Bitcoin

Bitcoin Magazine US Treasury Asks For Public Input on Landmark Genius Act Crypto Legislation The U.S. Department of the Treasury is moving fast with crypto regulation, with the government body asking for public comment on the landmark GENIUS Act. In a Monday announcement, the Treasury said that it was welcoming input from stakeholders on a proposed rule that would provide clarity to industry regarding who needs a license to issue a stablecoin. President Donald Trump signed the GENIUS Act into law in 2025. The legislation allows banks and other entities to issue stablecoins if they back the tokens with assets like U.S. Treasuries and provide monthly disclosures of their reserves. While the law was passed by Congress last year, U.S. regulations typically require agencies to draft and finalize more specific implementing rules — with a period for public comment — before those rules take legal effect. The overall effective date of the GENIUS Act is expected to be January 18, 2027, with stricter offer and sale prohibition of stablecoins prohibited from July 18, 2028. JUST IN: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says the "Treasury is moving quickly to implement" the GENIUS Act "Beginning on January 18, 2027, the expected effective date of the GENIUS Act," pic.twitter.com/VCxbnwNM5G — Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) August 17, 2026 “President Trump and Congress delivered the GENIUS Act, establishing a landmark framework and clear rules of the road for payment stablecoins, and Treasury is moving quickly to implement that framework,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement. “Treasury welcomes input from stakeholders as we work to provide the regulatory certainty businesses need to innovate and grow in America, cement the role of the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency, and keep America the crypto capital of the world,” he added. The statement added that from January 2027, a person generally may not “issue a payment stablecoin in the United States” unless the person has obtained an appropriate federal or state license. Questions for stakeholders in consultation include whether key terms are defined clearly enough, when exactly a stablecoin should be considered “issued,” and what due diligence obligations digital asset service providers should have when relying on a foreign issuer’s compliance representations. The consultation comes as the U.S. races to craft laws to regulate the crypto industry. Lawmakers were this month aiming to get a vote on the crypto market structure bill, the Clarity Act, but it was delayed until September. Bessent this year urged lawmakers to get the Clarity Act over the line. President Trump said this month passing legislation like the Clarity Act is necessary for the U.S. to take the lead over China. He also claimed that more people were using Bitcoin to make payments. This post US Treasury Asks For Public Input on Landmark Genius Act Crypto Legislation first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo. Переглянути повний текст

Bitcoin Magazine Strategy Goes Another Week Without Buying — Or Selling — Bitcoin, Builds Up Cash Reserve Bitcoin treasury Strategy has gone another week without buying the leading cryptocurrency — but didn’t sell any this time. The Nasdaq-listed company said Monday in a regulatory filing that it had upped its cash buffer by selling 3,458,866 shares of MSTR common stock to generate $333.7 million. Strategy added $150M to its USD Reserve and repurchased $132M of $STRC, extending USD Duration to 2.8 yrs (+41 days) and tightening STRC BTC Credit to 114 bps (-4 bps). As of 8/16/26: ₿840,447 BTC Reserve; $4.8B USD Reserve. $MSTR https://t.co/kNWPowilmT — Michael Saylor (@saylor) August 17, 2026 Strategy used $52.4 million to pay dividends on its STRC preferred stock, then spent $132.2 million to buy the stock back. It also added $149.1 million to its dollar reserve. Strategy — formerly MicroStrategy — has recently pivoted to common stock sales to build up its cash reserves, rather than buying Bitcoin. It has halted its Bitcoin sales and even sold a chunk of its holdings over the past two months after aggressively buying in 2025. Strategy stock (Nasdaq: MSTR) has taken a hit in 2026, dropping over 60% year-to-date. At a little over $95 a pop, it is currently trading nearly 80% below its 2024 record. The company started buying Bitcoin in 2020 as a way to protect shareholder returns. It has since become the largest corporate holder of Bitcoin, with 840,447 coins worth $53.4 billion, acquired at an average price of $63,357, according to its website. Despite focusing on its cash buffer, Strategy has reassured investors that its long-term posture toward Bitcoin is still the same. CEO Phong Le said earlier this month that he isn’t worried about the current bear market, and that the company plans to remain a long-term buyer of Bitcoin despite its recent sales. “We’re the J.P. Morgan of the crypto economy, so whether we sell 1,000 Bitcoin out of 840,000 to me is irrelevant to the conversation,” Le said. Strategy’s approach has spawned a wave of copycat companies that have since adopted similar crypto-treasury strategies of their own. This post Strategy Goes Another Week Without Buying — Or Selling — Bitcoin, Builds Up Cash Reserve first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo. Переглянути повний текст

Bitcoin Magazine Edelman Financial, Tudor Investment Reveal Significant Bitcoin Holdings Edelman Financial Engines has disclosed a $34 million position in spot Bitcoin ETFs — a stake that now exceeds some of the firm’s other holdings in major tech companies. While the position is still tiny in the investment advisor’s portfolio, it is still larger than its $25 million position in Amazon. The position — held in BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust and Grayscale’s flagship product — tracks closely with the public views of its founder, Ric Edelman. JUST IN: $326 billion Edleman Financial discloses owning $34 million in Bitcoin ETFs pic.twitter.com/oXpYCafz69 — Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) August 14, 2026 Edelman has been advocating for Bitcoin ETFs since 2019, years before the SEC approved spot products in January 2024. He also founded the Digital Assets Council of Financial Professionals, an organization built to educate financial advisors on crypto and blockchain technology. And Edelman Financial isn’t the only one: In a filing submitted this afternoon, Tudor Investment Corporation, the firm run by legendary macro trader Paul Tudor Jones, reported owning 688,529 shares of IBIT as of June 30, valued at $22.9 million. JUST IN: Billionaire Paul Tudor Jones' $106 billion Investment Corporation reports owning $22.9 million of BlackRock's spot Bitcoin ETF pic.twitter.com/mrgPf2H53s — Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) August 14, 2026 That’s up from the 579,083 shares Tudor reported the previous quarter. It’s worth remembering that few investors have built a career reading inflation cycles and their historical patterns as successfully as Jones, making the size of the add notable in its own right. This post Edelman Financial, Tudor Investment Reveal Significant Bitcoin Holdings first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo. Переглянути повний текст

Bitcoin Magazine Abu Dhabi Sovereign Wealth Funds Keep Big Bitcoin Positions Bitcoin is the most important asset in two of Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth funds, according to regulatory filings. Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala Investment Company disclosed Friday that it held a $490 million stake in BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust — the second-largest single holding across its entire 13F portfolio. And a Thursday filing from the Abu Dhabi Investment Council, another state-run fund, revealed a $273.6 million position in the popular Bitcoin exchange-traded fund. The stake is the biggest position in its portfolio. JUST IN: UAE sovereign wealth funds Mubadala and Abu Dhabi Investment Council report owning a combined $763.7 million of BlackRocks Bitcoin ETF pic.twitter.com/OOnptHhlTA — Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) August 14, 2026 Both wealth funds’ position in Bitcoin is unchanged since last quarter. Earlier this year, blockchain analytics firm Arkham Intelligence attributed approximately 6,782 Bitcoins — worth roughly $453.6 million at the time of its analysis — to wallets connected to Bitcoin mining activity linked to the UAE’s Royal Group. The findings highlight a distinction between how the UAE has built its bitcoin position compared with other governments known to hold large amounts of the asset. Countries such as the United States hold substantial Bitcoin reserves that largely originated from law enforcement seizures. The UAE’s holdings, by contrast, stem primarily from domestic mining activity rather than confiscated assets. Since the SEC approved a slew of Bitcoin funds in January 2024, major firms have been able to buy exposure to the asset via shares of the regulated vehicles that trade on stock exchanges. BlackRock’s IBIT is the most successful crypto ETF: The fund has received more cash than any other crypto ETF and currently has $47.3 billion in assets under management. Pension funds and U.S. states have all bought exposure to Bitcoin via the ETFs, along with more traditional investments like tech stocks and other U.S. equities. This post Abu Dhabi Sovereign Wealth Funds Keep Big Bitcoin Positions first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo. Переглянути повний текст

Bitcoin Magazine Bitcoiners Warned After French Tax Authority Confirms Data Breach Affecting Hundreds of Thousands Bitcoiners have been warned after France’s tax administration confirmed that hackers breached its information system, exposing sensitive financial and personal data belonging to hundreds of thousands of taxpayers and businesses. Writing on X on Friday, Bitcoin developer Jameson Lopp said the leak was “more bad news for Bitcoiners living in the leading country for wrench attacks.” Lopp has created a tracker counting wrench attacks — when physical violence is used to steal crypto — across the world. A large amount happens in France, where data has been leaked before. More bad news for Bitcoiners living in the leading country for wrench attacks. The French tax authority has been hacked and 678K records leaked. 26,805 people with income over 100K€ 386 people with income over 1M€ 8 people with income over 10M€https://t.co/KlT0XqPLFR — Jameson Lopp (@lopp) August 14, 2026 The news comes one day after hardware wallet manufacturer Trezor announced a data breach exposing customer data. Cybersecurity researchers at FrenchBreaches, who reviewed samples of the leaked data, reported that the affected records break down to roughly 392,867 individuals and 285,570 businesses. Among the individuals, an estimated 26,805 have a reported annual taxable income of €100,000 or more, 386 exceed €1 million, and eight exceed €10 million. The hacker is said to be offering the full dataset for sale for several thousand euros. The breach first surfaced publicly on August 12, when a hacker using the alias “ZeroBytes” posted on a cybercrime forum claiming to have infiltrated internal DGFiP servers and obtained VPN credentials that unlocked an internal lookup tool covering millions of taxpayers. According to the hacker’s own account, the extraction was interrupted before it could be completed, leaving what they described as only a partial dataset of 678,438 records. The exposed sample reportedly includes highly sensitive information: full legal names, dates and places of birth, home and mailing addresses, marital status, number of dependents, internal tax identification numbers, reference taxable income, individual withholding tax rates, phone numbers, email addresses, and records of past correspondence with tax officials. Security analysts warn that this combination of identity, contact and financial data could fuel highly convincing phishing campaigns impersonating tax authorities, as well as identity theft and fraud schemes tailored to victims’ income levels or family circumstances. 2025 was the worst on record for wrench attacks (crypto targeted kidnappings), with around 55 reported globally last year, according to TRM Labs. Lopp’s tool counted over 70 throughout last year. And this year is already looking bad, according to the tracker: 54 attacks have been documented so far. Wrench attacks made headlines last year when crooks kidnapped David Balland, co-founder of crypto hardware wallet brand Ledger, and his wife in France. Criminals held the pair for around 24 hours before they were rescued by the French authorities. This post Bitcoiners Warned After French Tax Authority Confirms Data Breach Affecting Hundreds of Thousands first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo. Переглянути повний текст

Bitcoin Magazine Citi CEO Wants ‘Good’ Crypto Clarity Act To Get Passed Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser has said that while some improvements need to be made to the crypto Clarity Act, the bank wants a “good bill to go through.” The banking executive said that the bank was a “leader in digital assets” so wanted “safe adoption” of the technology. Lawmakers were trying to get a vote on the Clarity Act through before splitting for recess last week but ran out of time. A vote will now take place in September. JUST IN: Citi CEO Jane Fraser says she wants the CLARITY Act to become law. “We would like to see a good bill go through.” Watch pic.twitter.com/caX4lEJivk — Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) August 14, 2026 “We want to have good regulation that supports innovation and also encourages the safe adoption of the capabilities of digital assets,” Fraser said. “I think it would be excellent for the system.” A sticking point for the bill has been from the banking lobby, who raised concerns over crypto companies paying customers yield for holding stablecoins. U.S. banks have said they could lose customers if crypto exchanges offer more attractive products for their deposit base. Fraser reiterated the point on Friday, saying that small banks play an important role in the U.S. and a reward system on deposits could have a “detrimental effect.” But she added: “We have not given up on pushing to get some improvements made to the bill, but we would like to see a good bill go through.” America’s biggest crypto exchange, Coinbase, pulled support for the bill in January after clashing with banking chiefs who said that earning yield on stablecoins should be banned. The Clarity Act was passed last year by the House of Representatives but has been deadlocked since 2026. Still, the bill has been worked on by both Republicans and Democrats — despite crypto legislation being something pushed by pro-crypto President Donald Trump. Major institutions, including Fidelity and Goldman Sachs, as well as crypto lobby groups and politicians, have said the revised bill works in its current form. This post Citi CEO Wants ‘Good’ Crypto Clarity Act To Get Passed first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo. Переглянути повний текст

Bitcoin Magazine Bitcoin Treasury Strategy Bites Back After MSCI Announces Possible Index Removal Bitcoin treasury Strategy has said it “doesn’t need” Morgan Stanley Capital International after the index provider said it could remove the Bitcoin company from its Global Investable Market Indexes. MSCI said in a consultation that it was consulting on a plan to define “Non-Operating Companies” and make them ineligible for its Global Investable Market Indexes (GIMI). The removal of such companies would exclude companies like Strategy from indexes visible to a large pool of institutional investors. MSCI said it was weighing up the decision as Strategy is primarily known for holding a large amount of Bitcoin rather than running a traditional operating business. Digital assets are assets. Index providers should measure markets, not decide which assets companies are allowed to own. MSCI’s proposal puts it out of step with regulators, markets, and its own customers. Bitcoin doesn’t need MSCI. Neither does Strategy. $BTC $MSTR — Strategy (@Strategy) August 14, 2026 Writing on X Friday, Strategy wrote: “Digital assets are assets. Index providers should measure markets, not decide which assets companies are allowed to own. MSCI’s proposal puts it out of step with regulators, markets, and its own customers.” It added: “Bitcoin doesn’t need MSCI. Neither does Strategy.” The consultation also included Japanese Bitcoin treasury Metaplanet, which trades on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, and uranium investment company Yellow Cake. Based on financial filings as of May 2026, Strategy and Metaplanet already meet the criteria for removal under MSCI’s proposed rule. If MSCI adopts the proposal as currently written and their financial profiles remain unchanged, both companies would be deleted from the MSCI ACWI IMI Index as part of the November 2026 Index Review, triggering forced selling by index-tracking funds and loss of future passive inflows. MSCI is still gathering feedback on the proposal through September 30, and has explicitly said the consultation “may or may not result in changes to MSCI indexes” — meaning the rule could be modified, delayed, or dropped entirely based on responses from affected companies and market participants. Even if adopted, any changes to a company’s underlying financials before the review could also shift the result. Nasdaq-listed Strategy — formerly MicroStrategy — started buying Bitcoin in August 2020 as a way to generate better returns for its shareholders during the COVID-19 pandemic. It has since spent around $63.3 billion on Bitcoin and is the largest corporate holder of the asset. Investors can buy its shares to gain exposure to the leading cryptocurrency without having to buy and hold digital coins themselves. Strategy spawned a long-list of copycat firms which have bought not only Bitcoin, but other cryptocurrencies to boost their stock prices. Strategy’s stock (MSTR) was trading nearly 3% lower Friday at nearly $95 per share. MSTR year-to-date has dropped by nearly 40%. This post Bitcoin Treasury Strategy Bites Back After MSCI Announces Possible Index Removal first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo. Переглянути повний текст

Bitcoin Magazine Israeli Bank Leumi to Debut Bitcoin Trading With Galaxy Digital Israel’s biggest bank, Bank Leumi, will become the first lender in the country to offer customers Bitcoin trading, according to a Friday announcement. The lender will work with Galaxy Digital to provide the service, which will become available to customers early next year, the announcement said. Bank Leumi first announced plans to debut crypto trading in 2022 but shelved the initiative. The latest project will use GalaxyOne Institutional, Galaxy’s institutional platform for banks, asset managers and other institutions for trading and other services, to debut the service. JUST IN: Israel's largest bank is entering Bitcoin. Bank Leumi will allow customers to buy, hold and sell Bitcoin directly through its banking app. The service is expected to launch in early 2027. pic.twitter.com/I7QXezzDDR — Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) August 14, 2026 “We believe that digital assets are gradually becoming an integral part of the global financial system, and it is our role to enable customers to benefit from this development within a reliable, secure, and regulated banking framework,” Bank Leumi’s Head of Strategy, Maya Ravia, said in a statement. The statement added that customers will also be able to trade other cryptocurrencies on top of Bitcoin. Leumi’s mobile banking app, PEPPER, will also provide the service. “The future of finance will run on open, programmable rails, and we believe the banks that move first will define the era that follows,” Galaxy Israel CEO Lior Lamesh said. “We are building one platform for trading and custody, with institutional-grade security at its core, and the onchain rails beneath it, through Galaxy Infrastructure and GalaxyOne Institutional, for banks around the world.” According to Chainalysis, crypto adoption in Israel has been steadily growing over the years, with geopolitical headwinds including the war in Gaza and Iran, leading Israelis to digital assets as a “safe-haven.” This post Israeli Bank Leumi to Debut Bitcoin Trading With Galaxy Digital first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo. Переглянути повний текст

Bitcoin Magazine What the CLARITY Act Actually Does for Bitcoin In July 2025, House Republicans staged a coordinated three-bill blitz they called ‘Crypto Week;, advancing the GENIUS, CLARITY, and the Anti-CBDC Surveillance State Act in the same five day stretch. The GENIUS Act was signed into law within 24 hours, creating a regulatory framework for dollar-backed stablecoins. However, the other two bills weren’t so lucky. The Anti-CBDC Surveillance State passed the House by an extremely narrow margin, and got stuck in Senate purgatory without a floor vote in place for over a year. Following the House’s bipartisan passage of the CLARITY Act, the bill landed in the Senate Banking Committee where it sat for nearly a year. When the bill finally emerged out of committee, its cover page included the phrase “Strike out all after the enacting clause and insert the part printed in italic.” Translation: 100% of the bill had been rewritten. If you pull up the bill on Congress’ website today, you can see that the first 256 pages (the entire House-passed bill) are struck through, line by line, top to bottom. Then, starting on page 257, the Senate’s new version of the bill begins. (This is still the official text on file; a further-updated draft has circulated since, but hasn’t been formally filed as an amendment.) Given how much the bill has changed shape, it’s worth taking a step back and assessing how the CLARITY Act, in its post-June 1st form, actually affects Bitcoin, and if it can truly “act as the catalyst for the next bull run” as I see so often on X today. What the bill does do for Bitcoin Self-custody becomes a legally protected right Section 605, the ‘Keep Your Coins Act’, prohibits federal regulators from restricting or impairing a person’s ability to self-custody for any lawful purpose. Self-custody currently has no statutory backing, and providing direct legislation creates a defense against future tyrannical powers requiring custodial intermediaries. While people often dismiss this threat as ‘fear mongering’ and ‘doomerism’, this type of overreach does have recent historical precedent. In 2020, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin directed FinCEN to propose a rule targeting “unhosted wallets”. It would have required exchanges to collect names and home addresses for anyone moving more than $3,000/day into their private wallet, and file reports to FinCEN for anything over $10,000/day. Although the rule ultimately lost momentum, it remained on the books and un-withdrawn for almost four years. During that period, any Treasury Secretary could have revived and finalized it without any new legislation. This is the exact scenario Section 605 is written to prevent from happening again. Bitcoin developers, node operators, and non-custodial wallet makers get explicit immunity from money-transmitter liability Section 604, Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act, says a “non-controlling” developer or provider can’t be classified as a money transmitting business for doing that. Prime examples are Samourai Wallet and Tornado Cash. Both were open-source, non-custodial projects whose developers were criminally prosecuted under the theory that publishing the code made them unlicensed money transmitters. Samourai’s founders pleaded guilty in April 2026, and Tornado Cash’s Roman Storm was convicted on the same charge in August 2025. Section 604 does not undo either case, but it does draw a line so the next open-source developer doesn’t have to find out where it is in federal court. Bitcoin gets a statutory green light at the banking level Section 401, the “Permissibility of Digital Asset Activities”, is the only section of the CLARITY Act that is “bullish” for Bitcoin’s price, by my estimations. This section would finally let banks, brokerages, and institutions treat Bitcoin like a real asset class, pulling in a wave of new capital. The section lets financial holding companies, national banks, state banks, and credit unions custody digital assets, lend against them as collateral, operate nodes, provide brokerage and clearing services, and act as a market maker or dealer, all without needing extra prior approval beyond what banking law already requires. This section uses the term “digital asset,” which is broadly defined through the already-enacted GENIUS Act. Unlike “digital commodity” or “ancillary asset” elsewhere in the bill, Bitcoin clearly and unambiguously qualifies here. The addressable market this opens up is enormous. US commercial banks alone hold $25.7 trillion in total assets, nearly 20 times Bitcoin’s entire $1.3 trillion market cap. Custody giants like State Street and Northern Trust each sit on custody books that individually dwarf the whole Bitcoin market several times over. None of that capital needs to move far, or take much risk, to move the price of an asset this size. It just needs a legal, statutory door like Section 401 to walk through. What the bill doesn’t do for Bitcoin Bitcoin’s commodity status doesn’t get locked into federal law (at least not yet) As it currently stands, Bitcoin is treated as a commodity because the CFTC says so and courts have agreed in the course of enforcement cases. However, that is precedent, not statute. There is no framework in place preventing future regulators from not viewing it that way. The House-passed version of the CLARITY Act would have closed that gap. That language was struck out entirely when the Senate rewrote the bill on June 1, and for weeks, nothing replaced it. The July 22 draft of the CLARITY Act merges in the Senate Agriculture Committee’s CFTC framework, which does add the missing definition. But that draft isn’t law or a filed amendment yet. It doesn’t ban a Fed CBDC The House-passed version of the bill had a section called the “Anti-CBDC Surveillance State Act”, which prohibited the federal reserve from issuing a retail CBDC. This section was part of the 256 pages struck by the Senate Banking Committee, and the current form of the bill offers no operative section on the matter. Even if it passes, rules won’t actually exist for a while. This is where the “CLARITY Act supercycle incoming” narrative falls flat. A signed bill doesn’t come with a functioning regulator attached. The CFTC would need to build one almost completely from scratch. The GENIUS Act, signed last year, missed its entire one-year rulemaking deadline. Zero final rules, across six federal agencies, as of mid-2026. CLARITY would hand the CFTC the biggest new mandate in the bill, and the CFTC currently has a single sitting commissioner and staff headcount has dropped 21% in one year. So, is CLARITY a Bitcoin bill? Honestly? No. CLARITY is bullish for crypto broadly, and only narrowly bullish for Bitcoin specifically. The vast majority of the bill exists to give altcoins a way out of securities law limbo, which is a problem that Bitcoin does not acutely possess. Though, “not the main point” is not the same as “it doesn’t matter”. The bill provides specific pro-Bitcoin language that’s worth supporting on its own terms. Ultimately, whether the bill passes or falls into legislative oblivion, Bitcoin’s core principles remain the same: a decentralized protocol governed by mathematical certainty, and the world’s first digital commodity, with a market cap north of $1.3 trillion. Bitcoin will never live or die on Capitol Hill. This is a guest post by Isaiah Austin. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine. This post What the CLARITY Act Actually Does for Bitcoin first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Isaiah Austin. Переглянути повний текст

Bitcoin Magazine Bitcoin’s Bear Cycle Looks Familiar — And That Might Be the Bullish Case Bitcoin has fallen from a record high of roughly $126,080 in October to trade recently in the low-$60,000s — a decline of nearly 50% that has rattled sentiment. But it may just be business as usual. According to a Thursday report from asset manager VanEck, Bitcoin’s current slump tracks the asset’s historical four-year halving cycle, in which mining rewards are periodically cut in half, tightening new supply and often preceding a bear phase. The firm framed this downturn as a recurring feature of Bitcoin’s market structure rather than a break from it. VanEck’s GEO framework — which tracks Global Liquidity, Ecosystem Leverage, and On-Chain Activity — currently shows two of three signals reading neutral, with ecosystem leverage in constructive territory. The firm says that combination points to early signs of a bottom forming, and that it may be time to begin scaling into positions. Separate research from blockchain analytics firm CryptoQuant points in a similar direction. The firm’s analysts highlighted on-chain data showing that long-term Bitcoin holders — typically the market’s steadiest, most loss-tolerant cohort — are now sitting on deeper unrealized losses than the market overall, based on adjusted Net Unrealized Profit/Loss (NUPL) data. Analyst MorenoDV noted this week that this exact dynamic, long-term holders hurting more than average, has shown up at every prior major cycle bottom. Still, CryptoQuant urged caution against declaring a bottom prematurely. In past cycles, that same long-term-holder metric fell to much deeper negative extremes before a true low was reached. Current readings haven’t gotten there yet, meaning the biggest cryptocurrency could still face one more sharp capitulation move — unless stronger institutional demand and a more resilient holder base allow this cycle to bottom out with less damage than previous ones. Taken together, the two reports suggest a market that looks stressed by historical standards, but not yet at the extremes that have marked past cycle floors. This post Bitcoin’s Bear Cycle Looks Familiar — And That Might Be the Bullish Case first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo. Переглянути повний текст

Bitcoin Magazine White House to Host Crypto Industry Execs Next Week: Report Crypto and prediction market bigwigs are set to gather at the White House next week, according to a Thursday report from POLITICO. The report, citing people with knowledge of the matter, said the industry officials would meet one day before the Commodity Futures Trading Commission holds a meeting for its new Innovation Advisory Committee. The committee will feature a panel of experts also from the crypto, prediction market and traditional finance spheres. Despite the long-awaited crypto Clarity Act being delayed, regulators are moving ahead with pro-crypto initiatives. BREAKING: White House to host gathering for crypto industry officials next week, POLITICO reports pic.twitter.com/mdVnzglpmN — Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) August 13, 2026 POLITICO’s report did not mention if President Trump would attend the event. Last week, pro-crypto lawmakers were hoping the Clarity Act passed before Congress departed for August recess. After a delay, a vote will now go ahead in September. Lawmakers started mulling over a new draft of the bill, which was passed by the House of Representatives last year, in July. The text tackled the issue of ethics, banning government officials from promoting or making money from crypto. President Trump campaigned on a ticket to help the America become the crypto capital of the world, and received backing from major players in the space. Since taking office, the president has signed a number of pro-crypto measures, including a March 2025 executive order directing the creation of a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. Regulators have also scrapped a number of high-profile lawsuits against crypto companies, and made a push to watchdog the industry in a more helpful way. This post White House to Host Crypto Industry Execs Next Week: Report first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo. Переглянути повний текст

Bitcoin Magazine Tether Finally Completes Independent Audit of Reserves With KPMG Stablecoin giant Tether has announced that KPMG U.S. completed the first independent audit of its reserves after years of struggling to get a Big Four accounting firm to do so. The San Salvador-based company, which issues the largest stablecoin in existence, USDT, said the audit was “the largest inaugural financial audit in history.” Tether for years was criticized for being coy about its reserves and not having an independent audit of what it holds behind its flagship token. Tether said over the years that it was eager to work with a Big Four firm for an audit. Tether Completes the Largest Inaugural Financial Audit in History Read more: https://t.co/vWG0fFSUxH — Tether (@tether) August 13, 2026 “For years, some detractors said an audit of Tether could not be completed,” Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said in a statement. “They said the Company refused to subject itself to the most rigorous scrutiny. We have once again proven them wrong. Completing our financial statement audit sets a new standard for the industry and reflects the leadership we’ve brought to this market from the start.” Tether did not mention its Bitcoin holdings in its statement, nor did it immediately respond to questions from Bitcoin Magazine. But it said that KPMG “physically counted and inspected every individual gold bar held by Tether, verifying the existence and identifying information of each bar rather than relying solely on reports from custodians or counterparties.” Tether added that all assets and statements were subject to “independent substantive testing and verification.” The company has in recent years upped its gold buys, holds more U.S. treasuries than some countries and has nearly $60 billion in Bitcoin in its reserves, according to data from Arkham Intelligence. “Tether has evolved from a disruptive stablecoin issuer into one of the most financially significant and operationally sophisticated private companies in the world,” continued Ardoino. “This audit demonstrates that our financial infrastructure and governance have evolved alongside that responsibility.” Tether’s USDT product has a market cap of over $183 billion, making it the third biggest cryptocurrency in existence. This post Tether Finally Completes Independent Audit of Reserves With KPMG first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo. Переглянути повний текст

Bitcoin Magazine UBS Ups Bitcoin Position, Buys More Shares in BlackRock’s ETF Switzerland’s largest bank has upped its exposure to Bitcoin, according to regulatory filings. UBS bought more shares in BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust, bringing its total position to over $83 million across 2.5 million shares, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The bank has slowly upped its exposure to the biggest cryptocurrency by market cap since BlackRock’s top fund got approved back in 2024. JUST IN: Switzerland's largest bank UBS discloses owning $83.2 million of BlackRock's Bitcoin ETF pic.twitter.com/Nq9AU4GwdX — Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) August 13, 2026 The filings are the latest examples of traditional institutions seeking exposure to Bitcoin. ETFs like BlackRock’s Bitcoin Trust — which trades as IBIT — allow investors to buy exposure to the leading cryptocurrency without having to store the digital coin directly. Since the SEC approved a slew of Bitcoin funds in January 2024, major firms have been able to buy exposure to the asset via shares of the regulated vehicles that trade on stock exchanges. BlackRock’s IBIT is the most successful crypto ETF: The fund has received more cash than any other crypto ETF and currently has $47.3 billion in assets under management. Pension funds and U.S. states have all bought exposure to Bitcoin via the ETFs, along with more traditional investments like tech stocks and other U.S. equities. The shares in IBIT aren’t the only Bitcoin investment UBS has, either: the filing shows that the bank also has exposure to other premium income and other Bitcoin-related ETFs, bringing its ETF holdings in the cryptocurrency to around $90 million. The bank also has invested in American Bitcoin Corp., the Bitcoin mining company backed by U.S. President Donald Trump’s sons, Eric and Donald, Jr., with a position worth a little under $1.5 million. News dropped earlier this year that the Swiss bank was planning to offer Bitcoin trading to a select group of private clients in the country. This post UBS Ups Bitcoin Position, Buys More Shares in BlackRock’s ETF first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo. Переглянути повний текст

Bitcoin Magazine Data Breach at Trezor Leaks Info on Nearly 14,000 Bitcoin Wallet Users Hardware wallet manufacturer Trezor has announced a data breach exposing customer data. Writing on X Thursday, the company said that 13,689 customers from the US, UK, Sweden, Colombia, Brazil, Italy, and Portugal who received an order 90 days prior to August 8 were affected. We have some difficult news to share. Unfortunately, one of our shipping providers has experienced a data breach that exposed sensitive order data. This affects new customers in the US, UK, Sweden, Colombia, Brazil, Italy, and Portugal who received an order within the 90 days… — Trezor (@Trezor) August 13, 2026 “Our systems and devices remain secure, but affected customers could experience an increase in phishing attempts,” the Prague, Czech Republic-based company said. “We are deeply sorry to the community and those affected.” Trezor said that 11,742 customers had their names, emails, phone numbers, and shipping addresses leaked. Another 1,947 customers had just their names, cities and emails exposed. SatoshiLabs, the parent company of Trezor, said in an email to Bitcoin Magazine that its third-party fulfillment partner, ShipMonk, had experienced “unauthorized access to their systems containing customer data.” “Scammers can use the leaked information to send fake emails, make fake phone calls, send fraudulent letters, or potentially impersonate banks, crypto exchanges, or even Trezor,” the company said. SatoshiLabs said it was continuing to investigate the incident. Trezor is one of the most popular Bitcoin hardware wallet solutions, and also has support for storing other cryptocurrencies. Bitcoiners’ personal data has been targeted by cybercriminals in the past: back in 2020, an unauthorized party accessed popular hardware manufacturer Ledger’s e-commerce and marketing database, leaking over 1 million email addresses and the personal contact data of nearly 10,000 customers. And at the start of this year, customers reported receiving emails from Global-e, Ledger’s payment partner, that a data breach at its cloud systems leaked sensitive customer data. The Bitcoin community is still reeling after hackers targeted Canadian company Coinkite’s popular Coldcard product. Hackers started draining $111 million in Bitcoin from the popular Coldcard hardware wallets at the end of last month.The amount stolen could be much higher as investigations continue, with some estimating the real figure to be over $130 million. The theft continued, with Bitcoiners — and Coinkite — asking users to move their funds as hackers continued to drain digital coins from the later devices. This post Data Breach at Trezor Leaks Info on Nearly 14,000 Bitcoin Wallet Users first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo. Переглянути повний текст

Bitcoin Magazine Chinese AI Beats Restricted OpenAI and Anthropic Cybersecurity Models, Bitcoin Industry Warns Bitcoin company leaders and open-source developers are publicly stating that Chinese AI models are currently outperforming restricted American frontier systems in defensive cybersecurity work, forcing researchers to rely on them to secure critical Bitcoin infrastructure. Rob Hamilton, CEO of AnchorWatch, a Bitcoin self-custody insurance company, reported cripling American AI restrictions. After integrating OpenAI’s trusted cyber program (having already completed KYC months earlier), he was blocked from further analysis on a codebase he had already responsibly disclosed. “It absolutely guts me as a patriotic American to have to do this, but I will be going back to using Chinese open source models to conduct my research to protect Bitcoin infrastructure,” Hamilton wrote. “Black hats will not hit these issues. The white hats will.” Days later, he gained access to OpenAI’s “Daybreak Blue” cyber model and was blocked again within 19 minutes while red-teaming Bitcoin infrastructure. Francis Pouliot, founder of Bull Bitcoin, a Bitcoin-only exchange focused on self-custody infrastructure, described the situation bluntly. “I have never seen OpenAI this cucked. It’s cucked beyond belief now. Not even for security, for anything related to Bitcoin,” he posted. “USA AI industry is completely cooked if they don’t change this path,” he concluded, adding “Open-source Chinese LLMs. [orange heart emoji],” meaning that open Chinese models like Kimi K3 are actually helpful to Bitcoin. In a follow-up, Pouliot detailed how a Chinese open-source model identified a money-stealing exploit in a project he was auditing, demonstrated it on regtest, and helped patch it. When he asked the American models he pays for to review the same patch, they refused. PortlandHODL, a Bitcoin Core contributor who builds for AnchorWatch, publicly highlighted the performance gap. “US-based Frontier AI Model – ‘You’re absolutely right!’ Chinese Open Model – ‘78 critical vulnerabilities found.’ The implications of this are unfathomable,” he posted. In a follow-up, he added that he felt he was “basically asking Xi to not get my software hacked at this point,” calling for OpenAI and Anthropic to create proper access programs for U.S. citizens doing defensive security work. Alex Thorn, Head of Firmwide Research at Galaxy, signed a recent Bitcoin Policy Institute open letter demanding trusted access to frontier models for open-source defenders. “Americans should not have to rely on Chinese AI to defend themselves, their projects, companies, or clients from cyber-attacks,” he wrote. “RED TEAM NEEDS THE MODELS.” On August 10, the Bitcoin Policy Institute — a Bitcoin and, of late, AI-focused policy think tank — published an open letter signed by more than 70 organizations across the digital-asset ecosystem, including major custodians, exchanges, mining firms, and open-source development groups. The letter calls on frontier AI labs to establish clear trusted-access programs for qualified open-source and digital-asset defenders. It argues that current restrictions and safety guardrails leave legitimate security researchers without access to the strongest models, forcing them to rely on less capable open-weight alternatives while sophisticated attackers face no such limits. The signatories request early access to cyber-capable models, sufficient compute, secure environments for reviewing code, and direct channels with lab security teams, stating that frontier AI could become one of the most powerful defensive technologies available if defenders are given fair access. These statements reflect a broad pattern among Bitcoin security researchers: American models from OpenAI and Anthropic frequently refuse or restrict legitimate defensive work, even to users who are supposed to have been granted explicit access, while Chinese models such as Kimi K3 operate without the same guardrails and are delivering confirmed results. Concerns about hosting infrastructure of Chinese models being an attack vector can also be mitigated, since they are open source and can be run on American-hosted data centers, a trend that is likely to threaten the U.S. AI market if it continues. Coldcard Exploit Triggers Ecosystem-Wide Response The cybersecurity pressure became acute in the Bitcoin industry after a firmware flaw in Coldcard hardware wallets was exploited beginning July 30, resulting in the theft of well over $100 million in bitcoin from seeds generated with insufficient entropy. Bitcoin Magazine published an urgent advisory urging affected users to migrate funds: COLDCARD SECURITY RISK: IMMEDIATE ACTION REQUIRED. In response, a volunteer effort known as the Bitcoin Red Team formed, led by open-source developer Calle (creator of Cashu and the Android version of Bitchat) and Rob Hamilton. The group has conducted large-scale AI-assisted audits of Bitcoin open-source repositories, using models including Kimi K3 as the primary workhorse alongside limited access to Western systems. Early results, covered by Bitcoin Magazine, showed thousands of findings across hundreds of projects, including dozens of critical issues, with spending covered largely by OpenSats. By August 8, after more than 100 hours of work involving dozens of contributors, the team reported scanning 501 projects and producing 7,958 findings, of which 1,280 were rated high or critical severity. The majority of compute spend continued to go to Chinese open-weight models. Lessons from the Red Team Campaign Most recently, Calle shared lessons from the intensive red-team period. The effort has essentially completed a basic scan of virtually the entire Bitcoin open-source landscape; low-hanging fruit is largely exhausted, the developer wrote on this X account. Maintainers across projects have validated many of the critical and high-severity reports, while response times from projects vary widely and serve as a signal of overall health. Key takeaways include the need for every project to maintain its own permanent AI audit pipeline going forward. Projects that began such reviews months earlier are in a markedly stronger position. Unmaintained repositories should be treated as likely broken and unreliable. Calle also warned that the human-only era of open-source security review is over; verification is now effectively free, and information overload must be handled with AI rather than complaints about PR slop. Multiple concurrent and diverse human approaches remain the strongest method for finding vulnerabilities, and external red-teaming will likely be required indefinitely. Calle also repeatedly emphasized that developers should stop writing security-critical code in C. In a follow-up post he explained: “we’re finding memory-safety vulnerabilities in c projects that are prevented by default in many other languages. In the past, finding a simple buffer overflow wasn’t enough. You’d need a highly skilled hacker to turn the vulnerability into a working end-to-end exploit. Today, that’s a single prompt.” Bitcoin was the first major open-source ecosystem to confront this collision between accumulated human code and frontier AI capability. The rest of the software world is expected to follow. This post Chinese AI Beats Restricted OpenAI and Anthropic Cybersecurity Models, Bitcoin Industry Warns first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Juan Galt. Переглянути повний текст

Bitcoin Magazine Nakamoto Posts First Positive Adjusted Operating Income, Despite $133M GAAP Net Loss Bitcoin operating company Nakamoto Inc. dropped its first quarterly results on Thursday, marked by a wide GAAP net loss in what the company is calling a turning point in its underlying operations. The Nashville-based company posted total operating revenue of $35.9 million for the quarter ended June 30, 2026, split between $25.6 million from its media and asset management units and $10.4 million from its Bitcoin treasury and derivatives strategy, according to a Thursday statement. Nakamoto shares (NASDAQ: NAKA) rose more than 2% Thursday morning in New York. On a GAAP basis, Nakamoto reported an operating loss of $149.1 million and a net loss of $133.0 million, or $6.65 per diluted share — driven largely by a $105.2 million non-cash goodwill impairment and $48.7 million in mark-to-market losses on its Bitcoin holdings. Stripping out those non-cash items, the picture looks different: adjusted operating income came in at $7.3 million, which the company says is its first positive adjusted operating income since it became a Bitcoin operating company. “This quarter we delivered the first positive adjusted operating income since Nakamoto became a Bitcoin operating company,” David Bailey, the company’s Chairman and CEO, said, pointing also to a roughly $45 million reduction in outstanding debt and the extension of about $105 million in loan principal to June 2027. The quarter also brought a major structural shift: Nakamoto completed the closure of its legacy healthcare clinics on June 19, 2026, finishing its transition into a pure-play Bitcoin operating company. The board authorized a $25 million share buyback and added Chief Investment Officer Tyler Evans as a director. Nakamoto’s asset management arm, UTXO Management, launched a new structured credit fund and said it guided a client vehicle, the 210k Capital Fund, through what it described as the first cleared Bitcoin Depositary Receipt trade settled via traditional prime brokerage and DTCC infrastructure — a milestone the firm frames as a step toward integrating Bitcoin products into mainstream financial markets. Separately, the 210k Capital fund itself fell 5% for the quarter, outperforming a 14% decline in Bitcoin over the same period. The company’s media unit, BTC Inc., generated $22.6 million from its flagship Bitcoin 2026 conference and announced a new daily video network, BM TV, along with new institutional-focused events aimed at connecting corporate executives and capital allocators with the Bitcoin industry. Nakamoto ended the quarter holding 4,467 Bitcoin, valued at approximately $261.5 million. Bitcoin Magazine is published by BTC Inc, a subsidiary of Nakamoto Inc. (NASDAQ: NAKA) This post Nakamoto Posts First Positive Adjusted Operating Income, Despite $133M GAAP Net Loss first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo. Переглянути повний текст

Bitcoin Magazine Bitcoin Price May Be Battered, but Structural Adoption Story Still Intact: Grayscale Bitcoin’s price has shown signs of stabilizing after a rough stretch, but even setting aside where prices go in the near term, asset manager Grayscale says adoption of the cryptocurrency over the medium and long run remains largely unchanged. The reason: continued, unsustainable growth in government debt as a factor that keeps inflation and currency-debasement risk elevated. That backdrop, Grayscale argues, could push a widening range of investors toward scarce assets and alternative stores of value — a category where Bitcoin, with its fixed supply, is increasingly well positioned as a candidate. It added that the adoption of stablecoins and tokenization are set to make blockchain infrastructure commonplace across financial services. Top banks and asset managers have piled into the tokenization space the past year and are fast adopting crypto technology. Grayscale argues that as that spreads, more banks, brokerages, and other intermediaries will have both the technical rails and regulatory clarity needed to hold and transact in Bitcoin — eroding the wall that has historically kept it structurally separate from mainstream finance. “As the spread of the technology continues, many more intermediaries will have the necessary infrastructure (and regulatory clarity) to transact and store balances in Bitcoin — it will no longer be structurally apart from the rest of the financial system,” the note by the firm’s head of research, Zach Pandl, reads. The firm added that younger investors show a markedly higher appetite for digital assets, and alternative investments have become a standard portfolio component rather than a fringe allocation. The analysis expects institutions, wealth platforms, and individual investors alike to keep folding Bitcoin into diversified portfolios — largely through exchange-traded products, a shift it describes as already well underway. Taken together, the report says that a cyclical downturn in price doesn’t undercut the longer-term adoption thesis. The Bitcoin price was recently $63,549, down close to 50% from its October record of $126,080. This post Bitcoin Price May Be Battered, but Structural Adoption Story Still Intact: Grayscale first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo. Переглянути повний текст

Bitcoin Magazine Goldman Sachs to Acquire NEOS Investments in $2.25B Deal, Adding Bitcoin Income ETFs to Lineup Goldman Sachs has agreed to acquire NEOS Investments in a deal worth up to $2.25 billion that will give the Wall Street giant another Bitcoin-related product for its portfolio, the banking giant announced Wednesday. JUST IN: Goldman Sachs acquires NEOS, including $1 billion in their Bitcoin High Income ETFs pic.twitter.com/hYmCBEDV20 — Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) August 12, 2026 The deal will be in cash and equity, contingent on performance and service milestones, and will bring the Neos Bitcoin High Income ETF (BTCI), Boosted Bitcoin High Income ETF (XBCI) and Ethereum High Income ETF (NEHI) under Goldman Sachs Asset Management. CEO David Solomon called NEOS’s approach “highly complementary” to Goldman’s existing buffer, managed-outcome and income capabilities. NEOS co-founders Garrett Paolella and Troy Cates, who will join Goldman Sachs Asset Management as partners, framed the deal as pairing NEOS’s “entrepreneurial spirit” with Goldman’s scale. NEOS manages roughly $30 billion across 19 ETFs that use options strategies to generate monthly income. Combined with Goldman Sachs Asset Management’s existing $40 billion in income-oriented, options-based ETFs, the deal will push Goldman’s active ETF business to about $80 billion — making it the eighth-largest active ETF manager, according to Morningstar — inside a broader $130 billion ETF platform. The move follows Goldman’s earlier acquisition of Innovator Capital Management, rounding out a three-way combination focused on derivative-income and buffer/outcome strategies. The Bitcoin ETFs in question don’t hold the cryptocurrency directly, rather they use derivatives to generate income from crypto-linked exposure rather than owning the underlying coins, per NEOS’s disclosures. Therefore, the high headline yields come largely from selling options premium, not necessarily reflecting the price performance of Bitcoin itself. The acquisition effectively hands Goldman Sachs a ready-made foothold in crypto-income ETFs — a corner of the market it hadn’t built organically — right as institutional appetite for digital-asset-adjacent, income-generating products continues to grow alongside the broader derivative-income boom. The transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of 2027, pending regulatory approval. This post Goldman Sachs to Acquire NEOS Investments in $2.25B Deal, Adding Bitcoin Income ETFs to Lineup first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo. Переглянути повний текст

Bitcoin Magazine Bitcoin Flashes Bottom Signals as “Digital Gold” Narrative Returns Bitcoin is sending two notable signals to the market this week: on-chain data suggests the cryptocurrency may be forming a macro bottom, while its price behavior is increasingly echoing gold’s role as a safe-haven asset. That’s according to two reports from blockchain data firm CryptoQuant, whose analysts pointed to the early stages of a bottoming process for the biggest and oldest cryptocurrency. The price of the largest cryptocurrency recently stood at $63,362, mostly unmoved over a 24-hour period. Over the past week, Bitcoin is down nearly 2%. Since it notched a record of $126,080 in October, it has shed nearly 50% of its value. JUST IN: Bitcoin is now trading in its "Cost of Production" zone, typically the sign of a bear market bottom. HODL pic.twitter.com/rXi1kzxSXj — Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) August 12, 2026 “At each major cycle bottom, long-term holders were sitting on deeper unrealized losses than the broader market,meaning the cohort normally associated with the strongest conviction and lowest sensitivity to volatility is carrying greater unrealized stress than the market as a whole,” wrote analyst MorenoDV. “The current structure fits that pattern,” he added. The signal comes from adjusted Net Unrealized Profit/Loss (NUPL) data for long-term holders (LTH) — investors typically seen as the most resilient cohort in the market. Currently, LTH aNUPL has crossed into negative territory and sits below the broader market average, meaning even long-term holders are now sitting on losses greater than the market as a whole. Historically, this exact pattern — long-term holders hurting more than average — has shown up at every major cycle bottom. The setup lines up with Bitcoin trading roughly 50% below its cycle high, reinforcing the view that this is more than an ordinary correction. But analysts caution against calling a bottom just yet. In previous cycles, LTH aNUPL fell into much deeper, more prolonged negative readings before a true low was in — a level of losses some describe as “depression territory.” Today’s numbers haven’t reached that extreme. The report added that Bitcoin could still need one more capitulation leg to push long-term holder losses to historical extremes. Alternatively, stronger institutional demand and a more structurally resilient holder base could allow the market to bottom with comparatively less damage than in past cycles. Bitcoin’s 90-day correlation with gold has swung from nearly -0.9 in early 2026 to around +0.7, according to data highlighted by CryptoQuant CEO Ki Young Ju, who described the move as a return to “digital-gold-era levels.” The shift suggests investors are once again pricing Bitcoin as a scarce, non-sovereign asset — one that can act as a hedge against currency debasement, fiscal stress, and geopolitical uncertainty, much like gold. Investors have long-touted Bitcoin as “digital gold” — a long-term store of value like the precious metal. And sometimes, they have been correlated. But Bitcoin’s behavior remains split. A month-to-date comparison shows it sometimes trading in step with the Nasdaq, behaving like a liquidity-sensitive risk asset, while at other times tracking gold’s moves as a scarcity play. Its volatility, though, continues to run far higher than gold’s. Analysts also urge caution in reading too much into the correlation shift. A positive correlation isn’t inherently bullish — the two assets can just as easily fall together as rise together. This post Bitcoin Flashes Bottom Signals as “Digital Gold” Narrative Returns first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo. Переглянути повний текст

Bitcoin Magazine OCC Says It’s ‘Open for Business’ as Crypto Firms Line Up for Bank Charters The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency says it will keep pushing to revive de novo bank chartering, a campaign that has already opened a federal on-ramp for some of the largest companies in crypto. In a statement Tuesday, the regulator said reinvigorating new bank formation remains a priority and commended the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation for its own recent efforts on the issue. “De novo chartering is a sign of a healthy banking system,” said Comptroller of the Currency Jonathan V. Gould, adding that the FDIC’s new process for reviewing deposit insurance applications aligns with the OCC’s work to reverse the decline in new charters. JUST IN: US regulator OCC approves Bitcoin and crypto firms to become national banks. "America and the OCC are once again open for business." pic.twitter.com/p6ig74pLYD — Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) August 12, 2026 Over the past 15 years, de novo chartering fell significantly, the OCC said. From 2011 through 2014, the OCC received an average of fewer than four charter applications per year, and in some years it received none at all. “For more than a decade, regulators signaled that those seeking a federal bank charter and federal deposit insurance need not apply,” Gould said. “Entities that engage in legally permissible activities, including those involving digital assets and other novel technologies, should have a path to becoming a national bank. America and the OCC are once again open for business.” The numbers have turned. The OCC has received 40 de novo applications in the last 18 months, including applications for national trust banks — a charter type it has granted for decades. In many cases it has ruled within 120 days of receiving a complete application. For the first time in five years, a full-service national bank has received final approval and opened its doors: Erebor Bank, N.A., backed by Palmer Luckey, Joe Lonsdale and Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund. A number of top crypto companies have received conditional approval, including Ripple, Circle, Crypto.com and Paxos. Donald Trump-backed decentralised finance platform World Liberty Financial has also applied, hoping to get institutions on board with using its native stablecoin, USD1. The appeal is structural: the charter lets crypto companies hold client assets and handle trade settlement inside a federally regulated framework. For an exchange like Coinbase, whose application remains under review, it would mean serving as a crypto custodian on a federal basis, managing assets for larger entities. Not everyone is happy about it, though. The Independent Community Bankers of America in December urged the OCC to reject Coinbase’s application for a national trust bank charter, arguing the exchange has “demonstrably flawed risk and control functions” and operates under governance that “prevents independent oversight.” And in February, the American Bankers Association — the country’s largest banking lobby — urged the OCC to slow its review of crypto companies’ charter applications. Underneath the procedural objections is a turf war. One of the biggest gripes from traditional banks comes down to stablecoins: companies like Coinbase want to pay users rewards for holding the tokens, which banks say is unfair and could erode their deposit base. The OCC, for its part, says it will continue to encourage the formation of new banks and strengthen the resilience of the federal banking system. This post OCC Says It’s ‘Open for Business’ as Crypto Firms Line Up for Bank Charters first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo. Переглянути повний текст

Bitcoin Magazine Bitcoin Yawns As Fed’s Favorite Inflation Gauge Eases Bitcoin’s price dipped slightly before remaining mostly steady after data on Wednesday showed that U.S. inflation was subdued. The price of the largest cryptocurrency recently stood at $63,863, mostly unmoved over a 24-hour period. Over the past week, Bitcoin is also flat. The core consumer price index, which excludes often-volatile food and energy categories, rose 0.2% from a month earlier and increased 2.5% from a year earlier — the slowest pace since March 2021. Energy and gas prices fell for a second month and grocery prices dropped for the first time since March, according to the print. The news takes the pressure off Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh to raise interest rates in September. Softer inflation data eases the path toward rate cuts, and lower rates reduce the opportunity cost of holding an asset that pays no yield. Bitcoin has typically performed well in a low-interest rate environment. Sticky inflation in the world’s biggest economy has led the Federal Reserve to take a cautious approach with interest rates. Despite Wednesday’s softer inflation data, prices are still higher ​than they were a year ago and wages in the U.S. are not keeping up. Bitcoin has faced increased volatility since the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran in February, with the leading cryptocurrency dropping hard on initial reports of war. Bitcoin is now down nearly 30% year-to-date. Still, in recent weeks, investors have shown a growing appetite for the asset. Spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds in the U.S. have experienced massive inflows — the biggest since April last week — despite negative news for the crypto industry: a massive exploit of the popular Coldcard Bitcoin hardware wallets last month shook crypto investors and a vote on the long-awaited digital asset market structure bill, the Clarity Act, has been delayed. This post Bitcoin Yawns As Fed’s Favorite Inflation Gauge Eases first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo. Переглянути повний текст

Bitcoin Magazine AI Hyperscalers Are Pricing Bitcoin Miners Off the Grid— Here’s Why Its a Massive Win-Win If you’ve scanned headlines over the last year, you’ve likely seen the prevailing market narrative: Bitcoin miners are abandoning their operations and pivoting to AI data centers, signaling a retreat from proof-of-work. To casual observers, this looks like a surrender. Proof that Bitcoin was just a temporary placeholder until a “better” compute workload arrived. However, if you look through the lens of power infrastructure and thermodynamics, that story gets the reality completely backwards. The migration isn’t a sign of bitcoin weakness; but a long-overdue, structurally bullish rebalancing of global energy pricing. Here is the underlying reality that the market completely misunderstood. AI vs. Bitcoin: Why Big Tech and Bitcoin Rigs Need Totally Different Data Centers The misconception stems from assuming all digital workloads are created equal. In reality, Artificial Intelligence and Bitcoin Mining require completely opposite physical and digital environments: An AI training cluster is fragile. If a 100-megawatt facility drops power mid-run, millions of dollars of training state are destroyed. It demands high-grade baseload power, ultra-low latency fiber, and 99.999% continuous uptime. Bitcoin mining, by contrast, is completely indifferent to latency, location, or uptime. ASICs can operate in a remote desert, next to a stranded hydro dam, or on an off-grid flare gas pad. If grid power prices spike, a miner can shut down in seconds without losing data or damaging its hardware. The Power Grid Eviction: How AI Is Pushing Bitcoin to Stranded Off-Grid Energy For the past decade, Bitcoin miners operated on major electrical grids simply because that was where power substations already existed. But using prime, grid-connected baseload electricity to run an interruptible, location-agnostic program was always an economic inefficiency. Now, AI hyperscalers are running into a massive bottleneck: getting new 100+ megawatt grid interconnections approved by utilities can take 3 to 5 years. Hyperscalers are buying up every megawatt of prime, grid-tied power real estate they can find. In doing so, AI is pricing Bitcoin off the main electrical grid. Far from destroying Bitcoin, this eviction restores it to its ideal thermodynamic role. Pushed off the grid, miners are forced to seek out energy that no one else can use: stranded wind in West Texas, flared natural gas in remote oil fields, or off-peak hydro in mountain ranges. AI takes the expensive grid power; Bitcoin captures the world’s wasted energy at the edge, and acts as the buyer of last resort for stranded, wasted, or curtailed energy sources. Eliminating the Miner Sell Pressure The primary structural weakness of pure-play Bitcoin mining companies has always been balance sheet volatility during bear markets. When hash price drops, debt-heavy miners are forced to dump their mined Bitcoin reserves onto the open market just to pay electricity bills and corporate overhead. This forced liquidating creates artificial downward pressure on Bitcoin’s price. The AI pivot fundamentally fixes this balance sheet flaw: Fixed USD Cash Flow: Multi-year hosting leases signed with AI companies generate steady, high-margin dollar income. Eliminating Forced Sales: With corporate overhead and debt service fully covered by AI lease revenue, operators no longer need to liquidate their Bitcoin treasury at market bottoms. The “Mullet” Data Center: Forward-thinking operators run a hybrid model, using high-margin AI workloads on grid-tied power to pay fixed bills, while maintaining flexible Bitcoin operations to monetize off-peak power and balance local grid loads. The Big Tech Paradox: Why AI Hyperscalers Will Eventually Hold Bitcoin The final piece of this puzzle is a paradox that tech hyperscalers are only beginning to confront. Big Tech is spending hundreds of billions of dollars to build an AI infrastructure that makes intelligence and digital content infinitely abundant. But when a digital good becomes infinitely abundant, its marginal cost trends toward zero. How do you protect a multi-trillion-dollar tech balance sheet when your primary product, digital output, is unconstrained? While AI makes digital intelligence infinite, Bitcoin imposes absolute, unalterable digital scarcity (capped strictly at 21 million units). Furthermore, Bitcoin is the only monetary asset whose issuance is directly bound to the same thermodynamic laws of work and energy that run data centers. Consider the staggering opportunity cost already compounding on hyperscaler balance sheets. Data from Bitcoin for Corporations reveals that if Amazon (AMZN) had allocated its $123.03B cash reserve to Bitcoin over a 3-year period instead of cash and short-term Treasuries, its treasury productivity would have surged from 12.21% to 119.55%—a 10x increase in capital efficiency representing over $132 billion in unrealized gains. (Try the Bitcoin Treasury Simulator with any stock ticker) Just as a tech company signs a long-term Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) to lock in electricity costs, holding Bitcoin operates as a PPA for monetary value. By sitting on massive cash stockpiles that yield nominal paper returns while spending billions fighting for physical energy, Big Tech leaves hundreds of billions in value on the table. The shift taking place across data centers isn’t a trade-off where one technology wins and the other loses. It is a market optimization. AI gets the high-speed, grid-connected real estate it needs to build synthetic intelligence. Bitcoin gets pushed further into the wilderness to capture cheap, wasted energy, backed by miners who no longer have to sell their coins to keep the lights on. And as the opportunity cost of holding depreciating fiat cash becomes too massive to ignore, hyperscalers will realize that securing the power grid is only half the battle: the ultimate reserve asset for an empire of infinite compute is physical digital scarcity. Disclaimer: This content was prepared on behalf of Bitcoin For Corporations for informational purposes only. It reflects the author’s own analysis and opinion and should not be relied upon as investment advice. Nothing in this article constitutes an offer, invitation, or solicitation to purchase, sell, or subscribe for any security or financial product. This post AI Hyperscalers Are Pricing Bitcoin Miners Off the Grid— Here’s Why Its a Massive Win-Win first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Nick Ward. Переглянути повний текст

Bitcoin Magazine Regulators To Push Pro-Crypto Initiatives Following Clarity Act Delay The long-awaited crypto Clarity Act has stalled and is due a September vote but regulators are ready to step in to advance crypto rules regardless, according to reports. Bloomberg reported Tuesday that the Securities and Exchange Commission was preparing to roll out this week initiatives to help the crypto industry. The regulator has said that it will hold an open meeting Friday “to create a tailored offering regime for certain investment contracts involving crypto assets.” JUST IN: SEC to unveil 'major crypto plans' as Clarity Act stalls — Bloomberg pic.twitter.com/H1OpsGBJP9 — Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) August 11, 2026 And JD Supra reported Tuesday that Commodities and Futures Trading Commission Chairman Michael Selig was ready to proceed with “rulemaking whether or not the Clarity Act is enacted, with the goal of finalizing rules before the end of the current administration.” The news from the regulators comes as the Clarity Act stalls. Pro-crypto lawmakers were last week hoping the Clarity Act passed before Congress departed for August recess. After a delay, a vote will now go ahead in September. Lawmakers started mulling over a new draft of the bill, which was passed by the House of Representatives last year, in July. The text that tackled the issue of ethics, banning government officials from promoting or making money from crypto. But Democrats still had a problem with it and some were deliberately holding it back, according to Republicans like Cynthia Lummis. Regulators the SEC and CFTC have become remarkably more crypto-friendly since President Trump took the White House. When Gary Gensler was in charge of the SEC under Democratic President Joe Biden, the regulator went after crypto firms like Coinbase and Kraken. Under the Republican Administration, the regulators have scrapped a number of high-profile lawsuits against crypto companies. President Trump campaigned on a ticket to help make the United States digital asset capital of the world, and has passed pro-crypto legislation since taking office. This post Regulators To Push Pro-Crypto Initiatives Following Clarity Act Delay first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo. Переглянути повний текст

Bitcoin Magazine Should Bitcoin Companies Build USD Reserves? Understanding The Truth Strategy’s U.S. dollar reserve has reached $4.65 billion, up from $3.75 billion two weeks earlier. It has also sold almost 7,000 BTC since late June 2026. Many are wondering why a company built around accumulating Bitcoin would choose to hold billions of dollars in fiat. More importantly, should other Bitcoin businesses do the same? Strategy holds cash because it’s in a very unique position Strategy increasingly operates as an issuer of Digital Credit: preferred securities backed economically by an enormous Bitcoin balance sheet. These instruments create fixed dollar dividends obligations. Bitcoin produces no cash flow. Strategy’s software business produces far too little cash to cover its capital structure. Traditional credit analysis compounds the problem. S&P assigned Strategy a B- rating in October 2025, citing its Bitcoin concentration, weak dollar liquidity, and very weak risk-adjusted capital. Under S&P’s methodology, Bitcoin is effectively excluded from the capital base used for this analysis because of its market risk. In our coverage of the S&P rating, we specifically mentioned that a cash reserve, amongst other things, was worth exploring to improve credit ratings. Strategy therefore holds dollars to support its credit issuance. That is literally the whole reason. More dollar liquidity can improve the perceived safety of its preferred securities, broaden investor demand, and potentially lower its cost of capital—in the eyes of credit ratings agencies. The cash still carries an economic cost. Excess capital should produce a return. A conventional company can reinvest it, repurchase shares, or distribute it. A Bitcoin company can buy more Bitcoin. Every dollar held in cash replaces potential positive returns with guaranteed negative real returns. Strategy accepts that cost because its business model depends on issuing more credit. Three unusual conditions exist at once: Bitcoin dominates its balance sheet, rating agencies heavily penalize that Bitcoin exposure, and management intends to keep issuing Digital Credit. All three conditions are pretty unique individually and it is exactly the combination of all three that creates the situation where they need to hold cash. For instance, if Strategy did not want to issue credit, then it wouldn’t need the cash. The economic consequence of cash reserves The math creates some glaring problems with cash reserves. Suppose Strategy issues $100 of preferred stock carrying a 10% annual dividend and holds three years of dividend coverage in cash. It must reserve $30 and can deploy only $70 into Bitcoin. The preferred still costs $10 per year. The $70 invested into Bitcoin must therefore generate: $10 ÷ $70 = 14.29% A stated 10% cost of capital becomes a 14.29% hurdle rate on the capital actually deployed. The reserve raises the required return by 42.9%. Interest earned on the cash reduces the hurdle somewhat, but the structural drag remains. The true hurdle is actually higher, however, because BTC’s volatility means it will heavily underperform the hurdle rate in some years, and these years still require the dividends to be paid (here I am assuming that dividends are not skipped). So aside from the cash drag, there is also a volatility drag imposed by attempting to amplify a volatile asset. This risk must be compensated for by adjusting the hurdle rate higher. The larger the required reserve, the less of every new dollar reaches Bitcoin. If Bitcoin appreciation fails to exceed this higher hurdle over time, common shareholders bear the cost. However, cash is far from useless. Cash creates useful optionality. It can cover dividends and interest during Bitcoin drawdowns, reducing the risk of forced Bitcoin sales. It can also support opportunistic repurchases of securities when they trade below their stated value. Strategy recently did exactly that. In late July, it paid $25 million for $28.89 million of STRC stated value, a 13.47% discount. It later used $108.6 million from Bitcoin sales to retire another 1.15 million STRC shares. Buying preferred stock below par removes more senior claims and future dividend obligations than the cash spent. It is also accretive to Net Bitcoin Per Share. Should Bitcoin companies accumulate cash or bitcoin? For most Bitcoin companies, cash needs should be tied to the operating business rather than to an arbitrary reserve target—consider that Strategy literally does not know how much reserves it needs to get a better rating or for more credit investors to become interested in STRC. A cash-flowing company usually has a good understanding of its cash outlay. It should hold enough dollars to cover payroll, taxes, debt service, vendor payments, near-term capital expenditures, and a reasonable buffer for volatility in operating cash flow. The right reserve depends on the stability of those cash flows. A profitable business with recurring revenue, low fixed costs, and predictable expenses can operate with a smaller buffer. A cyclical or capital-intensive business needs more. The reserve should rise because the business requires liquidity, not because management simply wants a large cash balance. Once operating needs and a prudent liquidity buffer is covered, additional cash needs a specific economic purpose. Otherwise it dilutes returns by generating a large opportunity cost. For any company, excess capital should compete directly against the company’s hurdle rates, repurchasing undervalued shares, reducing expensive liabilities, or investing in projects that can earn a higher return. In conclusion, Strategy is a very, very rare case. Its cash reserve exists only because it is building a large credit issuance business on top of a Bitcoin balance sheet while credit ratings agencies impose significant institutional inertia which treats legitimate, liquid assets as zero value. Companies without that liability structure—which is basically all other companies—have far less reason to accumulate dollars beyond their working capital buffer. Disclaimer: This content was prepared on behalf of Bitcoin For Corporations for informational purposes only. It reflects the author’s own analysis and opinion and should not be relied upon as investment advice. Nothing in this article constitutes an offer, invitation, or solicitation to purchase, sell, or subscribe for any security or financial product. This post Should Bitcoin Companies Build USD Reserves? Understanding The Truth first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Allard Peng. Переглянути повний текст

Bitcoin Magazine CFTC Charges Goliath Ventures With $400M Bitcoin Fraud The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has sued a Florida crypto trading firm and its chief executive, alleging they ran a Ponzi scheme that took in at least $397 million from about 1,600 customers and spent it on fake payouts and personal luxuries. The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, names Goliath Ventures Inc. and its CEO, Christopher Delgado, a Florida resident. According to the CFTC, Delgado and his company solicited money from the public for crypto asset trading, primarily in Bitcoin and other cryptos, then misappropriated all of it. .@CFTC Charges Goliath Ventures Inc. and CEO with $400 Million Fraud Scheme: https://t.co/3bnHedt4rk — CFTC (@CFTC) August 11, 2026 Rather than trading customer funds as promised, the agency alleges, the defendants used incoming money to pay fictitious profits to earlier investors and to bankroll what the complaint describes as Delgado’s lavish lifestyle. The CFTC also says the defendants guaranteed customers the return of their principal, their profits, or both, and sent out account statements showing gains that did not exist. Delgado has already admitted criminal responsibility. In June, in a parallel case brought by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Florida, he pleaded guilty to federal charges tied to the fraud. The Securities and Exchange Commission filed its own civil action against Delgado and Goliath on Tuesday, the same day as the CFTC complaint. CFTC Chairman Michael S. Selig framed the case as part of a broader posture toward digital asset markets, saying the agency would keep policing fraud and manipulation while it develops clearer rules so legitimate firms can build domestically. David I. Miller, the agency’s director of enforcement, said the division remains what he called an important cop on the beat on digital commodity fraud. The CFTC is seeking restitution for customers, disgorgement of ill-gotten gains, civil monetary penalties, trading and registration bans, and a permanent injunction barring further violations of the Commodity Exchange Act and the agency’s regulations. The allegations in the civil complaint remain unproven. Counsel for Delgado and Goliath Ventures was not identified in the CFTC’s announcement. Restitution orders in cases like this one are frequently difficult to collect. The agency routinely notes that wrongdoers may not have enough remaining assets to repay what victims lost. This post CFTC Charges Goliath Ventures With $400M Bitcoin Fraud first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo. Переглянути повний текст