Cointelegraph

Bitget CEO Gracy Chen expects Bitcoin to remain broadly around current levels through the end of the year despite its recent surge, citing interest rates and broader macroeconomic conditions as key factors shaping the cryptocurrency’s outlook.
Speaking on Cointelegraph’s Trade Secrets podcast, Chen said predicting whether Bitcoin (BTC) will finish the year above or below $70,000 is difficult, pointing to the possibility of higher interest rates as one factor that could pressure prices.
Cointelegraph host interviews Bitget CEO Gracy Chen. Source: Trade Secrets
“If any of that happens, the price should go down, at least theoretically,” Chen said, adding that BTC has become increasingly integrated with traditional finance and sensitive to broader macroeconomic conditions.
“My guess is maybe around the same range,” Chen said, adding that BTC could finish the year $10,000 to $20,000 above or below current levels, which she described as her “more responsible” forecast.
Chen sees US Bitcoin purchases as unlikely
Chen was also skeptical that the US government will begin purchasing Bitcoin for its national reserve before the end of President Donald Trump’s term, calling such a move unlikely within the next two years.
The Trump administration established a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve in March 2025 using BTC already forfeited to the federal government, while directing officials to explore budget-neutral strategies for acquiring additional BTC.
The US government currently holds an estimated 328,372 BTC, according to BitcoinTreasuries.NET, much of it accumulated through law enforcement seizures and asset forfeitures rather than direct purchases.
Top 5 government Bitcoin holdings. Source: BitcoinTreasuries.NET
Chen said actively purchasing Bitcoin would be a significantly bigger policy decision, requiring debate among lawmakers and political parties despite the administration’s broadly crypto-friendly stance.
“From a policy perspective, it’s probably unlikely,” Chen said. “I just don’t see it coming right now.”
Magazine: Bitcoin to $1M by 2030 is ‘mathematically impossible’ says Markus Thielen

The founder of the Bridgewater Associates hedge fund, Ray Dalio, called on investors to put money into gold and “a bit of Bitcoin” in response to a looming debt crisis.
In a Friday LinkedIn post, Dalio said having between 10% to 15% of one’s portfolio in gold could help reduce risk. He advocated for gold and Bitcoin (BTC) as assets to be overweight compared to debt assets like bonds, citing risks from “internal political and external geopolitical conflicts.”
“My guess, which I suppose will be a bad one, is that [a US debt crisis] will come in three years, give or take two, if the course we’re on is not changed,” said Dalio.
The Bridgewater Associates founder, with an estimated net worth of more than $15 billion, has previously argued that Bitcoin could not replace gold as a store of value and warned about privacy concerns and threats from quantum computing. His Friday comments echoed those from July 2025, when he said he held some, “but not much” Bitcoin, and recommended holding up to 15% in the cryptocurrency and gold.
In 2022, months before a significant crypto market downturn, Dalio said that holding between 1% to 2% of BTC in one’s portfolio was “reasonable.”

Former Alameda Research and FTX executives receive 5-year trading bans
On Tuesday, the US District Court for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) entered consent orders related to a 2022 enforcement action against former Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison and crypto exchange FTX co-founder Zixiao “Gary” Wang.
The orders imposed by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) required that Ellison and Wang receive a five-year trading ban related to their roles in the crypto exchange’s collapse. The CFTC also ordered that the Alameda CEO receive a 10-year registration ban, while Wang received an eight-year registration ban.
According to CFTC enforcement director David Miller, the orders reflected Wang’s and Ellison’s “material assistance in the Commission’s FTX-related investigations.” The civil case is separate from criminal cases involving the misuse of customer funds at FTX, in which Ellison was sentenced to two years in prison and Wang received time served.
US prosecutors file opposition to Polymarket trader over $400,000 Maduro bet
On Wednesday, lawyers representing the US government in SDNY filed their opposition to a motion to dismiss from Gannon Ken Van Dyke, a US soldier who allegedly made more than $400,000 using event contracts on prediction market platform Polymarket using nonpublic information. Van Dyke was tied to the military operation that removed Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January.
The US soldier’s motion to dismiss, filed on July 31, included claims that the Commodity Exchange Act, at the center of three of the charges he faces, was “ambiguous” in treating event contracts as “swaps” under the CFTC’s purview. In its Wednesday filing, the US government argued that Van Dyke “advances hypotheticals, edge cases, and ongoing litigation over state gaming laws” that were unnecessary to decide in order to move forward with the case.
“Van Dyke’s motion asks the Court to make a factual determination not appropriate at the motion-to-dismiss stage,” said SDNY Deputy US Attorney Sean Buckley. “His argument relies on speculative assertions about facts, based on improper inferences from the Indictment and incorrect conclusions about the nature of the charge, to claim that facts do not amount to ‘property.’”
As of Friday, the court had not posted any decision on the motion to the public docket.
Magazine: MiCA cracks down on USDT in Europe... but no one else cares

Bitcoin (BTC) consolidated above $77,000 after Friday’s Wall Street open as gold joined the crypto rally to hit 14-week highs.
Key points:
Bitcoin and gold both hit their highest levels since May 15 against the US dollar.
Analysis ties the strong performance firmly to US government debt policy.
Polymarket odds of Bitcoin reaching $90,000 before 2027 reach 48%.
Analysis: Bitcoin and gold gains not “surprise”
Data from TradingView showed BTC/USD cooling after reaching its highest levels since May 15, still up nearly 6% on the day.
BTC/USD one-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
Gold echoed the move, reaching multi-month highs of $4,632 per ounce, up 2.2% on the day at the time of writing. On a monthly basis, BTC/USD and XAU/USD were up 13% and 16%, respectively.
BTC/USD vs. XAU/USD one-day chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
“What’s happening now in gold and crypto should not come as a surprise,” market commentary The Kobeissi Letter wrote in a response on X.
Kobeissi attributed the rapid gains in precious metals and crypto to a combination of inflation, deficit spending and US Treasury policy. Record government deficit spending and the Treasury Department’s pledge to at least double the size of certain debt buyback operations to $4 billion helped drive the rally in both asset classes, Kobeissi argued.
Discussing Bitcoin’s reaction to the current macro landscape, trading company QCP Capital noted that the financial stress signals went beyond the US, highlighting surging Japanese government bond yields after a rare joint currency intervention in the yen earlier this month.
“The most notable cross-asset signal this week has been the divergence after Treasury’s announcement. Treasuries initially rallied before giving back much of the move. BTC and gold did not retrace to the same extent,” it wrote in its latest Market Color analysis, adding:
“That does not establish a new liquidity or monetary regime, but it does highlight the sensitivity of alternative assets to changes in long-end rates and the dollar.”
Polymarket 2026 odds of $90,000 BTC near 50%
As BTC price upside passed 20% over two days, consensus over potential targets through year-end began to improve.
Data from prediction service Polymarket put the odds of BTC/USD hitting $90,000 before 2027 at 48% at the time of writing, up sharply since the start of the week.
Odds of BTC/USD hitting $90,000 by Jan. 1, 2027 (screenshot). Source: Polymarket
Some market participants, however, remained skeptical. Trader and analyst Rekt Capital stressed that Bitcoin needed to reclaim its 50-week exponential moving average (EMA) at $77,232, a trend line it rejected in January.
“Break the Downtrend and Bitcoin will confirm entry into a new technical Macro Uptrend. Reject from here however and price will maintain its series of Lower Highs,” he told X followers.
“History suggests there’s still time for price to continue its Downtrend.”
BTC/USD one-month chart. Source: Rekt Capital on X.com

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.”
Magazine: How Hong Kong is turning tokenized bonds into real market infrastructure

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.
Magazine: How the EU’s crypto tax rules are expected to work for users and platforms

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.
Magazine: How Bitcoin and gold reacted differently to the Iran war shock

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.”
Magazine: Inside the ‘fake police raid’ that forced a $1M Bitcoin transfer

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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