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Trump: CFTC Chair Working to Bring Hyperliquid Into the U.S. in Full Compliance
On August 19, U.S. President Donald Trump said at a White House event with technology leaders that CFTC Chairman Michael S. Selig is working to bring Hyperliquid into the United States in a fully compliant and legal fashion.
Trump also noted that Selig authorized the first true Bitcoin perpetual futures contract on a CFTC-registered exchange in May. Selig later said that the U.S. had codified the GENIUS Act, established a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, drawn a clear line between crypto securities and commodities, launched the first U.S. crypto perpetual, and protected the rights of software developers.

U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded $517 million in net inflows on Aug. 19, led by BlackRock’s IBIT with $285 million, while spot Ether ETFs drew $189 million, with BlackRock’s ETHA accounting for $122 million. BlackRock is the world’s largest asset manager and a dominant issuer in the U.S. spot crypto ETF market.

HTX, one of the longest-running major crypto exchanges since its founding in 2013, said an internal review found no official accounts involved in address-poisoning transfers reported by some users. The exchange said some users may have acted independently after funds remained frozen at Kraken, citing known cases involving up to about $4.2 million.

According to 13F data disclosed by Strategy, 12 of MSTR’s 15 largest institutional shareholders increased their positions in the second quarter of 2026, lifting the combined value of their holdings by about $1.2 billion from the previous quarter. Goldman Sachs increased its position by roughly $407 million, Capital International Investors by $364 million and BlackRock Asset Management Ireland by about $98 million, while Capital Research Global Investors and UBS were among the few institutions that reduced their stakes. Strategy is the world’s largest corporate Bitcoin holder, with more than 840,000 BTC on its balance sheet as of August 2026.

Strategy Responds to MSCI's Proposal to Exclude Bitcoin Treasury Companies
On August 17, during Strategy's Q2 2026 Investor Q&A session, CEO Phong Le addressed MSCI's proposal to exclude Bitcoin treasury companies from its indexes.He said that even if Strategy were ultimately removed, MSCI-indexed holdings account for only around 3% to 4% of the company's outstanding shares.
While the exclusion could create some short-term selling pressure, he believes the overall impact would be limited.He also argued that the proposed adjustment is inconsistent with the direction of the SEC, FASB, and current accounting treatment practices. Strategy will once again submit a formal response to MSCI, hoping that the index provider will ultimately decide not to proceed with the latest rule changes.

South Korea’s Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) has accepted BitGo Korea’s virtual asset service provider (VASP) registration, making it the first locally established subsidiary of a foreign crypto company to obtain the status directly. BitGo, one of the industry’s oldest and largest institutional crypto custodians, said it chose to establish a local entity and meet South Korea’s regulatory requirements rather than enter the market by acquiring an existing licensed operator.

Bitcoin remains below both the roughly $68,500 Short-Term Holder Cost Basis and the $75,800 True Market Mean, with Glassnode’s on-chain models continuing to place the market in a capitulation regime. Relative Unrealized Loss peaked at only about 25%, well below the more than 60% seen in previous cycles, while the 90-day Realized Profit/Loss Ratio remains at 0.75, above the sub-0.5 level historically associated with seller exhaustion.
Perpetual futures demand has turned positive and ETF flows are stabilizing, but the Coinbase Premium remains negative, signaling that U.S. spot demand has yet to meaningfully return. Glassnode said that until yields ease and the profit/loss ratio recovers toward 2, any Bitcoin rebound should be viewed as a local rally rather than a broader trend reversal.

According to Bloomberg, OKX has restricted Hong Kong employees and staff traveling through China from using Anthropic’s Claude after its enterprise account was briefly suspended in early August. The account has since been restored. OKX said some previous usage may not have complied with Anthropic’s regional access policies and will redirect related AI requests to other models. Anthropic’s current policy does not permit Claude usage in mainland China or Hong Kong.
OKX has actively promoted AI adoption among employees, incorporating AI capabilities into performance evaluations. The company said it spends about $6 million to $8 million per month across major AI model providers.

Federal Reserve minutes from the July meeting showed that inflation remained above the 2% target, with risks still tilted to the upside. Participants cited tariffs, the Middle East conflict and strong AI-related investment as potential sources of persistent price pressure. The labor market remained broadly stable and economic activity continued to expand at a solid pace.
Most participants supported keeping the federal funds rate unchanged, but several favored a 25-basis-point hike. Many said further tightening could be warranted if inflation failed to ease, while some questioned whether current financial conditions were restrictive enough to bring inflation back to target. The minutes also highlighted financial-stability risks from elevated valuations and growing leverage around AI infrastructure, warning that a reassessment of the sector’s long-term profitability could trigger a broader asset-price repricing.

Binance market data show that BTC is trading at $69,367.47, up 1.08% over the past 24 hours. ETH briefly traded above $2,300 and is now at $2,265.00, up 8.52% over the past 24 hours. CoinGlass data show that total crypto liquidations reached $802.98 million over the past four hours, including $66.45 million in long positions and $736.53 million in short positions.

U.S. President Donald Trump said at a White House event with technology leaders that CFTC Chairman Mike Selig is working to bring Hyperliquid into the United States “in a fully compliant and legal fashion.” Trump also noted that Selig authorized the first “true” Bitcoin perpetual futures contract on a CFTC-registered exchange in May. Following the remarks, HYPE briefly surged from around $62 to $72.3, gaining approximately 16%.

Core Scientific has transformed from a bankrupt Bitcoin miner into an AI data center infrastructure provider by repurposing its power, land and grid-connected sites for high-density computing. After emerging from Chapter 11 in January 2024, the company signed long-term agreements with CoreWeave and AMD-related partners. By July 2026, it had contracted about 1.1 GW of customer power capacity representing more than $24 billion in potential contract revenue, with roughly 437 MW already generating billable revenue.
The shift is already visible in its financials: high-density colocation accounted for about 83% of Q2 2026 revenue, while Bitcoin self-mining remained loss-making. The transformation is highly capital intensive, however, with nearly $1.2 billion spent on property, equipment, land and development rights in the first half of 2026 and long-term debt rising to about $4.3 billion. Core Scientific’s investment case now centers on its ability to convert scarce power capacity into long-term AI hosting revenue — what the article describes as “time to power.”

Cybersecurity firm Rapid7 disclosed Operation ASTERIX, a cryptocurrency fraud campaign that used roughly 885,000 phone numbers, crypto account-validation tools, phishing emails, vishing calls, and counterfeit Trezor, Ledger, and Exodus wallet apps to target crypto users and steal recovery phrases. In one German dataset, the operators identified 43,066 CryptoCom accounts from 316,002 phone numbers, then enriched confirmed targets with personal details to make support impersonation more convincing.
Rapid7 also found that the operators used GitHub Copilot and Claude Code to process target data, develop and debug malicious software, and build phishing infrastructure. After Claude refused requests related to code obfuscation, the operator switched to Kimi and attempted to bypass its safety controls with a custom jailbreak prompt, though Rapid7 could not confirm whether the attempt succeeded.

Cybersecurity firm Rapid7 disclosed Operation ASTERIX, a cryptocurrency fraud campaign that used roughly 885,000 phone numbers, crypto account-validation tools, phishing emails, vishing calls, and counterfeit Trezor, Ledger, and Exodus wallet apps to target crypto users and steal recovery phrases. In one German dataset, the operators identified 43,066 CryptoCom accounts from 316,002 phone numbers, then enriched confirmed targets with personal details to make support impersonation more convincing.
Rapid7 also found that the operators used GitHub Copilot and Claude Code to process target data, develop and debug malicious software, and build phishing infrastructure. After Claude refused requests related to code obfuscation, the operator switched to Kimi and attempted to bypass its safety controls with a custom jailbreak prompt, though Rapid7 could not confirm whether the attempt succeeded.

Binance market data shows that BTC rose above $68,000 to $68,418, up 5.47% over the past 24 hours. ETH rose above $2,000 to $2,081, up 8.4%.
CoinGlass data shows that approximately $1.31 billion in crypto positions were liquidated over the past hour, including $1.23 billion in short positions. Over the past 24 hours, total liquidations reached approximately $1.57 billion, with shorts accounting for $1.41 billion. A total of 114,038 traders were liquidated, with the largest single liquidation worth $32.18 million on Bitget’s ETHUSDT perpetual contract.

Grayscale filed the fourth S-3/A amendment for its Zcash Trust with the SEC, proposing to rename the trust and list its shares on NYSE Arca under the ticker “ZCSH” once the registration statement becomes effective. The filing also disclosed that a DCG subsidiary is in discussions to acquire approximately 200k ZEC through the trust, although the arrangement is non-binding and the investment may be increased, reduced or canceled.

Ethena and digital-asset prime broker FalconX have established a $1 billion secured warehouse facility to deploy assets backing USDe into overcollateralized institutional loans. FalconX will originate, service and manage the collateral for loans used in trading strategies, corporate treasury management and payments. The arrangement gives Ethena an additional source of returns beyond perpetual-futures funding rates. Collateral will be held by qualified third-party custodians, with Ethena holding a first-priority security interest over the facility’s assets.

Editor | WuBlockchain
In December 2022, Core Scientific was one of the most prominent Bitcoin miners to go bankrupt during the crypto winter. Less than four years later, the company had secured more than $24 billion in potential long-term contract revenue, reached a market capitalization of approximately $7 billion, and become a key partner for AI industry participants such as CoreWeave and AMD seeking to lock in power and data center capacity.
At first glance, this looks like a classic story of a bankrupt miner suddenly striking it rich. But Core Scientific did not turn itself around simply by riding a rebound in Bitcoin prices. Instead, it recast the same power, land, and data center resources from relatively volatile Bitcoin mining assets into scarce AI data center infrastructure.
From a Publicly Listed Miner to Just $4 Million in Cash
Core Scientific’s predecessor was incorporated in late 2017, and the company began operating under the Core Scientific name in 2018. In January 2022, it listed on Nasdaq under the ticker CORZ through a merger with special purpose acquisition company Power & Digital Infrastructure Acquisition Corp.
At the time, Core Scientific’s principal businesses included self-mining Bitcoin, providing hosting services to third-party miners, and selling mining equipment. Its business model depended on three critical conditions: Bitcoin prices remaining high, mining machines operating continuously, and power costs remaining stable.
In 2022, all three conditions deteriorated almost simultaneously.
Bitcoin fell steadily from its November 2021 high of nearly $69,000 and briefly dropped to approximately $16,000 in November 2022. Meanwhile, the network hash rate and mining difficulty continued to rise, meaning miners had to deploy more computing power and consume more electricity to produce the same amount of Bitcoin.
Rising energy prices squeezed margins further. Core Scientific stated in its bankruptcy filings that its electricity costs reached approximately $106 million in the first half of 2022. Power prices continued to rise over the summer, while the company was also frequently required to curtail electricity consumption at the request of power suppliers.
Customer default added another layer of pressure. After crypto lender Celsius filed for bankruptcy in 2022, it became embroiled in a dispute with Core Scientific over their hosting agreement. Core Scientific said that Celsius had failed to pay approximately $7 million in accumulated charges and was continuing to cause the company additional losses.
Core Scientific reported a net loss of approximately $434.8 million in the third quarter of 2022. On December 21, 2022, the company formally filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas. It had approximately $4 million in cash on the filing date.
Core Scientific’s problem was not a lack of assets. Rather, the company had invested heavily to expand its mining business, using debt to purchase mining machines and build data centers. When Bitcoin prices, power prices, and financing conditions all reversed at once, those fixed assets could not be monetized quickly enough, while the company’s cash flow dried up first.
Bankruptcy Restructuring Preserved the Most Valuable Assets
Chapter 11 restructuring did not require Core Scientific to liquidate all of its assets immediately. The company was able to continue operating during the bankruptcy process while reallocating debt and equity among creditors, equipment financing providers, and existing shareholders.
Core Scientific completed its restructuring and emerged from bankruptcy in January 2024. The company said the restructuring reduced its debt by approximately $400 million while preserving approximately 724 MW of operational capacity, together with data centers, land, grid connections, and supporting infrastructure across several U.S. states.
Existing shareholders were not completely wiped out. Under the restructuring plan, they received common stock and warrants in the reorganized company and were eligible to participate in a related rights offering. Assuming the full exercise of the warrants and including the rights offering, the securities allocated to existing shareholders could represent as much as approximately 60% of the reorganized company’s equity.
The reorganized company’s shares resumed trading on Nasdaq on January 24, 2024. They opened at approximately $5.89 and closed at approximately $3.44 on the first day. Initially, the market still viewed Core Scientific as a Bitcoin miner that had only just emerged from bankruptcy and needed to repair its balance sheet.
However, the data center and power assets preserved through the restructuring later became the foundation for the company’s valuation reversal. Mining machines can depreciate rapidly, and Bitcoin production is affected by both the token’s price and network difficulty. By contrast, data centers that have already secured grid connections, built substations, and assembled large sites are difficult to replicate in the short term.
CoreWeave Gave Mining-Site Power a New Pricing Model
Core Scientific’s partnership with AI cloud infrastructure company CoreWeave became the pivotal event in the shift in its valuation framework.
The two companies had already worked together on an approximately 16 MW project in Austin, Texas. In June 2024, Core Scientific announced a new 12-year agreement with CoreWeave to provide approximately 200 MW of high-performance computing infrastructure. The company estimated that the contract could generate more than $3.5 billion in potential cumulative revenue over its full term.
Under the initial agreement, CoreWeave would fund approximately $300 million in project capital expenditures, which would be credited against future hosting fees. This arrangement reduced Core Scientific’s upfront construction burden and allowed it to gradually convert existing mining sites into high-density data centers suitable for GPU clusters.
The companies subsequently expanded their partnership several times. The long-term capacity contracted in 2024 grew from approximately 200 MW to approximately 502 MW through successive additions of roughly 70 MW, 112 MW, and 120 MW. This figure excluded the earlier approximately 16 MW Austin project.
In February 2025, the companies added another approximately 70 MW at the Denton project in Texas. Core Scientific expected to fund approximately $104 million of capital expenditures for the expansion, with CoreWeave funding the remaining related capital investment.
Including the earlier Austin project, the agreements between the two companies covered approximately 588 MW, which Core Scientific reported as approximately 590 MW. The contracts had 12-year terms and represented approximately $10.2 billion in potential cumulative revenue.
These contracts changed the way capital markets assessed Core Scientific. Investors had previously focused primarily on its Bitcoin output, hash rate, mining-machine efficiency, and BTC holdings. After the pivot, the more important metrics became contracted capacity, the number of megawatts generating billable revenue, the value of long-term contracts, and project delivery timelines.
When one megawatt of power is used for Bitcoin mining, its value depends on the price of Bitcoin, network difficulty, and mining-machine efficiency. When it is used for AI compute hosting, that same power capacity can potentially be converted into comparatively stable revenue through contracts lasting more than a decade. Core Scientific’s assets did not change completely, but their use case and the duration of the resulting cash flows did.
A $9 Billion Acquisition That Never Closed
CoreWeave was not only one of Core Scientific’s largest AI hosting customers; it also tried twice to acquire the company outright.
In 2024, CoreWeave offered to acquire Core Scientific for $5.75 per share in cash, but Core Scientific’s board rejected the proposal. At the time, Core Scientific said the offer significantly undervalued the company and its growth prospects.
The two companies reached another acquisition agreement in July 2025. Under its terms, Core Scientific shareholders would receive 0.1235 shares of CoreWeave Class A common stock for each CORZ share they held.
Based on the transaction terms announced at the time and CoreWeave’s five-day volume-weighted average price, the deal valued Core Scientific’s fully diluted equity at approximately $9 billion. Based on CoreWeave’s closing share price on July 3, 2025, the consideration was worth approximately $20.40 per Core Scientific share.
However, this was a fixed-exchange-ratio transaction with no fixed cash price. As CoreWeave’s share price declined, the implied value of the consideration offered to Core Scientific shareholders fell with it. By September 2, 2025, the implied value had dropped to approximately $11.41 per share.
Some Core Scientific shareholders were also concerned that the transaction would require the company to give up the potential upside from remaining independent in exchange for shares in another AI infrastructure company that likewise faced high capital expenditures, customer concentration, and debt pressures.
On October 30, 2025, Core Scientific shareholders voted against the transaction, and the two companies subsequently terminated the merger agreement. Although the transaction never closed, the approximately $9 billion valuation nevertheless became an important reference point as the market reassessed the value of Core Scientific’s power and data center assets.
From the $5.75-per-share cash offer in 2024 to the approximately $9 billion all-stock transaction in 2025, CoreWeave’s two acquisition attempts showed that Core Scientific’s core value no longer lay only in its mining machines and Bitcoin output. It increasingly lay in power capacity that could be delivered within a relatively short period.
AMD Took the Story Into Its Second Phase
The CoreWeave contracts demonstrated that Bitcoin mining sites could be converted into AI data centers. The AMD-related partnership could also reduce Core Scientific’s dependence on a single customer and a single project.
In 2026, Core Scientific announced a large-scale infrastructure partnership with AMD. According to the disclosures accompanying Core Scientific’s second-quarter 2026 results, the partnership could ultimately support up to approximately 2.5 GW of leasable capacity. Signed 15-year agreements covered five projects and approximately 529 MW, representing more than $14 billion in potential base contract revenue.
In addition to the contracted capacity, AMD received reservation rights for approximately 1.925 GW of additional capacity. If all of these rights are converted into definitive projects, the partnership’s total potential scale could reach approximately 2.5 GW. However, reserved capacity is not the same as revenue under signed contracts. Its eventual conversion will still depend on site selection, grid access, project construction, and end-customer demand.
As part of the partnership, AMD received warrants to purchase up to 30 million shares of Core Scientific common stock at an exercise price of $23.47 per share. Following the execution of the related leases on July 27, 2026, warrants covering approximately 6.5 million shares had vested and become exercisable. The arrangement means AMD is not only an equipment and industry partner but could also participate in the upside from an increase in Core Scientific’s share price.
Of the AMD-related contracted capacity, approximately 152 MW was leased by AI infrastructure operator Neocloud. Core Scientific, Neocloud, and AMD also entered into a tripartite credit support agreement designed primarily to protect AMD equipment deployed at the sites and to give AMD the option to cure certain defaults by Neocloud. The relevant documents, however, did not characterize AMD as an unconditional guarantor of all of Neocloud’s payment obligations.
By July 2026, Core Scientific had contracted approximately 1.1 GW of customer power capacity, representing more than $24 billion in potential contract revenue. Approximately 437 MW had begun generating billable revenue, corresponding to approximately $635 million in annualized GAAP hosting revenue.
From approximately 590 MW under the CoreWeave agreements to approximately 529 MW under the AMD- and Neocloud-related agreements, Core Scientific was beginning to move beyond a model driven by a single customer at the contracted-capacity level and to reposition itself as a data center developer serving multiple AI industry participants.
The Financials Are Beginning to Validate the Pivot, but the “Windfall” Remains a Valuation Narrative
Core Scientific’s revenue mix has changed markedly.
In the second quarter of 2026, the company generated approximately $164.2 million in total revenue. High-density colocation revenue was approximately $136.7 million, or about 83% of the total, while self-mining digital asset revenue was approximately $21.5 million.
The high-density colocation business generated approximately $80 million in quarterly gross profit, with a gross margin of approximately 59%. By contrast, the self-mining business recorded a gross loss of approximately $12.2 million and a gross margin of approximately -56%. The company reported adjusted EBITDA of approximately $41.1 million for the quarter.
This means high-density colocation is no longer merely a future plan. It has become Core Scientific’s largest source of revenue and gross profit. The mining business that once supported the company is becoming a smaller, less profitable residual operation.
There is, however, still a significant gap between contract value and accounting profit.
Core Scientific reported a second-quarter net loss of approximately $1.155 billion, of which approximately $1.046 billion came from fair value changes in warrants and contingent value rights. These losses were driven primarily by the increase in the company’s share price and were non-cash accounting items; they did not mean the company had incurred an equivalent amount of actual cash outflow during the quarter.
Even so, the company still recorded a GAAP operating loss of approximately $78.5 million in the second quarter, indicating that it had not yet achieved stable profitability on an accounting basis.
Core Scientific generated approximately $230.9 million in net cash from operating activities in the first half of 2026, but this figure included approximately $208.2 million in proceeds from the sale of digital assets, as well as customer prepayments and other changes in working capital. Positive operating cash flow therefore cannot be taken to mean that the data center business can already fund all construction and financing expenditures on a standalone basis.
The AI data center pivot also requires enormous capital investment.
In the first half of 2026, Core Scientific spent approximately $954 million in cash on purchases of property, plant, and equipment, of which approximately $181 million was funded by CoreWeave. The company also paid approximately $233 million to acquire land and development rights, bringing the combined cash investment in these two categories to approximately $1.187 billion.
To support project construction, the company issued $3.3 billion of 7.75% senior secured notes due 2031 in May 2026. As of June 30, 2026, Core Scientific’s long-term debt had risen to approximately $4.3 billion from approximately $1.06 billion at the end of 2025.
The more than $24 billion in potential contract revenue therefore should not be interpreted as $24 billion in cash that the company has already secured. This revenue must be recognized gradually over more than a decade and depends on projects being completed on schedule, customers continuing to perform their contractual obligations, and data centers operating reliably.
Core Scientific shares closed at $21.77 on August 5, 2026, ET, up approximately 533% from their $3.44 closing price on the first day of relisting on January 24, 2024. Based on approximately 321.3 million shares outstanding as of July 23, the company’s market capitalization was approximately $7 billion.
This rally reflects capital markets pricing in future cash flows ahead of their realization. Investors are not buying profits that the company has already earned; they are buying the possibility that its power resources can be converted into AI data center revenue in the years ahead.
What Core Scientific Is Really Selling Is “Time to Power”
Core Scientific’s turnaround was not simply the result of a bankrupt miner returning to profitability on the back of a Bitcoin rebound. It was a transformation in both infrastructure use and valuation framework.
In the Bitcoin mining era, the company’s primary assets were mining machines, hash rate, and mining sites capable of securing a continuous supply of low-cost electricity. In the AI data center era, mining machines have become less important, while land, grid access, substations, fiber connectivity, cooling systems, and project execution capabilities have become the core assets.
As demand for AI data centers grows rapidly in the United States and grid interconnection can take years, what customers are actually buying is not merely electricity but the ability to obtain large-scale energized capacity within a defined timeframe. A mining site that has already been selected, secured grid access, and retained room for expansion may be brought online faster than a data center built from scratch.
What Core Scientific sells, therefore, is not merely megawatts. It can also be understood as “time to power.” By securing land and power resources in advance and then signing long-term contracts with AI customers, the company is converting infrastructure once used for Bitcoin mining into longer-duration hosting cash flows.
This model has not eliminated risk; it has changed the source of that risk.
Core Scientific’s primary risks once came from Bitcoin prices, electricity prices, and network mining difficulty. Now, they are more likely to come from capital expenditures, financing costs, customer concentration, construction delays, and contract performance. If projects cannot be delivered on schedule, or if customer demand and financing conditions change, the more than $24 billion in potential contract revenue may still not be fully realized.
From approximately $4 million in cash and Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection to a market capitalization of approximately $7 billion and more than $24 billion in potential contract revenue, Core Scientific has unquestionably achieved a dramatic valuation reversal.
But the company’s real transformation is not that it suddenly owns more Bitcoin. It has evolved from a miner dependent on crypto prices into a data center developer whose core products are power capacity and speed to energization. Whether it has truly escaped the high-leverage risks of the previous cycle will ultimately depend on whether these power blueprints can be converted, on schedule, into data centers that generate recurring billable revenue.
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CryptoSlate reported that Bitcoin fell 14.2% in Q2 2026, while institutional Bitcoin ETF holdings rose 7.5% from 498,389 BTC to 535,723 BTC. The number of institutions reporting Bitcoin positions through 13F filings fell from around 2,000 to approximately 1,900. Banks and quant funds increased exposure, while sovereign wealth funds and endowments largely held steady. Hedge funds reduced some ordinary ETF shares, although options positions make their actual exposure difficult to assess.

Hyperliquid core contributor Xulian requested feedback on the latest HIP-4 templates, which are now available onchain and via API. The latest template in each family will undergo validator review and an onchain vote for potential inclusion as a mainnet template. Mainnet deployment remains conditional on HIP-4 activation.