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By Pierre Gérard, CEO and co-founder, Scorechain
When we founded Scorechain in Luxembourg in 2015, “blockchain analytics” was not yet a category. We spent the first few years explaining to banks and regulators why the transparency of a public ledger was an opportunity rather than a threat. A decade later, I am watching the same misunderstanding attach itself to artificial intelligence (AI), and it is costing the industry time it does not have.
Two stories dominate the conversation. The first says AI will soon replace compliance teams altogether. The second says AI is too unpredictable to let anywhere near regulated financial activity. I do not believe either one, and I say that as someone whose company has risk-assessed more than 2,800 virtual asset service providers (VASPs) since 2015, and has spent the past two years adding AI where it genuinely helps, as a separate layer rather than something baked into the compliance tools our clients depend on.
Start with the problem that every compliance officer I speak to raises within the first five minutes: noise. A sanctions screening system tuned the way a nervous bank tunes it can throw off false positives on the order of 95%. Transaction monitoring is not far behind. So a trained analyst, someone who understands typologies and can read a fund flow, spends the bulk of the working day clearing alerts that were never risks: dismissing name matches on a common surname, reading five adverse media hits that turn out to describe a different person entirely. Each of those adverse media checks takes an analyst 10 to 20 minutes. That is the actual texture of compliance work today, and it is why good people burn out of the profession.
This is where automation earns its place, and it is a narrower place than the hype suggests. I am not neutral about it. Scorechain AI exists to hand an analyst a single report: a wallet’s risk score, the entity types it has interacted with, and the named services and counterparties it has been exposed to. That is work that used to mean hours of manual tracing across a ledger. But notice what the report does and does not do. It does not decide anything. It compresses the evidence so that the compliance officer, the person who has to sign off on that decision and defend it to a regulator later, can read it in minutes and then make the call. That is the whole game. Good automation does not shrink the compliance function; it moves it off the treadmill of triage and back toward judgment.
The distinction matters, because the alternative is dangerous. In a regulated setting, a model cannot answer to a supervisor. The Sixth Anti-Money Laundering Directive (AMLD6) and the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) both require an institution to explain and stand behind its decisions. “The algorithm flagged it” is not a defence at an inspection, and “the algorithm cleared it” is worse. So the only responsible design is AI as a support layer sitting on top of trustworthy data, with a named compliance officer retaining the decision and the accountability that comes with it. Human oversight is not a training-wheel we remove once the model matures. It is the architecture.
And a model is only ever as good as what sits beneath it. This is the part outsiders miss. On its own, an AI reading a blockchain sees only anonymous strings of characters moving value to other anonymous strings. It cannot tell that the wallet three hops upstream is a sanctioned exchange, or that the counterparty receiving the funds is a mixer rather than a payroll provider. Supplying that missing context is the whole job of blockchain analytics: attaching identity and risk to raw on-chain activity, tracing indirect exposure across multiple hops rather than just checking the address in front of you, and scoring it against the more than a billion data points and over a million crypto entities we have labelled since 2015. Take a concrete case: a wallet looks clean at first glance, but tracing its flows shows that most of its balance arrived, two hops back, from an address tied to a ransomware operator. That is the finding a model would never reach on raw chain data alone, and the one a compliance officer has to act on. Feed a model that context and it can reason on solid ground. Feed it thin data and it produces confident nonsense, which in compliance is more dangerous than an honest gap, because it clears things it should not.
Here is what I find genuinely new. AI is no longer only a tool that compliance teams use; it is becoming a participant in the market they monitor. Autonomous agents that initiate payments under preset limits have moved from demo to deployment, pushed along by real infrastructure: Coinbase’s x402 standard for machine-to-machine payments, Visa’s Trusted Agent Protocol, the PayPal and OpenAI checkout integration. Software is starting to transact with other software, settling in crypto assets, at a volume no treasury team could match by hand.
It raises a question the industry has not answered cleanly yet: how do you apply Know Your Transaction principles to a counterparty that is a piece of software? The direction, at least, is clear. When agents transact on their own, controls cannot live only at onboarding. They move to the transaction layer itself: real-time monitoring, velocity limits, provenance, and the ability to intervene while money is still in flight. The transparency we spent years defending to sceptics turns out to be the one thing that makes autonomous on-chain activity auditable at all.
This is the future we decided to build for rather than wait on. We recently launched Scorechain MCP, which exposes our risk scoring and entity intelligence through the Model Context Protocol, the emerging standard that lets AI agents call external tools directly. The intelligence lives in our platform, and the AI stays outside it, calling in for answers rather than being embedded in the compliance tool itself. The premise is simple: an agent should never transact blind. Before it moves funds or approves a counterparty, it can ask Scorechain in the same breath whether that address is a sanctioned entity, a mixer, a known scam, or a clean private wallet, and receive a risk score in return. This is not a hypothetical throughput. We already run more than 1.5 million AML checks a day, and a screening call returns in roughly 235 milliseconds, quick enough to sit inside a live transaction rather than slow it down. We put it where those agents and workflows actually live, as an app inside ChatGPT and Claude, and as an integration on automation platforms such as n8n and Zapier. A compliance check that sits inside the flow, at the moment the decision is made, is worth far more than one bolted on after the money has already moved. The most basic check of all, whether an address appears on a sanctions list, should not sit behind a paywall for anyone. That is why we offer it as a free sanctions screening API that any developer, agent, or workflow can call. Screening for sanctions exposure is not where a compliance provider should be extracting value; it is the floor the whole market should be standing on.
There is a second-order shift here that token issuers and asset managers are only starting to reckon with. When value moves into stablecoins and tokenised assets at machine speed, the risk that matters is no longer only the individual transaction but the asset itself: who holds it, how concentrated that ownership is, and how much of the supply sits with sanctioned or otherwise high-risk entities. That is a different question from transaction monitoring, and it is the one our Digital Asset Intelligence is built to answer, giving an issuer or an asset manager an asset-level view of holders and exposure before they mint, list, or allocate.
Europe is readier for this than it is given credit for. MiCA and AMLD6 already assume continuous monitoring and clear accountability rather than a one-time check at the door, and a regime that assumes activity must be explainable is exactly what you want when software starts moving money. So yes, AI is coming for crypto compliance. It will remove a great deal of tedious work, and I welcome that. What it will not remove is the need for judgment, accountability, and verifiable data. It raises the bar on all three. The teams that treat AI as a faster analyst, grounded in reliable on-chain intelligence and kept firmly under human control, are the ones who will still be standing when the machines start transacting. That is closer than most people think.
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The Chief Technology Officer of Cardano Foundation, Giorgio Zinetti, is stepping down after a little over two years at the company. Zinetti announced the development on X on Monday, noting that he would be leaving the organization on August 31 and that he planned a new adventure later in September.
Zinetti joined the Cardano Foundation in 2024, where he served as the technical leader for expanding the Foundation’s projects and products, with a focus on scaling enterprise adoption. The Foundation confirmed Zinetti’s departure in a separate post on X. No replacement has been named, and the company has yet to clarify how the CTO’s duties will be covered once Zinetti leaves at the end of the month. It, however, mentioned that the board and executive team will continue working closely with senior technical and business development staff to hold the line on enterprise adoption.
Cardano Foundation reiterates focus on its goals
Cardano Foundation also mentioned on X that “In line with our current roadmap, the Foundation Board and Executive team continues to work closely with our technical and senior business development leaders to maintain a direct focus on enterprise adoption.” The Swiss-based Cardano Foundation is a not-for-profit organization tasked with advancing Cardano.
It is worth noting that Cardano is also supported by two other separate entities, Input Output Global (IOG) and Emurg. All three companies work together to manage and advance the Cardano blockchain. IOG is Cardano’s engineering and development front, led by Charles Hoskinson, while Emurgo serves as the commercial arm. In July, however, Emurgo announced it would step down from its duties as a member of Cardano’s governance group.
The decision was made after its wallet, SecondFi, was exploited, resulting in the loss of $2.4 million in ADA, as Cryptopolitan reported. Cardano is currently the 29th-largest chain by total locked-asset value (TVL). It accounts for $69.62 million in DeFi TVL, across 69 protocols, according to on-chain data from DeFiLlama. At the time of writing, the native token ADA was trading at $0.1961, with a $7.16 billion market cap.
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Microsoft is hoping to publicly launch its Maia 300 AI accelerator as soon as September, according to a report by The Information. The company is also in talks with TSMC to secure more than 300,000 units by next year.
Microsoft has contacted Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) to reserve capacity for the chips, which are due to be delivered in 2027. The order alone would exceed the tens of thousands of Maia 200 parts produced so far. Microsoft’s longer-term target is to exceed one million units, but packaging negotiations and supply of components may cap the actual number the company gets. The Maia 200 slipped after early tests failed to meet internal goals. Since then, it has reached only a handful of data centers.
Microsoft says the chip runs 30% better
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told investors on the company’s fiscal Q4 2026 earnings call on July 29 that the chip runs 30% better on performance per dollar than existing hardware and is being scaled to support OpenAI and Microsoft’s own MAI models. Back in January 2026, when Cryptopolitan reported the launch of the Maia 200, Microsoft described it as a second-generation part for inference based on TSMC’s 3-nanometer process.
Microsoft’s executive vice president for cloud and AI, Scott Guthrie, called it “the most efficient inference system that Microsoft has ever built.” Nadella has said openly that a goal is to cut reliance on Nvidia. Microsoft says its chips can run its own and OpenAI workloads at lower cost. It is expanding internal use through Azure AI Foundry and Copilot while selling the hardware to large outside cloud customers.
Earlier this month, Anthropic confirmed it is building its own semiconductor team to design custom chips for its Claude models. That makes it a potential buyer of the Maia 300 and a future rival in custom silicon chips. Last year, in-house chips from Google, Amazon, Meta, and OpenAI were projected to make up 45% of the AI-chip market by 2028, compared with 37% in 2024.
Microsoft’s fiscal Q4 2026 revenues were $90.0 billion, up 18% year-over-year, with Azure and other cloud services up 43%. TSMC’s N3 node and CoWoS advanced packaging will face supply constraints through 2027. That’s around the same time Microsoft wants to ramp up Maia 300 chip production.
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Bybit has initiated legal proceedings in connection with the February 2025 theft of $1.5 billion in crypto, taking it to a US courtroom. The company has filed a civil lawsuit against North Korea and the Lazarus Group. So far, it has won a preliminary injunction that freezes the stolen funds investigators can still reach.
The complaint was filed in the US District Court for the District of Columbia and names the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, its Reconnaissance General Bureau, and the Lazarus Group, according to a press statement released by Bybit. It also named unidentified individuals and entities holding or moving the money, listed as John Doe defendants. However, suing a sanctioned state like North Korea may not yield the desired result, as there is no one to enforce any judgment against it. Bybit understands everything about the proceedings and has found a workaround by adding anonymous wallet holders and intermediaries.
Bybit sues North Korea and Lazarus group
According to Bybit, the development gives it a legal route to identify them and claw back whatever remains traceable. The exchange said the court found that “Bybit has demonstrated a likelihood of success on the merits,” and also referenced the theft when it granted a temporary restraining order as “one of the largest cryptocurrency thefts in history.” Ben Zhou, co-founder and CEO of Bybit, said it was an industry problem, stating, “The Lazarus attack wasn’t just an attack on Bybit. It was an attack on trust in our industry.”
He added that the exchange has worked “with investigators, exchanges, regulators, law enforcement, and now the courts.” According to Bybit, it has recovered around $48.4 million in stolen assets, and about $30.5 million more has been frozen across more than 28 exchanges and custodians pending further action. However, this is still a very small fraction of the $1.5 billion that was stolen, which Bybit also acknowledged. In its June filing, the exchange mentioned that 90.2% of the stolen assets had already gone dark after moving through mixers, cross-chain bridges, and over-the-counter dealers.
It stated that only 9.8% was traced to identifiable wallets, with about $75.5 million frozen or recovered at that point. Zhou had said a year earlier that close to 69% of the funds were still traceable. However, recent submissions show that the window has been closing fast. The lawsuit is the visible end of a longer legal effort. According to the unsealed records, Bybit first filed under seal on June 18, obtained a temporary restraining order and expedited discovery on June 19, saw the order renewed on July 16, and won a partial preliminary injunction on July 30.
The complaint seeks the return of the stolen funds, plus punitive and treble damages under the US Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. Some of the recovery has come through law enforcement pressure on the laundering infrastructure itself. Bybit credited German authorities with dismantling the exchange eXch and German and Swiss authorities with disrupting the service Cryptomixer.io, both used to move illicit proceeds.
eXch had been accused of letting the hackers cash out, with more than $90 million funneled through it in the weeks after the breach. The FBI publicly blamed North Korea for the Bybit theft on February 26, 2025, tagging the activity “TraderTraitor” and warning that the actors were converting the stolen Ether to Bitcoin across thousands of addresses. Bybit says its civil case runs alongside the criminal investigations and that it continues to share blockchain intelligence with agencies, including the FBI.
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Bitmart founder Sheldon Xia has denied that the exchange had fled with customer funds. He told account holders on X that the team is still working through asset inventory, asset consolidation, and system maintenance, with formal announcements to follow. In his post, which was written in Chinese and shared on August 8, Xia first stated that the exchange “has not run away” and “will not run away.”
In the same post, the Bitmart founder then went on to ask users not to trust the wave of rumors, screenshots, and claimed leaks attributed to current and former staff. However, Xia did not go into specifics, gave no figures, set no dates, and pointed to no reserve report. His post is coming on the same day that Bitmart set as the deadline for US customers to pull their crypto, with many users looking forward to the proofs. Bitmart said on July 26 that it would begin an “orderly wind-down of its trading platform operations,” a decision it tied to its operating conditions, market environment, and strategic direction.
Bitmart assures users of sticking to its wind-down schedule
The company’s BMX token dropped close to 60% in a day on the news, per CoinGecko data. It ended new account creation, stopped receiving deposits, and switched off fresh orders on July 26. It also stated that all spot and futures trading will stop on August 26. All operations on Bitmart will end by January 31. However, the platform stated that users will still be able to keep their login access for some time to review records and file withdrawal requests.
Days before Bitmart officially announced it was shutting down, users had flooded social media with reports that they could not get to their tokens in time or at all, as Cryptopolitan reported at the time. One account holder stated that they still had $80,000 in crypto trapped on the platform. “Right now 150,000 people are looking for their money,” that person said, pointing to a Bitmart Telegram channel. While users were experiencing difficulties with the platform, its leadership was also having a bit of drama as its global CEO, Nenter “Nathan” Chow, was let go.
Chow informed reporters that he learned about his employment ending on July 24. He said he played no part in the wind-down decision and only learned of it when it became public. Chow joined Bitmart from Animoca Ventures and took the CEO role in April 2025, when Xia stepped back to group president. Weeks before the shutdown, Chow had publicly pledged the company would “be here for the next eight” years. Bitmart’s holding company, GBM Global Holding Company Limited, is registered in the Cayman Islands, and its user agreement invokes Cayman law.
However, on August 6, the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority (CIMA) allegedly informed reporters that Bitmart and its related GBM entities “are not, and have never been, registered, licensed, regulated, or otherwise authorized” to run a virtual-asset business in or from the territory. BitMart suffered a hot-wallet hack in December 2021, where it lost about $150 million. In a statement that was released on May 23 to address earlier withdrawal complaints, it blamed its risk system, stating that it was intercepting 239 linked accounts it accused of abusing trading subsidies. A full proof-of-reserves report, as promised, is yet to be shared.
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CLARITY Act negotiations face a September deadline after White House crypto adviser Patrick Witt criticized Senate Democrats for delays. Witt accused Democrats of blocking a procedural vote before the August recess.
He wrote on X, “Chuck Schumer and the “pro-crypto Democrats” pulled out all the stops to block a mere procedural vote on the bill before recess, demanding yet another extension.”
His comments followed an overnight Senate session that ended without the expected pre-recess vote. Senate Majority Leader John Thune then filed a motion to begin cloture.
Thune Moves CLARITY Act Toward September Vote
Thune’s filing keeps the legislation positioned for Senate action after recess. The Senate returns September 14, leaving limited time before midterm campaigning intensifies.
Thune wrote, “We, the undersigned senators … hereby move to bring to a close debate on the motion to proceed to calendar number 423, [House Resolution] 3633, an act to provide for a system of regulation of the offer and sale of digital commodities by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.”
Witt said Congress has spent years seeking cryptocurrency rules. Senate negotiations over the CLARITY Act have continued since last summer.
He said failure to secure a vote by September 15 could permanently damage the bill’s prospects. Galaxy Research last month cut its estimated 2026 passage probability from 50 percent to 30 percent.
September Window Raises Pressure on Lawmakers
The proposal seeks clearer jurisdictional boundaries between the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
Another delay could leave crypto firms waiting longer for comprehensive market structure legislation. September offers limited floor time before November’s midterm elections.
Thune previously blamed Democrats for slowing the legislation while promising to prioritize it after recess. His filing could allow an early procedural vote after senators return.
The chamber has a three-week September session, giving senators only days to complete voting. The bill must also compete with other Senate business.
Lawmakers Remain Divided Over Key Provisions
Disputes remain over financial crime provisions, stablecoin rewards, and government ethics requirements. Senators Gallego and Tillis proposed a July ethics compromise covering public officials and spouses.
The proposal would let state attorneys general enforce a ban on officials launching or sponsoring digital assets. It would require President Trump to sell stakes in crypto-related businesses, although he has not approved the plan.
The CLARITY Act needs roughly 60 votes. With 53 Republicans, supporters need at least seven Democratic or independent votes if every Republican supports it.
Crypto Council for Innovation CEO Ji Hun Kim said the group plans to lobby both parties during the August break. Supporters aim to secure enough votes for September action.
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Ethereum and Solana are considering proposals to reduce token issuance, but Galaxy Research says supply changes alone will not reprice either asset.
Galaxy told clients that demand remains the main force determining ETH and SOL prices. Galaxy Vice President of Research Lucas Tcheyan wrote that demand decides where the tokens will go next. His comments addressed issuance proposals under review across both networks.
Ethereum EIP 8361 Targets Validator Issuance
EIP-8361 introduces a “tapered issuance burn” for validator rewards. Rewards would fall to zero once 50% of Ether supply is staked.
About one-third of ETH supply is staked. Under the proposal, consensus-layer yield would decline from around 2.6% to 1.2% at today’s rate.
Six researchers filed EIP-8361, including Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake. The plan would roll out over 18 months, giving stakers nearly two years.
No vote has occurred. The proposal is being considered for Hegotá after Glamsterdam, with selection continuing through November.
Approval would likely not reach Ethereum until well into 2027. Aave founder Stani Kulechov and Sharplink oppose the proposal.
Sharplink CEO Joseph Chalom argued validators could operate at a loss after hardware and electricity costs. A validator survey recorded 99.77% opposition.
During the August 6 All Core Devs call, the presenting author raised withdrawing the proposal entirely.
Solana Proposals Accelerate Disinflation and Fee Burns
Solana is advancing two proposals through its new on-chain governance system. SIMD-0550, also called SGP-0002, was written by Helius engineers Lostin and 0xIchigo.
It would double annual disinflation to 30% and bring the 1.5% terminal floor forward to 2029 from 2032. The change would remove about 18.9 million SOL from future emissions.
Under the authors’ 68% staking-participation scenario, yield starts at 5.84%. It falls to 4.34% after one year, 3% after two years, and 2.25% after three years.
SIMD-0553, or SGP-0003, comes from Temporal’s cavemanloverboy. It would replace the flat per-signature fee with a resource-based charge based on transaction compute demand.
Those fees would be burned outright. Galaxy estimated daily SOL burns could rise from roughly 650 to between 7,500 and 9,000.
At current prices, daily burns could increase from about $47,000 to as much as $650,000. Even then, roughly 60,000 SOL enters circulation through daily inflation.
Galaxy Says Demand Remains the Pricing Driver
Galaxy said Solana’s proposals drew less opposition than Ethereum’s because versions circulated for over a year.
Both proposals cleared the 15% active-stake threshold required for discussion. They need two-thirds of the decisive stake to pass, with discussion ending August 22, 2026.
DeFi Development Corp. Nasdaq: DFDV holds SOL as its primary reserve asset. It said August 4 it supports both proposals and will vote yes.
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Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin is back on the privacy wagon, with his latest post on X commending Signal’s work on letting people create accounts without listing a phone number. The Ethereum co-founder, a known supporter of multiple privacy initiatives, has often thrown both his money and stature behind platforms and tools with a mandate to protect users’ content and the metadata around it.
Buterin has been very vocal in his support for privacy. He has also made it a priority for Ethereum. In his April 2025 essay, “Why I support privacy,” Buterin stated that whoever holds information holds power and that concentrated data collection must be resisted in the digital realm, where it is most practical. Buterin donated 128 ETH each to Signal and SimpleX Chat in November 2025. He praised both platforms for pushing open account creation and stronger metadata privacy.
Ethereum boss praises Signal for its strong privacy push
In that same round, he highlighted the same problem Signal is now trying to solve, noting that Sybil and denial-of-service resistance on the user side is harder to get right without leaning on phone numbers. Right now, users cannot create a Signal account without submitting a phone number, which privacy proponents like the Ethereum boss have called out as a potential weakness in the privacy wall.
However, recent updates from AboutSignal.com, an independent site tracking the app, have reported commits to Signal’s server code that point to backend support for accounts that carry no phone number, covering registration security, account handling, and regional data. One commit showed that the two account types would stay separate. So a user could not add a number later or strip one from an existing account. For now, the option appears limited to new sign-ups.
In a talk recorded in March, Signal CTO Ehren Kret stated that the main reason the app does not yet offer phone-number-free registration is the need to stop bad actors from mass-creating accounts. Kret said, “We gotta figure out some way to induce a cost for signing up without a phone number.” That cost may or may not be monetary, and Kret said back in March that Signal hoped to ship some version of the feature later this year.
Buterin has also been one of the biggest forces behind building privacy features directly into the Ethereum mainnet. Those measures are focused on uncensorable private transactions, unlinkable account activity, and private blockchain reads. However, none of it is live yet. Buterin’s Ethereum roadmap tries to stop observers from linking a user’s on-chain activity or wallet queries. Signal’s removal of the phone number addresses the same class of problem from a different angle: by cutting the identifier that ties an account to a real person.
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XRP whale accumulation continued in 2026 even as the token recorded a 43% price decline. Santiment data shows wallets holding between 10 million and 100 million XRP added 1.23 billion tokens since January.
The group held 10.97 billion XRP in January and 12.2 billion currently. Buying was irregular, though accumulation began before 2026. In November 2025, these wallets increased their holdings by 2.4 billion XRP.
XRP Whale Holdings Reached July Peak
Large holders slowed purchases in December and stayed quiet for several months. Accumulation gradually resumed in March 2026 and continued into the summer.
The balance peaked at 12.27 billion XRP on July 8 before easing to 12.2 billion. At current prices, the accumulated tokens are worth about $1.279 billion. At XRP’s previous record high of $3.66, the same amount would have been valued near $4.5 billion.
Exchange activity also showed fewer large transfers during July. On-chain analyst Darkfost reported that whale transfers to Binance fell to 25.3 million XRP by mid-July, the lowest level since January 2025. At their peak, such transfers reached 583 million XRP, worth about $1.36 billion.
Darkfost said, “This marks an essential first stage, the exhaustion of the largest XRP sellers on Binance, while price consolidates around $1 since June. This offers some relief for the price, which will now need a return of genuinely sustained demand to trigger a durable bullish move.”
XRP Whale Groups Show Mixed Positioning
The number of addresses holding 10 million to 100 million XRP also increased during 2026. The group started January with 301 addresses, fell to 285 in February, then climbed to 322 in early July. The figure slipped to 313, remaining below the all-time high of 351.
Other whale groups differed. Wallets holding 100 million to 1 billion XRP reduced their combined balance from 8.43 billion to 8.13 billion XRP, distributing about 300 million tokens.
Meanwhile, wallets holding 1 million to 10 million XRP increased their balance by 260 million tokens to 3.83 billion XRP. The 100,000 to 1 million XRP group reduced holdings from 6.43 billion to 6.37 billion, a decline of about 60 million XRP.
XRP Price Remains Under Pressure
The accumulation indicates that some large XRP holders increased exposure despite weak price performance. However, whale buying alone has not produced an immediate recovery, while supply changes across holder groups remain mixed.
XRP currently trades above $1 after falling about 6% over the past month. The token is also up 10% against other leading altcoins. Ethereum has gained 10%, while BNB is up 5%. Some analysts still expect XRP could fall another 35% in the coming months, which would take the token below $1.
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Eric Trump has gone after Bloomberg on Thursday over its description of SpaceX as “overpromising and underdelivering.” Eric Trump posted launch figures on X in defense of the company and was later joined by Elon Musk, who wrote that “Bloomberg is garbage.”
In its recent coverage of SpaceX, Bloomberg referred to the company as one that overpromises and underdelivers, sparking the ire of both Eric Trump and Elon Musk. Eric Trump responded to the post via a quote with statistics that show that SpaceX was responsible for roughly 80 to 85% of all mass launched to orbit in 2025, compared to about 8 to 10% for China. He also said that the company completed “165 successful Falcon flights with zero failures.” Musk’s reply was shorter, simply writing, “Bloomberg is garbage,” to his followers. The post drew more than 1,600 likes within hours.
Eric Trump backs SpaceX’s activities with statistics
The “overpromising” charge that Eric Trump was trying to disprove relates to targets Musk has set but not yet met. Musk has a record of disputes over his public statements, including an announced plan to take Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) private that never happened. Cryptopolitan reported SpaceX’s first earnings. SpaceX reported $7.81 billion in second-quarter revenue, up 92% from a year earlier, but also a $541 million net loss and $18.37 billion in quarterly capital spending.
Company executives said the 13th Starship test still needs regulatory approval before it can happen. They also said a Starlink upgrade will not be fully available to customers until about 1,000 new satellites are in orbit. SpaceX’s Starship program has cost over $15 billion so far, including $3 billion in 2025 and nearly $900 million in early 2026. The company expects Starship to start delivering payloads to orbit in the second half of 2026, but that milestone remains ahead of it.
Eric Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity back in 2017 that critics of his father were “not even people.” He also called the news media “out of control.” That same year, he told a radio show that dwelling on negative coverage could push someone to “end up killing yourself out of depression.” During the 2024 campaign, he defended claims about FEMA that officials had labeled disinformation, telling Scripps News, “It’s not misinformation. FEMA has run out of money.”
Musk has had many similar clashes that have escalated as his platform has grown. The Guardian columnist Jane Martinson wrote about Musk’s interview with Zanny Minton Beddoes, the editor-in-chief of The Economist, whom he called a “traitor to the West” after the interview ended. He also said the mainstream press is a “reality distortion nightmare mirror.”
A separate spat with President Donald Trump in June 2025 erased $34 billion from Musk’s net worth in a single day. During that dispute, Musk threatened to decommission SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft but ultimately reversed his decision five hours later.
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The estate of late Ondo Finance founder Nathan Allman has taken the tokenization firm’s current chief executive to court in Delaware over a legal ownership dispute. A disputed leadership handover has left the company with two rival power centers, and the estate is asking a judge to decide who legally runs Ondo Finance.
Until a judge rules, the legal standing of the company’s contracts, spending and share issuance is in doubt. Three complaints were filed on the 6th of August in Delaware’s Court of Chancery by Kathleen Allman, the mother of the late Nathan Allman, founder of Ondo Finance. When Nathan Allman died in late May at 32, he held three roles at once: CEO, sole director and controlling shareholder, according to the complaint. His death froze the company. His voting shares passed into his estate, so no one had the authority to exercise them, and with the single board seat empty, there was no director left to appoint a successor or call a meeting.
Ondo Finance ownership clash causes issues
The deadlock continued until a Hawaii probate court made his mother administrator of the estate on June 26, handing her the voting power. The estate is accusing Ian De Bode, the former president of Ondo Finance, of using the gap before probate closed to install himself. According to the filings, De Bode took advantage of the bylaws to declare himself CEO, then leaned on a shareholder agreement to name himself sole director and started acting alone.
Kathleen Allman’s suit argues Ondo Finance’s charter allowed the CEO vacancy to be filled only by a board decision, and since no board existed, De Bode’s appointment was void along with everything that followed. De Bode also allegedly leaned on corporate resources to pressure Kathleen into signing documents cementing his control, and he and Ondo’s outside lawyers refused her request for a shareholder list. After gaining her voting rights, Allman did not immediately fire De Bode.
After joining the board, she put an interim operating policy in place to keep the business running, and kept De Bode on as president while asking for basic company records, all of which De Bode and Ondo Finance’s counsel declined to recognize. De Bode has called Allman’s claims “meritless” and her decision to sue “regretful.” According to him, Ondo Finance still has the backing of “key stakeholders, including its lead investors and the Ondo Foundation.”
The Ondo Finance board said in a statement that it remains focused on serving users “without interruption” while it searches for a permanent successor. The company also recently named former Blockchain.com executive Adam Schlisman as its chief financial officer. Ondo Finance, founded in 2021 and backed by Coinbase, Wintermute, Tiger Global and Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, is leading the real-world asset market with about $3.5 billion in total value locked.
It runs products including the OUSG tokenized Treasury fund and the yield-bearing USDY token, but following the news of the dispute, ONDO fell about 6% over 24 hours to $0.35. The company is currently trading at roughly 84% below its December 2024 record of $2.14. More than 10 million ONDO was reportedly moved onto exchanges as the news spread, with some transfers tied to Ondo team wallets, and put the two-day drop at around 9%.
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NexGen Banking Summit UK Returns for its 3rd Edition, Uniting Europe’s Banking Leadership in London
London, UK — The NexGen Banking Summit UK 2026 will convene on 21–22 October 2026 at the DoubleTree by Hilton London – Tower of London, bringing together over 300 C-suite executives, board members, regulators, and fintech innovators from across the UK and Europe. Now in its 3rd edition, the summit continues to serve as an invitation-led forum for strategic dialogue on the future of banking, covering themes spanning digital transformation, regulatory evolution, and emerging financial technology. Delegates can expect keynote addresses, executive panels, fireside chats, and curated networking opportunities designed to foster meaningful, high-value connections among the industry’s most influential decision-makers. More details: https://nexgenbanking.com/
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London, 6–7 October 2026: Digital Assets Week will return to London, the only forum where capital markets transformation through tokenisation is examined in depth, from issuance and market structure to settlement, custody, liquidity and regulatory alignment.
The underlying foundation of Digital Assets Week is Global Asset Digitisation Projects, making it the only venue where the commercialisation of tokenising assets is discussed comprehensively and at scale.
Digital Assets Week is institution-led and designed to support substantive dialogue between market participants, regulators and infrastructure providers on implementation, risk management and market structure as digital assets increasingly intersect with traditional capital markets.
The 2026 edition will focus on how digital assets and tokenisation are moving from experimentation towards practical implementation across traditional financial markets. Discussions will examine the evolution of tokenised private and public markets, 24/7 trading, atomic settlement, fund administration, digital asset custody, stablecoins, payments infrastructure, regulation, liquidity and institutional blockchain adoption.
Key speakers confirmed to join the 2026 agenda include:
● Rachel Blake MP, The Economic Secretary to the Treasury, HM Treasury ● Sasha Mills, Executive Director, Financial Market Infrastructure, Bank of England ● Sumeera Younis, Chief of Operations – Crypto Task Force, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
● Anthony Clark-Jones, Head of Digital Assets (Products & Services), UBS Investment Bank
● Sean Mullins, Head of Digital Assets Product, Securities Services, HSBC ● Emma Lovett, Executive Director, Markets Digital Assets, J.P. Morgan ● Anna Matson, Senior Vice President, Head of Digital Assets & Innovation EMEA, Northern Trust
● Waqar Chaudry, Executive Director; Head, Digital Assets. Financing and Securities Services; Corporate & Investment Banking, Standard Chartered Bank
● Sabih Behzad, Head of Digital Assets & Currencies Transformation, Managing Director, Deutsche Bank
● Emilio Anting, VP of Digital Asset Partnerships, Franklin Templeton
● Previn Singh, Digital Assets – Head of Tokenisation Strategy, Fidelity International ● Doug Bambrick, Head of Custody Product – UK and Middle East, BNP Paribas ● David Reed, Director – Digital Assets Product, Invesco
● Deepa Raja Carbon, Managing Director and Vice Chairperson, VARA ● Christoph Hock, Head of Tokenisation and Digital Assets, Union Investment ● Kelly Moffatt, Head of Digital Assets Compliance, Citi
● Rosemary Hanna, Head of Division, Markets and Funds Policy, Central Bank of Ireland
● Ryan Hayward, Head of Digital Assets and Strategic Investments, Barclays ● Christian Lawrence, Chief Cross-Asset Strategist, Head of Americas & Energy Markets Research, Managing Director, Rabobank
● Antoine Scalia, Founder and CEO, Cryptio
● Cameron Drinkwater, Chief Product & Operations Officer, S&P Dow Jones Indices ● Myles Wright, CEO, Fnality Services
and many more.
This year’s event is already seeing the strongest level of financial institution and regulator registrations at this stage of any previous edition.
Financial institutions and regulators confirmed to participate include representatives from Aberdeen, ABN AMRO Bank, AllianceBernstein, ANZ Banking Group, Aviva Investors, Baillie Gifford, Bank of America, Bank of England, Barclays, BlackRock, BNP Paribas, Citi, Deutsche Bank, Fidelity International, Franklin Templeton, Goldman Sachs, HM Treasury, HSBC, Intesa Sanpaolo, J.P. Morgan, Lloyds Bank, M&G Investments, MUFG Bank, Morgan Stanley, Nomura, Northern Trust, Rabobank, Société Générale, Standard Chartered, State Street, T Rowe Price, TSB Bank, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, UBS, Union Investment, VARA, WisdomTree and many more.
Registration for Digital Assets Week London is now open. Tickets can be accessed here: https://www.universe.com/events/digital-assets-week-london-2026-tickets-LGVXZ7
For sponsorship or speaking enquiries please contact: christina@julietmedia.com
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Markets move fast, and staying ahead requires continuous learning and access to the right insights. With macroeconomic shifts, regulatory updates, and sudden technical breakouts redefining the financial landscape, static charts aren’t enough. Market participants need real-time perspectives, robust peer analysis, and adaptable toolsets to survive and thrive. To meet this structural demand, the upcoming Global Trading Show Meetup has established itself as the definitive ecosystem for interactive professional learning, collaborative strategic discussion, and deep-market understanding.
Powered by Times of Trading, this highly anticipated industry gathering bridges the gap between complex structural theories and actionable execution. Far from a conventional lecture-based conference, the meetup is built from the ground up as a high-value knowledge collaborative. It offers a transparent window into how modern trading institutions, proprietary desks, and technical analysts break down information, optimize risk parameters, and deploy capital across diverse asset classes.
Deconstructing Global Market Movements
Modern trading operates across continuous, interconnected global sessions, transforming financial markets into a 24-hour liquidity cycle. A sudden monetary policy shift in Asia can instantly trigger a cascade of volatility throughout Europe, which can then dictate the opening orders on Wall Street. Consequently, achieving consistent market performance requires a highly sophisticated awareness of macroeconomic timing, multi-market trends, and regional behavioral variations.
The core curriculum of the Global Trading Show Meetup tackles these complexities. Attendees will dissect current macro indicators, explore the hidden nuances of cross-asset correlations, and analyze how global capital flows behave under varying market conditions. By stepping away from isolated technical metrics, participants will discover how to evaluate the broader structural trends that drive long-term price velocity, allowing them to transform systematic global volatility into structured strategic advantages.
Engineered for All Skill Levels
A defining characteristic of this event is its broad, inclusive architecture. Since the financial ecosystem relies on diverse perspectives to create deep liquidity, this meetup mirrors that diversity in its target audience. The environment explicitly caters to active institutional and retail traders, seasoned market analysts, long-term investors, and ambitious beginners looking for a solid foundation.
For active professionals and institutional analysts, the gathering can help stress-test advanced methodologies, debate risk mitigation strategies, and explore next-generation trading technologies. Simultaneously, newer market participants gain a rare, unfiltered look into professional-grade risk management frameworks, helping them bypass common early pitfalls. This cross-pollination of levels of varying expertise creates an environment where every participant can access practical, institutional-grade knowledge.
Interactive Discussions and Strategic Networking
The structural layout of the Global Trading Show Meetup prioritizes collaborative interaction over passive observation. The schedule features intensive, live case studies, technical workshops, and open-mic panel discussions that encourage constructive peer critique. From examining historical setups and subtle nuances in market microstructures to identifying execution errors, the attendees at this event will engage with market veterans rather than checking out slideshows.
Beyond technical education, the event provides an invaluable venue for organic, high-level professional networking. In an industry often characterized by isolation, building direct relationships with trustworthy peers is a proven accelerator of long-term professional development. The informal breakout sessions and structured meeting spaces are engineered to spark cross-border ideas, facilitate capital partnerships, and encourage continuous knowledge exchange long after the event formally concludes.
Register and Join the Community
In the modern financial landscape, separation is driven entirely by information asymmetry. Better insights lead to better decisions, and better decisions ultimately forge a sustainable, long-term career path in the global marketplace. The Global Trading Show Meetup is your entry point to acquiring those insights, mastering those strategies, and building a reliable network of like-minded market professionals.
The space for this premier gathering is strictly limited to ensure meaningful, high-value networking and high-quality collaborative discussions, so secure your seat today!
To view the full event schedule, review guest speaker profiles, and secure your complimentary access pass, please visit the official event platform at the Global Trading Show Meetup Hub.
Do not let fast-moving market shifts catch you unprepared. Register and be part of the trading community, claim your place among industry peers, and become an active participant in shaping the future of global trading.
The post Global Trading Show Meetup Focuses on Market Insights, Strategies, and the Future of Trading first appeared on Coinfea.

Trading today is driven by communities, shared insights, and real-time collaboration. The archetype of the isolated trader staring intensely at rows of monitors in total solitude is rapidly fading. In the modern financial landscape, market velocity and information flow require collective intelligence. Succeeding in today’s macroeconomic environment demands access to broader perspectives, real-time data cross-referencing, and peer-to-peer accountability. Recognizing this fundamental shift, the upcoming Global Trading Show Meetup has emerged as a crucial node for community-centric market analysis and collaborative strategy development.
Powered by the Times of Trading, this highly anticipated gathering serves as a dynamic, community-driven platform. It bridges the gap between individual retail market participants, institutional asset managers, and ecosystem enthusiasts. The event acts as an active hive mind where raw market data transforms into clear, actionable perspectives through open, transparent group dynamics.
The Power of Shared Trading Experiences
The modern rise of specialized trading communities suggests that systemic market risks are managed more effectively when handled collectively. Global trading meetups are designed to connect like-minded traders, share experiences, and learn together. Operating within an educational collective allows market participants to decode complex economic indicators, stress-test technical setups, and process market noise with far greater clarity than any single trader could manage alone.
At the core of the Global Trading Show Meetup narrative is this dedication to collaborative growth. Attendees actively participate in an ecosystem built on shared experiences. By examining both profitable campaigns and catastrophic drawdowns within a trusted group, participants gain institutional-grade wisdom without paying the typical psychological or financial toll. This open exchange of strategic frameworks helps strip away the emotional biases that frequently disrupt individual execution.
What to Expect: Real-Time Strategy and Evolution
The event architecture is designed to break down traditional barriers between speakers and the audience, prioritizing real-time strategy sharing and organic peer integration.
Dynamic Market Trend Discussions: Sessions will focus heavily on current macro trends, structural shifts across asset classes, and navigating unpredictable liquidity cycles.
Granular Strategy Breakdowns: Rather than focusing on abstract theories, presenters and attendees will pull up live charts to dissect mechanical execution, risk-to-reward parameters, and modern capital preservation techniques.
High-Value Networking Canvas: The dedicated breakout blocks provide an unstructured environment to meet potential capital partners, find algorithmic collaborators, or build a trusted circle of daily accountability peers.
An Inclusive Ecosystem for Market Enthusiasts
The true strength of any financial network lies in its diversity. The Global Trading Show Meetup is designed to welcome the entire market spectrum, offering clear value across all experience levels.
For active, high-volume traders and professional investors, the meetup serves as a sophisticated sounding board to refine proprietary systems and debate advanced market microstructures. For beginners and general market enthusiasts, it provides an invaluable environment to learn professional habits early, step away from dangerous internet echo chambers, and observe how seasoned veterans manage risk. This unique mix ensures that whether you are writing complex trading code or placing your very first order, the community provides a structured path forward.;
Join the Movement: Shape the Future of Trading
Isolation is a significant, avoidable risk in modern trading. Trading evolves faster when knowledge is shared, and those who embed themselves within robust, active networks inherently adapt to shifting market conditions more quickly than the rest. The Global Trading Show Meetup is more than just a date on the financial calendar; it is a collective step toward a smarter, more collaborative trading culture.
Digital credentials and physical seating are strictly managed to maintain high-quality interaction, so make sure that you grab your seat early.
To review the complete panel agenda, explore interactive workshop topics, and claim your attendance pass, visit the official Global Trading Show Meetup Hub.
Do not navigate these complex, fast-moving markets alone. Join the community, register today, and discover the power of collaborative trading.
Contact
Outreach & Partnerships Team
media@globaltradingshow.com
The post Global Trading Show Meetup Brings Traders Together to Share Insights, Strategies, and Market Perspectives first appeared on Coinfea.

OpenAI has urged a federal judge to dismiss Apple’s trade-secrets lawsuit. On Wednesday, the company made the plea, arguing that the case is a cover-up for its inability to retain engineers and ship AI. The motion to dismiss claims that OpenAI and two former Apple employees took confidential information and tried to steal trade secrets while recruiting interviews.
The 31-page filing uses variations of the word “fail” about 50 times and frames the dispute as Apple lashing out over its problems. “Apple should not be permitted to use a baseless and pretextual lawsuit to make up for its shortcomings in the market for talent and retaining its employees, and its failures to integrate AI into its products,” the motion says. The central claim in the lawsuit filed by OpenAI is that Apple created the mess. Apple told staff to use their personal iCloud accounts to route work, blurring the line between corporate and personal data and leaving departing employees with access they never asked for, says OpenAI.
OpenAI claims the case is a cover-up
According to the filing, two former employees were mentioned in the case. Chang Liu’s last day at Apple was January 22, 2026. Tang Tan is a design executive who OpenAI says spent more than 24 years at the company. On August 3, OpenAI published a blog titled “Apple is getting this wrong,” in which the AI company alleged that it had iMessages between Liu and his former Apple colleagues asking Liu to help them locate files and complete transfers after he had already left.
One message from an Apple employee reads, “I found a 64GB drive. Do you think that will work,” followed later by “Still copying.” Liu was contacted by Apple staff, not the other way around, says OpenAI. “Residual access” is how the company describes Liu’s ongoing access to Apple systems. Apple doesn’t always disable accounts when people leave. On Tan, OpenAI says it told its team bluntly that it won’t touch proprietary material from other companies. In addition, OpenAI’s blog post refutes Apple’s version of the events leading up to the lawsuit.
Apple said it reached out to OpenAI in February and got no response. OpenAI says Apple now admits its outside lawyers sent an email to the wrong person after confusing two Asian last names and only admitted the mistake after OpenAI called them out. Apple also said it had a discussion with general counsel for OpenAI. The company later acknowledged to OpenAI that it never happened. In earlier contact, Apple never raised the specific allegations in the suit, OpenAI said, and at one point said it was “resolving any issues” and then went quiet for five months before filing, the tech giant said.
On Monday, Apple filed for a preliminary injunction, a court order that would prevent OpenAI from using the disputed trade secrets while the case is ongoing. OpenAI describes the request as baseless and pointless. It says it has no interest in Apple’s secrets and does not possess any. Apple’s lawsuit alleges that more than 400 former employees now work at OpenAI and that the company used internal Apple code names to lure confidential details from job candidates.
Apple has reportedly lost researchers from its Foundation Models team to Meta, OpenAI, xAI, and Cohere, including team lead Ruoming Pang, who left for a Meta package above $200 million, as Cryptopolitan has reported. In July, Elon Musk publicly championed Apple and exchanged insults with Sam Altman on X.
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Cathie Wood’s Ark Invest has announced that it bought about $17.3 million of Circle stock and ~$20 million of SpaceX stock. Both buys landed on the same day SpaceX plunged 13.6% on a jump in AI spending. Ark Invest bought 273,343 Circle shares split among the Ark Innovation ETF (ARKK), the Ark Next Generation Internet ETF (ARKW), and the Ark Blockchain & Fintech Innovation ETF (ARKF).
Circle closed nearly flat that day, up 0.05% to $63.28, meaning the stake was worth around $17.3 million. According to disclosures, Ark Invest sits ninth in ARKK’s holdings with a 3.68% weight worth $223.4 million. Ark limits any one position to 10% of a fund, so it’s diversified across its ETFs, and there’s still room to add. In the second quarter, total revenue and reserve income for Circle reached $701 million, a 7% increase year-over-year. The figure was less than the $712 million to $718 million analysts had modeled. CRCL dropped about 3% in premarket trading before bouncing back.
Ark Invest makes huge Circle and SpaceX stock buys
According to reports, adjusted earnings were 18 cents a share, versus a consensus of 16 cents, and net income from continuing operations was $48 million. Adjusted EBITDA was up 8% to $143 million. Total USDC in circulation grew 19% to $73.3 billion, with onchain transaction volume increasing 151% to $14.8 trillion. Circle’s reserve income, which is the money it earns on the assets backing USDC, was $668 million, up 5% from a year ago.
However, the yield on those reserves fell 66 basis points. Circle is sitting on more reserves and making less from each dollar of them. Circle’s Arc blockchain is scheduled to launch on the public mainnet on September 16, with BlackRock, DTCC, Visa, and Mastercard listed among founding validators. Ark Invest bought 181,830 SpaceX shares in ARKK, the Ark Autonomous Technology & Robotics ETF (ARKQ), ARKW, and the Ark Space & Defense Innovation ETF (ARKX), amounting to a ~$20 million stake.
That order came as SpaceX dropped 13.6% to $108.27, below its $135 IPO price. Earnings coverage from Cryptopolitan said revenue had soared 92% year over year to $7.8 billion, along with a $541 million net loss. Investors were spooked by spending after capital expenditures rose to $18.4 billion, a sixfold increase in the quarter, mostly to build out AI infrastructure. SpaceX expects $1 trillion in annual revenue by 2030, or possibly 2029, ahead of an earlier 2031 target, Elon Musk told the call.
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Circle announced it has acquired key assets from IBM’s blockchain portfolio, making the company the largest holder of blockchain patents in the United States.
The transaction adds more than 680 patent families and nearly 1,000 issued patents worldwide to Circle’s intellectual property portfolio, according to the company’s announcement. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, and neither company confirmed whether IBM retained any licensing rights related to the transferred patents.
The acquired portfolio extends beyond blockchain technology and includes patents covering banking, financial services, insurance, enterprise infrastructure, supply chain verification, and secure cloud operations. Circle said the intellectual property strengthens its long-term strategy as it continues expanding products built on blockchain infrastructure.
Sarah Wilson, Circle’s general counsel and corporate secretary, said IBM has been a pioneer in technological innovation. She added that intellectual property remains critical to advancing the company’s “mission and expanding adoption of on-chain infrastructure.”
Patents strengthen Circle products and enterprise services
Circle said the newly acquired patents will support several existing products, including USDC, the Circle Payments Network, and Arc, its enterprise blockchain platform. The company also stated that the portfolio will contribute to financial tools designed for AI agents, an area it has continued developing through its Agent Stack offerings.
Both companies also indicated they intend to explore additional commercial opportunities together following the transaction.
The acquisition changes the ranking among major blockchain patent holders in the United States. Patent analytics firm PatSnap reported in December 2025 that IBM held 790 blockchain patents, placing it alongside Advanced New Technologies and Bank of America. By acquiring most of IBM’s blockchain portfolio, Circle now moves ahead of those competitors.
Circle received its first blockchain-related patent in December 2023 for parallel blockchain data processing. The company also previously joined the LOT Network, an organization created to protect members from patent assertion entities.
Market response and regulatory momentum
The announcement generated modest gains in premarket trading. Circle shares rose 2.5%, while IBM shares increased 1.6%.
The market reaction follows a challenging period for Circle’s stock performance. Yahoo Finance reported that CRCL had declined 66% over the previous 12 months to $62.36, while IBM had fallen 18% to $214.19 as of July 27. Circle’s shares experienced significant volatility during 2025, climbing from about $81 to a peak near $293 before surrendering most of those gains.
The acquisition also follows recent regulatory progress for Circle. On July 10, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency granted final approval for Circle National Trust to operate as a national trust bank providing digital asset custody services. Earlier in May, Circle raised $222 million through the sale of Arc tokens before the blockchain’s launch, resulting in a network valuation of $3 billion.
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Strategy shares climbed after the company disclosed a major increase in its cash reserves, extending coverage for dividend and interest obligations while continuing to adjust its capital allocation strategy ahead of its upcoming quarterly earnings release.
Strategy increases cash reserve through share sale
Strategy Inc. disclosed in a Form 8-K filed on Monday that it increased its cash reserve by $525 million during the past week. The company sold 5.4 million MSTR shares, generating proceeds of $544.5 million. During the same period, it also repurchased 288,930 shares of its STRC preferred stock for $25 million.
Executive Chairman Michael Saylor confirmed the update on X, stating that Strategy has now secured 2.1 years of coverage for dividend and interest payments. According to the filing, the company now holds a total USD Reserve of $3.75 billion.
Saylor had hinted at the announcement a day earlier by posting the company’s familiar tracking chart alongside the comment, “We’re gonna need another color.” Similar posts had previously been followed by announcements of Bitcoin purchases. However, Monday’s filing instead detailed an expansion of the company’s cash reserve.
The latest disclosure also confirmed that Strategy did not purchase any Bitcoin during the reporting period. That marked the fifth consecutive week without a Bitcoin acquisition.
Bitcoin holdings remain unchanged as criticism emerges
We’re gonna need another color. pic.twitter.com/AqZO5UeXDx
— Michael Saylor (@saylor) July 26, 2026
Strategy continues to hold 843,775 BTC, valued at approximately $54 billion. Based on the reported figures, the company’s Bitcoin position currently reflects paper losses exceeding $8 billion.
Long-time Bitcoin critic Peter Schiff criticized the company’s latest financing decision. In a post on X, Schiff argued that selling MSTR shares was the wrong approach and claimed Strategy should have sold Bitcoin instead of what he described as “discounted MSTR shares.”
He wrote, “So, another week when you chose to destroy common shareholder value by selling discounted MSTR shares (thereby reducing Bitcoin per share) to raise cash and buy back STRC rather than sell Bitcoin.”
Schiff further argued that repeated sales of common shares reduce the justification for investors to own MSTR.
MSTR rises ahead of quarterly earnings report
MSTR traded at $97.46, representing a daily gain of 6.44% following the announcement. The share price advanced as investors assessed the company’s strengthened cash position and capital management activities.
MSTR price chart. Source: Yahoo Finance.
Strategy is scheduled to report its second-quarter earnings on Thursday, July 30. The company’s earnings are expected to increase by 6.40% to $121.88 million.
The consensus price target for MSTR stands at approximately $360, representing an implied upside potential of more than 290% based on current trading levels.
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Boltz has announced that its swaps have been suspended indefinitely. The non-custodial service that lets users move Bitcoin between the Lightning Network and Bitcoin’s base layer made the announcement on Monday, telling users a rising wave of AI-assisted attacks had made it unsafe to keep running. Lightning users and the small open-source teams hold much of Bitcoin’s payment plumbing.
Boltz says the problem is how quickly attackers can operate now. Boltz said in posts on X that swaps are off “until further notice,” with no timeline for any possible return. “To be clear: this is not a response to a single incident,” the Bitcoin bridge builder said. Over the past few months, it had seen a steady increase in automated, AI-assisted probing of its systems and had dealt with several exploits, each of which was contained. “Attackers now iterate faster than a team our size can find and patch,” Boltz said. The recent security scans left the company unable to responsibly turn swaps back on while “being actively targeted by what appear to be multiple resourceful groups while we race to deploy fixes.”
Boltz blames major shift in Bitcoin operating services for move
The company described the change as “a major paradigm shift for Bitcoin services operating on an open source stack.” It told users, “Do not expect swap services to resume shortly.” Boltz confirmed that no one lost funds, as it never takes control of customer coins. The swaps are done via hashed timelock contracts, a mechanism that either completes a trade in full or reverses it within a single block.
Swaps move value between regular BTC, Lightning BTC, and Liquid Network BTC. “No user funds were ever at risk,” Boltz said. It continued, “Losses were ours alone.” Boltz has not revealed its transaction volumes, while DeFiLlama showed its total value locked at ~$262,000. The API is still running and operational, so users can process cooperative refunds, and unilateral refunds work anyway, as they don’t depend on Boltz infrastructure.
Bull Bitcoin told users that Lightning payments and Liquid-to-Bitcoin swaps in its wallet would now “fail without explanation” while it searches for a fix. Aqua Wallet issued a similar notice and said it was working with Boltz to find an alternative route for Lightning swaps. The shutdown is a warning to anyone building on an open stack with a small headcount. AI attackers are getting more sophisticated, and the cost of maintaining enterprise-grade security “will price out many innovative startups” working on services tied to client funds, even non-custodial ones, said Swan co-founder Yan Pritzker.
AI software has been connected to a seed-phrase exploit of Coldcard, a hardware wallet implicated in more than $100 million in stolen Bitcoin. Cryptopolitan also reported the same trend in DeFi, where GoPlus Security said more than $1.5 million was drained in four smart-contract attacks in 48 hours. A16z crypto found the success rate of an off-the-shelf AI agent exploiting known vulnerabilities jumped from 10% to 70% once it was fed structured attack knowledge.
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