Knaken's collapse highlights the urgent need for stronger regulatory protections for crypto customers, as current frameworks leave them vulnerable.

The post Dutch prosecutors sell seized crypto from bankrupt broker Knaken, but customers may never be made whole appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The surge in stock perpetual trading on CEXes highlights a shift towards more accessible, 24/7 leveraged trading, impacting global market dynamics.

The post CEX stock perpetual trading volume surges nearly 17-fold in 2026 appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Union Pacific's profit surge from fuel surcharges amid rising oil prices highlights potential regulatory scrutiny and shipper dissatisfaction.

The post Union Pacific turns fuel cost recovery charges into profit amid Iran war appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Trump's policy shift may hinder a U.S.-Iran nuclear deal and reflects a strategic pivot towards economic pressure over military engagement.

The post Trump shifts US policy to economic isolation of Iran, reduces S. Korea drills appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

BofA's AI tracker could drive transparency and standardization in AI model evaluation, influencing enterprise AI investment decisions.

The post Bank of America launches AI tracker covering model intelligence and costs appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Bitcoin Magazine

Edelman Financial, Tudor Investment Reveal Significant Bitcoin Holdings 

Edelman Financial Engines has disclosed a $34 million position in spot Bitcoin ETFs — a stake that now exceeds some of the firm’s other holdings in major tech companies. 

While the position is still tiny in the investment advisor’s portfolio, it is still larger than its $25 million position in Amazon. 

The position — held in BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust and Grayscale’s flagship product — tracks closely with the public views of its founder, Ric Edelman. 

Edelman has been advocating for Bitcoin ETFs since 2019, years before the SEC approved spot products in January 2024. He also founded the Digital Assets Council of Financial Professionals, an organization built to educate financial advisors on crypto and blockchain technology. 

And Edelman Financial isn’t the only one: In a filing submitted this afternoon, Tudor Investment Corporation, the firm run by legendary macro trader Paul Tudor Jones, reported owning 688,529 shares of IBIT as of June 30, valued at $22.9 million. 

That’s up from the 579,083 shares Tudor reported the previous quarter. 

It’s worth remembering that few investors have built a career reading inflation cycles and their historical patterns as successfully as Jones, making the size of the add notable in its own right.

This post Edelman Financial, Tudor Investment Reveal Significant Bitcoin Holdings  first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

Abu Dhabi Sovereign Wealth Funds Keep Big Bitcoin Positions 

Bitcoin is the most important asset in two of Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth funds, according to regulatory filings. 

Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala Investment Company disclosed Friday that it held a $490 million stake in BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust — the second-largest single holding across its entire 13F portfolio. 

And a Thursday filing from the Abu Dhabi Investment Council, another state-run fund, revealed a $273.6 million position in the popular Bitcoin exchange-traded fund. The stake is the biggest position in its portfolio. 

Both wealth funds’ position in Bitcoin is unchanged since last quarter. 

Earlier this year, blockchain analytics firm Arkham Intelligence attributed approximately 6,782 Bitcoins — worth roughly $453.6 million at the time of its analysis — to wallets connected to Bitcoin mining activity linked to the UAE’s Royal Group.

The findings highlight a distinction between how the UAE has built its bitcoin position compared with other governments known to hold large amounts of the asset. Countries such as the United States hold substantial Bitcoin reserves that largely originated from law enforcement seizures. 

The UAE’s holdings, by contrast, stem primarily from domestic mining activity rather than confiscated assets.

Since the SEC approved a slew of Bitcoin funds in January 2024, major firms have been able to buy exposure to the asset via shares of the regulated vehicles that trade on stock exchanges. 

BlackRock’s IBIT is the most successful crypto ETF: The fund has received more cash than any other crypto ETF and currently has $47.3 billion in assets under management. 

Pension funds and U.S. states have all bought exposure to Bitcoin via the ETFs, along with more traditional investments like tech stocks and other U.S. equities.

This post Abu Dhabi Sovereign Wealth Funds Keep Big Bitcoin Positions  first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoiners Warned After French Tax Authority Confirms Data Breach Affecting Hundreds of Thousands

Bitcoiners have been warned after France’s tax administration confirmed that hackers breached its information system, exposing sensitive financial and personal data belonging to hundreds of thousands of taxpayers and businesses.

Writing on X on Friday, Bitcoin developer Jameson Lopp said the leak was “more bad news for Bitcoiners living in the leading country for wrench attacks.”

Lopp has created a tracker counting wrench attacks — when physical violence is used to steal crypto — across the world. A large amount happens in France, where data has been leaked before. 

The news comes one day after hardware wallet manufacturer Trezor announced a data breach exposing customer data. 

Cybersecurity researchers at FrenchBreaches, who reviewed samples of the leaked data, reported that the affected records break down to roughly 392,867 individuals and 285,570 businesses. 

Among the individuals, an estimated 26,805 have a reported annual taxable income of €100,000 or more, 386 exceed €1 million, and eight exceed €10 million. The hacker is said to be offering the full dataset for sale for several thousand euros.

The breach first surfaced publicly on August 12, when a hacker using the alias “ZeroBytes” posted on a cybercrime forum claiming to have infiltrated internal DGFiP servers and obtained VPN credentials that unlocked an internal lookup tool covering millions of taxpayers. 

According to the hacker’s own account, the extraction was interrupted before it could be completed, leaving what they described as only a partial dataset of 678,438 records.

The exposed sample reportedly includes highly sensitive information: full legal names, dates and places of birth, home and mailing addresses, marital status, number of dependents, internal tax identification numbers, reference taxable income, individual withholding tax rates, phone numbers, email addresses, and records of past correspondence with tax officials.

Security analysts warn that this combination of identity, contact and financial data could fuel highly convincing phishing campaigns impersonating tax authorities, as well as identity theft and fraud schemes tailored to victims’ income levels or family circumstances.

2025 was the worst on record for wrench attacks (crypto targeted kidnappings), with around 55 reported globally last year, according to TRM Labs. Lopp’s tool counted over 70 throughout last year. And this year is already looking bad, according to the tracker: 54 attacks have been documented so far. 

Wrench attacks made headlines last year when crooks kidnapped David Balland, co-founder of crypto hardware wallet brand Ledger, and his wife in France.

Criminals held the pair for around 24 hours before they were rescued by the French authorities.

This post Bitcoiners Warned After French Tax Authority Confirms Data Breach Affecting Hundreds of Thousands first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

Citi CEO Wants ‘Good’ Crypto Clarity Act To Get Passed

Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser has said that while some improvements need to be made to the crypto Clarity Act, the bank wants a “good bill to go through.”

The banking executive said that the bank was a “leader in digital assets” so wanted “safe adoption” of the technology. 

Lawmakers were trying to get a vote on the Clarity Act through before splitting for recess last week but ran out of time. A vote will now take place in September. 

“We want to have good regulation that supports innovation and also encourages the safe adoption of the capabilities of digital assets,” Fraser said. 

“I think it would be excellent for the system.”

A sticking point for the bill has been from the banking lobby, who raised concerns over crypto companies paying customers yield for holding stablecoins. U.S. banks have said they could lose customers if crypto exchanges offer more attractive products for their deposit base.

Fraser reiterated the point on Friday, saying that small banks play an important role in the U.S. and a reward system on deposits could have a “detrimental effect.” But she added: “We have not given up on pushing to get some improvements made to the bill, but we would like to see a good bill go through.”

America’s biggest crypto exchange, Coinbase, pulled support for the bill in January after clashing with banking chiefs who said that earning yield on stablecoins should be banned. 

The Clarity Act was passed last year by the House of Representatives but has been deadlocked since 2026. 

Still, the bill has been worked on by both Republicans and Democrats — despite crypto legislation being something pushed by pro-crypto President Donald Trump. 

Major institutions, including Fidelity and Goldman Sachs, as well as crypto lobby groups and politicians, have said the revised bill works in its current form. 

This post Citi CEO Wants ‘Good’ Crypto Clarity Act To Get Passed first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin Treasury Strategy Bites Back After MSCI Announces Possible Index Removal

Bitcoin treasury Strategy has said it “doesn’t need” Morgan Stanley Capital International after the index provider said it could remove the Bitcoin company from its Global Investable Market Indexes.

MSCI said in a consultation that it was consulting on a plan to define “Non-Operating Companies” and make them ineligible for its Global Investable Market Indexes (GIMI).

The removal of such companies would exclude companies like Strategy from indexes visible to a large pool of institutional investors. MSCI said it was weighing up the decision as Strategy is primarily known for holding a large amount of Bitcoin rather than running a traditional operating business.

Writing on X Friday, Strategy wrote: “Digital assets are assets. Index providers should measure markets, not decide which assets companies are allowed to own. MSCI’s proposal puts it out of step with regulators, markets, and its own customers.”

It added: “Bitcoin doesn’t need MSCI. Neither does Strategy.”

The consultation also included Japanese Bitcoin treasury Metaplanet, which trades on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, and uranium investment company Yellow Cake. 

Based on financial filings as of May 2026, Strategy and Metaplanet already meet the criteria for removal under MSCI’s proposed rule. 

If MSCI adopts the proposal as currently written and their financial profiles remain unchanged, both companies would be deleted from the MSCI ACWI IMI Index as part of the November 2026 Index Review, triggering forced selling by index-tracking funds and loss of future passive inflows.

MSCI is still gathering feedback on the proposal through September 30, and has explicitly said the consultation “may or may not result in changes to MSCI indexes” — meaning the rule could be modified, delayed, or dropped entirely based on responses from affected companies and market participants. Even if adopted, any changes to a company’s underlying financials before the review could also shift the result.

Nasdaq-listed Strategy — formerly MicroStrategy — started buying Bitcoin in August 2020 as a way to generate better returns for its shareholders during the COVID-19 pandemic.

It has since spent around $63.3 billion on Bitcoin and is the largest corporate holder of the asset. Investors can buy its shares to gain exposure to the leading cryptocurrency without having to buy and hold digital coins themselves. 

Strategy spawned a long-list of copycat firms which have bought not only Bitcoin, but other cryptocurrencies to boost their stock prices. 

Strategy’s stock (MSTR) was trading nearly 3% lower Friday at nearly $95 per share. MSTR year-to-date has dropped by nearly 40%. 

This post Bitcoin Treasury Strategy Bites Back After MSCI Announces Possible Index Removal first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

SafePal has become the latest hardware-wallet provider to suffer a security incident after an authorization flaw exposed personal information from about 40,000 customers.

The Aug. 16 disclosure extends a run of security problems involving hardware-wallet companies and their users, including recent incidents affecting Trezor, Ledger and Coldcard.

Two SafePal failures turned an order-system flaw into a larger data exposure

SafePal revealed that the breach originated in the company's e-commerce infrastructure.

According to the firm, an authorization flaw in its order-tracking system allowed unauthorized access to customer records covering purchases made between March 2, 2025, and April 11, 2026. The exposed information included names, email addresses, shipping addresses, phone numbers, and purchase details.

SafePal said private keys, recovery phrases, wallet passwords, payment card numbers, and wallet access were not exposed. It also found no evidence that the flaw itself was used to compromise customer wallets or steal cryptocurrency.

However, the authorization weakness was only one part of the incident.

A separate configuration error had prevented a scheduled cleanup process from operating correctly between September 2025 and April 2026, leaving older order records in the system for longer than intended.

That failure expanded the pool of information available through the authorization flaw and extended the affected dataset back to March 2025.

The retention failure also conflicts with a SafePal support statement published in 2020, which said information associated with delivered hardware-wallet orders would be retained for 30 days and then destroyed through a monthly cleanup process.

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Together, the two failures explain both how customer information became accessible and why nearly 40,000 records remained available: one control failed to restrict access, while another failed to delete information that should no longer have been stored.

Hardware-wallet incidents spread from data leaks to nine-figure theft

SafePal's disclosure is the latest in a series of security incidents involving major hardware-wallet providers and their customers this year.

In recent weeks, Trezor disclosed that a breach at its shipping provider exposed personal information belonging to nearly 14,000 customers, while Coldcard users suffered direct losses after a flaw in the wallet's key-generation process allowed attackers to drain Bitcoin from affected addresses. Ledger customers were also affected by an order-data breach involving third-party payment provider Global-e earlier this year.

The Coldcard incident has produced the largest financial loss among the recent cases. More than $100 million in Bitcoin was stolen after a bug left some private keys insufficiently secure, and funds were drained across multiple attack waves beginning in late July.

The other incidents have primarily exposed customer information rather than private keys, but security experts have warned that the stolen data creates another route for criminals to target crypto holders.

Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao pointed out that the breaches exposing names, phone numbers, emails and delivery addresses could increase phishing, social-engineering and physical-security risks.

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Notably, SafePal issued a similar warning after its own breach and said it had already taken down more than 30 fraudulent websites and phishing links targeting customers.

Meanwhile, including home addresses raises a more serious physical-security concern because leaked customer records can identify people who purchased devices commonly used to store cryptocurrency.

That comes as violent attacks against crypto holders are already increasing. Chainalysis said so-called wrench attacks, including kidnappings and home invasions used to force victims to transfer digital assets, resulted in about $30 million of reported thefts during the first half of 2026. The total for 2025 reached a record $58 million.

Chainalysis data also showed that home invasions accounted for 37% of violent crypto attacks recorded in 2026, while kidnappings made up more than half of reported incidents tracked this year.

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The recent hardware-wallet incidents have therefore produced risks at several levels. Coldcard users have already suffered more than $100 million in direct Bitcoin theft, while breaches affecting SafePal, Trezor and Ledger have exposed information that can be used for targeted phishing, impersonation and potentially physical attacks.

Taken together, the incidents complicate the idea of hardware wallets as a single line of defense. The devices may protect private keys, but users remain exposed to firmware failures, customer databases, and the broader infrastructure surrounding self-custody.

The post SafePal breach exposes 40,000 customers as hardware wallet attacks escalate from data leaks to $100 million theft appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Sono Group’s transition to a Bitcoin-heavy treasury is laying bare the severe financial strain at the core of the restructured company.

With its former solar energy subsidiary now spun out as a discontinued operation, the parent company generated zero revenue during the first half of 2026. Instead, Sono has tethered its survival entirely to digital assets.

However, an Aug. 14 Form 10-Q filing reveals a stark liquidity mismatch: as of June 30, the company held just $166,000 in cash against $4.11 million in Bitcoin.

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Bitcoin sits at the center of Sono’s liquidity plan

Bitcoin now occupies a central position in Sono’s continuing business accounts.

During the first six months of the year, the company spent $5 million to acquire 68.49 BTC. After accounting for option-related receipts and deliveries, its treasury stood at 69.78 BTC by the end of June. The firm stated that the fair value of these holdings stands at $4.118 million.

However, the strategy has yet to pay off as the company recorded an $890,000 net digital-asset treasury loss for the half.

To generate additional liquidity from the reserve, management has been writing weekly covered calls against its Bitcoin holdings. This strategy produced $93,000 of net option income during the first half, but the filing warns that those proceeds may not be sufficient to meet the company’s obligations.

Meanwhile, the financial pressure extends beyond the crypto portfolio.

Sono posted a $5.792 million net loss for the first half, including a $3.335 million loss from continuing operations.

The company has also relied heavily on external financing. First-half net cash provided by financing activities totaled $7.050 million, comprising $5.050 million of gross proceeds from four secured convertible debentures and another $2 million from a pre-funded warrant.

By June 30, Sono reported $5.049 million of convertible notes payable, net, against $5.050 million of gross principal outstanding. The net balance reflects accounting for the discounted debt host together with an embedded conversion derivative liability.

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Those financing actions provided liquidity but did not resolve the underlying going-concern risk.

Sono says it plans to seek further debt or equity capital, while warning that additional financing may not be available on acceptable terms, or at all. Its covered-call strategy carries a similar limitation because premium income may not be enough to fund its obligations.

That leaves Bitcoin as both a treasury asset and a potential source of liquidity if other measures fall short.

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Sono lists a partial Bitcoin sale among the measures available to shore up liquidity. The filing does not say such a sale has occurred or establish when one might happen.

But with no continuing-operations revenue and only $166,000 in cash as of June 30, the Bitcoin reserve has become more than a treasury investment: it is also one of the assets Sono may need to draw on to meet its obligations.

The post This public company quit solar for a $5 million Bitcoin bet, now it has just $166,000 in cash appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Nakamoto, the parent company of Bitcoin Magazine, faces a near-term balance-sheet test at year-end, when 60 million USDT of a Bitcoin-backed credit facility comes due amid tight unencumbered liquidity and heightened market volatility.

According to the company’s second-quarter regulatory filings, Nakamoto held $19.1 million in cash as of June 30, while a separate 105 million USDT tranche of the loan does not mature until June 2027.

However, assessing the firm’s near-term liquidity is complicated by its treasury structure: the vast majority of its digital asset holdings are already locked up as collateral for the facility.

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At the close of the quarter, Nakamoto held 4,467 Bitcoin valued at roughly $261.5 million. Of that stockpile, 3,805 BTC, worth approximately $222.7 million, was pledged to crypto exchange Kraken to secure the loan.

That left the company with just 662 unencumbered BTC, or about $38.7 million in free digital reserves.

Combined, Nakamoto’s cash and unencumbered Bitcoin stood at roughly $57.8 million at quarter-end, narrowly trailing the 60 million USDT obligation due Dec. 4.

While this does not represent an immediate funding shortfall, since the filing notes that pledged tokens can be liquidated at maturity to extinguish the debt, it leaves Nakamoto with a limited unencumbered cushion and a heavy reliance on Bitcoin to support repayment.

The company has already shown a willingness to pare back its core holdings to reduce the facility. In June, Nakamoto offloaded about 600 BTC for 35.6 million USDT and unwound select derivative hedges, generating roughly $48 million in aggregate net proceeds.

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The firm directed 45 million USDT toward paying down the facility, cutting the total balance from 210 million USDT to 165 million USDT, while extending 105 million USDT of the principal into mid-2027.

Meanwhile, the primary vulnerability between now and December remains collateral integrity.

Under the credit agreement, the annual loan fee stands at 7.75% as long as Nakamoto maintains at least 2,000 BTC in a designated account, rising to 8% if balances drop below that mark. Crucially, the 2,000 BTC marker serves strictly as a pricing tier rather than a margin trigger.

Nakamoto did not disclose the facility's specific maintenance or liquidation thresholds. A drop below the maintenance line would force the firm to post additional collateral or pay down principal, while breaching the liquidation trigger would constitute an event of default and allow Kraken to liquidate the pledged Bitcoin.

Nevertheless, the Bitcoin treasury company maintained that existing liquidity will satisfy operational cash requirements over the next 12 months, though it acknowledged that a sustained drop in Bitcoin prices could impair its ability to service debt and fund operations.

Headline results offer limited insight into the impending maturity. Nakamoto posted a second-quarter net loss of $133 million, driven primarily by a $105.2 million non-cash goodwill impairment and $48.7 million in mark-to-market losses on its digital asset portfolio.

The firm's adjusted operating income came in at $7.3 million, though that figure was heavily supported by $10.4 million in derivative revenue.

David Bailey, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Nakamoto, said:

“While our GAAP results reflect significant non-cash charges from goodwill impairment and the decline in Bitcoin’s price, this quarter we delivered the first positive adjusted operating income since Nakamoto became a Bitcoin operating company.”

The December maturity therefore leaves Nakamoto dependent on a combination of cash, unencumbered assets and pledged Bitcoin that can be sold against the loan.

With most of its BTC still committed as collateral and the facility’s maintenance and liquidation thresholds undisclosed, Bitcoin’s price will remain a key variable before the Dec. 4 payment comes due.

The post How a Bitcoin Treasury company sold 600 BTC to cut debt but still ended up with $60 million due in December appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Greenlane Holdings is a Nasdaq-listed company holding about 81.3 million BERA and BERA-equivalent units. Its token treasury ended the second quarter valued at about 77% below cost. A stayed Nasdaq rule could eventually expose the company to a $5 million listing test with no ordinary cure period.

At June 30, the treasury's $70.2 million cost basis compared with $16.4 million of fair value, according to Greenlane's quarterly filing. The 76.6% gap was a mark-to-market shortfall, not a realized loss from selling the tokens.

CryptoSlate Berachain market data puts the price at roughly $0.142. At that price, the same 81.3 million units would be worth about $11.6 million. That estimate is illustrative, not a company-reported current value. It assumes the holding was unchanged after quarter-end and that all BERA-equivalent positions value one-for-one.

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Greenlane's liquidity and losses

Greenlane reported $6.1 million of cash at June 30, down from $32.5 million at the end of 2025. In addition, it held $8.1 million of aUSDC and sUSDe protocol instruments, presented separately from cash, against $6.5 million of current liabilities. The filing flags liquidity, redemption, counterparty, protocol and valuation risks around those instruments.

The company's $24.8 million second-quarter net loss included a $19.1 million noncash change in digital-asset fair value. It also included a separate $1.8 million impairment of its Airgraft investment. Meanwhile, Greenlane's operating loss was $3.3 million, while cash used in operations totaled about $7.1 million for the first half. These figures separate the accounting hit from cash consumed by the business.

The treasury markdown does not mechanically cause a listing failure. Nasdaq's Market Value of Listed Securities metric uses the consolidated closing bid price multiplied by listed securities. It does not use the value of Greenlane's BERA, cash or protocol assets. Nevertheless, those balances matter indirectly because they can affect investor valuation and the company's financing options.

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A stayed rule with no ordinary cure

The SEC approved Nasdaq's new $5 million MVLS requirement on July 22. The Commission stayed that approval on July 29 while it reviews the decision. The official SEC docket showed no later merits order or timetable as of Aug. 15.

The rule therefore creates no current trigger for Greenlane. If it becomes operative, however, 30 consecutive business days below $5 million in MVLS would produce a Staff Delisting Determination. That process would not include the ordinary compliance period used for many listing deficiencies. A hearing request would not stay trading suspension. A panel could reverse an error or allow up to 180 days to meet all applicable initial-listing standards. That is not a standard cure period.

Greenlane said that, as of Aug. 14, it would be below the threshold without the stay. It had received no deficiency notice or Staff Delisting Determination and was evaluating unspecified alternatives to increase MVLS.

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Using Greenlane's disclosed 694,544 shares and its $1.93 Aug. 13 close gives a one-day proxy of about $1.34 million. With that share count fixed, $5 million would require roughly $7.20 per share, about 273% above $1.93.

Separately, a dilutive raise is not mathematically required. A sufficient share-price recovery could lift MVLS without issuing stock. For that reason, at the disclosed share count, clearing the threshold would require that steep price increase. Greenlane disclosed no specific route, and a single day's price cannot establish a 30-business-day compliance result.

The post How a public firm’s $70 million altcoin bet crashed 77% and left it facing Nasdaq delisting appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Bitcoin market cap must rise to ARK Invest's roughly $16 trillion 2030 base case, requiring about 78.6% annual growth from the current level; institutions and digital-gold adoption carry almost the entire scenario.

CryptoSlate's Bitcoin market cap stands at near $1,263,920,244,537. Reaching $16 trillion by Dec. 31, 2030, from that point requires a 12.659-fold increase in a little over four years.

However, July 2026 spot-Bitcoin ETF flows expose weak demand in the most visible US institutional channel. The current Farside daily table sums to just $172.8 million of net inflows for US spot-Bitcoin exchange-traded funds. ARK's scenario reaches far beyond one month and one access channel, but today's lower market value has made the remaining climb steeper.

The model concentrates 93% of its value in two bets

Bitcoin market cap math: three starting points, three growth rates

ARK's Big Ideas 2026 report states that Bitcoin could compound about 63% annually during the five years to 2030, rising from nearly $2 trillion to roughly $16 trillion.

Three different growth rates matter here because each uses a different starting point or clock.

ARK's published 63% rate belongs to its own approximate model baseline. Treating the displayed endpoints as exactly $2 trillion and $16 trillion across five full years produces 51.6% annual growth. A 63% five-year rate ending at $16 trillion implies a starting value near $1.39 trillion. ARK uses rounded language and does not publish the unrounded input on the page, leaving the visible figures internally non-reproducible without more precision.

The 78.6% figure starts later and lower. It runs from CryptoSlate's Aug. 15, 2026 snapshot through the end of 2030. It is a current-baseline calculation, separate from ARK's stated rate.

In ARK's additive framework, six demand assumptions generate about $15.948 trillion of modeled market-cap impact:

Institutional investment and digital gold total $14.8 trillion, or 92.8% of the calculated base case. The model therefore succeeds or fails mainly on Bitcoin gaining a much larger role in global portfolios and in the monetary use case now served by gold. The other four buckets collectively account for 7.2%.

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July exposes weakness in the US ETF channel

Meanwhile, Farside's 22 July daily totals produce $172.8 million. XBTO reported $172.4 million and described July as the weakest positive month of 2026 through that point. The public sources give no reason for the $400,000 difference, making approximately $173 million the appropriate narrative figure.

For comparison, a mechanical annualization produces $2.07 billion, based on $172.8 million multiplied by 12. Monthly ETF flows can swing sharply, so that figure works as a scale comparison rather than a forecast.

Likewise, ETF net flow and market capitalization describe different market processes. ETF data measures creations and redemptions. Bitcoin market cap is the latest traded price multiplied by circulating supply. Marginal transactions can reset the price applied across that supply, allowing market value to move by more or less than the dollars entering an ETF.

ARK's valuation methodology likewise builds terminal values from adoption rates, addressable markets and projected Bitcoin supply. Its $5 trillion institutional component represents a modeled value outcome from 2.5% penetration of a global portfolio. It does not specify $5 trillion of ETF subscriptions.

Still, the recent institutional evidence points to weak traction. BlackRock's IBIT quarterly filing shows $4.286 billion of second-quarter contributions and $7.236 billion of redemptions, producing a $2.951 billion net decrease in assets from capital-share transactions. Those transactions can occur in kind, which makes the filing measure distinct from investor cash flow. IBIT's shares outstanding rose just 0.4105% between June 30 and July 31.

Price response remains equally non-mechanical. ARK estimated that US spot ETFs and asset treasuries absorbed 1.2 times newly mined supply plus recirculated dormant Bitcoin in 2025. Bitcoin's price still fell 6.2% that year.

Together, these observations make July a warning about one major route to ARK's institutional target. They do not measure pension allocations, direct custody or the entire global portfolio in ARK's denominator.

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The biggest assumptions have the weakest visible bridge

Size and current observable traction make institutional investment and digital gold the most consequential risks.

The institutional case needs Bitcoin to reach 2.5% of ARK's roughly $200 trillion global portfolio excluding gold. The US ETF channel currently supplies the most visible daily evidence, and July showed minimal net demand. A broader judgment needs multi-period ETF data alongside direct institutional holdings, treasury positions and other custody channels.

Digital gold carries more weight at roughly $9.8 trillion, yet its denominator remains open to interpretation. The World Gold Council valued all above-ground gold at about $31 trillion at the end of 2025 and classified more than $15 trillion as investable or financial gold. ARK uses a separate $24.4 trillion gold-market input. These figures describe different scopes, placing ARK's denominator between the Council's all-gold and investable-gold measures.

The base case ultimately needs evidence that Bitcoin is capturing monetary demand associated with gold, not merely benefiting from a larger gold valuation. ARK itself enlarged the digital-gold addressable market after gold's market value rose 64.5% in 2025.

By contrast, ARK's emerging-market assumption has already moved in the opposite direction. ARK cut base-case penetration from 2.5% to 0.5%, an 80% reduction, as stablecoins gained ground in developing economies. The International Monetary Fund estimated that gross cross-border USDT and USDC flows increased from $12 billion in the first quarter of 2020 to $316 billion in the first quarter of 2025, with a large share directed to emerging markets. That growth supports the competitive pressure behind ARK's revision, while ARK alone supplies the exact 80% model adjustment.

Sovereign adoption remains a smaller, policy-dependent component. The US Strategic Bitcoin Reserve was established in March 2025 with forfeited Bitcoin as its initial funding. The policy directs officials to develop budget-neutral acquisition strategies, without mandating funded open-market purchases.

A separate bill that would require 200,000 BTC in annual purchases has been introduced but not enacted. That distinction leaves current US policy centered on retention rather than a scheduled bid.

Corporate holdings can move in both directions. In a July 6 Strategy filing, the company reported that it had sold 3,588 BTC for $216 million from June 29 through July 5 to fund preferred-stock distributions and replenish a dollar reserve. One company's sale cannot measure the entire corporate bucket, but it demonstrates that financing needs can turn a treasury holder into a seller.

Related Reading

Bitcoin treasury trade faces a stress test as debt pressure triggers selling

Corporate and sovereign BTC holders are selling into stress, raising fresh doubts about how durable treasury demand really is.

Apr 4, 2026 · Andjela Radmilac

A falsifiable scorecard through 2030

ARK publishes an endpoint scenario. A smooth compounding curve from the Aug. 15 snapshot provides analyst-created monitoring markers for that endpoint:

Bitcoin can overshoot or undershoot any single point. Two consecutive year-end misses, paired with flat or falling multi-period evidence for institutional allocation and digital-gold adoption, would make the base case materially less plausible because the required growth rate for the remaining years would rise.

The 2030 deadline supplies the hard test. ARK's base case fails on its own terms if institutional penetration does not approach 2.5%, evidence remains incompatible with a roughly $9.8 trillion digital-gold component, and the six modeled impacts do not support a Bitcoin market cap near $16 trillion.

Interim institutional monitoring should use a rolling 12-month ETF window together with disclosed direct holdings and treasury positions. Digital-gold monitoring should track whether Bitcoin's monetary role and overall capitalization are becoming consistent with ARK's modeled component. Stablecoin use, sovereign acquisition policy, corporate net buying and Bitcoin financial-services growth then show whether the smaller buckets are adding support or introducing further shortfalls.

July's approximately $173 million ETF inflow raises the burden of proof for the institutional path. The $16 trillion scenario now depends on visible acceleration across institutions and digital gold, while Bitcoin market cap must sustain a 78.6% annual climb from the Aug. 15 baseline.

The post Slowing ETF demand and corporate treasury selling are breaking the math behind Wall Street’s $16 trillion Bitcoin target appeared first on CryptoSlate.

The information provided in this article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Cryptocurrency investments carry a high degree of risk.

An NFT collection on Robinhood Chain now has a higher floor price than Bored Ape Yacht Club. It has 630 owners. And its price is not really a price at all — it is a formula. Here is what StonkBrokers actually does, why the math behind the floor matters more than the chart, and what the rest of the Robinhood Chain NFT market looks like.

New to the chain itself? Start with our guide to Robinhood Chain and the memecoins, then come back here.

The NFT wave in numbers

Robinhood Chain launched on 1 July 2026 and was immediately taken over by memecoins. By mid-July, a second wave started: NFTs.

By 23 July, seven collections had traded more than 1,500 ETH between them — pyopyopyopyo, StonkBrokers, OnChainHoodies, Gremlin Cartel, Robinhood Punks, Cash Cats and Robbin Hood Babies. Two and a half weeks later the field has consolidated hard around a single name.

Total NFT volume across the chain over 24 hours: roughly $979,000 (CoinGecko, 11 August 2026). Note the shape of it: StonkBrokers carries about an eighth of that volume on five sales, while Cash Cats does a comparable number on 555. One is a market. The other is a handful of very large tickets.

That table is the 11 August snapshot and is left standing as one. The StonkBrokers floor has come off hard since: 11.5 ETH on 14 August and 9.95 ETH on 17 August, down 26% from the 13.41 ETH peak, which is the move the rest of this article is about.

What StonkBrokers actually is

The collection launched on 17 July 2026 from Clutch Markets. There were 4,444 items and the mint was never open to the public — access was earned by burning older NFTs from the same team.

The technical core is ERC-6551, a standard that gives an NFT its own on-chain wallet, known as a token bound account. The NFT stops being a picture and becomes a container.

Three things follow from that:

Every broker was seeded with stock. At mint, each token bound account received a random tokenized equity token — TSLA, AMZN, NVDA, PLTR and others. It can be withdrawn at any time.

Activated brokers earn more stock. Paying a one-time fee in $STONKBROKER "activates" a broker across five tiers, from 66,666 to 1,666,666 tokens, worth a 1x to 3.33x reward weight. Half of every activation fee is burned.

Activation dies on transfer. Sell or move the NFT and the activation clears. The new owner has to pay again. The wallet contents travel with the NFT; the yield entitlement does not.

The rewards come from the collection's own NFT AMM, called Anvil. Seventy percent of the ETH trading fees accumulate in a pool, and when it is full any wallet can trigger a "Clock In" — the ETH buys tokenized stocks, which are distributed pro rata to activated brokers.

It is the most literal expression of what Robinhood Chain was built for: an NFT that is a securities account. It is also a closed loop.

The floor price is a derivative, not a price

This is the part almost every write-up skips.

The Anvil AMM prices every broker at a fixed reference of 666,666 $STONKBROKER, plus a 10% fee in ETH. So run the arithmetic with the token at $0.02333403 (CoinGecko, 17 August 2026):

666,666 × $0.02333403 ≈ $15,556, plus fee ≈ ~$17,112

CoinGecko puts the actual floor at 9.95 ETH, or $18,647, on the same day: about 9% above the AMM price including the fee. That gap has now flipped twice in a week. On 14 August the floor sat 2% below the mint-equivalent price, and three days before that it stood 5% above. Watch where the flip comes from, because it is not the NFT: between 14 and 17 August the token fell 22% while the floor gave up 13.5%. The reference price dropped out from under the secondary market, and buying from a holder became the expensive route again.

So the NFT is not being bid up. The token is, and the NFT follows. In the seven days to 11 August the token gained 111.8% and the floor gained 107.9%, the same move to within four percentage points. The reverse leg is visible in the same data, but it is not a clean mirror. Between 11 and 14 August the floor fell faster than the token, 14.2% against 8.4%. Between 14 and 17 August it was the other way round, 13.5% against 22%. The link is real and it is loose: the floor is quoted in ETH and trades in lumps of five sales a day, so it lags the token in both directions rather than tracking it minute by minute. That lag is exactly where the premium appears and disappears.

There is a second number worth sitting with. 4,444 NFTs × 666,666 tokens = 2.96 billion tokens. The entire total supply of $STONKBROKER is 2.717 billion. The collection cannot be bought at its own reference price even if every token in existence were used for it. The quoted NFT market cap of $82.9M therefore still exceeds the token's full diluted valuation of roughly $63.4M. It is an accounting artifact, not wealth.

630 owners, and what that really means

CoinGecko reports 630 unique owners against 4,444 items, 14.2%, or roughly 7.1 NFTs per holder. For context, Bored Ape Yacht Club sits at 5,670 owners across 9,998 items, or 56.7% (CoinGecko, 17 August 2026).

Part of that is a measurement artifact: NFTs sitting in the Anvil vault all belong to one contract address and count as a single owner. Part of it is real. The mint was whitelist-only through a burn of a previous collection, so the distribution started narrow and never widened.

The practical consequence is not moral, it is mechanical. A low free float means a small number of addresses can move the floor, and the primary exit route pays out in $STONKBROKER, not in ETH. You are trading one illiquid asset for another.

The reflexivity problem

Strip the mechanics down and the loop looks like this:

Traders buy brokers → fees accumulate → fees buy tokenized stocks → stocks are distributed to activated brokers → the yield attracts more traders.

Nothing in that loop is external. The "stock yield" is redistributed trading fees, not revenue from outside the system. If volume falls, the StockBooster pool fills more slowly, drops shrink, and the reason to activate weakens — which reduces token demand, which lowers the AMM reference price, which lowers the floor.

That is not a criticism of the design. It is a description of it. Reflexive systems work beautifully upward and unwind at the same speed.

One roadmap date is left as fuel: a vote-directed DEX plus an NFT options desk on 29 August. The launchpad was due on 11 August. The floor peaked at 13.41 ETH on that same day and has come off 26% since; the token set its own peak of $0.03699 on 9 August and trades about 37% below it. Anyone entering here is entering after the move and after the first leg down, not before either.

What buying in actually costs

The floor is the entry ticket, not the position.

Borrowing is also possible: lock a broker as collateral for a 666,666 $STONKBROKER loan at 15% annualized, with the fees feeding the same reward pool.

Before committing to any of it, the number that matters is the one nobody publishes: the actual daily stock-token payout per activated broker. Without it, no payback period can be calculated, and "yield" is a word, not a figure.

The security backdrop

Two things sit underneath every position on this chain.

L2Beat rates Robinhood Chain below Stage 0. Only two whitelisted actors can challenge an incorrect state, there is no exit window, and contracts are upgradeable with no delay. Proof data does live on Ethereum, which is the genuinely good part.

The scam environment is active. Nine days after launch, Protos documented fake contracts, honeypots and individual losses up to $56,000. On 23 July, Vlad Tenev's X account was compromised and used to promote a fraudulent "VLAD" token; the associated wallets pulled roughly 650 ETH, around $1.2–1.3 million. Hijacked SpaceXAI and Starlink accounts pushed a separate rug.

For NFTs specifically, the pattern to watch is the mint page. StonkBrokers minted out in July, which means any site advertising a live free mint for it today is, by definition, not the official one. Verify the domain through the project's verified channels every single time.

Four checks before you buy a Robinhood Chain NFT

1. Get the contract address from a verified source only — never from a post, a reply or a paid search result.
2. Check how much of the supply sits in the protocol vault before reading anything into the owner count.
3. Ask what backs the floor. If an AMM prices the collection off a token, you are taking token risk with NFT liquidity.
4. Find the realized yield per NFT per day. If you cannot find it, you cannot price the asset — and neither can the person selling it to you.

The verdict

StonkBrokers is the most interesting thing built on Robinhood Chain so far, and ERC-6551 token bound accounts are a genuinely useful primitive — an NFT that custodies real assets solves a problem that JPEG collections never could.

But the current price says almost nothing about that. It says the token doubled. Anyone buying the floor today is buying leveraged exposure to $STONKBROKER, wrapped in an asset that is harder to sell, with the floor at an all-time high and the token about 10% below the peak it set on 9 August — three weeks into a project whose main modules have not shipped yet.

The idea deserves attention. The entry point deserves scepticism.

For the wider picture — the chain, the memecoin wave and the tokenized stocks — see our Robinhood Chain guide.

FAQ

What is StonkBrokers? A collection of 4,444 NFTs on Robinhood Chain, launched 17 July 2026 by Clutch Markets. Each NFT owns an ERC-6551 token bound account that holds tokenized stocks and can receive further stock tokens as rewards once activated.

Why is the StonkBrokers floor price higher than Bored Ape Yacht Club? Because it is pegged to a token, not set by open bidding. The project's own AMM prices each NFT at 666,666 $STONKBROKER plus a 10% ETH fee, so the floor rises and falls with the token.

Do I earn rewards just by holding $STONKBROKER? No. Rewards go only to activated NFTs. The token gives liquid exposure to the ecosystem and is required to buy and activate a broker, but it does not earn stock distributions by itself.

What is ERC-6551? A standard that gives an NFT its own on-chain wallet, called a token bound account. The NFT can then hold and control other tokens — which is what allows a StonkBroker to hold tokenized equities.

Is there a Robinhood Chain token or airdrop? No. The chain uses ETH for gas and no native token or airdrop has ever been announced. Any offer claiming otherwise is a scam.

Where to read on

How the memecoin wave on Robinhood Chain started, which tokens carry it and how to tell a durable move from pure circular volume is covered in the Robinhood Chain memecoins explainer — the backstory to every figure above.

If you want to act on it, the first question is where you can legally trade: the crypto exchange comparison lists the providers licensed under MiCA, with fees and regional limits.

Sources

CoinGecko (NFT collection and token data), stonkbrokers.cash, clutch.markets, Odaily, AirdropAlert, OpenSea, L2Beat, DefiLlama, growthepie, KuCoin News, Protos, Cryptopolitan, U.Today, CoinDesk, Decrypt. Market data refreshed 17 August 2026; the collection comparison table and the seven-day figures are explicitly dated 11 August and left as the snapshot they were.

Note on AI use: AI tools were used for this article – in research and drafting, and for the header image, which is AI-generated and does not depict a real event. All figures, claims and sources are editorially checked before publication.

Swapping Bitcoin for Stablecoins: Does Austria Charge Tax?

Many bitcoin investors move into stablecoins for a while when the market turns volatile. Rather than cashing out into euros, they swap their bitcoin for a token designed to track the US dollar or the euro as closely as possible. In economic terms the operation looks a great deal like a sale into a state-issued currency.

Austrian tax law draws a decisive distinction here. Where the stablecoin received qualifies as a cryptocurrency within the meaning of the Income Tax Act, a direct swap counts in principle as a crypto-to-crypto transaction. For bitcoin classed as new assets, that step does not yet trigger tax on the price gain accumulated so far.

The liability is deferred rather than cancelled. The historical acquisition costs of the bitcoin carry across to the stablecoins received. Once those stablecoins are later sold for euros or US dollars, the appreciation originally built up in bitcoin can become taxable.

Stablecoins Can Qualify as Cryptocurrencies for Tax Purposes

A stablecoin is meant to hold its value against a reference through a defined mechanism. The US dollar serves as that reference in most cases. Other stablecoins track the euro, different asset classes, or a basket of several values.

According to the Austrian finance ministry, stablecoins can fall under the cryptocurrency definition set out in Section 27b of the Income Tax Act. The ministry names Tether as an explicit example. Among the decisive criteria: the token has to be accepted as a means of exchange and be capable of electronic transfer, storage and trading.

A dollar-pegged stablecoin therefore does not become an actual US dollar for tax purposes. Tracking a state currency changes nothing about the basic position that the investor holds a digital token rather than legal tender.

Classifying a stablecoin as e-money under supervisory law does not automatically rule out treatment as a cryptocurrency either, according to the Austrian income tax guidelines. Tax classification and financial market classification need not line up completely.

A Direct Bitcoin to Stablecoin Swap Is Usually Tax Neutral

Under the crypto tax regime currently in force in Austria, swapping one cryptocurrency for another does not in principle constitute a taxable disposal.

Where a private individual swaps bitcoin directly for a stablecoin that meets the statutory definition of a cryptocurrency, the bitcoin gain accrued up to that point is therefore generally left untaxed at the moment of the swap. The Austrian finance ministry confirms explicitly that no realisation takes place in a crypto-to-crypto swap.

This applies in particular to bitcoin acquired after February 28, 2021, which counts as so-called new assets.

A simplified example:

• Bitcoin bought for 20,000 euros
• Value of the bitcoin at the time of the swap: 60,000 euros
• Stablecoins received: equivalent of 60,000 euros

Although the position shows an economic gain of 40,000 euros, a direct swap into a stablecoin recognised for tax purposes generally attracts no tax at that stage. The investor now holds stablecoins worth 60,000 euros. Their acquisition costs for tax purposes, however, are not automatically 60,000 euros.

The Old Bitcoin Acquisition Costs Travel With You

In a tax-neutral crypto-to-crypto swap, the acquisition costs of the cryptocurrency given up transfer to the cryptocurrency received.

In the example above, the bitcoin was originally bought for 20,000 euros. Those very acquisition costs pass across to the stablecoins in principle.

The tax position then looks like this:

Market value of the stablecoins: 60,000 euros
Acquisition costs carried over: 20,000 euros
Appreciation not yet realised: 40,000 euros

Moving into stablecoins does not reset the tax history. The appreciation achieved so far stays in place and is taken into account at a later taxable realisation.

Seen from Austria, stablecoins are therefore no instrument for locking in a bitcoin gain free of tax for good. They can push back the moment of taxation, yet they generally leave the latent tax burden intact.

Selling the Stablecoins for Euros Triggers the Tax

Once the stablecoins are later sold for euros, the transaction is no longer a tax-neutral crypto-to-crypto step. Swapping a cryptocurrency for euros or for a recognised foreign currency counts as a taxable realisation.

That covers in particular:

• Selling the stablecoin for euros
• Selling it for US dollars
• Redeeming it with the issuer against legal tender
• Using the stablecoin to pay for goods
• Using the stablecoin to pay for a service
• Gains from taxable crypto new assets held privately are generally subject to the special tax rate of 27.5 percent.

Continuing the example:

• Original bitcoin acquisition costs: 20,000 euros
• Swap of the bitcoin into stablecoins: market value 60,000 euros
• Later sale of the stablecoins: 60,000 euros
• Taxable gain: 40,000 euros
• Tax at 27.5 percent: 11,000 euros

The stablecoins themselves gained little to nothing in value, yet the sale captures the gain built up earlier in bitcoin. The reason lies in the acquisition costs of 20,000 euros carried forward.

A Euro Stablecoin Also Remains a Token in Principle

The principle extends beyond dollar stablecoins. A token pegged to the euro can likewise remain a cryptocurrency for tax purposes. Swapping bitcoin for a euro stablecoin is therefore not automatically the same as selling bitcoin for real euros. Where the token meets the definition in Section 27b(4) of the Income Tax Act, a tax-neutral crypto-to-crypto swap can still be in play.

What matters is more than how precisely the stablecoin mirrors one euro. The relevant question is which asset the investor actually receives:

• Real euros in a bank or exchange account: in principle a taxable realisation of the bitcoin
• Euro-pegged stablecoin that counts as a cryptocurrency for tax purposes: in principle a tax-neutral crypto-to-crypto swap
• Token that does not count as a cryptocurrency: possibly a taxable swap against a different asset

Investors should therefore look past the trading name or the ticker of the token.

Not Every Stablecoin Automatically Enjoys the Tax Treatment

The finance ministry chooses its words carefully: stablecoins can fall under the cryptocurrency definition. It follows that the assessment depends on how the individual token is structured.

A tax-neutral swap requires both the bitcoin given up and the token received to be cryptocurrencies within the meaning of Section 27b(4) of the Income Tax Act. Where bitcoin is swapped for a token classed for tax purposes as a security, a receivable, an asset token, a derivative or another economic asset, the exemption for crypto-to-crypto swaps does not apply.

The Austrian finance ministry points out, for instance, that certain asset tokens and NFTs fall outside the cryptocurrency definition. Depending on their structure, different tax rules govern them.

A closer review may be needed for:

• tokenised securities
• tokens on money market funds or bonds
• gold-backed or commodity-backed tokens
• synthetic tokens with a derivative structure
• platform balances that cannot be transferred freely
• tokens that mainly represent a redemption claim
• stablecoins with an unusual legal construction
• The label "stablecoin" on its own therefore guarantees no tax neutrality.

What Applies When the Exchange Settles Technically in Euros?

Some crypto exchanges offer a trading pair between bitcoin and a stablecoin while internally settling the operation through euros or another fiat currency.

The account statement may then show two technical entries, for example:

• Sale of bitcoin for euros
• Purchase of the stablecoin with euros

This does not necessarily produce a taxable intermediate realisation. Under the Austrian income tax guidelines, the operation as a whole can still be treated as a tax-neutral crypto-to-crypto swap where the investor clearly placed an order for such a swap, has no influence over the technical settlement and at no point can dispose of the fiat amount shown in between. The sequence also has to be documented unambiguously.

The picture can differ where the user genuinely sells bitcoin for euros first and then decides independently whether and when to buy a stablecoin with the euro balance.

In economic terms there are then usually two separate operations:

• a taxable sale of bitcoin for euros
• a subsequent acquisition of a stablecoin

The decisive factors are therefore the end result together with the order the user placed and whether a freely available fiat balance accrued to them in the meantime.

Swap Fees Generally Trigger No Additional Tax

Trading or transaction fees often arise on a direct swap of bitcoin into a stablecoin.

Under Austrian administrative practice, expenses directly connected with a tax-neutral crypto-to-crypto swap are irrelevant for tax purposes at the moment of the swap. They count neither as additional acquisition costs, nor does paying them in cryptocurrency generally trigger a taxable realisation of its own.

That sets these fees apart from network fees on a pure wallet transfer. Where bitcoin is merely moved to another address belonging to the same owner and the network fee is paid in bitcoin, the fee coins can constitute a taxable swap against a transaction service.

Fees on the crypto-to-crypto swap itself benefit from a specific exception. Investors should therefore record whether a fee belonged directly to the swap or arose for a separate withdrawal or wallet transfer.

Swapping the Stablecoin Back Into Bitcoin

Where the investor later swaps the stablecoins directly back into bitcoin, that step is in principle another tax-neutral crypto-to-crypto swap, provided both tokens satisfy the statutory cryptocurrency definition.

The original acquisition costs then transfer from the stablecoins to the newly received bitcoin.

Example:

• Bitcoin originally bought for 20,000 euros
• Bitcoin swapped into stablecoins at a value of 60,000 euros
• Stablecoins later swapped back into bitcoin at the same value

After the swap back, the acquisition costs of the new bitcoin generally remain 20,000 euros for tax purposes. The appreciation of 40,000 euros stays untaxed yet stored in the tax record. The gain is generally realised only on a later sale of the bitcoin for euros or on another taxable use.

What Happens When the Stablecoin Loses Its Peg?

Stablecoins carry risk. Their market value can fall below the intended reference value temporarily or permanently. A depeg, as it is known, can carry tax consequences too.

Example:

• Acquisition costs carried over from the bitcoin: 20,000 euros
• Stablecoins received in the swap: market value 60,000 euros
• Stablecoin loses its peg
• Sale proceeds: 45,000 euros

The taxable gain in this case generally amounts to:

45,000 euros in proceeds minus 20,000 euros in acquisition costs = 25,000 euros in gain

The investor has lost 15,000 euros in economic terms against the value at which the stablecoins were acquired, and a taxable gain of 25,000 euros nonetheless remains. The reason is that the original bitcoin acquisition costs were carried forward.

Where the sale proceeds fall below the acquisition costs carried over, a loss relevant for tax purposes can arise.

Example:

• Acquisition costs carried over: 20,000 euros
• Stablecoin sold after a sharp loss in value: 12,000 euros
• Loss for tax purposes: 8,000 euros

Subject to the statutory restrictions, that loss can generally be offset against certain positive investment income. Offsetting it freely against salary or self-employed income is not provided for.

Stablecoin Interest Can Be Taxable Immediately

Simply holding a stablecoin triggers no ongoing taxation in principle. The position changes once the tokens are lent out or committed to certain DeFi or yield products.

Consideration for making cryptocurrencies available falls under current income from cryptocurrencies pursuant to Section 27b(2) of the Income Tax Act. This covers lending income in particular, along with certain rewards for supplying tokens to liquidity or lending pools. Such income is generally valued and taxed at the moment it accrues.

What that means:

• Swapping bitcoin into a stablecoin can be tax neutral to begin with.
• Lending out that stablecoin for interest afterwards can generate ongoing taxable income.
• A later sale of the rewards received can produce an additional price gain or loss.

Platforms do not always use terms such as "staking", "earn", "rewards" or "savings" in their tax sense. The actual economic substance governs. Where the arrangement amounts to lending in truth, the yield can be taxable as soon as it accrues.

What Applies to Legacy Bitcoin Holdings?

The tax-neutral crypto-to-crypto rule in Section 27b covers cryptocurrencies acquired after February 28, 2021. Bitcoin from earlier purchases generally counts as legacy assets and remains subject to the previous tax system.

Swapping legacy holdings constitutes, in legal terms, a disposal of the old bitcoin and a fresh acquisition of the stablecoin received. Whether that disposal is actually taxable depends on the earlier tax classification and above all on the speculation period applicable at the time.

For legacy holdings held privately over many years, the former one-year speculation period has usually expired already. In such a case the swap of the old bitcoin can be free of tax. The stablecoin received then generally counts as a new asset. Its acquisition costs are usually set at the market value of the bitcoin given up at the time of the swap. The finance ministry confirms this treatment for comparable swaps involving legacy crypto holdings.

Example:

• Bitcoin acquired in 2020 for 10,000 euros
• Swap in 2026 at a value of 70,000 euros
• former speculation period expired

As far as the old bitcoin is concerned, the swap can remain free of tax. The stablecoins received then count as new assets with acquisition costs of 70,000 euros in principle. Selling them later for 70,000 euros usually produces no further gain.

The situation can look different for business holdings, legacy holdings deployed to earn interest, or other special cases. Legacy holdings should therefore be documented separately from new assets.

Does the Exchange Have to Withhold Capital Gains Tax?

Austrian crypto service providers are generally obliged to withhold capital gains tax on certain crypto income accruing after December 31, 2023. On a tax-neutral swap of bitcoin for a qualifying stablecoin, no withholding tax should generally fall due on the deferred gain.

Once the stablecoin is later sold for euros, an Austrian provider can calculate and withhold the tax using the acquisition costs it has stored or been notified of.

Foreign exchanges frequently apply no Austrian withholding. Taxable gains then generally have to be reported in the income tax return. Since the 2025 calendar year, Austrian withholding agents have had to supply standardised tax reporting for crypto income on request.

Difficulties can arise where the platform does not know the original bitcoin acquisition costs. Where a move between exchanges or wallets fails to carry the full data across, the automatic tax calculation can diverge from the actual outcome.

Which Data Investors Should Document

For a bitcoin to stablecoin swap, the following information in particular should be recorded:

• Date and exact time of the swap
• Quantity and type of the bitcoin given up
• Type and quantity of the stablecoin received
• Market value of both holdings in euros
• Original acquisition costs of the bitcoin
• Acquisition costs carried over to the stablecoin
• Trading and transaction fees
• Name of the specific trading pair
• Evidence of a direct crypto-to-crypto order
• Information on any technical fiat settlement in between
• Later sales, swaps back or transfers
• Income from lending or DeFi use

The chain of acquisition costs matters most of all. Without it, a later stablecoin sale cannot be calculated correctly.

Conclusion: Moving Into Stablecoins Usually Just Defers the Tax

A direct swap of bitcoin for a stablecoin generally triggers no tax in Austria on crypto new assets, provided the stablecoin received itself counts as a cryptocurrency within the meaning of Section 27b of the Income Tax Act.

The bitcoin appreciation accrued up to that point does not disappear, though. The original acquisition costs transfer to the stablecoin. On a later sale for euros, US dollars, goods or services, the deferred gain is generally realised and can be taxed at 27.5 percent.

• Particular attention is required where:
• the token received may not be a stablecoin within the meaning of crypto tax law,
• the exchange actually settles the operation through a freely available fiat balance,
• legacy bitcoin holdings are used,
• the stablecoin loses its peg,
• stablecoins earn interest or are deployed in DeFi protocols,
• historical acquisition costs are missing.

Stablecoins can serve as an instrument for reducing price risk temporarily. What they do not offer in Austria is a way to realise a gain free of tax for good.

The XRP price is trading at $0.9996 at the time of writing. Not above $1. Not comfortably below it. Exactly on the line that has defined the token's entire summer.

The weekly candle tells the story better than any headline: open at $1.0289, high at $1.0402, low at $0.9852, close at $0.9996, down 2.87% on the week. XRP has now poked below the psychological $1 mark several times in August and clawed its way back each time, but every recovery has been weaker than the last. The bounces are getting smaller, the closes are getting lower, and the buyers who defended this level in June and July are visibly running out of ammunition.

That matters far more than it sounds, because XRP is not falling on its own bad news. It is falling in a market where Bitcoin itself is struggling. And if BTC loses its own footing, XRP does not have a soft landing waiting below.

Why is the $1 level so important for XRP?

$1 is the last structural support XRP has left before a long air pocket down to $0.90 and $0.80. It is not just a round number, it is where buyers have repeatedly stepped in since late June, and it is now the only thing separating $XRP from levels it has not traded at in almost two years.

Round numbers matter in crypto because they concentrate orders. Stop losses cluster just beneath them, limit buys stack just above them, and derivatives desks build positions around them. XRP has spent roughly two months grinding sideways against this line, which means an enormous amount of leverage has been built directly on top of it.

When that kind of level breaks with conviction rather than in a wick, the resulting move is rarely orderly. The stops trigger, the liquidations cascade, and the price does not stop at the first sign of demand. It stops where the next real bid sits.

What do the charts actually say about XRP right now?

XRP is trading below its 200-week EMA at $1.3745, its weekly RSI has fallen to 31.02 against a signal line at 33.50, and the entire structure since March has been a clean series of lower highs and lower lows.

Break that down:

• The 200 EMA at $1.3745 is now overhead resistance, not support. XRP lost it in May and every attempt to reclaim it since has been rejected. Until price closes back above it, the weekly trend is bearish by definition.
• Weekly RSI at 31.02 is nearly oversold, but on a weekly timeframe that is not automatically bullish. Oversold in a downtrend usually means the trend is working, not that a reversal is due. RSI can sit in the low 30s for months.
• RSI below its signal line means momentum is still deteriorating, not stabilising.
• The rejection map above is brutal: $1.20, $1.30, the EMA at $1.3745, then $1.50 and $1.80. Every single one of those was support on the way down. They are all resistance now.

The performance table underlines how relentless this has been. XRP is down 3.80% over one week, 7.99% over one month, 32.78% over six months, 45.67% year to date, and 67.54% over twelve months. Even the five year figure is negative at 22.29%. This is not a healthy asset taking a breather. This is an asset in a sustained, multi-quarter distribution.

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What happens to XRP if Bitcoin drops?

This is the part most XRP holders are underestimating.

XRP has no independent bid right now. If Bitcoin breaks below $60,000, XRP loses $1 almost mechanically, and the next levels that offer any real support are $0.9049 and $0.8052.

Bitcoin is currently stuck around $63,000 after repeatedly failing to reclaim $65,000. Analysts are watching support in the $60,000 to $61,000 zone, with resistance stretching toward $65,000 to $66,000, and the 0.618 Fibonacci retracement near $57,825 marked as the clearest support on the weekly chart. In other words, BTC has maybe 4% of cushion before it enters a zone where its own structure starts breaking.

Altcoins do not fall proportionally with Bitcoin in these moments. They fall harder. A 5% $BTC drawdown routinely translates into 8% to 12% on a weak large cap altcoin, and XRP is currently one of the weakest large caps in the market by flow data. If BTC slides from $63,000 toward $57,800, that is a 8.3% move for Bitcoin. Applied to XRP with a typical high beta multiplier, that alone would put XRP in the $0.85 to $0.90 region without a single piece of XRP-specific bad news.

That is the asymmetry XRP holders need to understand. XRP does not need its own catastrophe. It just needs Bitcoin to have a bad two weeks.

XRP Price Prediction: Where is the next support if XRP loses $1?

The two levels that matter are $0.9049 and $0.8052. Between $1 and $0.90 there is very little historical trading activity, which means the drop can be fast and shallow on volume.

Here is the downside map:

The $0.90 area is the first genuine test. It lines up with prior consolidation from the 2024 range and it is where a lot of longer-term accumulation sat before the late-2024 breakout. If sellers push through it, $0.8052 becomes the line that decides whether this is a deep correction or a full retrace of the entire 2024 to 2025 move.

Below $0.80 the chart is essentially empty until the $0.60 region. That is not a prediction, it is just what the volume profile looks like.

Why is nobody buying XRP at these levels?

Because the institutional money that was supposed to be XRP's catalyst simply is not showing up.

Weekly net inflows into US spot XRP ETFs collapsed 93% to $1.01 million for the week ending August 8, down from $14.86 million the previous week, even though the seven spot XRP ETFs hold roughly $1 billion in combined assets. There have been multiple days this month with literally zero net flow activity, something Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs did not experience once over the same stretch.

Meanwhile, the CLARITY Act missed its window before the Senate recess, which pushes any legislative clarity on XRP's commodity status to September at the earliest. The single biggest regulatory catalyst on XRP's calendar has been kicked down the road, and the market has repriced accordingly.

There is one genuine counterpoint. Whale wallets holding more than 10 million XRP have been absorbing over 10 million tokens per day, and large holder outflows from Binance now account for 91% of total exchange outflows, the highest concentration since 2024. Someone with size is buying. Whether that is conviction accumulation or slow-motion bag catching will only be clear in hindsight, and whales have been early before.

What would actually turn XRP bullish again?

XRP needs a weekly close above $1.22 to neutralise the immediate bearish structure, and a reclaim of $1.30 to $1.3745 to genuinely flip the trend.

The sequence looks like this:

1. Defend $1 on a weekly closing basis, not just intraweek wicks.
2. Reclaim $1.20 to $1.22, which would break the run of lower highs since May.
3. Close above $1.30, the last major horizontal resistance.
4. Reclaim the 200 EMA at $1.3745, which would be the first real trend change signal since spring.

Realistically, step one is the only thing on the table this month. Everything above requires either a Bitcoin recovery above $70,000 or a hard regulatory catalyst, and neither is scheduled before September.

What should XRP holders watch this week?

• The weekly close. A weekly candle that closes below $0.985 confirms the breakdown. A close back above $1.05 buys time.
• Bitcoin at $60,000. This is the trigger level for the whole altcoin complex, XRP included.
• XRP ETF flow reports, published every Monday. Four consecutive weeks below $5 million would confirm the demand collapse is structural rather than seasonal.
• Whale accumulation data. If the large wallets stop buying while price falls, the last remaining bid disappears.

The bottom line

XRP is not in a dip. It is in a downtrend that has now compressed against its final support, with weekly momentum deteriorating, institutional flows evaporating, and its main regulatory catalyst delayed to September. The token has broken below $1 several times already, and each defence has been thinner than the last.

The dangerous part is not XRP's own chart. It is that XRP has become almost entirely a leveraged expression of Bitcoin's direction, and Bitcoin is sitting 4% above a support zone that analysts already consider the last clean line on the chart. If BTC goes, XRP does not drift lower. It gaps to $0.90, and if that fails, $0.80.

For traders, the levels are simple: $1 decides everything, $1.22 changes the picture, $0.9049 and $0.8052 are where you find out how bad it gets.

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Toncoin changes hands at 1.3260 USD, roughly 62.5 percent below the twelve-month high of 3.5328 USD reached on 14 August 2025. A discount of that size is what keeps the question alive: is Toncoin a good buy at current prices, or has the market marked the asset down for reasons that have not gone away?

One point needs clearing up first. The listing formerly known as Toncoin now trades as Gram, ticker GRAM, and the project's own site at ton.org uses the new name throughout. It is the same listing under a new label rather than a fork or a token swap. We keep the familiar name here because that is what readers search for.

cryptoticker.io collected the price data for this analysis on 14 August 2026. Market data comes from CoinMarketCap, and every indicator quoted here was calculated in house from 365 daily closing prices using standard formulas: exponential moving averages for the trend, Wilder's method for the relative strength index.

Toncoin price analysis: where the TON price stands and which levels matter

At 1.3260 USD the Toncoin price sits below both reference lines that medium-term investors watch. The 50-day exponential moving average stands at 1.4925 USD, which puts the current price 11.2 percent underneath it. The 200-day exponential moving average, the slower of the two, sits at 1.6695 USD, a further step up and 20.6 percent above the current quote. In chart terms, Toncoin is trading in the lower third of its own annual range.

The floor of that range is well defined. The twelve-month low of 1.2022 USD dates from 2 March 2026, and the current price is only 10.3 percent above it, a narrow cushion. The ceiling is far away: the 3.5328 USD high from August 2025 would require the price to more than double.

Three levels therefore frame any decision at current prices. The March low near 1.20 USD is the zone buyers defended once before. The 50-day line at 1.4925 USD is the first hurdle a recovery would need to clear. The 200-day line at 1.6695 USD separates a bounce from a trend change.

Is the Toncoin downtrend broken or only interrupted?

The data says interrupted rather than broken. Over 30 days Toncoin is down 16.7 percent, over 90 days down 30.6 percent, and over twelve months down 62.5 percent. Each window points the same way, and the sequence of lower highs behind them has not been reversed.

What has changed is the pace. The gap between the current price at 1.3260 USD and the March low at 1.2022 USD has held for months, which means sellers have not forced a new low despite a weak tape. A base of that kind is a precondition for a trend change without being one in itself.

For the downtrend to count as broken, the price would need to reclaim the 200-day line at 1.6695 USD and hold above it rather than tag it and fall back. Until then, the defensible description is a downtrend in a pause, and anyone buying at current prices is assuming that pause resolves upward.

What RSI and moving averages mean for a Toncoin entry

The relative strength index over 14 days reads 38.3, below the neutral midpoint of 50 and above the 30 mark conventionally treated as oversold. The practical meaning is unspectacular: selling pressure has eased, but no washout has occurred of the kind that often precedes sharp rebounds.

The two moving averages add the structural picture. With the price at 1.3260 USD below the 50-day line at 1.4925 USD, and that line below the 200-day line at 1.6695 USD, the alignment is the one technicians call bearish: the recent average price sits under the longer one, which is what a sustained decline looks like from the inside.

For an entry decision, the combination offers no timing signal at all. It rules out the argument that Toncoin is technically oversold and due a bounce, and equally the argument that the asset is overheated. Investors who need a technical trigger will not find one at 1.3260 USD, which is a reason to think about position sizing rather than entry precision.

What Toncoin trading volume reveals about demand

Volume deserves the most attention here. Toncoin turned over 35.6 million USD in the last 24 hours. The 30-day average sits at 49.5 million USD, the 90-day average at 145.6 million USD, and the full-year average at 161.6 million USD. Activity is running at roughly a fifth of the annual norm.

Thin volume has two consequences for a buyer. Price moves in either direction require less capital, so rallies and declines can both be sharper than the market capitalisation of 3.66 billion USD would suggest. And the drop in turnover indicates departed attention rather than accumulating demand.

Market capitalisation places Toncoin at rank 22 among crypto assets, a large-cap position by any measure. The gap between that rank and current activity is the tension in this asset: a top-25 valuation supported by turnover at a quarter of its own yearly average. The broader market offers little support either, with the Fear and Greed Index at 36, in fear territory.

Structural factors that speak for Toncoin: supply, usage and regulation

Supply mechanics come first. Roughly 2.758 billion coins circulate out of a total supply of about 5.231 billion, with no hard maximum in the sense that Bitcoin has one. Inflation is bounded by protocol rules rather than a fixed cap, so the circulating share can keep rising. A buyer at 1.3260 USD is buying a claim on a supply base that is not fixed, and that belongs in any valuation.

Usage is the more distinctive argument. The network's design and its documentation at docs.ton.org centre on cheap, high-throughput transfers aimed at consumer payments inside a messenger environment rather than on complex financial contracts. That distribution channel is the asset's genuine differentiator among large-cap chains, and it is why the listing survived a 62.5 percent drawdown without losing its top-25 rank.

Regulation is the third factor, and the picture is neutral to mildly favourable. Under the European framework supervised by ESMA, crypto assets face harmonised disclosure and custody requirements across the bloc, which has made large-cap tokens easier for regulated venues to list and keep listed. That lifts no single price, but it lowers the risk that a top-25 coin becomes inaccessible on European platforms.

Against those points, the rename to Gram carries a practical cost that is easy to underestimate: ticker changes fragment search traffic, complicate portfolio tracking and occasionally delay listings on smaller venues. We regard this as transitional friction rather than a structural flaw, and flag it as interpretation rather than measurement.

What speaks for buying Toncoin at current prices

Three arguments carry weight at 1.3260 USD.

The entry sits near a tested floor. At 10.3 percent above the twelve-month low of 1.2022 USD, a buyer here has a reference level close enough to define risk precisely. That is a materially different proposition from buying in the middle of a range, where the nearest meaningful support may be 30 percent away.

The valuation has already absorbed a severe repricing. A decline of 62.5 percent over twelve months has removed most of the optimism priced in at 3.5328 USD. Whatever expectations remain at 1.3260 USD are modest, and assets that have completed their repricing need less good news to move.

The distribution advantage is intact. The messenger-linked reach that made the network interesting remains in place, and a rank-22 market capitalisation of 3.66 billion USD indicates that large holders have not abandoned the listing. Where analysts expect the price to go from here is set out in our Toncoin price prediction.

What speaks against buying Toncoin at current prices

Three counterarguments deserve equal weight.

The trend is still against the buyer. With the price at 1.3260 USD below the 50-day line at 1.4925 USD and the 200-day line at 1.6695 USD, every moving-average signal points down. Buying here means positioning against the prevailing trend and accepting that the asset may spend further months below both lines.

Liquidity has thinned to a worrying degree. Turnover of 35.6 million USD against an annual average of 161.6 million USD means larger orders move the price more, spreads widen when volatility arrives, and exits in a falling market cost more than the screen suggests. This is the most concrete risk in the current setup.

The supply side keeps expanding. With about 2.758 billion of a roughly 5.231 billion total supply in circulation and no fixed cap, new coins keep reaching the market. Where demand has fallen to a fifth of its yearly norm, that puts a structural weight on the price which technical support levels cannot offset.

How to buy Toncoin at current prices: costs, custody and providers

The cost of buying matters more than usual when an asset is this illiquid. Spreads on thinly traded pairs can exceed the visible trading fee by a wide margin, so the headline commission is only part of the bill. Our crypto exchange comparison sets out the fee models side by side.

For European investors, regulatory status is the second filter. Supervised platforms offer clearer complaint routes and stricter custody rules, the relevant distinction once positions grow beyond pocket money. The candidates are collected in our overview of the best regulated crypto exchanges, and among individual venues we have examined Bitpanda in detail and Kraken's fee structure and features separately.

Custody is the third decision and independent of the first two. Coins left on an exchange remain in someone else's control, which is convenient for trading and unhelpful for holding. Investors planning to hold across a full cycle generally move to self-custody, and the trade-offs between the leading devices are laid out in our hardware wallet comparison. Toncoin support varies by device, so check before buying rather than after.

So is Toncoin a good buy at current prices?

The data supports different answers over different horizons, and separating them is the only honest way to close.

Short term, the setup offers no edge. An RSI of 38.3 is neutral, both moving averages sit above the price, and volume at 35.6 million USD gives any move a fragile foundation. The risk of another test of the 1.2022 USD low is real, and if that level gives way on rising volume, the assumption that a base has formed is refuted.

Long term, the case rests on one question: does the messenger-linked distribution advantage translate into sustained usage, or does it remain a promise? If usage grows and turnover recovers toward the 161.6 million USD annual average, the current price will look like the discount phase of a cycle. If turnover keeps falling while supply expands, a rank-22 market capitalisation of 3.66 billion USD becomes hard to defend, and the drawdown from 3.5328 USD reads as a repricing rather than an overreaction.

The condition that would refute the constructive scenario is specific enough to monitor: a sustained close below 1.2022 USD, or a further decline in volume from an already depressed 35.6 million USD. The condition that would confirm it is equally specific: a reclaim of the 200-day line at 1.6695 USD with turnover moving back toward its annual norm. Neither has happened, which is why the answer at 1.3260 USD is a matter of position sizing rather than conviction.

Buying Toncoin: what to take away

1. The price sits low in its own range, and the range is what defines the risk. At 1.3260 USD, Toncoin trades 10.3 percent above the twelve-month low of 1.2022 USD and 62.5 percent below the 3.5328 USD high, with both moving averages overhead. Where analysts see the price heading from this zone is covered in our Toncoin price prediction.
2. Thin volume is the risk that costs money in practice. Turnover of 35.6 million USD against a 161.6 million USD annual average widens spreads and makes exits expensive, which makes the choice of venue a financial decision rather than an administrative one. The fee models are compared in our crypto exchange comparison.
3. Custody is a separate decision from the purchase. Anyone planning to hold beyond a trade should settle the storage question before buying rather than afterwards, and the options are set out in our hardware wallet comparison.

Disclosure: Some of the providers mentioned in this article work with us through partner programmes. This has no influence on the price analysis or on our assessment of the chart situation; the price data comes from a public market data source and can be verified there.

(As of 14 August 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices, fees and terms change; check them with the provider before every purchase. Crypto assets are subject to high price volatility, and a total loss is possible.)

Stellar trades at around 0.1612 US dollars on 12 August 2026. That is 64.4 percent below the twelve-month high of 0.4526 US dollars set on 14 August 2025, and 12.4 percent above the twelve-month low of 0.1434 US dollars from 23 May 2026. The sixteenth-largest crypto asset by market capitalisation therefore sits in the lower third of its yearly range. Is Stellar a good buy at current prices, or is this a weakness that has further to run?

cryptoticker.io compiled the price data for this analysis on 12 August 2026. The market data comes from CoinMarketCap, and we evaluated the daily closing prices of the past 365 trading days up to and including 11 August 2026. The indicators are calculated with standard formulas: the 200-day average and the 50-day average as exponentially weighted means, the RSI over 14 days according to Wilder. Every value changes with each trading day.

Stellar price analysis: where XLM trades and which levels matter

The Stellar price of 0.1612 US dollars sits below both moving averages. The 200-day average stands at 0.1986 US dollars and thus 23.2 percent above the current price. The 50-day average stands at 0.1787 US dollars, which XLM would have to gain 10.9 percent to reach. The nearest level to the downside is the twelve-month low of 0.1434 US dollars, reached on 23 May 2026.

The past 30 trading days span a range of 19.1 percent, from 0.1612 US dollars on 7 August to 0.1919 US dollars on 22 July. Within that range the price has drifted towards the lower edge, and the seven most recent closes all fall between 0.1613 and 0.1686 US dollars. A market that narrows in this way is usually waiting for a reason to move, and the direction is not readable from the chart alone.

Between the current price and the May low the market barely traded over the past year, which means there is little accumulated support in that stretch. Longer-dated scenarios are collected in our Stellar price prediction.

Is the Stellar downtrend broken or only interrupted

The quarterly figures give a mixed answer. Over 90 days the price is 1.5 percent higher, which is close to unchanged. Over 30 days it is 12.8 percent lower, and over twelve months it is down 62.6 percent from 0.4311 US dollars. The picture is one of a market that stopped falling in the spring without beginning to rise.

The sequence matters. Stellar found its low at 0.1434 US dollars on 23 May 2026 and recovered to 0.2607 US dollars by 30 May. That rally has since given back 38.2 percent, and the price now stands closer to the May low than to the interim high. A downtrend counts as broken once a market sets a higher low and then clears its previous high; Stellar has managed the first half of that condition and not the second.

The most plausible reading in our view is an interruption rather than a reversal. The price has held above the May low for eleven weeks, which argues against an immediate continuation of the fall, and it has failed twice to hold the 50-day average, which argues against a turn that has already happened. Both statements are assumptions drawn from the chart.

What RSI and moving averages mean for a Stellar entry

The RSI over 14 days stands at 33.9 points. Readings below 30 are conventionally treated as oversold, so Stellar is close to that zone without having entered it. An RSI at this level tells you that the market is weak, and it does not tell you when the weakness ends.

The two moving averages are stacked against the price. With the 50-day average at 0.1787 US dollars sitting below the 200-day average at 0.1986 US dollars, and the price below both, the trend structure is intact to the downside on all three horizons. That configuration has held since the spring.

For an entry this has two practical consequences. Buying at 0.1612 US dollars means buying against the trend, which historically requires either a long holding period or a tight exit. Waiting for a close above the 50-day average means paying at least 10.9 percent more for a market that has confirmed a change. The two routes price risk and certainty differently.

What Stellar trading volume reveals about demand

Turnover over the past 24 hours amounts to 80.6 million US dollars against a market capitalisation of 5.56 billion US dollars, a turnover rate of 1.4 percent. The 30-day average sits at 116.5 million US dollars per day. The 90-day average is far higher at 338.6 million US dollars, and the average across the full year is 234.8 million.

The comparison is the informative part. Current turnover runs at roughly a third of the 90-day average and at about a quarter of the twelve-month average. Trading interest in Stellar has thinned considerably since the spring, and the thinning coincides with the drift towards the yearly low.

Thin volume cuts both ways for a buyer. A market that few people trade needs less capital to move, so a return of interest can lift the price quickly. The same thinness means larger orders move the price against the person placing them. Where trading costs are lowest differs by venue, and our exchange comparison sets the fee models side by side.

Structural factors that speak for Stellar: supply mechanics, usage and regulation

Stellar's supply is capped and largely issued. Of a maximum of 50.0 billion XLM, 34.49 billion are in circulation, which is 69.0 percent. The remaining 15.5 billion sit with the Stellar Development Foundation and are released according to published mandates. There is no ongoing inflation in the sense of newly mined units, and the foundation burned roughly half of the original supply in 2019. The details of the model are documented on the Stellar Lumens overview.

The network's purpose is payment settlement and asset issuance rather than general-purpose computation, with a stated focus on cross-border transfers and tokenised deposits. The documentation for issuers and anchors is published at developers.stellar.org. Whether that focus translates into sustained demand for the asset is a separate question from whether the network is used, and the two have diverged before.

On regulation, European rules now apply in full to service providers rather than to the asset. The European Securities and Markets Authority supervises the framework and publishes the register of authorised firms. For a buyer in the European Union the practical effect is that the venue matters as much as the coin, and the comparison of regulated exchanges tracks which providers hold which permissions.

What speaks for buying Stellar at current prices

Three arguments carry weight at 0.1612 US dollars.

1. The price sits 64.4 percent below the twelve-month high of 0.4526 US dollars and 23.2 percent below the 200-day average of 0.1986 US dollars. Anyone buying now pays a fraction of what buyers paid a year ago for the same asset and the same supply schedule.
2. The May low at 0.1434 US dollars has held for eleven weeks across several tests. A level that repeatedly attracts buyers is a more useful reference than one derived from a formula, and it gives an entry a measurable point of failure 12.4 percent below the current price.
3. Supply is capped and 69.0 percent issued, so the dilution risk that weighs on assets with open emission schedules is comparatively limited here. What remains is release from a known holder under published mandates rather than open-ended issuance.

What speaks against buying Stellar at current prices

Three arguments point the other way.

1. The trend is down on every horizon that matters. The price is below the 50-day average of 0.1787 US dollars, which is itself below the 200-day average of 0.1986 US dollars, and the twelve-month change is minus 62.6 percent. Buying here is buying against that structure.
2. Turnover of 80.6 million US dollars a day is roughly a third of the 90-day average of 338.6 million. Falling participation is a poor foundation for a recovery, because a price that few people are trading is a price few people have agreed on.
3. The broader market is in a defensive mood. The CoinMarketCap Fear and Greed Index reads 38 points, in the fear range. Assets in the lower half of the ranking table tend to lag when sentiment is defensive, and Stellar sits at rank 16.

How to buy Stellar at current prices: costs, custody and providers

Three cost blocks decide what an entry actually costs. The trading fee is charged per order and typically ranges from about 0.1 percent on maker-taker models to well above one percent on simplified buy interfaces. The spread between bid and ask is not shown separately. The withdrawal fee applies when you move XLM off the exchange, while the on-chain cost on the Stellar network is a fraction of a cent.

The provider question separates two use cases. For a position you intend to trade, an exchange account with low per-order costs is usually adequate; our Kraken review covers one such venue. For a position you intend to hold, the relevant criteria are the provider's regulatory permissions and its withdrawal terms, which our Bitpanda review examines.

Custody is the second decision. Coins left on an exchange are a claim against that exchange rather than an asset you control, which is acceptable for a short holding period and less so for a long one. Moving XLM to your own wallet removes that counterparty risk and adds the obligation to secure a recovery phrase. Suitable devices are ranked in the hardware wallet comparison.

So is Stellar a good buy at current prices, short-term and long-term

Over a short horizon the evidence is unfavourable. The RSI at 33.9 points, the price below both averages, and turnover at a third of its 90-day average describe a market without a catalyst. The nearest resistance is the 50-day average at 0.1787 US dollars, 10.9 percent away, and the nearest support is the twelve-month low at 0.1434 US dollars, 12.4 percent away. Risk and reward are roughly symmetric on those two levels, which is a poor ratio for a directional trade.

Over a horizon of several years the calculation rests on different inputs. A capped supply that is 69.0 percent issued, a network with a defined purpose, and a price 64.4 percent below its twelve-month high are the conditions under which long-term positions have historically been built in this asset class. None of that establishes that a recovery will occur, and the 62.6 percent twelve-month decline is a reminder that discounts can deepen.

The assumption of a floor counts as disproved if the price closes below the twelve-month low of 0.1434 US dollars on a daily basis. It counts as confirmed if XLM reclaims the 50-day average of 0.1787 US dollars and closes above it on rising volume. The test after that would be the 200-day average at 0.1986 US dollars. These three levels let you check your own assessment against the market rather than against an opinion.

Buying Stellar: what to take away

1. The Stellar price of 0.1612 US dollars sits 23.2 percent below the 200-day average of 0.1986 US dollars, 10.9 percent below the 50-day average of 0.1787 US dollars, and 12.4 percent above the twelve-month low of 0.1434 US dollars. The zone between those two levels is where the situation is decided, and the running assessment is in our Stellar price prediction.
2. An RSI of 33.9 points and turnover at a third of the 90-day average describe weakness without capitulation. Anyone entering should know what each purchase costs, and the exchange comparison shows where the differences lie.
3. For a holding meant to sit for years, custody is the second decision alongside the entry price, and the choice of a regulated venue is the third. Both are covered in the hardware wallet comparison.

Disclosure: Some of the providers mentioned in this article work with us through partner programmes. This has no influence on the price analysis or on our assessment of the chart; the price data comes from a public market data source and can be verified there.

(As of 12 August 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices, fees and terms change; check them with the provider before every purchase. Crypto assets are subject to high price volatility and a total loss is possible.)

The trustee says Knaken bought the coins in its own name, leaving customers with a euro claim against a company that has collapsed.

A flaw in an order-tracking plug-in of bitcoin wallet provider SafePal exposed names, addresses and phone numbers of nearly 40,000 customers.

Three weeks after a Flash release that couldn't produce a working file, Google's budget tier zero-shots a playable game. It still can't reason, and a free 27B model still writes better.

A California bill is awaiting an Assembly vote to "place guardrails" around AI chatbots and prevent them from acting as therapists.

Apple is pairing its in-house model with Alibaba’s Qwen as it prepares to bring Apple Intelligence to Chinese iPhones.

Following a $1,900 entry, popular trader DonAlt targets a theoretical $10,000 for Ethereum while planning a strict real-world profit-take.

The unpleasant situation around memecoins and Binance's CZ triggered a new update on Trust Wallet.

Dutch prosecutors have sold the remaining cryptocurrency seized from failed crypto exchange Knaken for €2.2 million.

Ripple has minted another 10 million RLUSD on the XRP Ledger as the stablecoin’s market cap reaches $1.71 billion.

Investment advisor Ross Gerber has taken another swipe at Bitcoin.

TLDR

• S&P 500 futures hovered near unchanged following three consecutive weeks of gains
• Nasdaq 100 futures advanced 0.5% on renewed technology sector interest
• Major retailers including Walmart, Target, Lowe’s, and Home Depot scheduled to release quarterly results
• Market-implied probability of September Fed rate increase dropped below 33%
• VIX volatility index reached its 2026 low point on Friday

U.S. equity futures displayed minimal activity Monday morning as traders prepared for a week centered on major retail company earnings and the release of Federal Reserve policy meeting minutes.

Futures tied to the S&P 500 hovered around unchanged levels after the benchmark index posted its third straight week of positive performance. Futures for the Nasdaq 100 gained 0.5%, supported by renewed buying interest in technology shares. Dow Jones Industrial Average futures declined approximately 72 points, representing a 0.1% drop.

Major Retail Reports Take Center Stage

The week’s most significant market events revolve around quarterly earnings releases from leading retail chains. Walmart, Target, Lowe’s, and Home Depot are scheduled to unveil their financial performance.

These corporate reports will provide market participants with valuable insights into consumer spending patterns during the crucial back-to-school shopping period. Retail sector performance typically serves as a barometer for overall economic vitality.

Market analysts will scrutinize retailer commentary regarding pricing strategies, customer demand levels, and store traffic patterns. Unexpected developments could trigger significant movement in individual equities and broader market indices.

Minutes from the Federal Reserve’s most recent Federal Open Market Committee session are scheduled for release Wednesday. Market participants will analyze the document for indicators about the central bank’s future monetary policy direction.

Trading activity reflects diminished expectations for a September interest rate increase. Market-based pricing suggests the likelihood of a rate hike at the Fed’s Jackson Hole gathering now stands below one-third.

Both consumer and wholesale price inflation metrics moderated in July. These figures helped alleviate worries about additional rate tightening and supported the S&P 500’s recent upward momentum.

Market Volatility Gauge Reaches 2026 Low Point

The Cboe Volatility Index, commonly referred to as the VIX, fell to its lowest reading of 2026 on Friday. This development indicates that market participants are not anticipating significant market disruptions in the immediate future.

Continuing geopolitical tensions in the Middle East have failed to significantly disturb financial markets. A ceasefire agreement between the U.S. and Iran was scheduled to lapse Monday, yet crude oil prices continued their downward trend in early session trading.

West Texas Intermediate crude futures decreased 0.3% to approximately $82.19 per barrel. Brent crude, the global pricing benchmark, ticked higher to $88 per barrel.

The yield on 10-year Treasury notes declined 2 basis points to 4.68% on Monday. The U.S. dollar weakened 0.3% relative to a basket of major global currencies.

Financial conditions have experienced modest tightening in recent weeks, evidenced by rising yields on both 10-year and 30-year Treasury securities heading into the weekend.

Market observers anticipate continued stability until Nvidia releases its quarterly earnings next Wednesday, an event that could serve as the next significant market-moving catalyst.

In the interim, market participants remain focused on retail sector performance and Federal Reserve communications for potential shifts in the economic outlook.

The post Tech Stocks Push Nasdaq Higher as Markets Eye Retail Earnings and Fed Minutes appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Takeaways

• Twenty-nine state attorneys general are prosecuting Meta in a trial launching Tuesday, alleging violations of child safety regulations and consumer protection statutes.
• The lawsuit is spearheaded by California, Colorado, Kentucky, and New Jersey, with testimony anticipated from Mark Zuckerberg and Adam Mosseri, Instagram’s CEO.
• Prosecutors are pursuing damages exceeding $1 trillion while demanding comprehensive modifications to Instagram and Facebook, including elimination of like features and continuous scrolling.
• Meta rejects the accusations entirely, characterizing the financial claims as “vastly disproportionate,” highlighting that potential liabilities of $1.4 trillion approach its $1.5 trillion valuation.
• A New Mexico court recently mandated Meta pay $942 million and designated the company a “public nuisance” in a separate ruling.

Meta is preparing for a potentially pivotal legal confrontation beginning Tuesday in an Oakland, California courtroom. State prosecutors from 29 jurisdictions contend that Meta breached child protection regulations and consumer safety statutes, causing documented psychological harm to minors.

META stock declined 0.86% in anticipation of the proceedings.

Meta Platforms, Inc., META

District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers will oversee the proceedings in the US District Court for the Northern District of California. She previously handled the high-profile litigation between Elon Musk and Sam Altman and is known for her straightforward judicial approach.

California, Colorado, Kentucky, and New Jersey are the primary states presenting evidence in the trial. CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram’s leader Adam Mosseri are both scheduled to provide testimony.

Prosecutors assert that Meta intentionally engineered features including continuous scrolling, automatic video playback, and engagement metrics to maximize young users’ time on its services. They contend Meta understood these mechanisms contributed to mental health issues including anxiety, depression, and self-destructive behavior, yet promoted its products as safe.

The prosecution additionally claims Meta violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act by permitting users under age 13 on its platforms and gathering their personal information without guardian authorization.

The States’ Requirements

In addition to financial penalties, prosecutors want Meta to restructure fundamental aspects of Instagram and Facebook for younger demographics. Their demands encompass eliminating engagement metrics, discontinuing infinite scrolling, halting automatic video playback, prohibiting ephemeral content such as Instagram Stories, and modifying content recommendation systems.

They’re also requesting mandatory parental authentication for adolescent accounts and limitations on mobile notifications.

These elements represent integral components of Meta’s current platform architecture.

The prospective financial penalties are staggering. States are requesting damages approaching $1.4 trillion. Meta’s complete market capitalization currently stands at approximately $1.5 trillion.

Meta is mounting an aggressive defense. “The AGs offer no proof anyone in their states was misled,” a company representative stated. “Rather than sticking to the facts or the law, the states have instead decided to chase an outlandish payout.”

Previous Unfavorable Verdicts

This litigation arrives amid a pattern of adverse legal outcomes for Meta.

Just weeks ago, a New Mexico court mandated Meta pay $942 million and classified the corporation as a “public nuisance,” drawing parallels between its impact on youth and industrial pollution. The court additionally required Instagram and Facebook to eliminate like features for users under 18 and restrict notification timing for teenagers.

In March, jurors determined Meta and YouTube were negligent following testimony from a woman who described developing a serious addiction to their platforms beginning at age 10. Both companies received a $6 million damages award.

The 30 jurisdictions participating in Tuesday’s case encompass approximately two-thirds of America’s population. An unfavorable verdict would almost certainly compel Meta to implement nationwide platform modifications.

Proceedings commence Tuesday under Judge Gonzalez Rogers’ supervision.

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Key Highlights

• Advanced Micro Devices completed a $4.75 billion bond sale to accelerate AI infrastructure investments
• Shares jumped 6.5% to close at $514.13 during Monday’s trading session
• This marks the chipmaker’s largest U.S. dollar denominated debt transaction in company history
• The company elevated its AI semiconductor market forecast to $1.4 trillion through 2030
• Institutional ownership stands at 71.34% with Wall Street maintaining a “Moderate Buy” consensus

Advanced Micro Devices successfully priced a massive $4.75 billion bond sale on Monday, earmarking the capital for aggressive expansion in artificial intelligence and data center infrastructure. The stock responded positively, gaining 6.5% to settle at $514.13.

Advanced Micro Devices, Inc., AMD

This debt transaction represents the semiconductor manufacturer’s most substantial U.S. dollar bond issuance to date. A portion of the capital raised—approximately $875 million—will be allocated toward retiring bonds scheduled to mature in the coming month.

The financing announcement follows closely on the heels of AMD’s Advancing AI event, during which company leadership increased their forecast for the overall AI chip market, now projecting it to reach $1.4 trillion by the end of the decade.

The chipmaker has delivered exceptional performance this year, climbing 130% year-to-date. Despite this impressive rally, shares remain approximately 12% beneath the 52-week peak of $580.91 recorded in June 2026.

Wall Street analysts continue showing strong interest. Baird established an ambitious $1,250 price objective, highlighting AMD’s AI accelerator portfolio and data center segment strength. Jefferies positioned its target at $650, while Argus upgraded its forecast to $625 alongside a buy recommendation.

Wall Street Outlook and Analyst Perspectives

The broader Wall Street consensus maintains a “Moderate Buy” stance with an average price objective of $546.87. Among covering analysts, 31 assign Buy ratings, 10 recommend Hold positions, and just one suggests Sell.

Bank of America separately boosted its server CPU market projection for 2030 to exceed $210 billion, up from a previous $170 billion estimate, identifying AMD among its top semiconductor investment choices.

From a product development standpoint, the company unveiled immediate compatibility for the Qwen3.8 27B AI model. This strategic move positions AMD to strengthen adoption rates among artificial intelligence developers and enterprise data center operators.

Principal Financial Group expanded its stake in AMD by 9.7% during the second quarter, adding 180,198 shares to its holdings. Institutional investors collectively control 71.34% of outstanding shares.

However, not every development has been favorable. Reports indicate SpaceX intends to utilize Nvidia processors exclusively, effectively excluding AMD from that particular revenue opportunity. Additionally, insider selling activity has persisted, though these transactions occurred through pre-established Rule 10b5-1 trading arrangements.

Second Quarter Financial Performance

AMD unveiled its Q2 financial results on August 4. Earnings per share reached $1.66, exceeding the analyst consensus of $1.62 by $0.04. Total revenue achieved $11.54 billion, surpassing the $11.31 billion projection.

Top-line growth registered at 50.1% compared to the prior year period. During the equivalent quarter last year, the company delivered EPS of $0.48.

Analyst projections currently anticipate full-year earnings per share of $6.44 for the chipmaker.

Technical indicators show the 50-day moving average positioned at $511.77, while the 200-day moving average sits at $368.29. The company commands a market capitalization of $839.73 billion with a price-to-earnings multiple of 132.23.

Prior to this bond issuance, AMD maintained a remarkably low debt-to-equity ratio of merely 0.03. This conservative capital structure provides substantial flexibility to absorb the additional leverage without significantly compromising balance sheet health.

Volatility has been characteristic of the stock, recording 50 single-day movements exceeding 5% throughout the past year, making Monday’s advance consistent with established trading patterns. The combination of the historic bond offering and upgraded AI market projections provided investors with compelling catalysts for accumulation.

The post AMD (AMD) Stock Jumps 7% Following Record-Breaking $4.75B Bond Offering appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Highlights

• IREN shares climbed approximately 9% this week following the successful completion of its inaugural AI cloud deployment for Microsoft
• This initial deployment, designated Horizon 1, represents the opening phase of four scheduled rollouts within a five-year agreement valued at $9.7 billion with Microsoft
• The company received Nvidia’s prestigious Exemplar Cloud designation for the GB300 NVL72 infrastructure
• Third quarter fiscal 2026 revenue totaled $144.8 million, declining 21.6% compared to the prior year, while per-share losses expanded to $0.74
• Wall Street analysts maintain a collective “Moderate Buy” stance with a mean price objective of $83

Shares of IREN concluded the trading week with gains of roughly 9% after the company delivered two consecutive announcements that energized investor sentiment. Microsoft officially accepted delivery of the company’s first 50-megawatt AI cloud infrastructure, while Nvidia simultaneously awarded IREN its Exemplar Cloud designation for the GB300 NVL72 system.

IREN Limited, IREN

Trading commenced Friday at $44.06 per share. The equity currently trades within a 52-week bandwidth spanning $17.22 to $76.87, supporting a market capitalization near $15.75 billion. Since the beginning of the calendar year, IREN has appreciated 19%.

The Microsoft infrastructure, dubbed Horizon 1, operates from IREN’s facility in Childress, Texas. Utilizing direct-to-chip liquid cooling technology, this deployment initiates a series of four anticipated buildouts governed by the five-year, $9.7 billion agreement formalized in November of the previous year.

With the Exemplar Cloud designation, IREN enters an exclusive cohort that encompasses CoreWeave, Nebius, AWS, Azure, and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.

Energy Infrastructure as Competitive Moat

IREN’s fundamental competitive strength resides in its energy portfolio, an inheritance from its cryptocurrency mining heritage. The organization currently operates 810 MW of grid-connected data center capacity, while actively constructing an additional 2,100 MW and developing another 1,600 MW distributed across six North American sites.

This operational expertise in energy acquisition, electrical systems, and thermal management has enabled IREN to secure $2.8 billion in agreements with prominent clients including Perplexity, Figure AI, and Fireworks AI, supplementing the substantial Microsoft partnership.

Company leadership projects reaching 480 MW of AI cloud infrastructure by the conclusion of 2026, expanding to 1,210 MW throughout 2027. Management has further articulated an extended roadmap targeting 5 gigawatts of capacity spanning North America, Europe, and the Asia Pacific region.

During the first quarter of fiscal 2026, IREN completed the acquisition of Nostrum Group, contributing an additional 490 MW of European energy capacity alongside a 50-member specialized team.

Financial Performance Shows Contrasting Trends

Third quarter fiscal 2026 revenue registered at $144.8 million, representing a 21.6% year-over-year decline, primarily attributed to the retirement of Bitcoin mining equipment. Cloud services revenue, however, expanded to $33.6 million compared to $17.3 million in the corresponding quarter last year.

Annual recurring revenue from cloud operations currently stands at $3.7 billion. Bernstein projects this metric could potentially reach $10 billion by 2028 and has maintained its Buy recommendation with a $100 price objective.

Per-share losses widened to $0.74 against $0.07 in the year-ago period, substantially exceeding the analyst consensus estimate calling for a $0.22 loss. This marked the company’s second straight quarter of earnings disappointments.

Conversely, net cash generated from operations during the nine-month period concluding March 31, 2026 surged 102.7% year-over-year to $289.3 million. IREN concluded this period holding $2.2 billion in cash reserves against merely $0.5 million in short-term obligations.

Valuation metrics present a challenge. IREN’s forward price-to-sales multiple of 21.59 and price-to-cash flow ratio of 48.25 substantially exceed sector benchmark medians.

Among 15 analysts tracking the equity, 11 assign a Strong Buy rating, three recommend Hold, and one advises Strong Sell. The consensus price target stands at $83, suggesting approximately 83% appreciation potential from present trading levels.

IREN is scheduled to release complete fiscal year 2026 financial results on August 27.

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TLDR

• Major retail chains including Walmart, Target, and Home Depot release quarterly results this week
• August consumer sentiment declined even as inflation showed two consecutive months of moderation
• July retail sales contracted 0.6% on a monthly basis, falling short of analyst projections
• Fed funds futures now indicate approximately 70% probability of unchanged rates at September meeting
• Global AI data center investment may reach $1 trillion by 2026, though infrastructure constraints threaten expansion pace

Market attention pivots this week from inflation metrics to the health of American consumers, as earnings reports from leading retail chains provide critical insights into household spending patterns.

Walmart delivers its quarterly update Thursday morning. The discount retail powerhouse recently indicated shoppers display signs of “navigating financial distress,” citing altered gasoline purchasing patterns. Management implemented price reductions in response, and analysts will scrutinize whether this tactical move is generating results.

Target announces results Wednesday. The Minneapolis-based retailer achieved comparable store sales expansion last quarter—its first positive reading in more than twelve months. However, Chief Financial Officer Jim Lee cautioned that fragile consumer sentiment poses risks to sustained growth.

Home Depot releases earnings Tuesday. The home improvement leader delivered solid quarterly performance but fell short on comparable store sales benchmarks. With homeowners postponing major renovation projects, the company has increasingly shifted emphasis toward serving professional contractors.

Consumer Sentiment Deteriorates Despite Inflation Relief

The University of Michigan’s latest consumer sentiment index revealed heightened pessimism among Americans during August. Confidence erosion proved most pronounced among senior citizens, lower-income earners, and individuals without post-secondary education.

A mere 8% of survey participants anticipate their earnings will outpace inflation during the coming twelve months. Monthly retail sales contracted 0.6% in July, significantly underperforming economist forecasts calling for a 0.1% increase.

Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation figures demonstrated only marginal improvement. Nevertheless, the data prompted market participants to reduce expectations for a September Federal Reserve rate increase, with current pricing suggesting roughly 70% likelihood of a pause.

The S&P 500 concluded the previous week with a 0.4% advance. The Nasdaq climbed 0.6%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped 0.6%.

Additional companies reporting this week include: Lowe’s on Wednesday, Ross Stores and Deere and Company on Thursday, plus BJ’s Wholesale Club on Friday. Chinese technology giants Alibaba and Baidu are also scheduled to report.

Artificial Intelligence Investment Surge Confronts Infrastructure Challenges

Beyond the retail landscape, artificial intelligence infrastructure expansion remains a developing narrative. Goldman Sachs projects worldwide AI data center capital expenditure could touch $1 trillion by 2026. JPMorgan estimates domestic spending at $697 billion. Bank of America envisions a trajectory reaching $1.2 trillion by 2027.

Industry observers caution that capital availability represents just one piece of the puzzle. Semiconductor supply constraints continue despite expanded production capacity. Qualified construction workforce remains scarce. Regulatory headwinds intensify, exemplified by a twelve-month building freeze in New York and mandated electricity audits in Texas.

Bloomberg New Energy Finance projects a 19-gigawatt electricity deficit for AI data centers by 2035 under current expansion trajectories. Industry analysis suggests utilities may greenlight merely 28% of power allocation requests, partially attributed to numerous speculative applications submitted by data center developers.

The Federal Reserve’s July policy meeting transcript releases Wednesday, offering market participants visibility into central bank deliberations regarding interest rate policy.

The post Major Retailers Set to Report Earnings as Consumer Spending Shows Strain appeared first on Blockonomi.

Bitcoin’s dull price movements over the weekend sort of extended as the new business week started, but the asset has managed to decisively reclaim the $63,000 level as of now.

RAIN, ZEC, and HYPE have emerged as today’s top performers from the larger-cap alts, while ETH has neared $1,900 once again.

BTC Above $63K

Bitcoin stood tall at the beginning of the previous business week when it traded comfortably at $65,000 and even tried to break out even higher. However, it was quickly stopped at $65,400 and slipped to $63,800. The bears appeared to be in control for most of the week.

After a couple of failed rebound attempts, both of which were halted at $64,400, BTC went south once again. This time, it dipped to $62,800. Another bounce-off followed, but the bears kept a tight control of the market and drove bitcoin south to a 10-day low on Friday at $62,500.

The cryptocurrency finally reacted positively and jumped by a grand almost immediately. It failed to continue recovering, though, and calmed at $63,000, where it spent the entire weekend without any moves in either direction.

It dipped to $62,600 on Monday morning before it pumped by $1,000 to $63,600. Although it was stopped there, it still trades above $63,000 as of press time.

Its market cap has returned to $1.270 trillion on CG, while its dominance over the alts stands below 57%.

BTW Keeps Pumping

While even most of the mid- and lower-cap alts have remained sideways lately, Bitway (BTW) has stolen the show once again. The asset is up by 16% daily, 80% weekly, and a whopping 460% since this time last month. It currently trades close to $0.35, and it has become the 69th-largest cryptocurrency by market cap.

The most substantial gainers from the larger-cap alts have produced a lot more modest increases. ZEC and RAIN are up by around 4%, while HYPE has jumped by 3% to $59. ETH is close to $1,900, while XRP continues its battle with the key $1.00 level.

The cumulative market cap of all crypto assets has added less than $20 billion daily and remains below $2.250 trillion on CG.

The post Bitway (BTW) Continues to Steal the Show as Bitcoin (BTC) Holds Above $63K: Market Watch appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Anthropic appears to be moving closer to its initial public offering (IPO), which undoubtedly is one of the most closely watched technology listings of 2026.

The emerging consensus is that Claude’s maker could reach the public markets this fall; however, there are still a few important caveats and clarifications.

Prediction Markets Lean Toward October

While in no way a certainty, prediction market traders are leaning heavily in the direction that the IPO will come in October.

As you can see on the Polymarket snapshot, the contract tracking whether Anthropic will go public by September 15 implies just a 2% chance, while the probability for September 30 stands at 10%. By October 31, however, the odds jumped to 70%, and the market shows an 83% chance of an IPO by the end of this year.

Notably, the October probability had increased sharply in recent trading sessions, suggesting that users are becoming more confident that the listing could happen during that month.

Reports Also Point to Fall Listing

Not surprisingly, that view is also largely supported by recent reporting. A report from the Wall Street Journal said that the firm’s executives have been meeting with prospective investors to strengthen confidence ahead of an IPO that could arrive in September or early October.

Anthropic has also taken a major procedural step: the firm confidentially filed for a US IPO in June, giving it flexibility to move once regulatory review and market conditions allow it.

But that’s not the only impressive part about the IPO. Another report outlined that some investors are targeting a valuation of $2 trillion or even more for an October debut. This would be more than double the $965 million post-money valuation that Anthropic received in its May funding round, although the company has not publicly confirmed either the IPO date or the valuation.

$2 Trillion Valuation?

Whether participants in the IPO and public investors will support such a massive figure is likely to depend on the confidence placed in Anthropic’s growth projections.

Reuters reported that the company is forecasting roughly $190 billion to $200 billion in revenue in 2028, compared with a $47 billion annualized revenue run rate disclosed in May. Bankers and investors are now looking unusually far into the future when they assess what the firm could be worth. They are attempting to account for the company’s rapid growth and the high costs of training and operating cutting-edge AI models.

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Chainalysis is challenging the US government’s decision to award a blockchain analytics contract to TRM Labs without a competitive bidding process.

According to a case filed in the US Court of Federal Claims, the company alleged that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) favored TRM Labs.

Clash Over $94.66M Contract

At the center of the lawsuit is a major contract of $94.66 million, which was awarded last month by ICE to TRM Labs. This one-year award runs from July 1, 2026, through June 30, 2027, and states,

“The purpose of this contract is to support the Department of Homeland Security, Homeland Security Investigations, Homeland Security Task Force National Coordination Center Cyber Disruption Center through the provision of analytical support services.”

Chainalysis has challenged that award while alleging that the federal law enforcement agency’s decision was “arbitrary, capricious, and unreasonable.” The company stated that the agencies skipped the normal competitive process and awarded the work directly to its rival. It has now asked the court to stop the award. The full complaint is under seal because it contains Chainalysis’ confidential, proprietary information and trade secrets, so the public docket does not reveal all of its arguments.

TRM Labs has already joined the case as an intervenor to defend the government’s decision. The court has also approved a protective order. Briefing is now underway, and filings are scheduled through the end of August. Oral arguments are set for September 2 at the National Courts Building in Washington, DC.

Meanwhile, the government has asked the court to issue a decision by September 10.

Lucrative Market for Crypto Analytics

Chainalysis and TRM Labs are both popular blockchain analytics companies whose tools are used by government agencies to track cryptocurrency activity. These tools have become increasingly important for authorities tracking crypto-linked financial activity by identifying wallets and following the movement of funds tied to sanctioned entities and illicit networks. The technology has also been used in cases involving state-linked wallets and the freezing of crypto assets.

This has helped platforms such as Chainalysis to build a significant business with the US government.

In the case of Chainalysis as well, its federal work dates back to 2015, when the FBI awarded it a $9,000 contract for data software. Since then, its government business has grown substantially, working with several agencies, including the DEA and IRS.

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The new business week has started on the right foot, as after a highly dull and sluggish weekend, bitcoin has finally charted a minor increase to $63,500. The following days have some important macro events in the United States that can further impact the market, albeit not as notable as the CPI data from last week or the actual FOMC meetings.

Although the calendar is considerably lighter, the Federal Reserve will return to the spotlight as investors attempt to determine what comes next for interest rates and the September meeting.

Fed Minutes in Focus

CryptoPotato reported at the end of July that the US Fed maintained the interest rates unchanged for a fifth consecutive meeting, even though this one was the most uncertain since the COVID-19 outbreak in early 2020. The decision, though, exposed a growing divide among policymakers, as three officials favored a rate hike.

Consequently, investors are now expecting the minutes for additional details about the central bank’s concerns over inflation and whether more policymakers will join the call for higher rates in the coming months. Risk assets like cryptocurrencies tend to be affected the most by the Fed’s plans as expectations for tighter monetary policy typically put pressure on speculative investments.

The latest economic data cast another shadow on the broader picture. US retail sales unexpectedly declined by 0.6% in July, which was the first drop in nine months. Recent unemployment and inflation readings reduced the expectations for a September rate hike.

More interesting data comes on Thursday with the release of the weekly initial jobless claims, which could provide further insight into the US labor market. The August Philadelphia Fed Manufacturing Index will also be released on that day, which can offer an early indication of changes in economic activity.

The rest of the macro releases in the US are unlikely to have any impact on crypto. They include the August S&P Global Manufacturing and Services PIM readings.

Key Events This Week:

1. July Housing Starts data – Tuesday

2. July Pending Home Sales data – Tuesday

3. Fed Meeting Minutes – Wednesday

4. August Philly Fed Manufacturing Index – Thursday

5. August S&P Global Services PMI data – Friday

6. August S&P Global Manufacturing…

— The Kobeissi Letter (@KobeissiLetter) August 16, 2026

Price Updates

Crypto prices stayed quiet over the weekend, but most assets have marked minor increases on Monday morning. Bitcoin is up to $63,400, while ETH has challenged the $1,900 level again. XRP continues to fight for the psychological $1.00 support.

HYPE and RAIN have surged the most from the larger caps, gaining 3.5% and 2.5%, respectively. WLFI is in the green again after the recent bank charter license received by the project behind it.

The post A Quiet Macro Week? These US Events Could Still Spark Bitcoin Volatility appeared first on CryptoPotato.

Although the broader landscape around XRP and the ETFs behind it is nowhere near the peaks from last year, some of the most prominent names on Wall Street have not abandoned it.

Just the opposite; the recent SEC filings show that behemoths like Jane Street, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, UBS, and a few others have reported XRP ETF positions. However, there are significant differences in their exposure.

Jane Street Leads the Pack

In its latest Form 13F filed with the SEC at the end of the previous business week, covering holdings as of June 30, Jane Street Group solidified its spot as a leader in terms of XRP ETF adoption. Data shows that the trading giant held more than 1.2 million shares of the Bitwise XRP ETF alone, alongside exposure to other funds from Franklin Templeton, Grayscale, Canary Capital, and 21Shares.

The Bitwise product exposure is particularly eye-catching because it holds spot XRP, unlike other ETFs tracking the popular altcoin. Bitwise’s product saw the light of day in November, just a few weeks after Canary Capital’s ETF hit Wall Street, and has become the largest of the bunch since.

The document covers the second quarter of the year, as confirmed by the SEC. The filing contains the company’s reportable securities position at the June 30 cutoff.

It’s worth noting that Jane Street’s involvement, since it’s one of the largest market makers and actively trades ETFs and options, should not necessarily be regarded as a simple long-term directional bet on XRP, but the scale is still difficult to ignore. Moreover, it held just 20,605 ordinary Bitwise XRP ETF shares at the end of Q1, meaning that there was a significant increase to the 1.2 million shares reported three months later.

BoA, Morgan Stanley In It

Bank of America also reported in its latest filing cycle that it held 13,260 shares of the Volatility Shares XRP ETF. However, the position is worth just $76,000, nowhere near Jane Street’s exposure. Additionally, the Volatility Shares XRP ETF is not a spot ETF such as Bitwise’s financial vehicles.

Morgan Stanley also disclosed positions in three XRP-related funds at the end of Q2: 6,715 shares of Franklin’s XRP ETF, 255 shares of REX-Osprey’s product, and 567 shares of Bitwise’s counterpart.

These holdings are quite insignificant relative to the behemoth’s overall portfolio, but they add to a growing list of institutions reporting regulated XRP exposure. Additionally, Wolverine Asset Management had nearly 200,000 Bitwise XRP ETF shares, Gallacher Capital Management reported 86,744 Capital XRP ETF shares, while Main Street Group and National Bank of Canada had 5,261 and 3,848 shares of XRP-related products, respectively.

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