Cointelegraph

Digital Asset, the creator of the Canton Network, and former US House Speaker Paul Ryan’s American Idea Foundation plan to pilot a blockchain-based system for distributing state-administered benefits across three US states using the Canton Network.
The RISE program is expected to launch in the first quarter of 2027 and would combine multiple benefits into monthly or twice-monthly payments, with spending rules applied to categories including food, child care and cash.
According to Friday’s announcement, the system would automatically adjust benefit levels as household income changes and allow participating agencies to track payments, balances, spending and compliance data through Canton. Digital Asset said Canton would coordinate the rules, permissions and transactions used to distribute benefits while limiting access to sensitive information.
Ryan said the pilot is intended to reduce penalties that can occur as benefit recipients’ incomes rise:
By combining fragmented benefits, reducing penalties as families earn more, and rigorously measuring results, these pilots can help show what a modern safety net should look like.
The companies did not name the participating states or specify which benefit programs would be included, and said the pilots remain subject to federal approval.
Canton expands government-linked use cases
The RISE program could add a public-benefits use case to Canton, whose recent growth has largely centered on institutional finance, including projects involving government securities.
In April, Japan Securities Clearing Corporation, Mizuho, Nomura and Digital Asset launched a proof of concept using Canton to test Japanese government bonds as digital collateral, including for real-time, cross-border transactions. The project was selected for support under Japan’s Financial Services Agency Payment Innovation Project.
Canton was also used in July to settle a tokenized US Treasury trade between Franklin Templeton and Virtu Financial, with Tradeweb handling execution and price discovery. The Treasury changed hands against USDCx in real time, which Tradeweb described as an industry first.
Canton’s native Canton Coin (CC), which is used to pay fees for transactions through the network’s Global Synchronizer, has a market capitalization of about $4.1 billion and ranks 23rd among cryptocurrencies, according to CoinGecko data. CC is up around 10% over the past week.
Source: CoinGecko
Magazine: MiCA cracks down on USDT in Europe... but no one else cares

Shares of Bitcoin miners and digital asset treasury companies surged toward the end of the week, tracking a broader rally across crypto markets after the US Treasury announced it would double certain long-dated bond buybacks — a move aimed at supporting liquidity in the Treasury market that also helped bolster risk appetite.
Bitcoin (BTC) miner Canaan led crypto-related stocks on Friday, rising more than 25%. MARA Holdings edged higher after gaining nearly 16% during Thursday’s session.
Strive, which holds more than 20,000 Bitcoin (BTC) on its balance sheet, jumped more than 16% on Friday. Japan-listed Metaplanet, which recently expanded its Bitcoin treasury strategy by acquiring Nasdaq-listed Super League Enterprise, also gained more than 16%.
Shares of crypto exchange Coinbase and brokerage platform Robinhood posted double-digit percentage gains, underscoring how BTC’s recovery spilled over into publicly traded companies with direct exposure to digital assets.
Crypto-related stocks were rallying as Bitcoin extended its weekly gain to more than 23% on Friday, briefly topping $79,000, according to CoinMarketCap data. Ether (ETH) gained nearly 30% over the same period, climbing above $2,400.
Trump adds regulatory tailwinds to crypto rally
Digital asset markets also drew support from comments by US President Donald Trump on Thursday, when he renewed calls for Congress to advance the CLARITY Act. The legislation remains stalled after lawmakers failed to move it forward before the August recess.
The bill is viewed as a potentially significant step toward establishing a clearer regulatory framework for digital assets in the United States, including defining the respective oversight roles of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and Securities and Exchange Commission.
Trump also revived the prospect of the US government acquiring Bitcoin at a “sizable” scale following meetings with crypto industry leaders this week.

Bitcoin and the broader digital asset market got a taste of “not-QE” this week — and liked it.
The price of Bitcoin (BTC) jumped more than 23% toward $79,000 and Ether’s price crossed $2,400 after the US Treasury moved to double certain long-dated bond buybacks, adding fuel to an increasingly important question for digital asset markets. If Washington keeps finding new ways to support liquidity without technically embarking on quantitative easing, could Bitcoin and other risk assets become some of the biggest beneficiaries?
That question is already shaping business decisions across crypto. Standard Chartered sees Bitcoin heading toward $100,000, Metaplanet is taking its Bitcoin treasury strategy to the US and Cypherpunk Technologies is making a $33 million bet on Zcash mining.
Standard Chartered analyst sees Bitcoin reaching $100,000 as Treasury buybacks expand
Standard Chartered analyst Geoff Kendrick said Bitcoin could reach $100,000 by year-end as the US Treasury doubles long-end bond buybacks, a move he described as “exactly the type of thing Bitcoin loves.”
Kendrick said in a client note that BTC’s key technical level is $65,500 and breaking above it could confirm the cycle low is in. He cited Wednesday’s Treasury plan to at least double buyback operations for 10- to 20-year and 20- to 30-year coupons. Long-dated yields fell, and Bitcoin’s price immediately climbed more than 6% to nearly $69,000, its highest since early June, per CoinMarketCap.
The expanded program runs Sept. 9 through Nov. 4. Kendrick argues Bitcoin tends to benefit from government liquidity interventions and its fixed supply resists monetary debasement. The call still depends on BTC holding above $65,500. Without that, the cycle low cannot be confirmed.
Metaplanet expands Bitcoin treasury strategy to US with Super League deal
Metaplanet plans to take a controlling stake in Nasdaq-listed Super League Enterprise, expanding its Bitcoin treasury strategy to the US.
The Tokyo firm will contribute 2,100 BTC and $2.5 million in cash to Super League, which will be renamed Superplanet. That BTC, worth roughly $145 million, is under 5% of Metaplanet’s 43,000 holdings and comes from existing treasury, not new purchases. CEO Simon Gerovich said the structure gives two capital-raising avenues: Superplanet in US markets and Metaplanet in Japan. Shares of Super League surged over 50% on the news.
The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter, subject to shareholder approval and customary conditions.
Cypherpunk launches Zcash mining fleet controlling 18% of network hashrate
Cypherpunk Technologies is expanding into Zcash (ZEC) mining after acquiring a fleet from Winklevoss Capital in a $33.33 million equity deal, giving the publicly traded firm roughly 18% of the network’s hashrate.
The mining operation is already online at US facilities, producing about 4.2 GSol/s, or roughly 18% of Zcash’s current hashrate. Cypherpunk also holds 323,394 ZEC, about 1.9% of circulating supply, and targets 5% ownership. It has pitched Zcash mining as offering more attractive economics than Bitcoin mining or AI data center workloads.
However, those economics depend heavily on ZEC’s price, network hashrate, mining difficulty, and operating costs. The push follows a rally that saw the price of ZEC rise more than 1,300% over 12 months, though it has since corrected. The network implemented its Ironwood upgrade on July 28 to replace the Orchard pool after a flaw that could have allowed counterfeit ZEC creation, though no exploitation was ever detected.
CFTC seeks comment on AI compute futures as CME eyes October launch
The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is seeking public comment on futures contracts tied to AI computing capacity, a step that could shape an emerging market for trading and hedging the cost of computing power.
Bloomberg reported Monday that the regulator sent a request for comment to the White House Office of Management and Budget. CME Group announced last week it plans to launch two compute futures contracts on Oct. 5, pending regulatory approval, with Silicon Data providing the benchmarks. Estimates from TD Lombard, Goldman Sachs and Bridgewater Associates put AI infrastructure spending at roughly 2% to 2.5% of US GDP this year.
The review could complicate the timeline for planned compute products from CME Group and Intercontinental Exchange, which remain subject to regulatory approval. Once the White House review is complete, the CFTC is expected to open a comment period, typically lasting 30 or 60 days, according to Bloomberg.
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Solana reduced its slot time to 350 milliseconds, marking the first such reduction since the inception of the network, according to the Solana Foundation’s vice president of technology, Jacob Creech.
“We’re in a new era of 350ms. Next stop, 300ms,” Creech said in a Friday X post.
Average slot times on Solana stood at 360ms at press time, down from the network’s original 400ms target, according to the Solana slot time explorer.
In June, the Solana Foundation shared plans to reduce slot times from 400ms to 200ms, arguing that it would improve latency and accelerate confirmations on the blockchain network. Three further 50ms reductions are planned.
All four stages are targeted for mainnet activation in Agave v4.2, a validator client developed by Anza, though the schedule is tentative.
SIMD-0525, the proposal establishing the shorter slot times, was approved and merged on May 14.
Magazine: Efforts to bulletproof Ethereum are paying off in user metrics

Nomura Group’s digital asset subsidiary, Laser Digital, received authorization to operate as a crypto asset exchange service provider under Japan’s Payment Services Act (PSA)
A list issued by Japan’s Financial Services Agency (FSA) on Friday showed that Laser Digital received the country’s first crypto exchange license in four years. The last platform to receive FSA authorization was Binance Japan in October 2022.
Japan’s crypto market is entering a “new phase of maturity,” creating a need for “trusted counterparties and infrastructure” as “institutional investors increase their interest in this asset class,” Jez Mohideen, co-founder and CEO of Laser Digital, said in a Friday press release.
In July, Japan’s parliament passed revisions that classify crypto assets as financial assets under Japan’s Financial Instruments and Exchange Act (FIEA).
The revisions will move regulation of crypto transactions away from the PSA, where digital assets are currently treated primarily as payment instruments, and introduce insider trading rules and stronger oversight for crypto businesses. The crypto provisions will take effect on a date set by Cabinet order within one year of the amendments’ July 23 promulgation.
Japanese Finance Minister Satsuki Katayama signaled the intent to bring crypto under the same umbrella as traditional finance assets in January, to ensure that citizens will “benefit from digital and blockchain-based assets.”
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Binance employees detained in the United Arab Emirates were cleared and released after providing statements about third-party fund flows through a company client money account, a spokesperson for the exchange told Cointelegraph.
The New York Times reported Thursday that two Binance employees were detained after being stopped at airports in the UAE amid police inquiries into possible financial crimes involving the exchange.
The employees were not the targets or subjects of what Binance described as “routine inquiries.”
“Cryptocurrency and the mechanics of institutional client money accounts remain emerging concepts in many jurisdictions; we are working constructively with Dubai Police and authorities across other Emirates to establish clear, appropriate coordination procedures,” the spokesperson said.
In 2024, Nigerian authorities detained Tigran Gambaryan, then Binance’s head of financial crime compliance, for eight months while he faced money laundering charges.
By October 2024, the Nigerian government had dopped all charges against Gambaryan.
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Bitcoin may move toward its all-time high of $126,000 before the end of the year, with the recovery potentially accelerating after Oct. 6, according to Geoff Kendrick, global head of digital asset research at Standard Chartered.
Kendrick said in a Friday note shared with Cointelegraph that the latest rally has been driven largely by short liquidations, while inflows into spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds have also started to recover. He said low open interest could leave room for more investors to return as prices rise.
“For the first time this year there is now a risk my end year forecast (of USD100k) is too low,” Kendrick wrote.
In a Feb. 12 report, Kendrick cut Standard Chartered’s year-end Bitcoin target to $100,000 from $150,000 and its Ether target to $4,000 from $7,500. At the time, he expected Bitcoin to fall to around $50,000 and Ether to $1,400 before recovering during the rest of the year.
Other industry watchers have also pointed to signs that the bear market may be nearing an end. Swan Bitcoin CEO Cory Klippsten said Bitcoin may bottom in October, while 10x Research founder Markus Thielen said an August close above $63,000 could confirm a bear-market bottom.
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Coinkite released a new security upgrade to strengthen seed phrase generation by requiring user-supplied entropy mixed with improved device randomness.
Coinkite announced firmware 5.6.1 for Coldcard Mk4 and Mk5 devices and 1.5.1Q for the Coldcard Q in a Thursday blog post.
The release requires newly generated seeds to include user-supplied entropy through at least 65 keypresses with unpredictable timing, 50 rolls of a six-sided die or 128 coin flips. That input is combined with randomness from multiple device sources, including its secure elements and hardware random-number generator (RNG).
The combined randomness is used to create the wallet’s seed phrase and is intended to keep its private keys unpredictable even if one of the device’s entropy sources fails.
Coinkite told users to upgrade immediately, emphasizing that existing seed phrases remain vulnerable even after upgrading and must be replaced with new seeds before migrating funds.
Confirmed losses from the Coldcard exploit reached 1,778 Bitcoin (BTC), worth about $112 million, according to an Aug. 14 report by Galaxy Research. This makes the Coldcard hack the third-largest cryptocurrency exploit of 2026, according to data aggregated by DefiLlama.
Coldcard adds transaction and USB safeguards
The company’s July 31 firmware update had already fixed the seed-generation failure for newly created wallets. Thursday’s release follows three weeks of broader security review and also adds safeguards around USB data handling, transaction signing and hardware randomness.
Coinkite said the update addresses a theoretical attack involving a compromised computer USB port by re-verifying transactions immediately before signing. The firmware also introduces additional hardware RNG checks and a boot-time test designed to verify that the wallet is using its intended hardware path.
Other changes restrict USB downloads to the device’s most recent output and require an encrypted session, while certain Bitcoin signature hash modes that allow transaction outputs to remain modifiable are now blocked by default.
Coinspect launches weak-seed detection tool
Other companies are also launching software to identify wallets potentially exposed by weak seed generation.
Blockchain security company Coinspect revealed Unlukey, a free public tool for identifying wallet addresses generated from weak seed phrases. The first iteration of the tool aims to reproduce known weak seed generation and check whether public addresses belong to the affected dataset, Coinspect said in a Friday X post.
Weak seed phrase generation was one of the main vulnerabilities that led to the Coldcard exploit. TRM Labs said that a firmware bug from March 2021 weakened seed randomness on some Coldcard wallets, reducing key strength from 128 bits to 40 bits and making them “brute-forceable without physical access.”
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Bitcoin (BTC) hit $77,000 on Friday as business intelligence company Strategy’s corporate treasury returned to profit.
Key points:
Bitcoin reaches its highest level since May 26 as it revisits $77,000.
Price returns above the cost basis for Strategy’s BTC corporate treasury at $75,385.
Around 11% of the BTC supply constitutes a new band of support below $68,000.
Strategy out of the red with Bitcoin at highest since May
Data from TradingView showed new local highs above $77,400 prior to the week’s final Wall Street open.
BTC/USD one-day chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
Now up around 20% in 48 hours, BTC/USD saw little by way of consolidation as it reclaimed a key level for Strategy, the world’s largest corporate Bitcoin treasury company. Data from monitoring resource BitcoinTreasuries puts the cost basis for Strategy’s holdings of 840,447 BTC at $75,385, currently with a year-to-date gain of approximately $450 million.
Strategy Bitcoin treasury cost basis data. Source: BitcoinTreasuries
As Cointelegraph reported, between Aug. 3 and Aug. 9, Strategy opted to sell a small portion of its treasury worth 1,690 BTC to repurchase 1.15 million shares of its STRC preferred stock for $108.6 million. The move represented the company’s fourth Bitcoin sale of 2026.
Concerns over the long-term viability of the company’s Bitcoin investment thesis accompanied the sales, something that the subsequent BTC price run-up should help alleviate, independent crypto analyst William Clemente suggested.
“Not only should Saylor/Strategy fears have been abated for a while once he showed that he was willing to sell BTC to rebuy STRC, but now after this price impulse they are even more over-collateralized by their BTC holdings,” he wrote on X, referring to former CEO Michael Saylor.
In an interview with Fox News earlier in August, current CEO Phong Le stated that Strategy would return to buying Bitcoin before the end of the year.
New BTC buy wall sits below $68,000
Amid misgivings over the durability of Bitcoin’s volatile upside move, analysis from onchain analytics platform Glassnode revealed a new safety net forming below $70,000.
Some 3.44 million BTC now have an onchain cost basis, also known as realized price, between $58,000 and $67,000. Of this, 2.23 million BTC — equal to around 11% of the total supply — was added over the past 11 weeks.
“It’s the densest cost-basis cluster below spot — a key potential support zone on any retracement,” Glassnode cofounder Rafael Schultze-Kraft commented on X.
Bitcoin UTXO realized price distribution data. Source: Rafael Schultze-Kraft on X.com
BTC/USD broke through several key resistance levels this week, including its 200-day simple moving average (SMA) at $68,967, a key target to reclaim to end the long-term BTC price downtrend.

US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) drew $608.3 million in net inflows on Thursday, lifting weekly inflows above $1.6 billion, while spot Ether ETFs logged their largest single-day intake since October.
The Bitcoin funds extended their positive streak to four straight sessions after attracting $297.6 million on Monday, $189.3 million on Tuesday and $517.2 million on Wednesday,SoSoValue data shows.
August net inflows reached $2.07 billion through Thursday, already surpassing April’s $1.97 billion, the previous monthly high for 2026, with seven trading sessions remaining. Cumulative net inflows stood at $53.4 billion.
The inflows accompanied a continued rally in crypto markets as Bitcoin traded at $75,133 at the time of writing on Friday, up 7.9% over the previous 24 hours, according to CoinGecko. Ether gained 4.6% to about $2,357.
Spot Ether ETFs attracted $220.8 million on Thursday, their largest daily net inflow across 203 trading sessions spanning 296 calendar days. The funds last recorded a larger intake on Oct. 28, 2025, when they drew about $246 million.
The funds have taken in approximately $512.2 million across four trading sessions this week, lifting their August net inflows to about $754.9 million. Total net assets reached $13.58 billion.

A group of South Korean lawmakers has introduced a bill to amend an existing financial law and expand the Financial Intelligence Unit’s (FIU) authority to investigate unregistered crypto businesses.
On Thursday, People Power Party lawmaker Eom Tae-young and nine other lawmakers filed the bill, which aims to add a new provision to the Act on Reporting and Using Specified Financial Transaction Information.
Under the proposal, anyone could report suspected violations of the law to the FIU. The agency could investigate and analyze alleged violations, file complaints with the relevant authorities, request criminal investigations or provide information to investigators.
The bill remains at the introduction stage and must pass the National Assembly before it can amend the existing law.
Under the current system, the FIU identifies suspected unregistered operators but relies on police and other authorities to pursue investigations.
Police suspended investigations or preliminary inquiries into 23 of 25 unregistered virtual asset service providers referred by the FIU between August 2022 and August 2025, according to Yonhap. The companies and related individuals were reportedly based overseas.
Crypto companies serving South Korean customers must register with the FIU. The regulator said in June that 28 providers were registered and that it had referred 40 suspected illegal operators to investigative authorities.

MANTRA’s native token sank 18.5% from its 24-hour high to a record low shortly before MANTRA Chain stopped producing blocks and its team announced a precautionary halt over an unexplained incident.
According to CoinGecko, MANTRA fell from $0.005060 to an all-time low of $0.004126 around 11:00 pm UTC on Thursday. It later recovered to about $0.0044 but remained down roughly 10% over 24 hours, while trading volume climbed nearly 600% to $24 million.
MANTRA said Friday it was “aware of an incident affecting MANTRA Chain” and had halted the network as a precaution while it investigated. “We don’t have a root cause or timeline to share yet,” the project said, adding that all endpoints and transactions were frozen.
The halt prevents assets from moving on MANTRA Chain and has prompted affected exchanges to pause deposits and withdrawals, with no timeline given for either service to resume.
MANTRA’s 24-hour price chart. Source: CoinGecko
MANTRA Chain remains halted as investigation continues
MANTRA’s status page classified the incident as a full outage affecting public endpoints, validators, bridge migration operations and MANTRA-managed Inter-Blockchain Communication relays. The team said it would not restart the network until it was confident it was safe.
The network’s public RPC listed block 17,449,398, produced at 11:13 pm UTC on Thursday, as its latest block. MANTRA posted its initial incident notice at 11:44 pm, while CoinGecko showed the token reaching its low around 11:10 pm.
MANTRA has not said whether the price movement was related to the incident or whether any assets were lost or placed at risk.
Cointelegraph contacted the MANTRA team for additional information but did not receive a response by publication.
The latest decline follows the April 2025 collapse of MANTRA’s former OM token, which plunged more than 90% from about $6.30 to below $0.50 and erased more than $5 billion in market value.
In June, Inveniam Capital Partners announced plans to acquire MANTRA after investing $20 million in the project in 2025. The acquisition followed January layoffs and restructuring after CEO John Patrick Mullin described 2025 as the project’s most challenging year.
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Trading platform and contracts for difference (CFD) broker Capital.com plans to offer spot crypto services to clients in the United Arab Emirates after its affiliate, Capital Vault, secured a virtual-asset license from the country’s Capital Market Authority (CMA).
According to an announcement sent to Cointelegraph, the license allows Capital Vault to deal in virtual assets as an agent or matching principal and provide custody on behalf of clients.
Once the service goes live, UAE clients will be able to buy and hold actual crypto through the Capital.com app, with Capital Vault providing execution, custody and settlement. This differs from Capital.com’s CFDs, which provide price exposure without ownership of the underlying crypto.
Capital Vault operates as a separate regulated entity, with its governance, custody and risk arrangements separated from Capital.com’s other businesses. The affiliate has opened an office in Abu Dhabi and is building a local virtual-asset team.
The approval follows the CMA’s introduction of a virtual-asset regulatory framework in April, which expanded the number of regulated activities from three to eight. The framework also established requirements covering business conduct, alternative trading systems, anti-money laundering controls and prudential standards.

Europe’s crackdown on Tether’s USDT is entering a new phase.
When Revolut told European users it would delist USDT after Aug. 31, it became another in a long line of European platforms restricting access to the world’s largest stablecoin as firms adapt to the requirements of the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation.
MiCA’s stablecoin rules have been phasing in since 2024, and the EU-wide transition period ended on July 1, putting further pressure on platforms to drop tokens that don’t meet the rules.
Yet according to Artemis Analytics, Tether being squeezed out of a major market has shown little sign of triggering a major shift in USDT activity. Alex Weseley, research and data, tells Magazine:
“The data does not indicate any noticeable change in USDT supply or demand attributable directly to MiCA coming into effect in Europe… MiCA didn’t trigger a major venue or chain migration.”
So why is demand for Tether holding up so well?
Stablecoins become financial infrastructure
One reason USDT demand is proving resilient is that dollar stablecoins are being used for more than trading or saving in other regions of the world.
In Argentina, for example, a country long obsessed with stuffing dollars into mattresses and storing wealth outside the traditional financial system, stablecoin activity has continued to grow even though restrictions on accessing actual US dollars have eased.
USDT supply share by chain at MiCA milestones. Source: Artemis.
Lemon, an Argentine crypto and financial services platform, processed $9.3 billion in total volume in 2025, up 60% from the previous year. Transactional users grew 70% to nearly 1.8 million and stablecoin volume grew 45% year-on-year.
Related: Why Argentina is blocking Polymarket despite its global growth
That suggests stablecoins are doing more than simply filling a gap created by restrictions on access to dollars; they’re becoming part of the way people move and spend money.
Ignacio Gimenez, Lemon’s business and planning manager, tells Magazine:
“The role of USDT and other dollar stablecoins is evolving. What we’re seeing is a shift from stablecoins as a store of value to stablecoins as financial infrastructure.”
He says stablecoin activity is “increasingly driven by payments, cross-border transfers and global financial services rather than only by savings,” adding that Argentine users can pay in Brazil through PIX using pesos, receive dollars or euros from overseas and have them credited as USDC, or move between bank dollars and digital dollar balances.
That makes stablecoin demand harder to measure by simply looking at which tokens are available on regulated exchanges.
MiCA is changing the European gateway
Lemon’s experience highlights a shift in user behavior in one of Latin America’s biggest economies, and there are signs that emerging markets are beginning to follow the trend.
Artemis data shows the number of daily users on Binance Smart Chain rose from about 318,000 in June 2024 to 1.56 million by July 2026, while daily users on Tron increased 44% to around 908,000. These chains are favored by day to day stablecoin users for their low fees. Weseley says:
“That looks like expanding global and emerging market usage rather than a Europe-specific migration, and there’s no clear MiCA-timed break in the chain data.”
That doesn’t mean MiCA is irrelevant: it is certainly changing which stablecoins regulated European platforms can offer, and reshaping the stablecoin market inside the bloc.
USDT daily active addresses by chain at MiCA milestones. Source: Artemis.
Maksym Sakharov, chief executive and co-founder of WeFi, a crypto financial infrastructure company, says that regulation is primarily changing how users access dollar stablecoins, rather than removing the underlying demand, whether it’s for trading, payments, or cross-border transfers. He tells Magazine:
“Users do not choose a stablecoin only because it is available on one regulated platform. They choose it because counterparties use it, liquidity is deep, and it works across many markets.”
For some platforms, the shift began well before the MiCA deadline. Chief executive of OKX Europe, Erald Ghoos, says OKX has not offered USDT to European users for around two years, so the latest MiCA deadline did not make much material difference.
Europe’s alternatives have a dollar problem
Perhaps the bigger question in Europe is what European users will embrace instead. Dollar-denominated stablecoins have a powerful advantage since the crypto market has always treated the greenback as its primary benchmark.
USDT transfer volume share by chain pre vs. post MiCA. Source: Artemis.
While Ghoos doesn’t expect that to change globally any time soon, he says that institutional interest in euro-denominated stablecoins is picking up. He says:
“What we are seeing from institutional players is interest in creating more EUR-denominated stablecoins, which is worth watching as it develops.”
For retail users, euro-denominated stablecoins could also make practical sense by removing additional friction, like currency conversion, from transactions. But while MiCA may determine which products are available through regulated European gateways, it cannot change the dollar’s role in global crypto markets.
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Bitcoin’s latest rally has pushed the cryptocurrency above a key long-term technical indicator for the first time in about nine months, offering a potential signal that its broader downtrend is losing momentum.
Charting platform Barchart highlighted on Thursday that Bitcoin’s (BTC) price had crossed above its 200-day moving average for the first time since November 2025, roughly a month after BTC reached an all-time high above $126,000.
The 200-day moving average is widely used to gauge longer-term market trends, with moves above the indicator often viewed as a sign of bullish momentum. A sustained break above the level could therefore suggest that Bitcoin’s months-long downtrend is beginning to weaken.
The move came as Bitcoin climbed to nearly $73,000 on Thursday, according to TradingView data.
Source: Barchart
Bitcoin has gained more than 13% since Wednesday, when the US Treasury Department announced it would at least double the size of liquidity-support buybacks for longer-dated Treasury securities, raising the maximum from $2 billion to at least $4 billion per operation beginning Sept. 9.
The operation aims to improve liquidity at the long end of the Treasury market and initially pushed long-term yields lower, helping bolster risk appetite across financial markets.
Following the Treasury’s announcement, Standard Chartered’s Geoff Kendrick said the move could help fuel a broader Bitcoin rally toward $100,000 by year-end.

Michael Selig, who chairs the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), signaled that the agency would not be idle while Congress continued to debate provisions in a cryptocurrency market structure bill.
In prepared remarks for the inaugural meeting of the CFTC’s Innovation Advisory Committee on Thursday, Selig said that the commission would move forward on crypto regulations even in the absence of the Digital Asset Market Clarity (CLARITY) Act being passed by lawmakers, adding it would “help [Donald Trump] deliver if Congress will not.” According to the chair, he had already directed staff to allow registered and non-registered entities to offer “crypto asset trading on a leveraged or margined basis” and explore developer protections.
“We’re going to give CLARITY its breathing room for a vote, but if the Democrats cannot support a bipartisan work product, which reflects compromises from both sides of the aisle, and ultimately send a fair version of the bill to the President’s desk, then rest assured, I will direct CFTC staff to move swiftly to propose these new rules for the industry,” said Selig.
The market structure bill is effectively paused until the US Senate returns to session in September, when Majority Leader John Thune is expected to hold a cloture vote on the legislation. CLARITY would need 60 votes to pass the chamber and return to the House of Representatives, whereupon it could go to Trump’s desk for final approval or a veto.
Selig’s remarks came just a day after the CFTC chair stood alongside Trump and other crypto industry leaders at a White House meeting. The president urged Congress to pass a “fair version” of CLARITY to keep the country “ahead of China.”
Many Democrats in Congress have been calling for stronger ethics provision in the market structure bill specifically to address the Trump family’s crypto investments, which netted the president $1.4 billion in 2025. Although Trump said on Wednesday that a “lot of Democrats” approved of CLARITY, it’s unclear whether enough lawmakers will support the bill to meet the 60-vote threshold to pass the Senate.
The CFTC chair’s agenda echoed that of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which on Tuesday released proposed rules for digital asset regulation. The securities regulator said the rules could provide crypto companies with a safe harbor policy from tokens being treated as “investment contracts” and certain exemptions for issuers.
CFTC still lacks a full panel of commissioners
Selig spoke alongside Innovation Advisory Committee Chair Walt Lukken and the body’s Designated Federal Officer Michael Passalacqua on Thursday. As the only Senate-confirmed commissioner at the CFTC in a leadership panel expected to consist of a bipartisan group of five members, Selig has been solely responsible for directing the agency’s agenda since December.
The CFTC committee also discussed issues related to artificial intelligence and prediction markets on Thursday. Under Selig, the agency has claimed that it has “exclusive jurisdiction” over prediction markets due to event contracts on the platforms being considered “swaps.” The chair has directed the commission to file lawsuits against state-level authorities challenging this position in cases involving companies like Kalshi and Polymarket.
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Binance has launched Agent OS, a developer platform that allows AI agents to access market data, monitor user accounts and execute crypto trades on the exchange.
According to a company announcement, the platform supports AI tools including ChatGPT, Claude Code, Codex, and Cursor, allowing users to authorize agents to view account information and place trades within configured permissions and limits.
Users can assign agents to dedicated subaccounts to separate funds and trading activity, configure their permissions and revoke access at any time. Binance said it can monitor trades placed through Agent OS but cannot see an agent’s external information sources, interpretation or decision-making, which occur within the user’s chosen AI application.
Agent OS also connects agents to Binance’s payment and onchain tools, allowing them to make payments and interact with wallets and other onchain services.
Crypto exchanges move deeper into AI agents
Binance joins a growing group of crypto exchanges opening their trading infrastructure to AI agents.
Coinbase launched Coinbase for Agents in June, allowing AI models including ChatGPT and Claude to connect to user accounts and autonomously execute crypto trades and strategies. The tool also supports agent-driven payments through Coinbase’s x402 protocol.
Source: Coinbase
Other exchanges have taken different approaches to AI autonomy. In July, Kraken unveiled an AI-powered investing assistant that monitors markets and recommends trades based on users’ financial goals and risk preferences, but requires user approval before executing a trade.
The push has extended beyond trading. OKX launched a beta marketplace where AI agents can find work, transact autonomously and hire other agents for tasks, using stablecoin payments and an onchain reputation system.
Several crypto industry leaders, including Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong and Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire, have argued that AI agents could soon account for a significant share of onchain activity. Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao has expressed a similar view, describing cryptocurrency as the “native currency” of AI agents.
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As US federal debt tops $40 trillion for the first time, there is renewed debate over whether mounting government borrowing could strengthen Bitcoin’s case as a scarce, non-sovereign asset.
Interest costs have also climbed, surpassing Medicare to become the federal government’s second-largest budget expense behind Social Security in the first 10 months of fiscal 2026, according to Reuters.
The debt milestone coincided with a Treasury move to calm a bond selloff that’s pushed long-term yields to their highest levels since 2007. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Wednesday the department would double buybacks of 10- to 30-year debt to at least $4 billion per operation, initially pushing yields and the US dollar lower as Bitcoin (BTC) and gold rallied.
Bitcoin is continuing to surge, trading around $72,600 on Thursday morning, up roughly 6% over the past 24 hours and 15% over the past week, according to CoinGecko data.
Source: Yahoo Finance
Treasury buybacks add another potential Bitcoin catalyst
While Bloomberg and others attributed elements of Bitcoin’s rally to optimism over friendlier US crypto policy following President Donald Trump’s meeting with industry executives at the White House on Wednesday, market analysts pointed to the Treasury and broader fiscal conditions as additional factors.
TrendLabs founder and chartered market technician JC Parets pointed to the Treasury’s move to increase purchases of longer-term government bonds, which he said bond-market participants viewed as an effort to push back against rising long-term rates. Parets said:
If the market believes the government is going to push back against rapidly rising long-term rates, that can change the math for everything else investors own. Including Bitcoin.
Bitunix analyst Dean Chen offered another view, saying that the debt milestone is not inherently bullish for Bitcoin. While Treasury buybacks temporarily lowered long-term yields and weakened the dollar, persistent deficits and growing financing needs could eventually push borrowing costs higher again.
Chen said Bitcoin’s near-term direction will depend more on broader financial conditions, pointing to US dollar strength, long-term Treasury yields and inflation expectations as key variables to watch.
Analysts at DeFi protocol Yield Basis took a longer-term view, telling Cointelegraph that continued growth in US debt could strengthen demand for Bitcoin as a hedge against currency debasement because of its fixed supply and lack of a sovereign issuer. They said:
Whether it will actually become a new reserve asset remains to be seen, but as concerns around fiat currency debasement grow, it will definitely stand out more as a straightforward protective instrument (alongside more traditional assets like gold).
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Bitcoin mining company Bitdeer’s artificial intelligence (AI) division, Bitdeer AI, signed a five-year customer deal covering about 50% of the capacity of its A102 Malaysia facility before its energization.
The deal was signed with an undisclosed customer of “high credit quality” and is expected to bring approximately $400 million in total revenue, Bitdeer revealed in a Wednesday announcement.
Revenue and associated costs are expected to begin in the first quarter of 2027 when services commence. Bitdeer AI is targeting 350 megawatts of AI cloud data center capacity by the first quarter of 2028.
Bitdeer is among the Bitcoin miners that expanded into AI infrastructure and high-performance computing to diversify revenue streams. Earlier in August, Bitdeer signed a 16-year lease valued at $4.7 billion for 121 megawatts of AI computing capacity in Norway.
Other Bitcoin miners that expanded into AI infrastructure include MARA Holdings, TeraWulf, Hut 8 and IREN.
Bitdeer’s stock price rose 7% on Wednesday and nearly 6% in pre-market trading on Thursday, changing hands at $10.2 a share as of 12:16 pm UTC, according to Yahoo Finance data.
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Public Bitcoin miners are spending billions chasing artificial intelligence and high-performance computing revenue, though returns have yet to keep pace, underscoring the massive upfront investment required to diversify beyond Bitcoin mining.
In its latest Miner Weekly newsletter, BlocksBridge Consulting reported that a group of 15 Bitcoin miners and AI data-center companies spent a combined $30.7 billion on capital assets in their latest 2026 reporting periods, already 42.6% more than the $21.53 billion they spent throughout 2025.
Among Bitcoin miners specifically, the gap between capital spending and AI revenue remains significant. Nine comparable miners spent $5.11 billion on capital assets during the first half of 2026 while generating just $341.2 million in directly reported AI and HPC revenue — a roughly 15-to-1 capex-to-revenue ratio.
BlocksBridge calculated capital spending based on cash purchases and allocations to hardware, property, equipment and other productive assets, after accounting for proceeds and refunds from asset sales.
Despite the gap, AI and HPC revenue is accelerating. The nine miners generated $205.8 million from those businesses in the second quarter, up 52% quarter-on-quarter, with Core Scientific, TeraWulf and Bitdeer among the companies reporting gains.
Bitcoin miners’ capital expenditures are vastly outpacing AI and HPC revenue so far. Source: Miner Weekly
The steep cost of pivoting to AI
AI and data centers have been touted as a way for Bitcoin mining companies to diversify amid challenging conditions in the mining sector, but BlocksBridge’s data shows that the pivot comes with substantial upfront costs.
“Power contracts and available land may give miners a starting advantage, but converting those assets into AI-ready capacity requires substations, buildings, cooling systems, networking equipment and, in some business models, GPUs,” BlocksBridge said.
It remains to be seen whether Bitcoin’s latest price recovery will provide relief for companies that still maintain sizable mining operations.
Bitcoin has surged more than 13% this week and climbed back above $72,000 after the US Treasury said it would at least double the maximum size of its long-term bond buybacks to $4 billion per operation, a move aimed at improving liquidity in the Treasury market that initially pushed yields lower and boosted risk appetite.
In a sign of the pivot to AI and HPC, Coinshares this week announced a change in strategy for its industry tracking exchange-traded fund.
Now branded the CoinShares Bitcoin Mining and Digital Power ETF (WGMI), with $222.4 million in assets under management, the fund’s universe includes 29 holdings drawn from bitcoin miners, data center operators, AI semiconductors, power generation, and HPC, which Coinshares describes as “the businesses powering the digital economy.”