Bitcoin

Bitcoin Magazine Coinbase Settles FOIA Fight With the SEC Over Gensler’s Vanished Texts Coinbase has settled its Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Securities and Exchange Commission, closing a years-long fight that came to rest on a batch of text messages the agency admits it destroyed. Chief legal officer Paul Grewal disclosed the deal in a Wall Street Journal op-ed on Wednesday. Under the terms, Grewal wrote, the SEC will pay $150,000 and repair its record-retention policies. The story behind the settlement is what gives it weight. Coinbase filed FOIA requests in 2023 for records that might show how the SEC decided to treat crypto as securities, the same question at the center of the enforcement suit the agency brought against the company that June. Rather than hand over the files, the SEC denied the requests, and the case dragged into court. The SEC’s own inspector general found that close to a year of former Chair Gary Gensler’s text messages, from October 2022 to September 2023, had been wiped after the agency reset his phone before a backup was made. That window covered the collapse of FTX and the agency’s hardest push against crypto exchanges. The watchdog found that 38% of the recovered texts touched agency business, including a May 2023 exchange on the timing of enforcement against trading platforms. SEC should play by the same rules: Coinbase Grewal built his case on a point that needs no legal training to feel. Under Gensler, the SEC had levied more than $1 billion in fines on financial firms for losing employee messages, and had said “everybody should play by the same rules.” Yet it lost its own chair’s texts during the most consequential stretch in crypto’s short history. “The Gensler SEC destroyed documents they were required to preserve and produce,” Grewal wrote when the report landed. “We now have proof from the SEC’s own Inspector General.” For Coinbase, the value was never the documents alone. The company had cast its transparency suits, including a challenge to the SEC and FDIC over pressure on crypto’s banking access, as proof that regulators leaned on the industry without clear rules. The SEC’s own case against Coinbase fell away in early 2025 under a new administration and a new chair. The settlement doubles as a personal coda. Grewal, the lawyer who steered Coinbase through years of combat with the SEC, plans to leave the company at the end of July. He closes this chapter with a small check, a promise of better filing habits, and a story the industry will carry for a long time: that the recordkeeping enforcer could not keep its own records. This post Coinbase Settles FOIA Fight With the SEC Over Gensler’s Vanished Texts first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman. Переглянути повний текст

Bitcoin Magazine VanEck: Bitcoin’s Summer Lull Masks a Tightening Supply Base Bitcoin spent the past month in a holding pattern around $63,700, and VanEck’s latest Bitcoin ChainCheck reads the setup as a cautious pause rather than a bottom, with derivatives flashing fear, miner economics near multi-year lows, and long-term holders tightening their grip. The mid-July report frames the moment as consolidation, not recovery. Bitcoin closed July 12 at $63,742, flat against a month earlier yet 33% off its six-month high and 14% below its 200-day moving average near a bitcoin price of $74,000. The pause caps two monthly declines, a 3.6% dip in May and a 20.5% drop in June. Trading thinned into the summer. Spot volume averaged about $5.1 billion a day over the 30-day window, down near 29% from the post-2019 norm, a softness the firm notes has marked June through August in each of the past six years. Realized volatility fell to 30.4% on an annualized basis, under the trailing-year 43% level and well beneath the long-run average near 81%. Derivatives flash fear, not panic VanEck reads the derivatives complex as defensive. The one-month put/call implied volatility skew widened to +11.4 percentage points, an 83rd-percentile mark since 2021, and traders appear content to fund put purchases with the sale of calls. The firm reads that as fear rather than capitulation. Total options premium eased 23% to $613.6 million, and the put/call premium ratio climbed to 1.49, against an average near 0.71. Perpetual-futures funding tells a similar story. The rate sits near +4.5% on a 30-day average, about half the long-run +8.4%, a sign that positioning stays far from bullish after a spring stretch in which traders were paid to hold shorts. VanEck maps both signals to below-average forward returns across the 30-to-180-day window. It flags two markers of a true bottom that have not arrived: a skew past +15 points, or funding that flips negative. Until one appears, the firm sees near-term downside pressure over a quick rebound. VanEck has pointed to negative funding as a bullish tell in past notes. Bitcoin ETP outflows and shaken treasury confidence Demand ran negative on the month, a drop the report ties to exchange-traded product outflows. U.S. spot ETPs shed 40,010 BTC, worth about $2.40 billion, while corporate treasuries added 2,343 BTC and miners kept 1,204 BTC. Exchange balances rose to fill the gap. The report also charts shaken confidence among digital asset treasuries after Strategy used $1.38 billion to retire convertible notes, a move that left the company with a $900 million reserve and pushed it to its first bitcoin sales since 2022. Those sales, VanEck writes, fed the negative flows across the treasury cohort. The on-chain picture cuts the other way. The share of bitcoin held longer than a year reached 60.8% of supply, a figure that has climbed through the price drop from 59.1% six months earlier. Another 17.7% of supply sits in the six-to-twelve-month band, coins that graduate into the long-term bucket if they stay put. VanEck projects the long-term share reaches about 62% in three months and nears 63% in six. Regimes with a long-term share above 60% and rising have lined up with above-average returns across horizons in the firm’s tests, an echo of its prior finding that whales kept holding through the selloff. Selling, the report finds, concentrates in the middle of the age curve, while the youngest and oldest coins stay still. Profitability metrics run cold, with net unrealized profit at the 17th percentile and 53% of supply in profit against a four-year average of 76%. Miner economics near multi-year lows Miner economics form the report’s grimmest section. Network hash rate held near record highs around 930 EH/s as price fell, a mix that pushed implied hashprice to about $30.6 per petahash per second per day, near multi-year lows. Daily miner revenue averaged $28.5 million, down 39.5% year over year, a level that puts lower-efficiency rigs at or below breakeven. Miner-held bitcoin stayed near 1.785 million, a sign of steady sales of new coins over capitulation. The pivot to artificial-intelligence hosting runs through the section. VanEck highlights TeraWulf’s 20-year, $19 billion lease with Anthropic and CleanSpark’s $6.6 billion deal as top unlevered yields, part of a build-out the firm has tied to a $50 billion near-term funding gap. Miner equities have dropped about 42% from 52-week highs on higher rates, a New York pause on data-center construction, and doubt over AI returns. The firm keeps its conviction, and points to richer contract terms, new AI deals, and hyperscaler spending as reasons the de-rating overstates the risk. It also notes bitcoin correlation across the group has stepped down, a sign the market prices the names on their own merits. That optimism is not universal across the market; some analysts have argued an AI pivot alone will not rescue struggling miners. VanEck sees a market that leans toward soft returns over the near term, held back by cautious derivatives and weak miner cash flow, yet supported by a supply base that keeps tightening. For patient holders, the firm writes, the structural picture stays constructive. This post VanEck: Bitcoin’s Summer Lull Masks a Tightening Supply Base first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman. Переглянути повний текст

Bitcoin Magazine Satsuma Shareholders Approve Bitcoin Liquidation, London Delisting Satsuma shareholders have voted to unwind the company’s bitcoin treasury and pull its shares off the London Stock Exchange. At a general meeting on July 20, holders passed two special resolutions: one to return substantially all of Satsuma’s capital to shareholders, the other to cancel the company’s listing on the FCA’s Official List. The capital return resolution carried 90.63% support, with 7,869,182,042 votes in favor against 813,703,719 opposed. The delisting resolution passed with near-identical margins, 90.59% in favor. The board will now close out Satsuma’s trading operations and sell the company’s remaining bitcoin, roughly 668 BTC. The stock had traded as Satsuma Technology PLC (LSE: SATS), one of the UK’s bitcoin treasury vehicles, second in size only to The Smarter Web Company. A timetable set out in the June 24 shareholder circular governs the wind-down. The record time for entitlement to B Shares falls at 6 p.m. on August 3, the deadline for warrant holders to exercise their warrants if they want the resulting ordinary shares included in the capital return. Once the total number of qualifying shares is fixed, Satsuma will petition the UK High Court to confirm the return of capital. A directions hearing is set for August 13, with a confirmation hearing to follow on September 8. Under that schedule, the listing cancellation lands on September 14, and payments and CREST transfers go out by September 28. Satsuma’s bitcoin struggles The vote caps a run of trouble for a company that built its identity around holding bitcoin on a public balance sheet. Satsuma bought most of its coins at an average price above $113,000. With bitcoin trading below $68,000 in July, the treasury sat on steep unrealized losses, and Satsuma’s shares fell more than 99% from their June 2025 peak near £14 to around 21 pence, a valuation below the worth of its own bitcoin holdings. The company had already begun trimming its position under liquidity pressure. In December 2025, the company sold 579 of its 1,199 bitcoin for roughly £40 million, proceeds it used to retire £78 million in convertible loan notes that matured on December 31. That sale left the company with 620 BTC and about £90 million in cash. By April, Pantera Capital, which held a 6% to 7% stake, was publicly pushing Satsuma’s board to sell its remaining bitcoin and hand the cash back to shareholders rather than persist as a listed treasury company. That pressure, combined with a shareholder requisition from holders representing more than 20% of Satsuma’s issued capital, forced Wednesday’s vote. The board itself split on the outcome. Four of six directors recommended shareholders reject the wind-down, arguing it would dismantle a listed bitcoin vehicle and close off the company’s existing strategy. Two directors backed the proposal, citing shareholder demand and the execution risk of continuing as a going concern. Satsuma’s exit adds to a wave of distress among smaller bitcoin treasury companies as coin prices sit well below the levels at which many of them accumulated their holdings, leaving boards to choose between raising fresh capital or returning what remains to shareholders. This post Satsuma Shareholders Approve Bitcoin Liquidation, London Delisting first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman. Переглянути повний текст

Bitcoin Magazine Bitcoin is NOT Changed by Proof Of Node You might have heard about BIP-110; here’s why this fork is not just bad for Bitcoin, but it is built on a misunderstanding of what a Bitcoin node is and what it is good for. As well as why, because of this misunderstanding, BIP-110 will fail. This article is a Take. Opinions expressed are entirely the author’s and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine. BIP-110 is a Bitcoin Improvement Proposal titled as a Reduced Data Temporary Softfork. The BIP proposes a consensus change to Bitcoin, which attempts to limit the types and amounts of arbitrary data that can be added to consensus-valid transactions by limiting a wide range of Bitcoin’s scripting capabilities. BIP-110 is led by a pseudonymous developer known as Dathon Ohm and is widely supported by the Knots community, an alternative implementation of Bitcoin led by one of Bitcoin Core’s earliest contributors, Luke Dashjr and its supporters. The BIP-110 consensus change is headed towards a mandatory signaling period in the coming weeks and thus a potential fork with the main consensus rules as implemented in Bitcoin Core. The proposal needs to gain a great deal of support from miners within the coming weeks to change Bitcoin consensus. As of the time of writing, miner signaling for BIP-110 stands at less than one percent. The Knots community, widely made up of Bitcoiners running nodes on machines like Start9 and Umbrel, has rallied around Knots in protest of a series of development decisions made by Bitcoin Core, the primary open source development community and reference implementation of Bitcoin. While a majority of senior Bitcoin developers are either opposed or apathetic to the changes proposed by BIP-110, the movement has gained enough steam to become an ongoing topic of discussion on social media. Supporters of BIP-110 believe that by running Bitcoin full nodes that signal for the consensus change, they alone can change Bitcoin. Here are the main concepts being debated, the biggest misconceptions about Bitcoin consensus, what a Bitcoin node is, and why BIP-110 is almost certain to fail. The Power and Limits of a Bitcoin Node Many of the disagreements and misconceptions in this recent cultural conflict within Bitcoin revolve around the idea of a Bitcoin full node. Influencers like Knut Svanholm, author and podcaster, have elevated the role of the full node to heights perhaps too close to the sun. Knut recently tweeted: “Every person on Earth is a node in the Bitcoin network. Most to a minuscule extent, of course, but every node is first and foremost a person, not a machine. Which tools we use to interact with the network (and, by extension, to which extent they influence the network) is entirely dependent on the choices we make.” Statements of this sort are poetically beautiful, philosophically grand, romantic even, but nevertheless technically incoherent and fundamentally meaningless. Knut’s tweet attempts to redefine what a ‘Bitcoin node’ means and fails at it, instead diluting the value of the term entirely. He might as well have said that every atom in the universe is a Bitcoin node, since apparently to him the term is all-encompassing. Knut, though well-intentioned, is wrong. A Bitcoin node is something very specific. It is a full copy of all of Bitcoin’s transaction history, block headers and transaction-related data. Its purpose is very specific: to let users verify the integrity of Bitcoin’s supply and transaction history in relation to Bitcoin’s consensus rules. Bitcoin nodes grant users a variety of benefits, such as privacy. Third-party wallet providers query their copy of the Bitcoin blockchain for the user’s balance and serve it back to the user via the wallet app. Most mobile wallets function this way, with users asking a third-party server for their balances; some, very few, can connect to a user-run local Bitcoin node, in which case the user’s public addresses and balances are not shared with any third-party wallet company. Another benefit Bitcoin nodes grant users is the ability to check whether they are in consensus with the rest of the network, staying in sync. If the user mines Bitcoin or contributes any significant amount of hashing power to Bitcoin’s proof-of-work network, the node also provides the opportunity to assemble a block, choosing which transactions go into it. This is only possible if the user manages to mine a Bitcoin block, which is quite an achievement today, given the difficulty and steep competition. Even new kinds of mining pools like Ocean, which attempt to decentralize block template production, letting retail miners have more influence over which transactions enter the chain, still need enough hashing power to win the proof-of-work race, resulting in sporadic blocks being mined and thus limited influence over the blockchain. Bitcoin nodes also relay transactions across the network, with tens of thousands of them communicating via a flood network; this results in a censorship-resistant system where a small number of nodes can get controversial transactions to miners, bypassing any kind of filters, as demonstrated by Peter Todd’s relay libre. Thus, Bitcoin nodes can not easily filter which transactions enter the blockchain. Even a large majority of Bitcoin nodes alone can not, however, change Bitcoin consensus. Not without having a large amount of economic activity entering the Bitcoin network through them, as exchanges do on behalf of millions of users. Not without having the protocol and application developer community behind them. Not without having the investor community behind them. Bitcoin is not a node democracy, contrary to popular memes today. Bitcoin nodes do not grant you ‘citizenship’ in the ‘Bitcoin nation’. Satoshi Nakamoto was quite clear about this in the Bitcoin white paper. Bitcoin’s ultimate security and governance structure is: one CPU cycle, one vote, not one Bitcoin node, one vote. And miners, who run the CPU cycles over Bitcoin’s proof-of-work, are very sensitive to investor sentiment and the broader developer community, resulting in a distributed global protocol for money that is very difficult to change. Bitcoin nodes ultimately let you know if you are connected to the network with the most accumulated proof-of-work and that its consensus rules are being followed, but a node alone does not let you change the consensus rules. Users who change the consensus rules of their Bitcoin node are, by definition, no longer running Bitcoin. As a result, changing Bitcoin consensus as a node runner is very difficult, and that’s a feature, not a bug. Bitcoin is money for enemies. History and Bitcoin Consensus Games Deep work has been done, trying to understand Bitcoin consensus, its various pillars and interest groups. Ren Crypto Fish, Steve Lee and Lyn Alden identified six of them in BCAP, an open-source effort to analyze Bitcoin consensus and risks in protocol upgrades. BCAP identified stakeholders such as Economic Nodes, Investors, Media Influencers, Miners and Protocol Developers, and Users and Application Developers Historically, in the case of a consensus crisis, it is true that Bitcoin nodes have been used to signal support for one version of Bitcoin over another. Fork events like 2017’s Bitcoin Cash fork are often cited as examples of economic nodes winning against opposition by miners. 2017’s legendary User Activated Soft Fork (UASF) faced major opposition in theory; a large majority of mining pools and their corresponding collective hashrate supported the Segwit2x version of Bitcoin, with many exchanges and corporations having signed the infamous New York Agreement. The Bitcoin node-supported soft fork won nonetheless, bluffing the Segwit2x version from a contested blockchain altogether. But that’s the thing: while the Bitcoin nodes technically won, they did so by having massive support from protocol developers, investors and media influencers: these nodes really had economic weight and rough consensus. BIP-110, on the other hand, does not have the protocol developers, nor does it have enough investors behind it. Michael Saylor has come out against it, with many industry leaders also openly opposing it or staying out of the matter entirely. In fact, during the Bitcoin Cash fork, the limits of retail Bitcoin nodes were clearly understood. A Bitcoin node run by an exchange is orders of magnitude more influential than that of a retail user, as it introduces large amounts of new transactions to the Bitcoin network. The Bitcoin node of a major mining pool is far more influential than that of a hobbyist solo miner, as it more often assembles blocks and chooses which transactions settle to the blockchain. Most Bitcoiners outside of exchanges use mobile wallets to access their Bitcoin. Such users and investors can ‘vote’ with their money, so to speak, by moving their bitcoins and economic activity elsewhere, be it to a wallet that supports their vision of Bitcoin, or their own full node. But while users remain on mobile wallets that talk to third-party nodes, those users have little individual influence over Bitcoin consensus. And the vast majority of mobile wallets are using a Bitcoin core-compatible back end. The same goes for exchanges; their users effectively delegate consensus decisions to the exchange operators. In some cases, exchanges have put consensus issues to a user vote, weighed by their total holdings, returning that decision to end users weighed by capital; we may see this happen again with BIP-110. Votes of the sort have started happening with Foundry today. One of the biggest Bitcoin mining pools in the world, Foundry, recently emailed its miners informing them that they can vote on the proposal with their hashrate. A high enough support could result in Foundry signaling for BIP-110, though that remains unlikely. Users who do not vote will effectively signal against BIP-110, defending the status quo. Thus apathy about the topic of BIP-110 would be a win for Bitcoin Core by default. BIP-110 supporters need to culturally win over a majority of the Foundry hash rate, who then must act to vote against the Bitcoin Core developer consensus, the most popular Bitcoin implementation and best supported codebase. Today, miners are not signaling support for BIP-110 in any significant way. In fact, according to some data, this is one of the least supported soft fork attempts by miner signaling in Bitcoin’s history. Less than one percent of the blocks mined in the current difficulty adjustment period are signaling for BIP110. Concluding Thoughts BIP-110 has so far failed to gain consensus across major interest groups within Bitcoin; neither developers, investors, miners, nor large economic nodes support the consensus change. The result is likely to be a chain split in the coming weeks, which could have significant consequences for lightning wallets running on BIP-110-compliant nodes, ultimately resulting in a new, yet small blockchain that would probably have to change the proof-of-work used to stay alive. This post Bitcoin is NOT Changed by Proof Of Node first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Juan Galt. Переглянути повний текст

Bitcoin Magazine Bitcoin Maxi Jack Dorsey Unveils New Open Source Group Chat App Tech entrepreneur Jack Dorsey has announced a new group chat platform aimed at reducing teams’ reliance on platforms like Slack, in the Bitcoin maxi’s latest push for decentralization. The Block co-founder wrote Tuesday on X that the new app, named Buzz, was “for teams of people and agents of all sizes” and “model-agnostic, decentralized, self-sovereign, and open source.” Described as “A new native workspace for human and agent teams” on its website, Buzz users can “chat with teammates and specialized agents in one shared space, then move straight into planning, project management, coding, and PRs.” A statement from parent company Block said that the new app was built on decentralized social networking Nostr protocol. “The interface will feel familiar to anyone who’s used a modern team communication tool,” Block added. “Every company is going to need a place where humans and agents work together,” Bradley Axen, head of AI capabilities at Block, said. “The question is whether that place is proprietary or open. We built Buzz because we believe it should be open.” Decentralize everything Dorsey, whose firm Block owns companies Square and Cash App, has long been pushing for decentralized solutions: primarily with Bitcoin. The billionaire founder of Twitter left the social media company to focus his efforts on payments and Bitcoin adoption in 2021, saying he wants the cryptocurrency to be the global currency and “everyday money.” He has also described Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoin white paper as “poetry.” Cash App allows users to send and receive and buy and sell Bitcoin and point-of-sale terminals Square accept the orange coin via the Lightning Network. Block also last year debuted a Bitcoin mining rig with swappable parts, with the idea that miners could cut costs on repairing and replacing the devices. This post Bitcoin Maxi Jack Dorsey Unveils New Open Source Group Chat App first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo. Переглянути повний текст

Bitcoin Magazine Coinbase Wants To Be Canada’s ‘Everything Exchange’ — With Crypto, Stocks, and Prediction Markets Crypto giant Coinbase is making its “everything exchange” push in Canada. Eric Richmond, country director and CEO of Coinbase Canada, told BNN Bloomberg in a Tuesday interview that the move would allow Canadians to not only buy crypto but also trade tokenized stocks and put money on prediction markets. “Coinbase believes we have a new technology here that can really help with that, and that’s blockchain and the technology that underpins crypto today,” Richmond said in the interview. “How do we create that one place for Canadians to have their entire financial experience in one app that’s underpinned by this technology that makes things frictionless, seamless, and 24/7?” He added: “I think people are starting to realize the fact that banks close at 4 p.m., or the markets close at 4 p.m., or that wires can take days to settle, or that access for high-net-worth individuals to certain products are gated for just those high-net-worth individuals.” Coinbase in the U.S. allows Americans to place bets and trade stocks. The company started as a place allowing people to buy and sell Bitcoin but has since offered hundreds of digital coins. Richmond added that the company was working with Canadian regulators to make the launch. Tokenized stocks are versions of equities that trade on the technology underpinning Bitcoin: the blockchain. Proponents like Coinbase argue that by tokenizing everything, traders will be able to make transactions around the clock, 24-7. A number of crypto exchanges are also making the push to branch out from crypto: Kraken, for example, has also started allowing users to trade stocks and has announced plans for a prediction market platform. Coinbase’s big moves Coinbase has made some bigger moves in recent years, other than just working as a crypto exchange. America’s biggest bank, JPMorgan Chase, last year signed a deal with the company to allow customers to directly link their bank accounts to the platform. Coinbase also provides custody services — including to Wall Street giants like BlackRock — and has a contract with the US government to hold onto seized crypto. The company also in April received conditional approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency in the U.S. for a national trust banking charter, essentially paving the way for it to serve as a crypto custodian on a federal basis, managing assets for larger entities. The company has clashed with banking executives recently over stablecoin rewards: the exchange wants its yield-bearing stablecoin products to continue, which in turn could prove to be a bigger boon in the long-run for the business. This post Coinbase Wants To Be Canada’s ‘Everything Exchange’ — With Crypto, Stocks, and Prediction Markets first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo. Переглянути повний текст

Bitcoin Magazine White House Presses Senate Democrats To Accept Trump Ethics Deal On Clarity Act The White House is pushing Senate Democrats to accept a conflict-of-interest agreement that President Donald Trump worked out with Republicans, a move that negotiators hope will settle the last major dispute in the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act. A White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told CoinDesk that Trump “has agreed to the most comprehensive and wide-ranging ethics provision in history.” No details have emerged on what crypto restrictions Trump has consented to, and Democrats have been kept out of the loop on the provision. The ethics section would restrict senior government officials from personal business ties to the crypto industry, including Trump, whose family holdings have generated more than $2 billion in new wealth since he returned to office, according to Reuters. Release of the final draft has stalled for several days as negotiators work through the language. Democratic lawmakers have not received a briefing on the concession, though Republicans and the crypto industry have begun a sales campaign that casts Democrats as the obstacle. “If Senate Democrats block this historic legislation after the administration has bent over backward to accommodate their concerns, stakeholders should make no mistake: It is the Democrats who are blocking this legislation because they were never serious about a legislative outcome,” the White House official said. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has added his voice to the push, saying that lawmakers stood at the “1-yard line” on the Clarity Act and urging Congress to pass the bill before the recess. Clarity Act updates coming out of the White House Democratic negotiators such as Senators Kirsten Gillibrand, Ruben Gallego and Angela Alsobrooks have not seen details of the agreement with Trump, who met with Republican senators at the White House last week. Many of the Democrats have drawn a line that the ethics provision needs to be strong. Trump has pressed the Senate to pass the Clarity Act, and his disclosure that he made more than $1 billion from crypto in 2025 has given critics fresh ammunition. The Clarity Act’s text cleared the Senate Banking Committee in a 15-9 vote, with Gallego and Alsobrooks joining Republicans to advance it. Both said in May they would not back the final passage without an ethics provision. During the committee markup, an amendment from Senator Chris Van Hollen to bar the president, vice president and members of Congress from crypto business ties failed 11-13. The industry expects full circulation of the legislative text this week, according to CoinDesk. The Senate has fewer than three weeks to finish the bill and clear a floor vote before Majority Leader John Thune’s August 7 deadline, when lawmakers break for their reelection campaigns and enter a narrow stretch to finish the bill. Galaxy Research puts the odds of passage at 50-50. This post White House Presses Senate Democrats To Accept Trump Ethics Deal On Clarity Act first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman. Переглянути повний текст

Bitcoin Magazine Hyperscale Data Buys More Bitcoin, Bridging Holdings to Over $72 million Hyperscale Data, Inc. has announced that it’s upped its Bitcoin holdings to over 1,000 digital coins. The New York Stock Exchange-listed company said Tuesday that it had over 1,087.4527 BTC as of Sunday — or $72.4 million based on today’s prices. The holdings are split across the company’s wholly owned subsidiaries, Sentinum, Inc. and Ault Capital Group, Inc. (ACG). During the week ended July 19, ACG added roughly 51.5 bitcoin through open-market purchases. The latest disclosure marks a significant acceleration in Hyperscale Data’s accumulation strategy. The AI data center company held just 627.9 BTC in late March 2026 — meaning it has nearly doubled its position, adding about 460 BTC in under four months. The buildout is part of the company’s goal of establishing a $100 million digital asset treasury and reaching full parity between its Bitcoin holdings and market capitalization. With a market cap of roughly $63 million, that threshold has now been crossed — the company’s bitcoin alone is worth more than the company itself, before counting cash or its operating businesses. Executive Chairman Milton “Todd” Ault III leaned into that disconnect, stating, “We now hold more than $70 million in Bitcoin.” He argued the market is assigning zero value to the company’s cash, its Michigan data center, and its portfolio of operating businesses, and said Hyperscale will keep executing while highlighting the widening gap between its market capitalization and underlying value. At the time of writing, GPUS is trading near $0.13 a share. Hyperscale is following the Bitcoin treasury strategy playbook Strategy Inc. (MSTR) has become the flagship case study in the evolution of Bitcoin treasury strategies in the corporate world. Under the leadership of Michael Saylor, Strategy shifted from a traditional software business to buying Bitcoin and allowing investors to get exposure to the asset via its shares which trade on the Nasdaq. This model has inspired other corporations like Hyperscale Data to add the leading cryptocurrency to their treasuries — though Hyperscale’s case is unusual in that its holdings now exceed its entire market cap, a situation more commonly seen in deeply discounted treasury plays. This post Hyperscale Data Buys More Bitcoin, Bridging Holdings to Over $72 million first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo. Переглянути повний текст

Bitcoin Magazine U.S. Senator: Clarity Act is ‘Almost There,’ Treasury Secretary Puts It at the ‘1-Yard Line’ Senator Kevin Cramer said the Senate has moved close to a deal on the Clarity Act, the crypto market-structure bill, with a fresh set of amendments on ethics and enforcement before Democrats for review. The North Dakota Republican, a member of the Senate Banking Committee, told Fox Business on Tuesday that the bill grows “clearer” as “each issue gets dealt with,” and that “we’re almost there.” He said the largest holdup is Democrats reading the new amendments, “some of them relevant to the ethics piece.” The central compromise Cramer described concerns who enforces the law. He said there appears to be “some agreement that the Department of Justice would be the prevailing enforcer,” a structure he backed as the source of uniform rules. Democrats, he said, had preferred a role for state attorneys general, an approach he argued would create “too disparate a situation” for the clarity the industry seeks. Ethics fight over President Trump That enforcement question sits at the heart of a months-long ethics fight over President Trump’s crypto ventures. Senator Cynthia Lummis, who chairs the Banking Committee’s digital assets subcommittee, had floated language that would let state attorneys general sue exchanges that list tokens issued by public officials, a provision aimed at holdings tied to the president and his family. Democrats on the committee have pressed for enforceable conflict-of-interest rules, and an amendment to bar the president, vice president, and members of Congress from crypto business ties failed on a party-line vote during the committee markup. Trump has met with senators over the ethics dispute as the White House and negotiators work toward terms. The shift Cramer outlined would route that enforcement to federal prosecutors rather than to fifty separate state offices, a change that narrows the paths available to challenge a listed token but centralizes the decision to act in the Justice Department. Cramer said the Senate has “a couple more weeks” before the August recess, and echoed Lummis in the push for passage before the break. “We have to get this done,” he said about the Clarity Act. Lummis, in an interview last week, said the bill was “ready” and that it was “very important” to move it across the finish line before the recess, so that markets could see “the stability that will be provided to them if they remain on shore in the United States.” Cramer flagged one more sticking point beyond enforcement: the definition of securities intermediaries. “The industry doesn’t like that,” he said, and noted a preference for a definition built around decentralization. He cast the remaining gaps as matters of “small details.” Lots of clarity about the Clarity Act The Clarity Act would split oversight of digital assets between the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, set disclosure rules for certain tokens, and extend anti-money-laundering and sanctions rules to crypto exchanges. The House passed its version a year ago, and the measure has waited in the Senate since. The Senate Banking Committee advanced its version of the Clarity Act in a 15-9 vote this spring, with two Democrats crossing over. The timeline is tight. Majority Leader John Thune has aimed to bring the bill to the floor before the work period ends in early August, and House members have urged the Senate to act within the window. The CFTC chair called the bill “so close”, while Galaxy Research cut its passage odds to 50-50 as the clock ran down. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessen: Clarity Act on ‘1-yard line’ Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent added his voice to the push, telling Bloomberg that lawmakers stood at the “1-yard line” on the Clarity Act and urging Congress to pass the bill before the recess. The bill competes for floor time with a continuing resolution to avert a government shutdown at the end of September and a reconciliation package, priorities Cramer ranked ahead of other items in the same interview. President Trump has pressed the chamber to pass the crypto measure, a message he has paired with warnings about competition from China. For all the optimism, Cramer stopped short of a firm date. “I don’t know that we get to it this week,” he said, a caveat that leaves the bill’s fate to the narrow stretch of Senate days before lawmakers leave Washington. This post U.S. Senator: Clarity Act is ‘Almost There,’ Treasury Secretary Puts It at the ‘1-Yard Line’ first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman. Переглянути повний текст

Bitcoin Magazine Bitcoin Price Closes in on $67,000, Lifting Strategy and Other Crypto Stocks Bitcoin’s price jumped Tuesday to its highest in over one month, bringing crypto stocks like Bitcoin treasury’s Strategy with it. The Bitcoin price was recently priced at $66,886, up nearly 3% in 24 hours. Over the past seven days, the leading cryptocurrency has risen by close to 6%. Its rise comes as stocks also trade higher — despite tensions in the Middle East flaring up again. Nasdaq-listed Strategy (MSTR), formerly MicroStrategy, also jumped above $100 per share on Tuesday. The price jump comes even as the Bitcoin juggernaut on Monday revealed it did not make its usual crypto buy, instead reporting the sale of a $225 million in MSTR shares, which it used for its dollar reserve. Strategy stock plunged with the price of Bitcoin last year, and is currently well below its November 2024 peak of $473.83. The software company, which started buying Bitcoin in 2020 as an inflation hedge, holds at 843,775 BTC, a position worth around $56.2 billion at current prices. Other Nasdaq-listed crypto stocks, including America’s biggest crypto exchange, Coinbase (COIN) and Bitcoin miner Marathon Digital (MARA), also surged on Tuesday. COIN at the time of writing was up 11% and MARA was trading over 6% higher. Middle East flare up Bitcoin’s price has taken a hit so far in 2026, and is currently down nearly 24% year-to-date. Since the leading crypto notched a new record of $126,080 in October, it has shed close to 50% of its value. The asset first got hit hard in October when the biggest crash in the history of the industry liquidated more than $19 billion in crypto bets. Then, crypto markets got hit harder after the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran in February, driving oil prices higher and deepening uncertainty around global inflation. Investors are now not expecting the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates anytime soon. More inflation comes less chance of interest rate cuts, which restricts the liquidity that Bitcoin needs to surge. Iran and the U.S. continue to fight, ending a truce, but Bitcoin seems immune to the latest flare up. As of July 20–21, the U.S. carried out its 10th straight night of strikes on Iranian military targets, with Trump vowing retaliation for three American service members killed and the Pentagon reporting nearly 100 U.S. troops injured over two weeks. This post Bitcoin Price Closes in on $67,000, Lifting Strategy and Other Crypto Stocks first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo. Переглянути повний текст

Bitcoin Magazine U.S. Treasury Freezes $130 Million Iran-Linked IRGC Crypto Wallet, Tracks Ayatollah’s Assets Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Fox News on Tuesday that the United States froze a crypto wallet linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps worth $130 million, part of a campaign to track the assets of Iran’s supreme leader around the world. “We are tracking these accounts all over the world,” Bessent said, in remarks that framed the Treasury work as one prong of an “economic fury” push against Tehran alongside a blockade. “We froze a crypto wallet linked to the IRGC the other day.” He said investigators had “found the money man for the Ayatollah” and were tracing the holdings of Ali Khamenei, including properties he valued at more than $100 million. Bessent said the Treasury hopes to publish the addresses of those properties. He cast the seizures as a transfer of value to the American people and a squeeze on the regime. Iran’s economy in ‘freefall’ Bessent also described a collapse in Iran’s economy. He said the rial sits at an all-time low against the dollar and called it in “freefall,” with an inflation rate he put “upwards of 180%.” His account tracks the rial slide that has pushed some Iranians toward bitcoin. The comments extend a Treasury campaign that has run through the war between Iran, Israel, and the United States. The department has sanctioned Iran’s largest crypto exchange and said the U.S. has seized $1 billion of Iran’s crypto. Blockchain analysts have tied billions in on-chain flows to IRGC-linked wallets, with such wallets receiving more than $3 billion in 2025, a rise from over $2 billion the year before. In a separate move, the stablecoin issuer Tether froze $344 million in USDT across two blockchain addresses tied to the IRGC, one of the largest single actions in the sequence. Bitcoin’s design draws both sides of the fight. It settles without a correspondent bank or a reserve-currency issuer, a trait that lets Iran monetize oil access outside the dollar system and lets Treasury trace and freeze value on a public ledger. The conflict has reshaped how crypto figures into the region. Since U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran began, bitcoin use inside the country has surged as residents moved value out of the banking system. Tehran, for its part, reportedly moved to accept bitcoin from tankers seeking passage through the Strait of Hormuz, a $1-per-barrel toll that turns its grip on the chokepoint into settlement revenue. The strait carries a fifth of the world’s oil. The war has repriced bitcoin as well. Treasury has not published documentation of the $130 million wallet freeze or the property addresses Bessent referenced. The inflation and currency figures came from his remarks rather than from Iranian data. This post U.S. Treasury Freezes $130 Million Iran-Linked IRGC Crypto Wallet, Tracks Ayatollah’s Assets first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman. Переглянути повний текст

Bitcoin Magazine Russia Passes Landmark Crypto Law, Setting State-Run Rails for Sanctioned Trade Russia’s State Duma passed a law on Tuesday that regulates the circulation of crypto and digital rights for the first time, a framework that sets rules for crypto exchanges, digital depositories, and investors while it opens a state-supervised channel for cross-border trade. Lawmakers cleared bill No. 1194918-8, “On Digital Currency and Digital Rights,” in its second and third readings, the final stage in the chamber, according to semi-official Russian news agency Tass. The measure heads to the Federation Council and to President Vladimir Putin for a signature, a process expected to take two more weeks before the law takes effect. It caps a sweeping regulatory push that has moved through parliament across the year. Legalization or taxation? The law does not turn bitcoin into money a Russian can spend at the store. The ruble stays the sole lawful currency for goods and services inside Russia, the ban on crypto payments holds, and a bar on advertising that promotes such use holds with it. What the law does is grant crypto a legal identity and a set of gates. It recognizes digital assets as property, licenses the firms that handle them, lets investors buy within set limits, and clears crypto for use in foreign trade. In plain terms, Russia is not freeing crypto for daily life; it is bringing crypto inside the state’s fence, where the government can watch it, tax it, and steer it toward the uses it wants. Anatoly Aksakov, chairman of the Duma Committee on Financial Markets, said the bill was “aimed at creating legal conditions for the functioning of cryptocurrencies in our country,” and that lawmakers had “maximally” weighed industry feedback. From September 1, 2026, the Bank of Russia will license five categories of participant — exchanges, brokers, management companies, depositories, and exchangers — the spine of the new market. Firms in a special registry may run exchange activity, with a grace period to July 1, 2027, before that requirement takes hold. Such firms must carry minimum capital of 15 million rubles, some $190,000, and must join a self-regulatory body. The law defines exchange activity as the systematic purchase and sale of cryptocurrency for one’s own account outside organized trading, with “systematic” set at two or more deals in a month above 3.5 million rubles. JUST IN: Russia passes law that "regulates the circulation of digital currencies and digital rights in Russia for the first time," TASS reports pic.twitter.com/nmTsKUeOTA — Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) July 21, 2026 A channel for sanctioned trade The commercial heart of the law sits in the cross-border carve-out. The framework legalizes what gray-market networks did in the shadows: settlement of foreign trade in crypto, outside the dollar-and-euro banking system that Western sanctions target. It hands the practice the Bank of Russia’s stamp. The same function ran through venues such as Garantex, which U.S. law enforcement shut down in March 2025, and through the ruble-pegged A7A5 stablecoin, a token that has moved tens of billions in sanctions-linked flows and that the U.K. has named in a sanctions round. Russia’s crypto pivot Moscow has pitched crypto trade as a route around sanctions for years; the new law builds it into formal infrastructure. The turn is a sharp one. In January 2022, weeks before the invasion of Ukraine, the Bank of Russia proposed an outright ban on crypto transactions and mining, and cast digital assets as a threat to financial stability. That stance held for as long as it took Western governments to cut Russian banks from SWIFT, a move that made trade in dollars and euros a harder task. Four years of infighting followed between a finance ministry that wanted crypto legal and a central bank that wanted it banned. Putin signed an experimental law in August 2024 that permitted mining and international crypto payments; Tuesday’s bill is the permanent frame that replaces the trial. The law’s rules for investors and coins For investors, the law splits the market in two. Non-qualified retail buyers may purchase up to 300,000 rubles of cryptocurrency, near $3,800, through a single licensed intermediary each year, and may send up to 100,000 rubles abroad. Qualified investors face higher ceilings — up to 3 million rubles for purchases and 1 million rubles for foreign transfers. Both groups must pass a risk-awareness test, and qualified status can rest in part on prior crypto experience. Tax treatment is set to track the rules for securities, with rates to firm up as implementing regulations arrive. The tiered design follows earlier steps that opened bitcoin access to retail buyers. The law leans on monitoring rather than disclosure of every wallet. Drafters dropped an earlier plan to require holders to reveal individual wallet addresses; reporting will center on transaction volumes and account balances. Large transfers to foreign or third-party accounts face a 48-hour hold, a window for authorities to review funds before they clear. Assets that clear strict thresholds may trade on organized venues — an average market cap above 5 trillion rubles over two years and average daily volume above 1 trillion rubles — limits expected to confine early trading to bitcoin and ether, with solana a possible third. Privacy coins that hide transaction data stay barred. The main provisions take effect on September 1, 2026, with a transition period for existing operators that runs to March 1, 2027. The passage marks another step in a run of Russian crypto moves, from a bid to make digital assets part of “everyday finance” to a crackdown on unregistered mining that carries the threat of forced labor. This post Russia Passes Landmark Crypto Law, Setting State-Run Rails for Sanctioned Trade first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman. Переглянути повний текст

Bitcoin Magazine Galaxy (GLXY) Commits $5 Million to Prepare Bitcoin for the Quantum Threat Galaxy Digital launched a Bitcoin Quantum Readiness Initiative today, a program that commits up to $5 million in developer grants, a research effort, and a new advisory council to harden the network against the arrival of powerful quantum computers. The Nasdaq-listed firm framed the multi-pillar effort as an attempt to close a gap between two worlds moving at different speeds. “There’s a gap between the quantum computing world, which is moving fast, and the Bitcoin development world, which is just beginning to engage with post-quantum cryptography in earnest,” said Alex Thorn, head of firmwide research at Galaxy, whose team has tracked the threat for Wall Street and cast it as a long-term engineering problem rather than a crisis. Bitcoin’s security rests on elliptic curve cryptography, a scheme that a machine running Shor’s algorithm could break by deriving a private key from an exposed public key. An attacker with such a tool could forge a signature and drain a wallet, with nothing on-chain to flag the theft. No such computer exists today, yet the estimated timeline for one keeps compressing, a trend the Bitcoin Policy Institute has warned narrows the window for the network to upgrade. Galaxy’s multi-pillar effort to prepare for quantum The grant program forms the first pillar. Galaxy said it would fund work on quantum-resistant transaction proposals, the integration of post-quantum signature schemes, tooling for wallet and custodian migration, and formal security audits of proposed code. Grants will be judged one at a time and paid on a milestone basis, and the firm expects to open applications without delay through the address quantum@galaxy.com. A research and publishing arm forms the second pillar, with Galaxy Research set to publish analysis of the threat and the developer response for investors, policymakers, and the technical community. The third pillar is a Quantum Advisory Council that will guide the research and weigh grant proposals. Its first members are Barry Sanders, professor and scientific director of Quantum City at the University of Calgary; Damien Bérubé, an MIT Sea Grant Knauss Fellow; and Eran Tromer, a professor of computer science at Boston University. “As leaders in the digital assets space, we believe it’s important that we help be part of the solution to any potential threat quantum computing poses to Bitcoin,” said Mike Novogratz, founder and CEO of Galaxy, a figure known for bold price calls on bitcoin. Sanders said quantum timelines “continue to compress” and that bitcoin should be no exception to the preparation underway across governments and industries. Old and reused addresses face the sharpest risk, since their public keys sit exposed on the ledger. An estimated 1.7 million BTC rest in legacy pay-to-public-key addresses, a stash with keys on permanent display. Defenses under review center on migration to quantum-resistant address types and new signature schemes, an approach embodied in BIP-360, a proposal from developer Hunter Beast that removes public-key exposure from standard transactions. That proposal merged into the Bitcoin Improvement Proposal repository this year, and BTQ Technologies deployed a working implementation on a quantum testnet. Bitcoin’s decentralized governance turns such changes into a slow process of design, review, testing, and deployment that can span years. Some observers cast that structure as the true obstacle, a governance challenge as much as a cryptographic one, and the pool of developers on the problem stays small next to its scale. Quantum tech is surging The launch lands in an active warning cycle. Galaxy Research has held that the risk is real yet the countermeasures are advancing, and President Trump signed executive orders that advance U.S. quantum work and set a 2031 federal deadline for post-quantum defense. NIST finalized its first post-quantum standards in 2024. Galaxy said it welcomes co-funders and other stakeholders, and acknowledged that peers may pledge their own funds toward the same goal. The firm cast that prospect as a benefit rather than a rivalry, with an open invitation to institutions and developers who want to join. This post Galaxy (GLXY) Commits $5 Million to Prepare Bitcoin for the Quantum Threat first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman. Переглянути повний текст

Bitcoin Magazine Jack Mallers Steps Down as CEO of Bitcoin Treasury Twenty One Capital Bitcoin treasury Twenty One Capital has named Raphael Zagury as its chief executive officer, a leadership change that arrives seven months after the firm listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Zagury succeeds founder Jack Mallers, who is stepping down to focus on his Bitcoin payments company, Strike. Speaking on the transition, Mallers said, “I’m grateful to everyone at XXI and everyone who believed in what we built,” said Jack Mallers. “Serving Bitcoiners has always been the mission, and that doesn’t change. Strike is where I carry it forward.” Austin, Texas-based Twenty One, which trades under the ticker “XXI” on the NYSE, said it would focus on becoming an institutional-grade operating company that’s judged on cash flow generation and capital allocation discipline, not just its Bitcoin holdings. It added that it would build and acquire high-quality operating businesses that “leverage Twenty One’s balance sheet while maintaining disciplined capital allocation at the parent company and create a long-term ownership model inspired by Berkshire Hathaway.” “My job is to build the operating company around [Twenty One], with the discipline, governance, and executional rigor of an institution,” Zagury said in a statement. “I believe our business will perform best when we also focus on the cash flow we generate and the rigor with which we allocate capital, not only by the Bitcoin we hold.” Mallers leaves XXI The firm, the product of a joint effort by Tether, Bitfinex, Cantor Fitzgerald, and SoftBank, is the second biggest public Bitcoin treasury, according to Bitcointreasuries.net, with a total of 43,514 coins — or $2.8 billion in Bitcoin at today’s prices. It debuted last year through a SPAC merger with Cantor Equity Partners, a blank check company affiliated with financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald. “XXI was built by Bitcoiners, for Bitcoiners. During my role as CEO, we defined a vision for a Bitcoin-native financial enterprise. As I focus my efforts fully at Strike, I look forward to watching the next phase of growth at XXI,” Mallers said. The companies behind it are a mix of traditional finance giants and crypto companies: Tether is the biggest issuer of stablecoins and Bitfinex is a crypto exchange. SoftBank is a Japanese multinational investment holding company and Cantor Fitzgerald is a Wall Street firm previously headed up by U.S. President Donald Trump ally and Secretary of Commerce, Howard Lutnick. Zagury founded and leads the team behind Elektron Energy, a large-scale Bitcoin mining and infrastructure business. Before that, he held roles as a managing director at Deutsche Bank and Merrill Lynch, and as a vice president at Goldman Sachs. He also co-founded OpenCo, at one point among Brazil’s largest fintech lenders. The change at the top comes with a shift in deal strategy. In April, Twenty One had floated a plan to consolidate the firm, Strike, and Elektron Energy into a single Bitcoin-native platform spanning financial services, mining infrastructure, capital markets, and treasury. According to Bloomberg reporting, that deal has been scrapped. Twenty One confirmed that Strike will now remain a standalone business and is out of the running for a merger. This post Jack Mallers Steps Down as CEO of Bitcoin Treasury Twenty One Capital first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo and Micah Zimmerman. Переглянути повний текст

Bitcoin Magazine Bitcoin Miner Hut 8 Shares Jump on $9.8 Billion AI Data Center Deal Bitcoin miner Hut 8’s shares rose Monday after the Toronto Stock Exchange- and Nasdaq-listed firm said it had signed a second 15-year lease ​worth $9.8 billion for its AI data center. Hut 8 shares peaked as high as $106 a pop before dropping to around $101. They closed Monday up over 10%. The deal will see the Toronto-based firm’s Beacon Point campus in Texas data center cover 352 ​megawatts of IT capacity. The tenant using the data center’s will have its capacity doubled to 704 MW. Hut 8 added that the campus has a base-term contract value of $19.6 billion over 15 years, rising to as much as $50.2 billion if renewal options are exercised. Asher Genoot, CEO of Hut 8, said: “The real test of our power-first approach is what our partners are willing to commit against it. Our tenant at Beacon Point chose to double its footprint at the site, the strongest validation an asset can receive.” Hut 8 last year signed a deal with American Data Centers Inc., a company backed by President Donald Trump’s sons Eric and Donald Jr., to contribute its Bitcoin mining equipment and help debut their American Bitcoin mining firm. AI pivot Hut 8 is one of a number of top publicly listed miners that have started directing resources to providing the infrastructure for high-powered computing. The company in December secured a Google-backed partnership with Anthropic and Fluidstack to build up to 2.3 gigawatts of AI data center capacity in the U.S. JUST IN: #Bitcoin mining company Hut 8 just announced it partnered with Google for financial backing on a 15-year lease. Bullish pic.twitter.com/NQN9JmW0ob — Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) December 17, 2025 A number of Bitcoin miners have already gone all-in on the industry as minting the biggest digital coin by market cap becomes harder and demand for AI compute surges. As the price Bitcoin has dipped, it has become harder for Bitcoin miners to make ends meet. Nasdaq-listed Bitfarms last year announced that it would wind down mining operations to focus on high-performance computing. Instead of dropping mining operations completely, a number of Bitcoin miners have instead marketed themselves as “compute” or “digital infrastructure” companies while switching between minting digital coins and providing compute for AI — depending on which is more profitable. Top miners Terawulf, IREN, and Cipher Mining all last year signed multi-year HPC contracts with Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Microsoft. Both the crypto mining and HPC industries require huge amounts of energy and data centers — but the move isn’t always easy: AI data centres require more expertise than Bitcoin mining. This post Bitcoin Miner Hut 8 Shares Jump on $9.8 Billion AI Data Center Deal first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo. Переглянути повний текст

Bitcoin Magazine Metaplanet’s Bitcoin Japan Announces Plan to Scoop Up Coins Despite Market Downturn Bitcoin Japan, a subsidiary of Asia’s answer to Strategy, Metaplanet, has announced it entered into a financing agreement to start buying the leading cryptocurrency for its treasury. The Tokyo-based, publicly-listed company said Thursday that it had approved a convertible bond deal with EVO Fund to raise 9.66 billion yen ($59.5 million). The deal will see the company spend over 662 million yen — or over $4 million — on its first Bitcoin transaction. Bitcoin Japan works on Bitcoin-related media, data platforms and events to promote the understanding of the leading cryptocurrency in Japan and “contribute to the development of its ecosystem globally,” according to its website. Its parent company, Metaplanet, is a publicly-traded company following in the footsteps of Nasdaq-listed Strategy — formerly MicroStrategy — by buying and holding Bitcoin on its balance sheet. It first started buying the asset in 2024. Metaplanet is one of the biggest Bitcoin treasuries in the world, with 43,000 digital coins worth over $2.8 billion in its coffers. Its stock is currently down over 50% year-to-date. JUST IN: Japan Public company Bitcoin Japan Corporation has raised $60 million through convertible bonds, allocating $4.08 million to make its first buy for their BTC treasury BULLISH pic.twitter.com/gn7hihxJ68 — Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) July 17, 2026 Treasury woes Bitcoin Japan’s announcement comes as treasury companies see their stock slide. Last year, the business model of buying and holding Bitcoin and other digital assets with spare cash suffered with a plunge in crypto prices. Strategy, the biggest and oldest Bitcoin treasury, has seen its Nasdaq-listed stock nosedive by nearly 80% over the past year. Little known publicly traded companies in 2025 rushed to announce they were buying digital assets in a hope to boost their stock prices. The strategy worked but since the market downturn, a number of firms in the space have had to sell a portion of their holdings as the price of Bitcoin has slumped. But companies are still accumulating during the downturn — and firms like Bitcoin Japan are seeing the current market price of the leading asset as an opportunity to start a crypto treasury. Regulatory push While Japan has long been a hub for crypto enthusiasts — former major Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox was based in Tokyo before a 2014 hack and its subsequent closure — lawmakers are now working on regulating the asset class. Japan’s parliament last week passed a law ​amendment to designate ‌cryptocurrency assets as “financial assets,” making the assets subject to ​stricter regulations, eventually paving the way for products like Bitcoin exchange-traded funds to debut in the Asian nation. The regulation is likely to come into effect within a year, Reuters reported, citing NHK news. This post Metaplanet’s Bitcoin Japan Announces Plan to Scoop Up Coins Despite Market Downturn first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo. Переглянути повний текст

Bitcoin Magazine Bitcoin-Treasury Capital B Plans 10-for-1 Reverse Stock Split for September Capital B, the Paris-listed bitcoin treasury company once known as The Blockchain Group, will combine every 10 existing shares into one new share beginning September 8, according to a regulatory filing the company published Monday. The consolidation reduces the number of outstanding shares from 300,650,632 to 30,065,063. Each new share will carry a par value of €0.80, up from €0.08 for the existing stock. The company framed the transaction as a “purely technical exchange” that leaves the aggregate value of each shareholder’s holdings unchanged, save for the treatment of fractional entitlements. Capital B said the move aims to “support the company’s institutional development and to open the company’s shares to a broader universe of investors.” Many institutional funds operate under internal rules that bar them from holding stocks below a set price, and some exchanges impose minimum-price thresholds for continued listing. A higher quoted price per share removes one barrier to that participation. Capital B shares trade near €0.48 on Euronext Growth Paris and have declined about 40% since the start of the year, per Google Finance data. Should the company’s market value hold, each consolidated share would open near €4.80. Key dates for Capital B shareholders The reverse split period runs from August 6 through September 7. Shareholders who hold a number of shares divisible by 10 will see their positions converted with no action required. Those holding leftover shares can buy or sell stock before the deadline to reach a round multiple of 10. For investors who do not, financial intermediaries will sell the shares tied to fractional entitlements and distribute the cash proceeds, with payments set to begin September 14. September 7 marks the final trading day for the existing shares. The consolidated shares start trading the following day under a new ISIN, the code exchanges use to identify a security. The company has set September 9 as the record date and September 10 for settlement and delivery. Capital B will also pause conversions of certain convertible bonds and exercises of share warrants from August 17 through September 10. After the split, the company will adjust conversion prices and warrant ratios to reflect the reduced share count, multiplying bond conversion prices by 10 while dividing warrant ratios and unvested free shares by 10. Treasury strategy stays central The share restructuring does not add bitcoin to the balance sheet or raise new capital on its own. It changes the number and nominal value of shares through a technical consolidation, a step the company tied to its goal of reaching a wider investor base. Capital B’s bitcoin holdings Capital B holds 3,139 BTC, a figure that ranks it as the second-largest listed corporate bitcoin holder in Europe, according to BitcoinTreasuries.net. Germany’s Bitcoin Group SE sits ahead of it with 3,605 BTC, the data shows. Capital B, which describes itself as Europe’s first bitcoin treasury company, built much of that position through fundraising rounds during the first half of 2026. In May, it acquired 192 BTC for €13 million after completing three capital raises. The company has moved to widen its access to capital. In June, shareholders approved authority for as much as €5 billion in capital increases and €100 billion in credit instruments, resolutions that drew more than 95% support from votes cast. Those approvals give the board financing capacity for future purchases. Capital B measures progress through bitcoin held per fully diluted share rather than total reserves alone, a framework common among bitcoin treasury companies. The firm has also said it is developing a bitcoin-backed credit product for the European market, though it has not set a launch date. This post Bitcoin-Treasury Capital B Plans 10-for-1 Reverse Stock Split for September first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman. Переглянути повний текст

Bitcoin Magazine Coinbase Executive Says Clarity Act Has ‘Tremendous Momentum’ in the Senate Coinbase Vice Chair Ryan VanGrack said the Clarity Act has gained “tremendous momentum” in the Senate, in a CNBC “Squawk Box” appearance that made the case for a federal crypto framework and touched on bitcoin, blockchain, and the industry’s uneasy truce with Wall Street. VanGrack, a former SEC official, framed the Clarity Act as an overdue set of rules rather than a giveaway. “It’s not about no regulation,” he said. “This is about imposing regulation on the industry for the first time.” He described a “win-win-win” for American investors, innovators, and standards should the measure pass, and said a bipartisan group of senators has kept up work “even in the last few weeks and days.” Clarity Act updates The House passed its version of the Clarity Act last year, and attention has shifted to the Senate, where the path to 60 votes remains the central hurdle. The Senate Banking Committee advanced the bill in a 15-9 vote this spring, with two Democrats crossing over, and House members have urged the Senate to act before the August recess. The measure sits in a narrow window as negotiators work out remaining terms. President Trump added his voice last week, posting on Truth Social in support of Senator Lindsey Graham and calling on the Senate to pass the bill. Trump framed the stakes in terms of competition with China, a message he has repeated as he presses the chamber to move. VanGrack said Democrats have won concessions that strengthen the bill’s consumer protections. JUST IN: Coinbase Vice Chair talks CLARITY ACT on CNBC "The Democrats have obtained meaningful concessions to make what was already a strong consumer protection bill, THAT much stronger" pic.twitter.com/y3n04dKdRi — Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) July 20, 2026 He pointed to an illicit-finance framework, an “FTX loophole” that the text would close, insider-trading safeguards, and added disclosures. “Across the board, the Democrats have obtained meaningful concessions to make what was already a strong consumer protection bill that much stronger,” he said. He said the bill would not change how crypto is classified as a commodity or a security in a fundamental sense, and would preserve the registration, examination, and surveillance structure from the House version. Asked how the industry reconciles with skeptics like JPMorgan chief Jamie Dimon, VanGrack pointed to a wave of bank and institutional deals. “Not a week goes by,” he said, where a firm fails to announce a new crypto project or investment. He predicted an “inevitable convergence,” a point at which the market stops separating traditional finance from crypto and treats each as a modern financial institution. That convergence has played out in public, and in conflict. JPMorgan and Coinbase announced a partnership to widen crypto access, and the bank has moved to accept bitcoin as loan collateral and to let clients trade it. Dimon, for his part, has declared war on the Clarity Act and aimed a crude insult at Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, a reminder that the détente carries friction. Is bitcoin real? The interview turned to a sharper question from CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin: whether blockchain is real but bitcoin is not. VanGrack called it “a fair question” and said the technology’s benefits stand on their own — faster settlement, more transparency, and round-the-clock transactions. He argued that no one building a financial system today would recreate the infrastructure of the past century. He cited Citadel Securities, which he said made another large investment in the crypto economy last week, as a sign that major institutions are trending the same course. Sorkin pressed the harder edge of the design: the technology aims to remove the counterparty a customer might call when something goes wrong. VanGrack conceded the point as fair, then countered with the costs of the current system — days to reconcile trades and the counterparty risk that delay creates. “I’m not here to tell you it’s the wrong technology,” he said. He acknowledged open questions, including whether crypto accounts should carry interest or loyalty rewards, a debate that bankers have raised and that the law will settle as “a blunt instrument.” He closed on the case for Clarity Act passage. “In the absence of clarity, you do not have a federal oversight and framework,” he said. “So whether you love crypto or hate crypto, you should want” the Clarity Act. This post Coinbase Executive Says Clarity Act Has ‘Tremendous Momentum’ in the Senate first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman. Переглянути повний текст

Bitcoin Magazine Russia Moves to Rein In Crypto Fraud With New Legislation Russia is pushing ahead with regulating the cryptocurrency market, with the State Duma considering a bill on combating fraud in the industry, according to reports. The bill will look at “combating the illegal use of cryptocurrencies within our country,” Anatoly Aksakov, chairman of the State Duma Committee on Financial Markets, reportedly said. Lawmakers will vote on the bill in its second and third readings this week, according to Russia’s Tass news agency, and will also work to provide “an opportunity for those who use cryptocurrencies for international transactions to do so within the legal framework.” Using crypto has been illegal in Russia as a form of payment since 2022 but lawmakers in the country have been open about using them for international settlements. President Vladimir Putin has also previously spoken about mining digital assets, and admitted back in 2022 that the country had “certain competitive advantages” in the sector thanks to its surplus of energy and cold climate. Last year, the president signed a law allowing cryptocurrency mining in the country, allowing legal entities to mine if they have been approved by the digital ministry. Foreign operations are currently banned from doing business in the country. Back in 2023, the Russian legislature passed a bill legalizing the use of digital currency as a way to make international payments. The bill likely has helped the country skirt international sanctions: The U.S. and European governments sanctioned Russia when it annexed Crimea in 2014, and Western nations have stepped up penalties since it invaded Ukraine in 2022. Top Russian banks are planning to launch crypto trading services when new regulations take hold in the country. Lawmakers have said that investors will have to pass a test to start crypto investing and will be limited on the amount they can buy. Pro-Bitcoin Putin? BREAKING: Russian President Putin says "Who can ban #Bitcoin? Nobody." pic.twitter.com/6mJ664BZZ8 — Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) December 4, 2024 Russia has long had a complex history with regulating cryptocurrencies but Putin has previously praised Bitcoin. While speaking at a forum in Moscow in December 2024, the leader of Russia was talking about the dominance of the dollar and other payment methods when he highlighted that new technologies were emerging that could help people move money. “For example, Bitcoin, who can ban it? Nobody,” he said at the time. “And who can prohibit the use of other electronic payment instruments? Nobody, because these are new technologies.” This post Russia Moves to Rein In Crypto Fraud With New Legislation first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo. Переглянути повний текст

Bitcoin Magazine New Onramp Report Makes the Case for Spot Bitcoin Over Paper Claims as Price Sits at Half Its Peak A new research report from bitcoin custody firm Onramp argues that the recent market slump is a reason to buy, and that owners should hold the asset itself rather than a paper claim on its price. The report, titled “Back to Basics” and published in July 2026, opens on a market puzzle: bitcoin trades at about half its late-2025 high, while equities and gold sit at or near records of their own. For a different asset, the report says, that divergence would read as a warning. For a fixed-supply asset with adoption at an early stage, it reads as an opening. Onramp splits its case into three parts — the fundamentals of bitcoin, the gap between owning the asset and owning a wrapper, and the data behind its claim that the moment favors accumulation. Bitcoin’s fixed supply The first section runs through ten ideas. Money, the firm writes, is a technology for storing value across time, a test that cash fails over long horizons. Fiat currencies lose purchasing power by design, since a money supply built to expand hands the first use of new units to governments and the institutions nearest them, while it charges holders of existing balances through a weaker currency. Against that backdrop, the report frames scarcity as the source of monetary integrity, and it casts bitcoin’s 21 million cap as a limit that any participant can verify rather than one that rests on trust. Other points cover bitcoin’s fixed issuance schedule, the halving, and the role of decentralization in making the rules credible. Authority rests with users who run full nodes, the report says, not with miners or firms, a structure that has held through past attempts to change the protocol’s core rules. It defends proof of work as a productive use of energy, with a nod to miners that consume flared gas and surplus renewable output, and it presents bitcoin as gold’s successor — scarce and durable, yet able to move across the world in minutes and to be audited by any holder. On volatility, Onramp treats sharp drawdowns as a feature of an asset in the middle of monetization. Declines of fifty percent or more have occurred several times, the report notes, and each prior drop gave way to a recovery beyond the former peak. The firm favors a mechanical approach over market timing, a nod to dollar cost averaging that some view as a growing strategy and one that analysts have urged during recent dips. ‘Paper Bitcoin’ The report’s sharpest argument sits in its second part, on “paper bitcoin.” A large share of what changes hands under bitcoin’s name, Onramp writes, is not bitcoin but a claim on it — a fund share, an exchange balance, or a structured product that stands as the obligation of a counterparty. Such wrappers can track the price, the firm allows, and many run as described under capable managers. The trouble is structural: each layer adds a custodian, an administrator, or a counterparty that the asset itself does not carry, and any of them can fail for reasons apart from bitcoin. The report ties the point to strain among bitcoin-linked credit products. Direct ownership, by contrast, preserves what the firm calls bitcoin’s bearer quality — control of the keys as ownership in full, with no account to approve and no party able to freeze or reclaim the holding. That framing echoes the case that bitcoin removes counterparty risk from a balance sheet. From there, Onramp makes its commercial pitch. Owners can pursue self-custody, the firm writes, or turn to multi-institution custody, a model that splits keys across independent institutions so that no single party can move the coins and no single failure can lose them. Onramp has raised $12.5 million to scale that platform and has folded cash, bitcoin, and gold into one account. Market timing The third part turns to timing. Onramp lists four observations: a drawdown that is shallow by bitcoin’s own history, a pattern of recoveries after comparable declines, the record of steady accumulation against other assets, and the odd sight of bitcoin at a discount while most markets sit at highs. The present cycle stands about seven months past its peak and near half below it, the report says, an earlier and shallower stage than equivalent points in past cycles. The conclusion returns to the title. Onramp says it is getting back to the basics this summer, and it frames the message without a forecast: buy on a schedule while prices are low, and hold what you accumulate in custody you control, spread across independent institutions. The fundamentals, the firm writes, are unaffected by the fall in price. A lower price on an asset of fixed supply and expanding adoption, it argues, is the thesis working in the buyer’s favor. This post New Onramp Report Makes the Case for Spot Bitcoin Over Paper Claims as Price Sits at Half Its Peak first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman. Переглянути повний текст

Bitcoin Magazine Strive (ASST) Adds 21 Bitcoin as Treasury Reaches 19,921 BTC and Cash Climbs to $157 Million Strive, Inc. purchased 21 bitcoin between July 13 and July 17 at an average price of about $63,221 per coin, a buy worth around $1.3 million, according to an 8-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday. The purchase lifted the Dallas-based treasury company’s bitcoin holdings from 19,900 to 19,921 BTC. Strive funded the buy while its balance sheet gained ground: cash and cash equivalents rose $3.3 million to $157.4 million as of July 17, up from $154.1 million a week prior. The modest addition marks a step down from the pace that carried the company past 19,000 BTC across the spring. Strive (Nasdaq: ASST) trades under the Class A ticker alongside its Variable Rate Series A Perpetual Preferred Stock, listed as SATA. Class A shares outstanding climbed to 73,869,961 from 73,426,164, a gain of 443,797 that reflects issuance under the company’s at-the-market program. Class B shares slipped by 3,335 to 9,800,012, and the SATA count held at 7,829,502. The filing detailed Strive’s position in Strategy’s Variable Rate Series A Perpetual Stretch Preferred Stock, known as STRC. Strive held 505,000 STRC shares across both reporting dates, though the fair value of that stake fell $1.1 million to $43.1 million as of July 17. Strive: Buying bitcoin ‘hand over fist’ Chief Executive Matthew Cole signed the report. Cole has cast Strive as a buyer with appetite, a stance he summed up in a pledge to keep buying bitcoin “hand over fist.” The company funds its accumulation through perpetual preferred equity rather than convertible debt, a structure Cole has framed as a guard against forced selling. Strive’s rise traces to a merger. The firm went public through a combination of Strive Asset Management and Asset Entities, then built a bitcoin treasury from the ground up. It expanded that base through the acquisition of Semler Scientific, an all-stock deal that folded a medical-technology firm and its bitcoin into Strive. Shareholders approved the Semler transaction, which closed in January and pushed combined holdings past 12,000 BTC. The average cost of the latest buy, about $63,221 per coin, sits below the levels Strive paid across much of its earlier accumulation. The purchase adds to a treasury built at a blended cost that management has tied to a long-run thesis on the asset. Growth has carried a cost. Strive reported a $393 million loss across its first six months as a public company, a figure tied to the accounting treatment of its bitcoin position and its share issuance. Management has pointed to a larger goal, with an eye on a $4.2 billion war chest to fund further bitcoin buys. The company’s model issues shares into the open market and converts proceeds to bitcoin at a fast clip, a design meant to raise bitcoin exposure per share while it limits dilution. Strive ranks among the top ten public corporate holders of bitcoin, a field that Strategy leads with 843,775 BTC. The filing carried the standard caution on forward-looking statements, with flags on risks tied to the Semler integration, digital-asset volatility, interest rates, and dilution from further share sales. The company said it may adjust the SATA dividend rate, a lever the company holds as it manages its preferred stock. This post Strive (ASST) Adds 21 Bitcoin as Treasury Reaches 19,921 BTC and Cash Climbs to $157 Million first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman. Переглянути повний текст

Bitcoin Magazine Strategy (MSTR) Sells $263.5 Million in MSTR Shares, Skips Bitcoin Purchase as USD Reserve Tops $3.2 Billion Strategy sold about $263.5 million worth of MSTR shares last week and made no bitcoin purchases, according to an 8-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday. The bitcoin treasury company reported the sale of 2,732,318 MSTR shares between July 13 and July 19. Proceeds went toward a $225 million boost to the firm’s U.S. dollar reserve, which reached $3.225 billion as of July 19. Strategy bought no bitcoin, sold no bitcoin, and repurchased no shares under its buyback programs across the period. The company’s bitcoin stack holds at 843,775 BTC, a position worth around $54.7 billion at current prices. Strategy acquired the coins for about $63.7 billion, including fees and expenses, at an average price of $75,476 per bitcoin, according to co-founder and executive chairman Michael Saylor. That total represents around 4% of bitcoin’s 21 million supply cap. At present prices, the position carries about $9 billion in paper losses. The dollar reserve has climbed across a run of similar weeks. A prior filing put the balance near $3 billion after a $467 million share sale, and the fresh $225 million addition marks a continued tilt toward cash as management builds a buffer against the firm’s debt load. Strategy’s bitcoin buying pause The pause extends a pattern. Strategy has leaned on dollar accumulation over fresh bitcoin buys across recent weeks, a shift from the aggressive purchases that have reshaped corporate finance and defined much of its history. Saylor posted another Strategy bitcoin acquisition tracker chart to X on Sunday with the caption “What’s next?” Posts of that kind have preceded acquisition announcements the next day, though the firm’s approach has varied across recent weeks. Company leadership frames the sales as a matter of balance-sheet strength rather than retreat. President and CEO Phong Le told Bloomberg TV last week that Strategy intends to remain a long-term bitcoin buyer. Le said the firm would begin weighing risks tied to its debt in the event bitcoin dropped to the $8,000 to $10,000 range, and described the balance sheet as secure. The stance matches Saylor’s repeated pledge that Strategy will keep buying bitcoin for years, a message he has held even through defenses of potential BTC sales. Saylor turned his attention to Bitcoin’s protocol over the weekend. He published a 110-point essay, “110 Reasons BIP 110 Is a Bad Idea,” his most detailed case against the proposed soft fork that seeks to limit arbitrary data on the network. The essay arrived ahead of BIP-110’s mandatory signaling window, which opens in early August. Miner support sits at 0.86% per the proposal’s public monitor. Bitcoin mining pool Foundry has asked miners to vote on the measure, and industry voices have flagged the fork as one on track to fail given weak signaling. Analyst reaction to Strategy’s dollar buildup has been warm. JPMorgan analysts called the larger cash reserves and improving institutional demand in bitcoin futures “encouraging signs” for the bitcoin outlook, even as spot bitcoin ETF flows stay volatile. Strategy sits atop a crowded field. Bitcoin Treasuries data counts 197 public companies with some form of bitcoin acquisition model, a tally that pushed corporate bitcoin holdings to a record high. Tether-backed Twenty One, Metaplanet, MARA, and the Adam Back and Cantor Fitzgerald-backed Bitcoin Standard Treasury Company round out the top five, with 43,514 BTC, 43,000 BTC, 36,303 BTC, and 30,021 BTC. The stock has struggled. MSTR fell 4% across last week and closed Friday at $94.85, a drop of 38.6% year-to-date. Bitcoin gained around 1% over the same stretch, a split that widens the gap between the firm’s treasury value and its market capitalization. Strategy shares were up 2% in pre-market trading. This post Strategy (MSTR) Sells $263.5 Million in MSTR Shares, Skips Bitcoin Purchase as USD Reserve Tops $3.2 Billion first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman. Переглянути повний текст

Bitcoin Magazine Bitcoin Sentiment Is Turning Bullish — But It’s Too Early to Celebrate: Report The Bitcoin bottom may be in — but don’t get your hopes up: It might struggle to go up anytime soon, according to one investment firm. A Friday report from European asset management firm CoinShares said that investors last week threw fresh cash at Bitcoin — and other crypto — exchange-traded products, indicating a change in sentiment. But other factors may hold digital asset markets from going higher, James Butterfill, head of research at CoinShares, wrote. “We have said for some time that Bitcoin has probably reached, or is close to, its floor,” the report read. “But we see no significant upside potential from here.” The report added that current macroeconomic headwinds, such as the US bombing Iran and rising oil prices, could see inflation go up again. Bitcoin’s price was up earlier this week, hitting a seven-day high of $65,501 on news that inflation in the US was softer than expected. It has since erased those gains and was recently trading for $64,010. The price of Bitcoin has typically done well on news that inflation is coming down because investors expect interest rates to come down. But Butterfill said that “a rate cut does not look probable at this stage.” Bitcoin’s worst run on record CoinShares’ data showed that investors pulled a total of $8 billion out of funds giving crypto exposure — “the worst run on record.” Last week, though, things reversed when $287 million hit crypto funds, CoinShares said, with the data so far showing that this week looks likely to be another positive streak. The price of Bitcoin has typically done well when US investors — previously excluded from crypto investing — have bought shares in exchange-traded funds approved in 2024. The products — handled by the likes of BlackRock, Fidelity, and Grayscale — allow more traditional investors or Wall Street institutions to buy positions in Bitcoin via shares that trade on stock exchanges. Since BTC’s October all-time high of $126,080, crypto markets have faced a battering as those investors have fast cashed out of the funds. Bitcoin has struggled to make gains, especially after the US and Israel started bombing Iran, leading to a surge in the price of oil. The leading cryptocurrency is now nearly 50% below its record. “The dominant picture is that the current setup is prompting interest in adding positions, but caution prevails while sentiment remains broadly negative,” CoinShares added. This post Bitcoin Sentiment Is Turning Bullish — But It’s Too Early to Celebrate: Report first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo. Переглянути повний текст

Bitcoin Magazine Ocean Mining VP Jason Hughes: BIP-110 on Track to Fail as Miner Signaling Stays Below 1% BIP-110 – My Notes to Miners This is a guest post by Jason Hughes, VP of Development and Engineering at Ocean Mining. Opinions expressed are entirely his own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc. or Bitcoin Magazine. The article originally appeared on X.com and has been published with the permission of the author. Let me start off by saying I’m not pro BIP110, and I’m not anti-BIP110. If it actually succeeds as something that gains true consensus within the network and ends up being enforced by a majority of the network… cool. If so, then we’ll go with it because the network has spoken and accepted it, and all nodes, including non-BIP110 nodes, will be pulled along for the ride. Unfortunately for proponents of the proposal, that simply isn’t currently the case by any measurable metric, nor does it appear to have a trajectory suggesting that will change, either. There’s been a lot of misleading information about this whole thing, especially in the context of mining. A few quick key bullet points to briefly counter some hyperbole from proponents: BIP110 is NOT inevitable. It CAN fail. BIP110 can and will cause a chain split/fork in a minority hashrate situation. BIP110 is NOT without risk to miners choosing to adopt it. Miners not supporting BIP110 are not suddenly mining “invalid” blocks just because a proposal that isn’t yet adopted simply exists. You’re not a bad person or evil simply because you don’t like or support BIP110. (The fact that I feel the need to point out that last part is actually kind of sad…) I was going to write a long post to help keep miners informed about things they need to remain aware of as this all plays out… before realizing I already did so months ago, as a document I authored that I had hoped could be put out as a miner education piece at OCEAN. Sadly, it never got published. So I went ahead and updated it, and well, here it is. Again, keep in mind this was written months ago, intended to be as agnostic as possible in an effort to make it acceptable as a corporate post. That effort failed, so I’m posting it as a personal document today instead. As a miner making important decisions about your operations, you need to be aware of all of this without the sugarcoating and, frankly, outright misleading information coming from some of the BIP110 proponents. You must be vigilant and decide what’s right for you. While there is certainly some misleading information from the opposition as well, nothing I’ve seen is nearly as egregious as the extremely premature claims of victory and accompanying hyperbole pushed by the BIP110 side. Summarizing my doc a bit, my personal suggestion to miners is this: Signal if you support BIP110. Do not signal if you don’t support BIP110 or don’t care. Either way, monitor the network on/around/before block 961632. If you continue to see non-signaling blocks from major pools, you can be reasonably certain they’re not going to suddenly decide later to throw away millions of dollars’ worth of revenue to backtrack and signal for BIP110. If they do, by some chance, start to signal for BIP110, you should monitor that and consider switching as required to stay on the heaviest chain. The key point is that, realistically, only one side can win. It’s either BIP110 succeeds, and miners not on the BIP110 side fail, or BIP110 fails, and miners on the non-BIP110 side succeed. Moving on, let’s dive into a small fraction of my rationale. QUICK FACT: Between 7 and 15% of Bitcoin Nodes are signaling support for BIP110. Depending on which centralized crawler you look at… no way to know for sure [how many BIP110 nodes are signaling support]. My personal private crawler puts this number much lower, but that’s a discussion for another day. Suffice it to say, I think it’s logical and correct to say that even 15% is not a majority. “But Jason! UASF got Segwit activated with fewer nodes!” Yep, because many miners, merchants, users, etc., all actually wanted Segwit. There was tremendous economic and community weight behind it. Without rehashing that whole thing, as plenty of resources on the topic from before BIP110 are worth a read, suffice it to say that BIP110 and Segwit activations are not quite comparable, as many have already pointed out. Segwit, for example, went into its UASF territory with around 1/3rd of the network’s hashrate already signaling support. With that kind of backing, the UASF to help push the MASF over the tipping point made a lot of sense. It doesn’t make sense here for BIP110. QUICK FACT: 0.6% of blocks over the past 60 days have signaled support for BIP110. [0.6% is a] pretty stark contrast to even Segwit’s low baseline support. Yes, I know it’s increased slightly in the past couple of weeks, but no new entrants. Just more clearly rented hashrate from one of the same small proponents. Something to keep in mind is that mining BIP110 signaling blocks via DATUM on OCEAN carries virtually no risk to the miner up until the fork point at block 961632. The cost is negligible, as you’re effectively guaranteed to recoup rental costs, etc. It’s awesome that the ability to do so exists, and I wouldn’t have it any other way… but just something to keep in mind when weighing signaling from such blocks in the grand scheme of things from a risk-reward, money-on-the-table perspective. “But Jason! Miners have no incentive to signal until the last minute!” I also see no evidence to suggest that this could be the case. Subjectively, I disagree with the premise, as it’s not in a mining pool’s best interest to destabilize the network in such a way. Part of the reason for early signaling and lock-in periods is to help coordinate upgrades in a smooth fashion. Waiting until the last minute negates that benefit entirely. I see no compelling rationale or upside to doing so. Continuing on this, as part of my personal node monitoring setup, I specifically monitor nodes known to belong to various entities, such as other mining pools, exchanges, large lightning nodes, merchants, etc. A supermajority of which are monitored with explicit permission and confirmation/coordination. QUICK FACT: All major mining pools I monitor are currently running some variant of Bitcoin Core v30 or v31 (except OCEAN). Expanding on that, most [mining pools] have updated their nodes since the proliferation of BIP110’s release, even since the release of Knots 29.3. Additionally, it is known that many mining pools run modified versions of their node software to facilitate various requirements of their specific infrastructure. Such changes would need to be ported to a BIP110-compatible client, tested, evaluated, and deployed ahead of time. I currently see no evidence that this is the case currently. As far as I can tell, the pools are aware but ignoring. “But Jason! Miners don’t determine consensus! Nodes do! Otherwise, they’ll just cancel halvings!” This is one of the funniest and most ridiculous arguments I’ve heard from the pro-BIP110 crowd. Comparing a consensus change that can be unilaterally enforced upon the network by miners and accepted by 100% of existing nodes (a soft fork), with a hard fork which no existing node will accept… is disingenuous at best. T ightening rules (like BIP110): Soft fork, can be enforced by miners if they choose to do so. Loosening rules (like canceling a halving): Hard fork, can not be enforced by miners without effectively 100% buy-in from the entire network… which isn’t likely to happen. Comparing the two is, bluntly, just stupid. “But Jason! If you don’t upgrade to the latest consensus rules, you’re insecure! You’ll lose funds! You’ll mine invalid blocks! You’ll [insert additional hyperbole here]!” This would be true of a consensus change that has, well, consensus. While BIP110 has made a valiant effort to gain that consensus, it has yet to have any measurable majority at what is now arguably the 11th hour. Not in nodes, not in hashrate, not in the social layers (consensus.health has a cool visual there where you’ll find me in the middle). If somehow BIP110 gains 51%+ of the network hashrate on/before block 961632… then, alright. It’s enforced, since as a soft fork a majority of miners can unilaterally enforce it in the absence of a fully adopted URSF (effectively a misnomer, as this would kind of be a hard fork). “But Jason! It can’t gain consensus by already having consensus! You have to give it a chance!” Firstly… no I don’t, even though I have. Second, it’s a rushed proposal that never had the time to even try and gain real consensus. It’s been 7 months since the release of the first BIP110 client. There’s ~3 weeks to go before “mandatory” signaling starts as of now (less by the time you read this). 90% of the time available has passed with no change in overall sentiment from any relevant players. If it hasn’t gained sufficient adoption in the past 7 months, it’s not likely to do so in the next 3 weeks. “But Jason! CSAM! CSAM! Pedophiles! CSAM!” I’ll be the first to say, even I personally overstated the risk here early on when Core proposed its OP_RETURN change. I personally expected something particularly egregious to hit the chain almost immediately, and to the best of my knowledge, that’s not yet happened. Could it still happen? Yeah, I suppose. But considering from a technical perspective, byte-for-byte the same contiguous arbitrary data can provably end up stored in the current chain or the BIP-110 chain without much issue… this particular argument for BIP-110 falls pretty flat to me at this point. Do I want CSAM in the chain? Of course not. Am I a pedophile if I don’t support BIP110? Also not. Concluding Thoughts I could continue to go on and on and on, but I’ll stop here. I’ve wasted enough time on this. I’m sure I’ve done plenty to annoy both sides of the BIP110 debate at this point, as I don’t adopt either stance. I’m sure I’ll catch flak from all angles simply for daring to speak my mind on it. Overall, I mostly think it was silly to approach addressing a real problem (the OP_RETURN default change in Bitcoin Core) with the maximum anti-spam manifesto based soft fork proposal… which provably cannot stop spam, arbitrary data, etc. (Yes, I know, proponents will claim it’s not about spam… and will also make semantic arguments that it does stop data as well… neither of which appears to be correct.) I’ll close with the concession that I could be wrong. I’m not Nostradamus, and I can’t accurately predict the outcome with 100% certainty. I can only go by what the data tells me, and so I give BIP110’s success less than a 5% chance of actually succeeding… and I consider that generous. You can take my opinions on this however you wish, but I highly recommend you don’t discount the actual data points, remain vigilant, and do what’s best for you and your mining revenue. Don’t be gaslit by either side of the debate, and make your own decisions. Here’s a link to the same document linked above for ease of access. This post Ocean Mining VP Jason Hughes: BIP-110 on Track to Fail as Miner Signaling Stays Below 1% first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Jason Hughes. Переглянути повний текст

Bitcoin Magazine SBI Holdings Takes Majority Stake in Singapore’s Coinhako After MAS Approval SBI Holdings has completed the acquisition of a majority stake in Coinhako, a Singapore-based cryptocurrency platform, after securing approval from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). The Japanese financial group made the purchase through its subsidiary SBI Ventures Asset Pte. Ltd., which injected capital into Coinhako parent Holdbuild Pte. Ltd. and bought shares from existing shareholders. The transaction closed July 16, making Coinhako a consolidated subsidiary. Coinhako operates through Hako Technology Pte. Ltd., holder of a Major Payment Institution license from MAS, and Alpha Hako Ltd., a crypto asset service provider registered with the British Virgin Islands Financial Services Commission. The platform spent a decade building a customer base across Southeast Asia, a region SBI now positions as a base for its digital asset strategy. SBI plans to combine Coinhako’s customer base, operational expertise, and regional network with its own financial services, technology, and global footprint. The company intends to expand a digital asset corridor that starts with Japan and Southeast Asia, and to develop services tied to its JPYSC yen-denominated stablecoin. SBI also flagged opportunities in tokenization, on-chain finance, and cross-border trading. “Our group aims to create a global corridor for digital assets by connecting exchanges around the world, enabling investors worldwide to make optimal investments without being hindered by national borders or currency barriers,” Chairman Yoshitaka Kitao said. He described Singapore as a crucial region because its digital asset regulations are ahead of the curve. Coinhako co-founder and CEO Yusho Liu called the deal a natural step. “For the past 10 years, we have built from the ground up Southeast Asia’s most trusted and legally compliant cryptocurrency platform in the world’s most advanced regulatory environment,” he said, adding that SBI’s backing gives the firm a stronger foundation. SBI Holding’s crypto moves The acquisition caps a run of crypto moves by the conglomerate, which holds more than 14 million users and $308 billion in assets under custody. In the past month, SBI led EDX Markets’ $76 million Series C, backed risk manager Gauntlet, launched JPYSC, and partnered with the Solana Foundation on an on-chain financial market in Japan. In June, the group agreed to buy Tokyo exchange Bitbank for about $289 million, and this week it teamed with Ondo Finance to tokenize Japanese equities. One limit remains: JPYSC does not yet support withdrawals to external wallets, which confines its use to SBI’s own platform. This post SBI Holdings Takes Majority Stake in Singapore’s Coinhako After MAS Approval first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman. Переглянути повний текст