-the-money ETH put options.
Hayes’ latest outlook builds on his earlier views on AI’s competing effects on crypto liquidity. On May 13, he said US-China competition in AI would encourage bank lending and fiat creation, benefiting Bitcoin. On June 4, Hayes sold HYPE and NEAR after warning that major AI listings could divert capital from crypto.
Big Tech locks in $1 trillion of future leases
The scale of commitments underpinning the AI boom is already visible. On Tuesday, Reuters reported that Microsoft, Meta, Oracle, Amazon and Alphabet have committed about $1.09 trillion to leases that have not yet commenced, primarily for data centers.
The commitments are nearly four times the roughly $285 billion in lease liabilities already recognized by the companies. However, Reuters noted that the $1.09 trillion cannot simply be treated as debt because it represents undiscounted payments spread across several years.
Still, the financial strain is uneven. Oracle’s debt was about 4.3 times its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, while Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft and Meta had ratios below one, according to a separate Reuters analysis.
S&P Global analyst Andrew Chang said Oracle’s data-center leases, which run for 15 to 19 years, pose a key risk because its customer contracts last no more than five years.
Magazine: Why Meta is choosing partners over power in its 2026 stablecoin push

A failure to pass the CLARITY Act this week will put the bill in a “walking dead” state, but won’t stop the crypto industry’s march forward, according to Bitwise chief investment officer Matt Hougan.
In a blog post on Wednesday, Hougan said while many, including himself, have called it the “make or break” week for the CLARITY Act, the reality is that the crypto industry has made too much progress to “go back in the bottle.”
“The reality is that Washington is always late to major technology shifts, and it has rarely mattered as much as people feared,” said Hougan.
His comments come as the Senate faces an Aug. 5 deadline to advance the landmark crypto market structure bill before its summer recess, with many concerned that failure to pass this week could see the bill pushed into the next year as lawmakers focus on the midterm elections in November.
Prospects for CLARITY this year fade
Market observers are increasingly pessimistic about the CLARITY Act’s passage this year. In July, Galaxy Research lowered its probability of the CLARITY Act passing in 2026 to 30%, while Polymarket currently shows a 23% chance of it being signed into law this year, down from 82% in February.
On July 24, NYDIG global head of research Greg Cipolaro said the latest draft was more complete but still lacked sufficient bipartisan support.
“The central investor takeaway is that Republicans have produced a substantially more complete bill, but not yet one with a credible path to 60 votes,” Cipolaro said.
According to sources speaking to Punchbowl News, without signs of progress from the White House on a bipartisan ethics deal, and movement on illicit finance and stablecoin yield, Senate Democrats will deny cloture for the crypto bill.
Polymarket odds for the CLARITY Act passing in 2026 are at 23%. Source: Polymarket
Hougan said failure to pass the bill will put it in a “walking dead” state, stalled, but not permanently defeated. He said there is some hope that the bill could pass in September, or even in December, when Congress returns for a lame duck session.
“Congress often bundles multiple bills into a year-end “omnibus” package, forcing legislators to vote on a single bill that includes things they like and things they hate. Maybe the Clarity Act can pass that way.”
“Crypto will be fine,” Bitwise’s Hougan says
If the CLARITY Act fails to pass this year, Hougan said that the industry will fall back to the SEC-CFTC’s joint interpretation issued in March, which classifies Bitcoin and other assets as digital commodities and replaces the SEC’s 2019 staff guidance.
SEC Chair Paul Atkins reinforced this last week, saying his agency is “ready, willing, and able to come out with rules that address the same issues as CLARITY and other aspects of the crypto market.”
However, the rules issued by the two regulators aren’t as durable as legislation, and could be challenged in court or reversed by a future administration. Atkins even acknowledged this in March when the two agencies released the interpretation.
Source: Cynthia Lummis
“Only Congress can ensure that regulation in this area is future-proofed through comprehensive market structure legislation,” Atkins said.
WisdomTree chief legal officer Ryan Louvar has argued that the absence of legislation would continue to impede the market, despite the regulators’ efforts.
“A market cannot function well when its participants cannot tell in advance which agency’s rules apply to them,” Louvar said at a July congressional hearing.
Hougan said “crypto will be fine” despite this, as it would still give the industry two and a half years to accelerate before a new administration could potentially install a new SEC.
“Washington is dysfunctional. It seems crazy to me that we can’t get our act together to pass legislation that would improve investor protections and spark new innovation,” said Hougan.
“But it’s not a referendum on crypto’s validity as a pillar of the global financial infrastructure. That ship has long since sailed. At this point, crypto has enough momentum that it will reshape finance for decades, regardless of what happens in the next few days.”
Magazine: CLARITY hopes fade, BitMEX shuts as lawsuit looms: Hodler’s Digest, July 26

Bitcoin may have already erased half of its market cap, but veteran crypto investor Michael Terpin says the asset still has further to fall before hitting rock bottom.
“We still have more pain to go,” Terpin tells Cointelegraph on the Trade Secrets show. Terpin believes that Bitcoin will ultimately fall “66%” from its October 2025 all-time high of $126,100. “I think that brings us down into the 40s, and I think that’s about where we’re gonna go,” Terpin says.
To be precise, a 66% drop from the ATH would see Bitcoin changing hands for $43,500, a price the asset has not seen since early February 2024. The 68-year-old investor, often referred to as the “Godfather of Crypto,” has seen Bitcoin plunge enough times to know what a true bottom feels like.
The ‘defining hallmarks’ of a Bitcoin bottom
Terpin doesn’t think markets have seen true capitulation yet. “One of the defining hallmarks of the bottom is that it doesn’t pop back,” Terpin says.
Michael Terpin spoke to Cointelegraph on the Trade Secrets show. Source: Cointelegraph
Terpin points out that greed is invariably why most traders fail to time market cycles correctly. He points to Bitcoin’s previous cycle top in November 2021, when the asset reached around $69,000 before entering an extended consolidation period. “You had quite a bit of time to get out over $60,000. But then everybody thought it was going to $100,000,” Terpin says, “remember the laser eyes?”
Terpin wasn’t confident back then that Bitcoin would reach $100,000. “I thought there was a possibility it could go to a hundred, but I thought the sweet spot was going to be eighty-five. And it obviously underperformed that because of all the bad macro,” Terpin says.
“We’ve had two cycles in a row now with bad macro. And you would have expected good macro from Trump, but the tariffs, and some of the other things that allowed a lot of manipulation,” Terpin says.
Bitcoin ultimately reached $100,000 in December 2024, just a month after Donald Trump won the US presidential election.
Terpin worked with Ethereum in its early stages
Terpin was an early investor in the crypto industry and is the founder and CEO of blockchain advisory firm Transform Ventures.
Through his company, he worked with several projects during their early development stages that went on to become major names in the industry, including Ethereum, Tether, and WAX. He was also an advisor to Mastercoin, the world’s first initial coin offering (ICO) in 2013. It later became known as Omni Layer.
Terpin claims he was the first crypto investor to relocate to Puerto Rico, which is known for its crypto-friendly tax policies. Since moving, he has also invested in and helped fund several startups based on the island.
Michael Terpin says four-year cycle is not over
He is convinced that Bitcoin is still following its traditional four-year cycle, despite the industry debate in 2025 that institutional adoption and the launch of spot ETFs may have changed the market’s usual boom-and-bust pattern.
Bitcoin is up 1.67% over the past 30 days. Source: CoinMarketCap
“I think we’re still following the halvings. This whole argument that, you know, we’re only going up from here because institutions don’t sell is garbage, right? Institutions absolutely sell.”
Terpin is also cautious about companies built around Bitcoin exposure, including Strategy and its executive chairman Michael Saylor’s aggressive Bitcoin accumulation strategy.
Buying Strategy stock or Bitcoin?
While acknowledging Saylor’s success, Terpin says investors should understand the risks of investing in a corporate structure rather than owning the underlying asset.
“I mean historically, you’ve done better if you buy Strategy at the bottom and then sell it at the top than if you buy the Bitcoin,” Terpin says. “Whether he’s [Michael Saylor] able to keep that going, and you know, he avoided being wrecked in 2022 when he was actually underwater with his Bitcoin.” But Terpin would personally “rather bet on Bitcoin than a single company.”
And indeed, investors looking for a low maintenance approach should also bet on Bitcoin rather than chasing altcoins, which require far more active management.
“You only have to look at your portfolio like a couple times during the four-year cycle,” Terpin says.
“When we’re getting near the bottom, see if it’s time to buy. And when we’re getting near the top, see when it’s time to sell. And the rest of the time you can just be on the golf course. Whereas with altcoins, you gotta be, you gotta be on it,” Terpin says.
https://x.com/Cointelegraph/status/2083118277757464943?s=20

The United States and the United Kingdom reaffirmed their commitment to closer financial regulatory cooperation during a recent bilateral working group, signaling continued policy alignment on digital assets as US authorities move to implement landmark stablecoin legislation.
During the 13th meeting of the UK-US Financial Regulatory Working Group (FRWG), held in London on July 8, officials discussed stablecoin regulation, digital asset market structure in the United States, tokenization and the UK’s Wholesale Financial Markets Digital Strategy.
An Aug. 4 joint statement summarizing the meeting said US officials updated their UK counterparts on implementation of the GENIUS Act, the country’s landmark stablecoin law, as well as ongoing work on digital asset market structure. Participants also discussed payment modernization and the G20 Cross-border Payments Roadmap, an international initiative to improve cross-border payments.
Although the meeting did not produce new policy measures, it underscored a shared commitment to coordinating regulation across key areas of the digital asset industry. The statement struck a broadly supportive tone toward “responsible” digital asset innovation while emphasizing financial stability and international regulatory cooperation.
That commitment was also reflected on July 14, when the Transatlantic Taskforce for Markets of the Future — a joint US-UK initiative focused on strengthening cooperation on financial innovation and capital markets — published its initial recommendations alongside a joint statement on stablecoins. The governments said the measures would lay the foundation for continued US-UK leadership in digital assets and capital markets.
UK rethinks stablecoin rules as US moves ahead
The UK’s renewed emphasis on stablecoins comes as some industry observers argue the country is losing ground to the United States, where the GENIUS Act has accelerated momentum behind regulated dollar-backed stablecoins.
The Bank of England has also softened its stance on stablecoin regulation. As Cointelegraph reported in May, the BoE is considering alternatives to temporary limits on stablecoin holdings and is reviewing whether its proposal requiring at least 40% of reserve assets to be held as non-interest-bearing deposits at the central bank is too restrictive.
Separately, the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority said earlier this year that cross-border payments represent one of the clearest near-term use cases for stablecoins, underscoring growing regulatory recognition of the technology’s potential.
Magazine: Coldcard exploit sparks Bitcoin flight, ‘bullish’ crypto consolidation: Hodler’s Digest, August 2

BNY and Galaxy have partnered to integrate institutional crypto staking into BNY’s digital asset custody platform, allowing eligible clients to earn staking rewards without moving assets out of custody.
Under the arrangement, which was unveiled on Tuesday, institutional clients will be able to stake supported proof-of-stake assets while keeping them within BNY’s custody framework. Galaxy will provide the staking infrastructure and serve as a design partner for BNY’s broader digital asset platform. The companies did not specify which digital assets will be supported.
The partnership also aims to combine custody, staking, reporting and tax services into a single offering for institutional clients, a move the companies said could simplify digital asset operations.
The partnership expands BNY’s push to integrate digital assets into traditional financial infrastructure. The bank was among the first major financial institutions to offer regulated custody for cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH), and has since broadened its digital asset strategy through initiatives including tokenized fund administration and efforts to move transfer agency records onchain.
Magazine: CLARITY hopes fade, BitMEX shuts as lawsuit looms: Hodler’s Digest, July 26

Bitcoin saw new August highs into Tuesday’s Wall Street open as markets bet on US-Iran tensions again easing.
Key points:
Bitcoin (BTC) edges higher as optimism over the Strait of Hormuz reopening pushes stocks to new all-time highs.
Oil prices drop to their lowest levels since July 13 with oil traffic potentially returning on Wednesday.
BTC acts between two daily moving averages as analysis sees “strong accumulation.”
S&P 500 tops $70 trillion market cap to new high
Data from TradingView showed BTC/USD climbing to $64,176 on Bitstamp, marking maximum daily gains of around 1%.
BTC/USD one-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
Oil prices reacted immediately after US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent suggested that traffic through the Strait of Hormuz could restart as soon as Wednesday.
Bessent told CNBC that there was “a chance we may have a deal today or tomorrow to open the Strait and move towards a more normalized position” in the US-Iran war amid ongoing talks between the two sides.
The comments came a day after US President Donald Trump confirmed the waterway reopening dialogue, saying that this could happen “as soon as tomorrow.”
WTI and Brent crude traded 4.8% and 4.6% lower, respectively, at the time of writing, hitting their lowest levels since July 13.
CFDs on US WTI crude oil four-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
US stocks futures gained prior to the open, which in turn saw the S&P 500 index hit a new record high of 7,713, with its market cap reaching $70 trillion for the first time.
S&P 500 index one-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
Analysts noted resolution of the Hormuz closure as one factor apt to influence market sentiment when it came to future Federal Reserve policy decisions. Amid an emerging hawkish split between Fed officials on interest rates, markets see 56.7% odds of central bank policymakers approving a 0.25% rate hike at its September meeting, per data from CME Group’s FedWatch Tool.
“Chairman Kevin Warsh’s limited guidance on the Fed’s reaction function means upcoming data, oil prices and the bond market will have a greater influence on the market’s expectations for the policy path,” Bloomberg macro strategist Michael Ball said.
Fed target-rate probabilities for September FOMC meeting.
Source: CME Group
BTC accumulation “strong” in stubborn local range
Bitcoin price action remained comparatively subdued compared to stocks as BTC/USD passed $64,000.
The pair remained held in check by its 21-day simple moving average (SMA) at $64,388, while its 50-day SMA functioned as support on hourly time frames.
BTC/USD one-hour chart with 21-day, 50-day SMA.
Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
With price rangebound, analysis from onchain analytics platform CryptoQuant reported “strong accumulation” among investors. 0.7% of the BTC supply, equivalent to around 155,000 coins, now belongs to investors with a cost basis between $62,000 and $65,000.
“This points to absorption rather than capitulation, as buyers accumulated into weakness,” it reported on Monday.
Magazine: How Fake World Assets and onchain gacha became crypto’s latest craze

Bitcoin mining company Bitdeer has signed a 16-year lease agreement valued at as much as $4.7 billion to secure artificial intelligence and high-performance computing data center capacity, underscoring how crypto miners are increasingly expanding into AI infrastructure as demand for computing power grows.
Under the agreement, Bitdeer will provide 121 megawatts of IT capacity at its Tydal, Norway, AI data center to a tenant that the company identified only as a subsidiary of Volta Infra. The facility will be configured to support Nvidia GPU-based AI workloads, though Bitdeer did not disclose the tenant’s identity or specify whether Volta is the end customer or an intermediary.
Bloomberg News reported that the Nvidia-backed Volta’s $10 billion ‌cloud contract is with ⁠Anthropic, citing people familiar with the matter.
The lease remains subject to customary closing conditions and is not yet effective, according to the company. To secure the tenant’s payment obligations, affiliates of JP Morgan and another unnamed global financial institution are expected to issue approximately $1.3 billion in letters of credit, or a bank guarantee that ensures the landlord can recover funds if the tenant fails to meet its contractual payment obligations.
Bitdeer shares jumped about 8% in early Nasdaq trading following the announcement, suggesting investors welcomed the company’s continued expansion into AI infrastructure and data centers.
Shares of Bitdeer Technologies Group (BTDR) rose sharply on Tuesday.
Source: Yahoo Finance
Bitdeer has steadily diversified beyond its core Bitcoin mining business in an effort to broaden its revenue base. Alongside its push into AI and high-performance computing infrastructure, the company has expanded its mining hardware manufacturing operations to reduce its reliance on third-party suppliers. Last month, Bitdeer announced a $36 million investment in a manufacturing facility in Nevada to support that strategy.
Bitdeer bucks industry trend by selling all BTC holdings
Bitdeer has taken a different approach from many of its publicly traded mining peers by fully liquidating its Bitcoin treasury.
In early February, the company held roughly 943 BTC before announcing that it had reduced its holdings to zero, while maintaining that it remains committed to the Bitcoin ecosystem. According to Bitdeer executive Ross Gann, the sales were made to help fund the company’s broader expansion strategy, including acquisitions of powered land for AI and Bitcoin mining infrastructure.
By contrast, several major Bitcoin miners continue to maintain large Bitcoin treasuries. MARA Holdings, Riot Platforms, CleanSpark and Hut 8 each hold at least 10,000 BTC, according to BitcoinTreasuries.NET, with MARA’s holdings exceeding 36,000 BTC.
Magazine: Sorry everyone, Bitcoin is headed down to $43,500: Michael Terpin

At least 15 different attackers have exploited the Coldcard vulnerability, according to Galaxy Digital’s head of research, Alex Thorn, citing new victim reports received since the incident.
Thorn said Tuesday that the victim reports helped the company label new attackers that would have gone undiscovered, as the nature of the exploit was different from a hack on a centralized exchange.
“Due to one single victim’s report of less than 1 BTC stolen, we identified a new attack with 12 BTC siphoned from 126 addresses,” Thorn wrote in a Tuesday X post.
The estimated losses from the Coldcard exploit have grown to $100 million across three confirmed attack waves, according to Galaxy Research. The company also identified a suspected fourth wave that could bring total losses to about $130 million in Bitcoin (BTC).
The ongoing attack reignited debate about the security of cold storage wallets and whether users are safer by holding their own Bitcoin.
$2 worth of AI hardening could have prevented the exploit: Dragonfly partner
Roughly “$2 of AI hardening” could have prevented the Coldcard exploit, wrote Dragonfly managing partner Haseeb Qureshi, citing social media reports that some AI models rediscovered the vulnerability that led to the attack in less than 20 minutes.
Qureshi’s remarks came in response to multiple social media users claiming that Claude was able to regenerate the vulnerability in just eight minutes. He argued that these results may have been contaminated by web search and added that open-source AI model GLM 5.2 was able to rediscover the attack in 20 minutes with web access turned off.
However, it is unlikely that AI models would have independently discovered this vulnerability before it was made public, crypto analytics platform Tokenomist’s data lead, Tatsapat Saerejittima, told Cointelegraph. He said:
“The claim that AI found it in 2 mins came from a pseudonymous Reddit user who scanned the code after the vulnerability had already become public. There was no blind test, no documented methodology, and no assessment of the model’s false-positive rate.”
Vulnerability seen in private key setup
Crypto research company Castle Labs’ co-founder, Francesco, said that the growing capabilities of AI models are drastically reducing the cost and time it takes to discover new cryptocurrency vulnerabilities, but added that Coldcard’s private key may have played a role in the vulnerability.
Coldcard used a “level of private key entropy (40 bits) much lower than the standard adopted by other wallets (a 12-word seed is 128 bits), a result of a firmware bug, making the job easier,” he told Cointelegraph.
Francesco, who asked that Cointelegraph not use his last name, said he expects the cost of bug discovery to continue decreasing as AI models gain more capabilities and become more prominent in both cybersecurity and exploits.
Magazine: Does Botanix’s failure prove Bitcoiners don’t care about DeFi?

Bitcoin miners with operations in Texas are not expected to be impacted by a moratorium on approval of data center projects connected to the state’s grid operator ordered by Governor Greg Abbott, Bernstein analysts said Tuesday.
Abbott on Monday directed the Public Utility Commission of Texas and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) to audit all data centers seeking to connect to the state’s power grid. The duration of the audit was not specified and comes amid increasing public backlash to the pace of data center build-out across the state, The Texas Tribune reported.
Bernstein analysts told clients on Tuesday that as most of the Bitcoin (BTC) miners operating in Texas are under contract for approved electric capacity, those operations are unlikely to be impacted by the moratorium.
“However, we believe, this audit throttles speculative data center pipeline and makes genuine sites with development history more valuable,” the research team led by Gautam Chhugani said in their note. “Bitcoin mining sites are favorably placed with the longest gestation, self-funding infra and local community management,” they said.
They said that the local operations of Cipher Digital (CIFR), Core Scientific (CORZ) and CleanSpark (CLSK) could be the miners most exposed to future public opposition to data center expansion, particularly during ERCOT’s approval process to convert their pipeline assets into grid-connected power capacity.
“We believe with increasing political opposition to new data center projects and fresh capacity being throttled by moratoriums/state directives, the approved MWs become more valuable,” they said, highlighting the Texas mining operations of IREN (IREN), which is fully ERCOT grid approved, as are the operations of Riot Platforms (RIOT).
CIFR shares were down more than 7% in Tuesday’s premarket trading, according to Yahoo Finance data. The miner reported second-quarter results earlier Tuesday, posting a loss of $0.65 per diluted share, widening from last year’s loss of $0.12 per diluted share.

The physical gold reserves backing Tether Gold (XAUt) increased 9.5% in the second quarter, which Tether said reflected growing demand for tokenized gold exposure.
Gold fell 14.1% during the quarter, its worst quarterly performance since the second quarter of 2013, data from TradingView shows.
“Holders of Tether Gold are not only buying XAUt when the price of gold is rising. They are using periods of market weakness to increase their ownership of physical gold through a product that is fully backed, transparent, portable and accessible onchain,” said Paolo Ardoino, CEO of Tether, in Monday’s XAUt attestation report.
The value of distributed tokenized commodities fell 4.2% to $4.58 billion in the past 30 days, while the number of holders rose 6.5% to 253,000, according to RWA.xyz data.
The physical gold reserves backing XAUt increased 36% in the first quarter to 707,747 fine troy ounces, valued at $3.3 billion at quarter-end. XAUt received Shariah certification from Amanah Advisors in July, a move that could expand access to the token among Islamic financial institutions.
Tether Gold ranks as the largest distributed tokenized commodity product with $2.4 billion in total value as of Monday.
Magazine: ‘Bitcoin Standard’ author explores reality where decentralized gold stopped WWI

Intesa Sanpaolo, Italy’s largest banking group, tripled its position in an iShares staked Ether exchange-traded fund during the second quarter while reducing its position in the iShares spot Bitcoin ETF.
The bank reported holding 349,600 shares of the iShares Staked Ethereum Trust ETF (ETHB) worth $7.1 million as of June 30, according to Friday filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. That was up from 116,200 shares valued at $3.15 million at the end of March.
Intesa retained 3.47 million shares of the ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF (ARKB) worth $67.6 million, its largest crypto-linked holding in the filing. The share count was down about 4% from the first quarter.
The bank cut its iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT) shareholding by about 94%, to 40,723 shares from 646,809 shares.
Intesa kept its Grayscale XRP Trust ETF (GXRP) position unchanged at 712,319 shares, nearly doubled its BitGo stake to 323,000 shares and reduced its Coinbase position to 7,000 shares.
Crypto ETFs give banks and other institutional investors exposure to digital assets through regulated securities products, avoiding the custody, compliance and operational requirements of holding cryptocurrencies directly.