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Russia's fuel crisis, exacerbated by Ukrainian attacks, could destabilize global energy and food markets, highlighting vulnerabilities in supply chains.
The post Russia faces renewed fuel shortages as Ukraine resumes attacks on refineries appeared first on Crypto Briefing.
The U.S. policy shift towards energy market stability over security concerns may stabilize oil prices, impacting global economic dynamics.
The post US shifts Iran war focus to prioritize cheaper oil for Americans appeared first on Crypto Briefing.
Cottrell's betting activities highlight the need for stricter financial transparency and regulatory measures in political finance and online platforms.
The post Polymarket account linked to Farage aide George Cottrell’s $8.8M Trump bets appeared first on Crypto Briefing.
Asian markets gain as fading US rate hike bets boost investor confidence, potentially attracting more global capital and fostering growth.
The post Asian stocks poised for weekly gain as US rate hike bets fade appeared first on Crypto Briefing.
Gold's volatility reflects market uncertainty over Fed rate decisions, impacting investment strategies and economic stability perceptions.
The post Gold retreats toward $4,300 as traders weigh Fed rate-hike path appeared first on Crypto Briefing.
Bitcoin Magazine
Bitcoin Magazine
Bitcoin’s Bear Cycle Looks Familiar — And That Might Be the Bullish Case
Bitcoin has fallen from a record high of roughly $126,080 in October to trade recently in the low-$60,000s — a decline of nearly 50% that has rattled sentiment. But it may just be business as usual.
According to a Thursday report from asset manager VanEck, Bitcoin’s current slump tracks the asset’s historical four-year halving cycle, in which mining rewards are periodically cut in half, tightening new supply and often preceding a bear phase. The firm framed this downturn as a recurring feature of Bitcoin’s market structure rather than a break from it.
VanEck’s GEO framework — which tracks Global Liquidity, Ecosystem Leverage, and On-Chain Activity — currently shows two of three signals reading neutral, with ecosystem leverage in constructive territory. The firm says that combination points to early signs of a bottom forming, and that it may be time to begin scaling into positions.
Separate research from blockchain analytics firm CryptoQuant points in a similar direction. The firm’s analysts highlighted on-chain data showing that long-term Bitcoin holders — typically the market’s steadiest, most loss-tolerant cohort — are now sitting on deeper unrealized losses than the market overall, based on adjusted Net Unrealized Profit/Loss (NUPL) data.
Analyst MorenoDV noted this week that this exact dynamic, long-term holders hurting more than average, has shown up at every prior major cycle bottom.
Still, CryptoQuant urged caution against declaring a bottom prematurely. In past cycles, that same long-term-holder metric fell to much deeper negative extremes before a true low was reached.
Current readings haven’t gotten there yet, meaning the biggest cryptocurrency could still face one more sharp capitulation move — unless stronger institutional demand and a more resilient holder base allow this cycle to bottom out with less damage than previous ones.
Taken together, the two reports suggest a market that looks stressed by historical standards, but not yet at the extremes that have marked past cycle floors.
This post Bitcoin’s Bear Cycle Looks Familiar — And That Might Be the Bullish Case first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.
Bitcoin Magazine
White House to Host Crypto Industry Execs Next Week: Report
Crypto and prediction market bigwigs are set to gather at the White House next week, according to a Thursday report from POLITICO.
The report, citing people with knowledge of the matter, said the industry officials would meet one day before the Commodity Futures Trading Commission holds a meeting for its new Innovation Advisory Committee. The committee will feature a panel of experts also from the crypto, prediction market and traditional finance spheres.
Despite the long-awaited crypto Clarity Act being delayed, regulators are moving ahead with pro-crypto initiatives.
BREAKING:
— Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) August 13, 2026White House to host gathering for crypto industry officials next week, POLITICO reports
pic.twitter.com/mdVnzglpmN
POLITICO’s report did not mention if President Trump would attend the event.
Last week, pro-crypto lawmakers were hoping the Clarity Act passed before Congress departed for August recess. After a delay, a vote will now go ahead in September.
Lawmakers started mulling over a new draft of the bill, which was passed by the House of Representatives last year, in July. The text tackled the issue of ethics, banning government officials from promoting or making money from crypto.
President Trump campaigned on a ticket to help the America become the crypto capital of the world, and received backing from major players in the space.
Since taking office, the president has signed a number of pro-crypto measures, including a March 2025 executive order directing the creation of a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve.
Regulators have also scrapped a number of high-profile lawsuits against crypto companies, and made a push to watchdog the industry in a more helpful way.
This post White House to Host Crypto Industry Execs Next Week: Report first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.
Bitcoin Magazine
Tether Finally Completes Independent Audit of Reserves With KPMG
Stablecoin giant Tether has announced that KPMG U.S. completed the first independent audit of its reserves after years of struggling to get a Big Four accounting firm to do so.
The San Salvador-based company, which issues the largest stablecoin in existence, USDT, said the audit was “the largest inaugural financial audit in history.”
Tether for years was criticized for being coy about its reserves and not having an independent audit of what it holds behind its flagship token. Tether said over the years that it was eager to work with a Big Four firm for an audit.
“For years, some detractors said an audit of Tether could not be completed,” Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said in a statement.
“They said the Company refused to subject itself to the most rigorous scrutiny. We have once again proven them wrong. Completing our financial statement audit sets a new standard for the industry and reflects the leadership we’ve brought to this market from the start.”
Tether did not mention its Bitcoin holdings in its statement, nor did it immediately respond to questions from Bitcoin Magazine.
But it said that KPMG “physically counted and inspected every individual gold bar held by Tether, verifying the existence and identifying information of each bar rather than relying solely on reports from custodians or counterparties.”
Tether added that all assets and statements were subject to “independent substantive testing and verification.”
The company has in recent years upped its gold buys, holds more U.S. treasuries than some countries and has nearly $60 billion in Bitcoin in its reserves, according to data from Arkham Intelligence.
“Tether has evolved from a disruptive stablecoin issuer into one of the most financially significant and operationally sophisticated private companies in the world,” continued Ardoino.
“This audit demonstrates that our financial infrastructure and governance have evolved alongside that responsibility.”
Tether’s USDT product has a market cap of over $183 billion, making it the third biggest cryptocurrency in existence.
This post Tether Finally Completes Independent Audit of Reserves With KPMG first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.
Bitcoin Magazine
UBS Ups Bitcoin Position, Buys More Shares in BlackRock’s ETF
Switzerland’s largest bank has upped its exposure to Bitcoin, according to regulatory filings.
UBS bought more shares in BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust, bringing its total position to over $83 million across 2.5 million shares, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
The bank has slowly upped its exposure to the biggest cryptocurrency by market cap since BlackRock’s top fund got approved back in 2024.
JUST IN:
— Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) August 13, 2026Switzerland's largest bank UBS discloses owning $83.2 million of BlackRock's Bitcoin ETF
The filings are the latest examples of traditional institutions seeking exposure to Bitcoin. ETFs like BlackRock’s Bitcoin Trust — which trades as IBIT — allow investors to buy exposure to the leading cryptocurrency without having to store the digital coin directly.
Since the SEC approved a slew of Bitcoin funds in January 2024, major firms have been able to buy exposure to the asset via shares of the regulated vehicles that trade on stock exchanges.
BlackRock’s IBIT is the most successful crypto ETF: The fund has received more cash than any other crypto ETF and currently has $47.3 billion in assets under management.
Pension funds and U.S. states have all bought exposure to Bitcoin via the ETFs, along with more traditional investments like tech stocks and other U.S. equities.
The shares in IBIT aren’t the only Bitcoin investment UBS has, either: the filing shows that the bank also has exposure to other premium income and other Bitcoin-related ETFs, bringing its ETF holdings in the cryptocurrency to around $90 million.
The bank also has invested in American Bitcoin Corp., the Bitcoin mining company backed by U.S. President Donald Trump’s sons, Eric and Donald, Jr., with a position worth a little under $1.5 million.
News dropped earlier this year that the Swiss bank was planning to offer Bitcoin trading to a select group of private clients in the country.
This post UBS Ups Bitcoin Position, Buys More Shares in BlackRock’s ETF first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.
Bitcoin Magazine
Data Breach at Trezor Leaks Info on Nearly 14,000 Bitcoin Wallet Users
Hardware wallet manufacturer Trezor has announced a data breach exposing customer data.
Writing on X Thursday, the company said that 13,689 customers from the US, UK, Sweden, Colombia, Brazil, Italy, and Portugal who received an order 90 days prior to August 8 were affected.
“Our systems and devices remain secure, but affected customers could experience an increase in phishing attempts,” the Prague, Czech Republic-based company said. “We are deeply sorry to the community and those affected.”
Trezor said that 11,742 customers had their names, emails, phone numbers, and shipping addresses leaked. Another 1,947 customers had just their names, cities and emails exposed.
SatoshiLabs, the parent company of Trezor, said in an email to Bitcoin Magazine that its third-party fulfillment partner, ShipMonk, had experienced “unauthorized access to their systems containing customer data.”
“Scammers can use the leaked information to send fake emails, make fake phone calls, send fraudulent letters, or potentially impersonate banks, crypto exchanges, or even Trezor,” the company said.
SatoshiLabs said it was continuing to investigate the incident.
Trezor is one of the most popular Bitcoin hardware wallet solutions, and also has support for storing other cryptocurrencies.
Bitcoiners’ personal data has been targeted by cybercriminals in the past: back in 2020, an unauthorized party accessed popular hardware manufacturer Ledger’s e-commerce and marketing database, leaking over 1 million email addresses and the personal contact data of nearly 10,000 customers.
And at the start of this year, customers reported receiving emails from Global-e, Ledger’s payment partner, that a data breach at its cloud systems leaked sensitive customer data.
The Bitcoin community is still reeling after hackers targeted Canadian company Coinkite’s popular Coldcard product.
Hackers started draining $111 million in Bitcoin from the popular Coldcard hardware wallets at the end of last month.The amount stolen could be much higher as investigations continue, with some estimating the real figure to be over $130 million.
The theft continued, with Bitcoiners — and Coinkite — asking users to move their funds as hackers continued to drain digital coins from the later devices.
This post Data Breach at Trezor Leaks Info on Nearly 14,000 Bitcoin Wallet Users first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.
CryptoSlate
Soluna Holdings, a renewable-powered data center operator spanning Bitcoin mining and developing AI infrastructure, reported rapid revenue growth in the second quarter alongside weaker consolidated profitability.
The company reported $15.1 million of revenue for the three months ended June 30, up 145% from $6.2 million a year earlier. A new presentation of pass-through electricity costs added $4.4 million to both revenue and cost of revenue, with no effect on gross profit, operating loss or net loss. Excluding that change, revenue still grew 73%.
Project Kati 1 completed 48 MW of construction and recorded its first positive site gross profit of $82,000. Project Dorothy 1A generated $2.9 million of revenue and $795,000 of gross profit.
Consolidated gross profit nevertheless fell 60% from the first quarter to $766,000. Soluna attributed the pressure mainly to $1.5 million of maintenance costs at the recently acquired Briscoe Wind Farm, ramp costs at Kati 1, and depreciation that began before the sites delivered their full revenue contribution.
The consolidated GAAP net loss widened to $22.6 million from $17.9 million in the first quarter and $7.8 million a year earlier. The Bitcoin miner's quarterly filing also recorded a $4.2 million loss on debt extinguishment.
Soluna financed a mix of operating needs, acquisitions, and development through substantial equity issuance. Outstanding common shares rose from 102.5 million on Dec. 31, 2025, to 225.8 million on June 30, an increase of 120%.
During the first half, the company sold 74.2 million shares through its at-the-market program, generating net proceeds of $113.5 million, and issued an additional 10.2 million shares under a standby equity purchase agreement, generating net proceeds of $18.9 million.
First-half cash uses included $11.6 million of operating cash burn, $65.1 million of investing outflow, including $51.4 million net for Briscoe, and $25.3 million for interests in Dorothy 1A and 1B.
Soluna sold 18.8 million additional ATM shares for about $23.6 million, lifting the outstanding count to 244.6 million as of Aug. 10, 139% above the year-end level.
The capacity behind Soluna’s AI pivot remains far smaller than its headline pipeline. As of Aug. 1, the company said the pipeline totaled about 6.3 GW, but only about 192 MW, or roughly 3%, was operating across three fully energized sites.
Another 14 MW was under construction at Kati 1, while 1.6 GW was in planning and development and 4.5 GW was in assessment with power partners.
Kati 2 illustrates the gap between development plans and active infrastructure. The joint venture with Metrobloks calls for 100 MW of critical IT capacity in its first phase and another 250 MW in a second phase, but neither phase was included in operating capacity.
For now, Soluna’s measurable base is 192 MW operating, with more than 6 GW still in construction, planning, development, or assessment, and a share count that reached 244.6 million.
The post Soluna has 6.3 GW of data center projects on paper, only 192 MW are operating appeared first on CryptoSlate.
Morgan Stanley Bitcoin Trust (MSBT) recorded a $66.8 million decrease in net assets from operations during its first 85 days, even as the exchange-traded fund brought in $371.1 million of gross share contributions against $5.26 million of redemption distributions.
The trust’s first quarterly filing shows creations dominated redemptions while Bitcoin fell. Redemption distributions equaled 1.42% of gross contributions from April 7 through June 30.
Unrealized Bitcoin depreciation accounted for $66.17 million of the operating-period decrease, nearly 99%. The balance consisted of $618,611 in realized Bitcoin losses and $72,288 in sponsor fees, distinguishing the $66.86 million accounting result from an ETF outflow measure.
Morgan Stanley's Bitcoin ETF net asset value per share fell 14.01%, from $19.70 to $16.94, while its disclosed CoinDesk Bitcoin benchmark declined 13.98% over the same period. At quarter-end, the trust held 5,059.3077 BTC with a $365.18 million cost basis and a fair value of $299 million, based on a Bitcoin price of $59,101.49.
Creations dominated after the zero-redemption month
MSBT issued 17.9 million shares and redeemed 250,000 during the reporting period, equal to 1,790 creation baskets and 25 redemption baskets. It ended June with 17.65 million shares outstanding and added a net $365.84 million through capital transactions.
MSBT completed its first trading month without daily redemptions. The 25 later redemption baskets ended that streak, although their value remained small relative to gross creations.
The filing’s GAAP figures and daily ETF flow tables use different measurement bases. MSBT’s $371.1 million contribution combined $200.3 million in cash proceeds with $170.8 million in Bitcoin received for share issuance.
Trust-level creations and redemptions occur through Authorized Participants in 10,000-share baskets at net asset value, according to the fund’s prospectus, while ordinary investors normally trade MSBT shares on NYSE Arca.
Those basket transactions do not identify the end sellers or their motivation, so the filing cannot establish whether retail activity drove the redemptions.
The trust had 21.74 million shares outstanding on July 31, up 4.09 million, or 23.17%, from June 30. The increase confirms net creation activity continued after the reporting period, though the filing does not identify which investors or distribution channels produced it.
The post Morgan Stanley’s Bitcoin ETF drew $371 million of share contributions while Bitcoin erased $66.8 million appeared first on CryptoSlate.
Bit Digital funded the majority-owned AI infrastructure company WhiteFiber without selling Ethereum or issuing new shares, but the route added a new dependency to its crypto treasury.
Galaxy Digital lent Bit Digital $50 million in a borrowing associated with 49,000 pledged LsETH, and Bit Digital separately became a lender to WhiteFiber.
The company said in its second-quarter results that it converted 73,235 ETH into 66,192 LsETH, the liquid-staking token it received in the exchange. It reported the pledged 49,000 LsETH as a $105.6 million digital-asset collateral receivable and retained 17,192 LsETH, worth $27.6 million, as a buffer against margin requirements.
Bit Digital drew the $50 million from Galaxy on May 20 at a 5.45% interest rate. The separate WhiteFiber delayed-draw facility started at $100 million and could rise to $150 million only by mutual written agreement.
LsETH is associated with Bit Digital's company-level Galaxy borrowing. WhiteFiber's facility is backed by a pledge of Enovum NC-1 Topco stock and a separate parent guaranty from White Fiber Operating Partnership.
Galaxy's master loan agreement gives Bit Digital 24 hours after an ordinary margin-call notice to add collateral. If a required call is not met, Galaxy can partially liquidate collateral to restore the contractual level. A faster nine-hour procedure may apply if an urgent threshold is specified.
The public documents establish price-sensitive margin mechanics, but not Bit Digital's proximity to a call or liquidation.
The impairment was an accounting hit, not a sale
The same quarterly release recorded a $46 million non-cash impairment on LsETH, and Bit Digital said it sold no ETH during the quarter. LsETH is carried at cost less impairment, unlike ETH's fair-value treatment, so the charge was not a realized loss.
ETH staking revenue fell to $900,000 from $2.3 million in the first quarter, while net loss attributable to Bit Digital shareholders reached $107.2 million. The impairment was only one component of those results and does not indicate that the Galaxy loan breached a collateral threshold.
The financing preserved the ETH position and avoided immediate dilution, but it also made part of the treasury's value relevant to WhiteFiber's funding chain.
That trade-off is now part of a broader capital-allocation debate: CEO Sam Tabar said the board is evaluating share repurchases, subject to board and shareholder approval.
The post Bit Digital pledged 74% of its staked Ethereum position to a loan that can trigger a 24-hour collateral call appeared first on CryptoSlate.
Multicoin Capital has exited its disclosed stake in Forward Industries, the largest Solana treasury company, according to SEC filings.
The crypto investment firm had been one of the three lead investors, alongside Galaxy Digital and Jump Crypto, behind the $1.65 billion financing that launched Forward’s Solana treasury strategy in September 2025. The three sponsors collectively committed more than $300 million, while Multicoin co-founder Kyle Samani became Forward’s chairman.
Less than eight months later, Multicoin Capital Management, Multicoin Capital Master Fund and managing partner Tushar Jain reported zero beneficial ownership in Forward. A May 8 Schedule 13D amendment marked the filing as the group’s final “exit filing.”
The exit is notable because Multicoin built much of its reputation on an early conviction in Solana, becoming one of the blockchain’s most prominent institutional backers long before its market value climbed to roughly $44 billion.
Multicoin unwound Forward stake amid split with Samani
Multicoin’s exit came through a series of transactions that moved most of its Forward exposure either back to the company or to an entity controlled by Samani.
On March 19, Forward disclosed that it had repurchased 6.16 million shares from an institutional investor for $27.37 million, or $4.44 per share. At the time, its quarterly filing identified Multicoin Capital Master Fund LP as the investor and related party that sold the shares.
Forward financed the repurchase with a $40 million loan from Galaxy Digital, carrying a weighted-average annual interest rate of about 3.4%, pledging fwdSOL from its treasury as collateral. The company said the borrowing would fund the buyback and support its broader digital-asset treasury strategy.
After the repurchase, the firm still beneficially owned about 6.24 million Forward shares, including 4.46 million shares issuable through warrants.
That remaining position was subsequently transferred to Lemmings Holdings LLC. Multicoin assigned warrants covering 4.46 million shares to Lemmings on April 30 and transferred another 1.78 million common shares on May 5. Forward had previously disclosed that Lemmings was controlled by Pyahm “Kyle” Samani.
Notably, Multicoin’s March-quarter 13F reported the 1.78 million Forward shares as part of its holdings during the quarter.
Its updated June-quarter filing shows that none of those shares remain, confirming that the position disappeared from its reportable public-equity portfolio after the shares were transferred to Samani-controlled Lemmings in May.
Samani had already resigned as a manager of Multicoin Capital Management effective Jan. 31, while remaining chairman of Forward. Multicoin’s May 8 filing then marked the investment firm’s exit from Forward, even as a Samani-controlled entity retained substantial exposure.
Meanwhile, the strategic differences between Samani and his former firm became more pronounced in July. After Multicoin backed a policy initiative with the Hyperliquid Policy Center, Samani accused the firm of “working against everything” Solana developers were building.
Multicoin executives have continued to express a bullish view on Solana. In June, Jain argued that Hyperliquid complements the firm’s Solana positions, describing Solana as the home of spot issuance, payments, lending and broader internet capital markets, while Hyperliquid serves derivatives trading.
Multicoin expects the two ecosystems to compete increasingly directly while both outperforming much of the broader crypto market.
Forward keeps buying Solana
Despite Multicoin’s institutional exit, Forward’s commitment to its Solana strategy has not changed.
According to its fiscal third quarter filing ended June 30, Forward revealed that it added 508,618 SOL and SOL equivalents during the quarter, increasing its holdings to about 7.55 million at June 30.
It then acquired another 254,325 SOL equivalents between July 1 and Aug. 3 at an average cost of about $75, lifting the treasury to roughly 7.81 million SOL equivalents.
Those purchases continued despite Forward reporting a $69 million quarterly net loss as lower SOL prices weighed on its digital-asset portfolio. The company ended June with about $11 million in cash and $105 million of Galaxy debt, with borrowings rising to $120 million after quarter-end.
Forward also repurchased more than 2.5 million shares during the quarter, continuing its capital allocation strategy, which previously included the Multicoin buyback. Samani said the company remained focused on increasing per-share value through treasury growth and share repurchases.
The company also joined the Russell 2000 and Russell 3000 indexes during the quarter, giving the stock broader exposure to index-linked institutional capital.
Forward is now looking beyond SOL accumulation for additional returns.
Chief Investment Officer Ryan Navi said the company is pursuing diversified sources of yield and evaluating acquisitions that could expand both its treasury and its role within the Solana ecosystem.
Its investment in Solana-based OnRe forms part of that effort, with Forward seeking US dollar-denominated returns that are less directly correlated with SOL. Navi also said weaker market conditions could create consolidation opportunities for the company.
The post Multicoin exits the $1.65 billion Solana treasury company it helped launch eight months ago appeared first on CryptoSlate.
Security flaws across major x402 payment facilitators could expose facilitator-held assets and leave merchants without receiving payment for services provided, according to new research presented at the 35th USENIX Security Symposium.
Researchers tested 15 major x402 facilitators, including Coinbase, Thirdweb, PayAI and Mogami, and found that every platform violated at least one security rule.
They mapped 49 rule violations to 31 distinct vulnerabilities across systems that accounted for 99% of observed x402 transactions and 98% of payment volume during the study.
The researchers identified four broad attack classes, including free shopping, asset theft, service disruption, and gas abuse.
They directly validated six attack paths under bounded conditions, including two free-shopping attacks, three gas-abuse attacks, and one path that could expose facilitator-held assets.
The findings do not mean that 99% of x402 transactions were themselves vulnerable. Rather, the paper said the attacks could cause “direct financial loss to merchants, theft of facilitator-held assets, unbounded sponsor-paid gas/fees, and disruption of payment services.”
The findings come as x402 is being promoted as infrastructure for machine-driven commerce, allowing websites and APIs to request payments that software and AI agents can complete autonomously. Facilitators sit between buyers and merchants, checking signed payment authorizations before submitting transactions to blockchains.
That position gives facilitators significant control over settlement while also concentrating risk.
Facilitator funds could be exposed
The most severe attack path involved ERC-6492, an Ethereum signature standard designed to support signatures from smart-contract wallets that may not yet have been deployed.
Researchers found that malicious metadata could cause a facilitator to fund and submit an arbitrary token-approval transaction rather than the payment it expected to settle.
The researchers stopped short of moving facilitator funds, but classified the flaw as a direct path to asset theft because an attacker could potentially use that authority to approve transfers of assets controlled by the facilitator.
Three other validated attacks exploited the same economic feature that makes facilitators useful to merchants: facilitators can sponsor blockchain transaction fees on their behalf.
Attackers could force affected implementations to pay for expensive smart-contract deployment or initialization, shifting potentially unbounded network costs onto the facilitator.
“If facilitators sponsor fees without reliable reconciliation or chargeback, attacker-induced settlement can become direct sponsor loss,” the researchers wrote.
That exposure is already visible in normal settlement activity, even though the study did not establish that historical failures were malicious.
Researchers analyzed more than 119 million x402 transactions across Base and Solana between Oct. 1 and Dec. 26, 2025. Facilitators spent about $202,000 on network fees, including roughly $5,800 on Base transactions that ultimately reverted or failed.
The failed transactions show the economic asymmetry built into sponsored settlement: a facilitator can incur blockchain costs even when the payment itself never completes.
Merchants can release services before payment lands
A second group of flaws creates the opposite problem, shifting losses from facilitators to merchants. The researchers dubbed the attack “free shopping.”
An x402 payment can pass an initial off-chain verification but still fail when submitted to the blockchain, including because an authorization has expired or the buyer no longer has sufficient funds.
If a merchant releases an irreversible service immediately after verification, the buyer can receive the product even though settlement later fails.
Researchers directly validated two free-shopping attack paths and classified another 10 as high risk.
The problem extended beyond individual facilitators to software supplied to merchants. All seven official Coinbase reference server kits examined by the researchers lacked explicit mechanisms for reversing actions taken after a successful verification.
In versions of Coinbase's Flask kit through 0.2.1, protected resources could be released after verification regardless of whether the subsequent settlement succeeded.
That design is especially consequential for AI-driven commerce, where autonomous software may request and consume APIs, data, or other digital services within seconds. McKinsey has estimated that AI agents could mediate $3 trillion to $5 trillion of global consumer commerce by 2030.
Coinbase dominates a concentrated facilitator market
The potential blast radius is amplified by the concentration of x402 activity during the researchers' measurement window.
Coinbase was the largest facilitator by a wide margin, processing 77.17 million transactions and nearly $27 million in payment volume.
Concentration also appeared on the merchant side. More than 93% of the roughly 53,500 unique servers observed in the study were associated with a single facilitator.
That structure creates a vulnerability, outage, or flawed software assumption at one large provider that can affect thousands of merchants rather than remain isolated to a small implementation.
It also makes remediation uneven. Fixing a facilitator's core service may not eliminate exposure if merchants continue running older software development kits or release products before settlement finality.
Fixes have started, but deployment remains unclear
The disclosures have prompted remediation by some of the facilitators examined, though the public record does not show how widely those fixes have been applied to live x402 infrastructure.
The paper's latest remediation update, dated Feb. 6, said Coinbase, PayAI and Mogami had collectively confirmed six vulnerabilities. Some had been fixed, while work continued on others.
The researchers did not publicly map individual vulnerabilities to specific facilitators, making it difficult to determine which providers were exposed to each attack or how broadly fixes have reached production systems.
Instead, they recommended treating all client-provided transaction fields as untrusted, rechecking payment conditions immediately before settlement, and imposing strict limits on facilitator-sponsored gas costs.
For merchants, the researchers recommended withholding irreversible services until settlement succeeds or maintaining a way to reverse actions when payment fails.
Those safeguards address the attack paths identified in the study. Their effectiveness will depend on whether facilitators, SDK developers, and merchants deploy them consistently across an x402 market whose activity is already concentrated among a small group of providers.
The post Coinbase and 14 other x402 facilitators failed security tests built for the coming AI-agent economy appeared first on CryptoSlate.
CryptoTicker.io
A Bitcoin savings plan takes the timing question off your hands. You buy a fixed amount every month, whether the price is rising or falling. Tax law grants you no such convenience: twelve instalments a year become twelve separate acquisitions, each with its own date, its own price and its own clock.
For you as an investor, that has one consequence. Whether a later sale stays tax-free is decided at the level of the individual tranche and the order in which the tax authorities treat those tranches as sold, never at the level of your total holding. Sell after three years of a savings plan and you do not hold one uniform stock of Bitcoin; you hold 36 acquisitions with 36 deadlines. This article sorts out the mechanics: holding period, exemption limit, order of disposal, valuation and record-keeping, each with its source.
Why a Bitcoin savings plan consists of many separate purchases for tax purposes
A savings plan is technically a standing order to buy: the exchange executes an order on a fixed date and credits you with the fraction of a Bitcoin you have acquired. For tax purposes, each of those executions is an acquisition within the meaning of German income tax law, with its own point in time, its own acquisition cost and its own holding period.
The savings plan therefore differs from a one-off purchase only in the number of events. Invest €6,000 in a single trade and you have one deadline to watch. Invest €250 a month for 24 months and you have 24 of them. Which providers in Germany offer automated instalments at all, and at what cost, is set out in our comparison of Bitcoin savings plans. The tax mechanics behind them are identical at every provider.
The one-year holding period under Section 23 EStG runs separately for every instalment
Gains from selling privately held crypto assets are private disposal transactions. The governing provision is Section 23(1) sentence 1 no. 2 of the German Income Tax Act: disposals of other assets are taxable where the period between acquisition and disposal is no more than one year. Where more than a year passes between purchase and sale, the gain falls outside taxation.
For a savings plan, this amounts to a rolling exemption. The March 2025 instalment is out of the period from March 2026, the April 2025 instalment from April 2026. If you sell part of your holding in May 2026, one and the same sale can contain tax-free and taxable portions at once.
What “other assets” means under Section 23 EStG
That crypto assets fall under this provision has been settled at the highest judicial level and is more than administrative opinion. In its judgment of February 14, 2023 (case no. IX R 3/22), the Federal Fiscal Court held that crypto assets are other assets within the meaning of the provision; the Federal Ministry of Finance cites the judgment at margin no. 53 of its circular. In practice: no flat-rate withholding tax, no saver’s allowance, and instead your personal income tax rate on gains realised inside the one-year window.
The €1,000 exemption limit: why one euro more makes the entire gain taxable
Section 23(3) sentence 5 EStG is precise: gains remain tax-free where the total gain from private disposal transactions in the calendar year came to less than €1,000. This is an exemption limit rather than a tax-free allowance. At €999 of gain you pay nothing; at exactly €1,000 the full amount becomes taxable.
Two details are regularly overlooked with savings plans. The limit applies to all private disposal transactions of a calendar year taken together, so gold sales inside the one-year window count as well. And the figure that is tested is the total gain, never gross turnover: losses from other deadline-bound sales in the same year reduce the tax base before the limit is applied.
Order of disposal: individual identification, FIFO and the average-cost method
When you sell out of a holding built from many instalments, it has to be clear which tranche counts as disposed of. The Federal Ministry of Finance circular of March 6, 2025 on individual questions of the income tax treatment of certain crypto assets settles this at margin no. 61, in three steps.
The starting point is individual identification: where the specific unit can be allocated individually, that unit counts as sold. Where this is not possible, the crypto assets of a given trading designation acquired first are deemed disposed of for the purposes of the holding period, and the average-cost method applies to the valuation. As a simplification, you may assume that the units acquired first were sold first, that is first in, first out.
In practice this means the order of purchase is unavoidable for the deadline, while for valuation you have a choice between the average-cost method and FIFO. On a savings plan that has been running for years, that choice quickly amounts to a three-figure sum, because the early instalments were executed at prices far removed from the later ones.
Wallet-by-wallet treatment: why the spread of your purchases across wallets counts
The order is not formed across your entire holding. Margin no. 61 makes clear that a wallet-by-wallet view applies. Within a wallet, the chosen method has to be retained until all crypto assets of that trading designation there have been sold in full; only after a subsequent new acquisition may you switch. If you later move holdings to your own wallet in portions, document those transfers. Without a record of which tranche went where, individual identification drops out as an option.
The ten-year period for currency tokens: why lending does not tie up your savings plan holdings for longer
Section 23(1) sentence 1 no. 2 sentence 4 EStG extends the period to ten years where income is generated from an asset in at least one calendar year. For a long time it was open whether staking or lending would therefore burst the one-year window for Bitcoin. Margin no. 63 of the circular answers this unambiguously: for currency or payment tokens, that extension does not apply.
The income itself is untouched by this. The circular allocates lending income to other income under Section 22 no. 3 EStG at margin no. 65, and the crypto assets received for it count as acquired at the moment they accrue. A fresh one-year period therefore starts for the income.
Daily price and price source: how you may value a monthly instalment
A savings plan instalment is rarely executed at a round price. Margin no. 91 therefore permits you to apply a daily price determined according to documented rules instead of the market price at the moment of execution, provided a consistent valuation is ensured. The daily average price, a fixed time of day and the daily closing price are all admissible.
Consistency is missing, according to the same margin number, where you draw on different sources or different points in time for acquisition costs and disposal proceeds. Settle on one price source and one time of day, and hold to both for the entire term.
Record-keeping duties: what the tax office expects after five years of a savings plan
Part III of the circular deals for the first time in detail with filing, cooperation and record-keeping duties. Margin no. 89 gets specific: where crypto assets are bought or sold through the centralised trading platforms of a foreign operator, this triggers an extended duty to cooperate under Section 90(2) of the Fiscal Code. That expressly includes retrieving transaction statements regularly and in full.
The sentence that matters most to savings plan investors comes at the end of the same margin number: missing records and data losses, for instance through the insolvency of a platform, are borne by the taxpayer. Margin no. 29a adds that retrieval is limited in time at some providers. Anyone who runs 60 instalments over five years and goes looking for the documents only at the point of sale carries that risk alone.
Tax reports and portfolio trackers: what they deliver and where their limit lies
Margin no. 29b of the circular describes the tax reports of private-sector providers with remarkable sobriety. Such reports resemble the tax certificates issued by banks on the surface, but they are built on wallet information and transaction statements that the taxpayer supplies. Their completeness therefore depends materially on the underlying data, and the results can be adjusted manually.
A report therefore carries none of the authority of a tax certificate. It is a calculation aid resting on your own data. For a savings plan with many small tranches it remains the most sensible tool nonetheless, because it carries the holding period forward for each individual tranche. A look at the comparison of crypto tax tools and portfolio trackers pays off above all on the question of whether the tool maps wallet-by-wallet methods and method retention cleanly at all.
Fees, spread and selling costs: what reduces the taxable gain
Under Section 23(3) sentence 1 EStG, the gain is the difference between the disposal proceeds on one side and the acquisition costs plus income-related expenses on the other. Order fees on a savings plan execution increase the acquisition costs; transaction fees on disposal are to be taken into account as income-related expenses under margin no. 59.
With percentage-based fees, this adds up over the years to an amount that noticeably reduces the taxable gain. The condition is that the fee per execution is evident from your records. At providers who price their margin into the spread, the cost is already contained in the execution price and therefore in the acquisition costs.
Loss offsetting: why savings plan losses only run against private disposal transactions
Section 23(3) sentence 7 EStG limits the offset: losses may be set off only up to the amount of the gain you realised from private disposal transactions in the same calendar year, and a deduction under Section 10d EStG is excluded. Sentence 8 allows a carry-back to the immediately preceding year and a carry-forward to future years, in each case again only within the same category of income.
A loss from a savings plan sale cannot be offset against your salary or against gains on shares. One further point matters: a loss after the one-year period has run is irrelevant for tax, because the transaction is no longer taxable. If you want to close out a position at a loss, you need to know which tranches are still inside the window.
The 2026 holding period debate: what savings plan investors should factor in now
The one-year period is politically contested. On August 9, 2026, CryptoTicker summarised the state of the discussion around abolishing the holding period and the associated Bundestag petition, in the article Germany’s crypto holding period faces abolition. What governs your tax return until further notice is the statutory text, and that still contains the one-year period unchanged. Any change presupposes an amendment to the Income Tax Act.
When a new rule would take effect, and whether existing holdings would be protected, is open and cannot be responsibly anticipated. The only thing you can steer today is your documentation. Anyone who keeps acquisition dates, price source and wallet allocation in good order will cope with any conceivable transitional rule.
What to take away
- Keep a tranche list from the very first instalment. Date, amount, quantity, execution price, fee and wallet all belong in it. Which providers run savings plans with traceable statements is shown in the savings plan comparison.
- Fix the valuation method once per wallet and stick to it. Average cost or FIFO, one price source, one time of day. A tool that maps wallet-by-wallet methods is in the comparison of crypto tax tools.
- Retrieve your transaction statements every year and archive them yourself. The extended duty to cooperate applies at foreign platforms, and data losses are borne by you. Which trading venues are regulated is set out in the comparison of regulated crypto exchanges.
(As of August 11, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy. This text is no substitute for individual tax advice.)
Transparency note: This article was produced with the assistance of artificial intelligence and reviewed by our editorial team before publication. All figures and claims were checked against the primary sources linked in the text. The feature image was generated with AI.
Elon Musk is putting up a semiconductor plant in Texas that, on the published plans, would be larger than anything the chip industry has ever announced for a single site. The project is called Terafab, it is going up in Grimes County north-west of Houston, and since August 6, 2026 it has an official first phase with a number attached to it: $16.8 billion.
To a crypto investor that reads at first like news from someone else's industry. The impression is misleading. If you buy mining hardware, hold shares in listed miners or keep AI tokens in your portfolio, you depend on the same scarce resource as Terafab does: manufacturing capacity on the most advanced process nodes. This article separates what is documented from what is still open, and shows where the project reaches into your portfolio.
Terafab: what SpaceX and Tesla are actually building in Grimes County
SpaceX and Tesla presented the first phase formally on August 6, 2026. The Grimes County site sits around 90 miles north-west of Houston and belongs to SpaceX; Governor Greg Abbott confirmed the investment the same day. At least 3,000 people are meant to work there, 60 to 80 percent of them from Grimes County and neighbouring Brazos County.
The scale is the real talking point. Tom's Hardware puts the manufacturing space of the finished campus at more than 100 million square feet, or roughly 9.3 million square metres. For comparison, Samsung's entire Pyeongtaek campus comes to around 31.1 million square feet. The wording the companies chose matters here: they speak of manufacturing space rather than cleanroom space, and those two figures lie far apart.
The plant is meant to produce AI inference processors for Tesla's Optimus robot and the Cybercab robotaxi, along with high-performance chips for the orbital data centres SpaceX has planned. Terafab is laid out as a captive plant for the Musk companies' own needs, not as a foundry for third parties. Its precursor is a smaller research fab on the north campus of Giga Texas.
The crypto connection: why wafer capacity at the leading node touches your holdings
Semiconductor capacity on the most advanced process nodes is a finite resource that gets reallocated every year. That is also where the chips sit that physically carry the crypto market: the ASIC compute engines used to mine Bitcoin come off the same contract fabs as graphics and AI accelerators. When another deep-pocketed buyer joins that queue, lead times and prices shift for everyone else in it.
Two concrete points of contact follow from this, and one trap. The procurement side is concrete, because ASICs that cost more or arrive later weigh on mining profitability and, over the medium term, on the hash rate. The equity side is concrete, because many listed miners are converting sites to AI hosting and their business model now hangs on the availability of accelerators. The trap sits with the tokens: AI tokens react to headlines about AI infrastructure even though no payment flow runs between a Texas factory and a protocol token.
That mixture of real supply chain and pure narrative is what makes the subject treacherous. Something similar played out around the financial plans for Musk's platform X, where a widely expected crypto feature ended up as a conventional banking product. Our analysis of the banking launch at X without crypto sets that out.
From 20 to 55 to 16.8 billion: why the figures for phase one diverge
The cost figures for Terafab have moved several times in a matter of months, and in different directions. Techtimes traces the sequence: around $20 billion at the announcement in March 2026, then $25 billion, then $55 billion in a filing from May, and finally $16.8 billion as the first phase in August. The magazine puts the gap between the May and the August figure at roughly $38 billion.
For a serious reading of them, what matters is that these numbers can draw different boundaries. A capital markets prospectus, a state press release and a construction announcement do not necessarily describe the same scope, and which boundary sits behind each sum is not disclosed publicly. The internal split between Tesla and SpaceX is unknown as well.
More informative than any single sum are the risk warnings SpaceX itself wrote into its S-1 prospectus of May 2026, according to Techtimes. Terafab is described there as a general framework for future development, with no financial terms, no arrangement on intellectual property and no binding commitments. The filing reportedly states in as many words that neither Tesla nor Intel is obliged to remain part of the project, and that there is no assurance the goals will be reached within the expected timeframe. Language of that kind is standard in prospectuses, but it does set the frame in which you should read every Terafab headline.
Intel 14A: Terafab rests on a manufacturing process that still has to deliver
On the figures Tom's Hardware assembles, the first phase of Terafab is meant to run on Intel's 14A manufacturing process. That is a remarkable commitment, because Intel has trailed TSMC in the foundry business for years, and 14A is the process with which the company intends to close that gap.
The other side of it stands in the prospectus: there is reportedly no obligation on Intel to stay in the project. Between the announcement and running volume production, then, sit several technical and contractual switches that could still fall either way.
What a process node actually tells you
The label 14A is a name for a process generation with certain transistor densities rather than a physical measurement. For the crypto world, one property counts above all: the more advanced the node, the more compute per watt. That ratio decides whether a mining rig still earns a contribution margin after two years.
One terawatt of compute per year: what that target says about the chip market
SpaceX and Tesla justify a plant of their own by pointing to their own demand. On their projection, the group's combined requirement will exceed one terawatt of compute per year and thus run well beyond today's global supply. When that point will arrive, the companies have left open.
Two things can be derived from this. First, the figure is a company demand forecast and not an audited market number; it justifies the investment rather than evidencing it. Second, it describes a squeeze that exists without Terafab as well: SpaceX, Tesla and xAI already claim a substantial share of available foundry capacity. And at the leading node, that is where the makers of mining hardware buy too.
Vertical integration: logic, memory, packaging and test under one roof
The technically most interesting part of the plan is its layout. Chip production is normally spread across continents: logic chips come out of one plant, memory out of another running different process technology, with packaging and test at specialist service providers. Terafab is meant to bring all of those steps together on a single campus.
The calculation behind it is speed. Running logic, memory, packaging and test side by side shortens the production cycle and allows yield improvements to be tested through faster. The price for it is a concentration risk at one location, plus a capital requirement that on Tom's Hardware's assessment will run well beyond the stated $16.8 billion for the full build-out.
Bitcoin ASICs and the race for capacity at the leading manufacturing node
For the Bitcoin market the chain is short. The makers of mining ASICs design their chips themselves and have them produced at contract fabs, usually on advanced nodes, because that is where energy efficiency per terahash comes from. Measured against AI accelerators, the order volumes of these vendors are small, and small customers get worse terms and later delivery dates in a tight market.
The effect shows up in the network with a lag. Late deliveries slow the build-out of hash rate, which in the short term even works in favour of existing miners, because difficulty climbs more slowly. More expensive hardware, on the other hand, worsens the payback on new rigs. If you are weighing up mining or valuing miner shares, delivery time and price per terahash are the metrics through which a factory project in Texas eventually becomes visible. Where you trade the underlying coins and at what fees is worth settling beforehand through a comparison of crypto exchanges.
AI tokens such as Bittensor, Render and Fetch: keeping narrative and payment flows apart
Every time a large piece of news about AI infrastructure appears, the prices of AI tokens pick up. Protocols such as Bittensor, Render or Fetch organise decentralised compute and rendering capacity and issue tokens for it. Between a factory that makes inference chips for Musk's robots and satellites and the demand for such networks, however, there is no economic connection. The price reaction feeds on the narrative.
That distinction is the core of any valuation. With every AI token, ask for verifiable quantities: how much compute is billed through the network, who pays for it, does that demand grow independently of headlines, and how many tokens enter circulation through issuance over the same period? While those questions stay open, you are trading a story. How the segment can be looked at in a structured way is something our editorial team wrote up in May 2026 in an overview on building an AI token portfolio.
Miners converting to AI data centres, and what that means for hash rate and mining stocks
The most solid crypto link sits with the listed miners. Several of them have begun to switch parts of their sites from Bitcoin mining to hosting for AI and high-performance computing. The reason is commercially obvious: the real raw material of these companies is a permitted grid connection and cheap power, and for the same megawatt hour AI customers on long-term contracts pay more than the Bitcoin market does with its halving cycles.
For you as an investor, that changes the nature of these shares. A miner drawing a growing share of its revenue from data centre contracts is less and less a leveraged mirror of the Bitcoin price and more and more an infrastructure operator with construction, schedule and counterparty risk. If you hold such stocks as a Bitcoin substitute, read the revenue split in the quarterly report before you rely on a presumed correlation.
What matters for investors: time horizon, concentration risk and the tax question
In the semiconductor industry, several years pass between a construction announcement and the first chips sold from a large plant. Civil works are due to begin within months, according to Techtimes; volume production is not mentioned. Anyone taking a position today because a factory has been announced is buying an expectation with a very long lead time.
On top of that comes a concentration risk that is easily overlooked in Musk-related themes. If you hold Tesla shares, a bundle of AI tokens and stakes in miners converting to AI hosting, you are sitting on the same bet in three positions. And tax applies when you sell. In Germany, gains on crypto assets held privately fall under the rules for private disposal transactions, where the holding period and exemption thresholds decide whether tax is due. If you rebalance actively, you are better off documenting as you go than reconstructing it from exchange exports in the spring.
What to take away from this
- Separate the supply chain from the story. Terafab touches your holdings through chip capacity and hardware prices, not through a payment flow to a token. Secure the holdings you intend to keep for the long run along the lines set out in our hardware wallet comparison.
- Evidence the metrics before you buy. With AI tokens, billed compute and the issuance schedule are what count; with miners, it is the revenue split between mining and hosting. The tools for that are in our overview of analytics platforms.
- Keep the tax file running alongside your trading. Rebalancing across several exchanges without ongoing records means losing track of holding periods. A tax tool or portfolio tracker takes that off your hands.
(As of August 10, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)
Transparency note: This article was produced with the assistance of artificial intelligence and reviewed by our editorial team before publication. All figures and claims were checked against the primary sources linked in the text. The feature image was generated with AI.
Trezor confirmed on August 13, 2026 that one of its shipping providers suffered a data breach that exposed the personal order details of thousands of hardware wallet buyers. No private keys were touched and no device was compromised, but the leaked data set is arguably the most dangerous kind in crypto: a verified list of people who own a hardware wallet, complete with the address where it was delivered.
Trezor Hack: What exactly happened in the Trezor ShipMonk data breach?
On Monday, August 10, 2026, logistics partner ShipMonk told Trezor that an unauthorized actor had accessed systems containing customer order data. Trezor disclosed the incident publicly three days later, on August 13.
ShipMonk is the fulfilment partner that stores Trezor products and ships parcels to customers in the US, UK and several other markets. To deliver a package, it holds the recipient name, shipping address, phone number, email address and order number. That is exactly the data set that was exposed.
The numbers Trezor published break down as follows:
- 11,742 customers with full exposure: name, email, phone number and shipping address
- 1,947 customers with partial exposure: name, city and email
- 13,689 customers affected in total
The investigation is still ongoing. Trezor says ShipMonk has secured the affected systems and hardened its security since the incident.
Who is affected by the Trezor customer data leak?
The breach is limited to new customers who received an order between May 10 and August 8, 2026 in seven countries: the United States, United Kingdom, Sweden, Colombia, Brazil, Italy and Portugal.
Anything older was already gone. Trezor enforces a 90-day data retention policy and contractually requires fulfilment partners to delete or anonymize order data 90 days after delivery. That single policy is the reason the exposure stopped at roughly 13,700 people instead of every buyer in the company's history.
There is one clean test for whether you are affected. Trezor emailed every exposed customer directly from help@trezor.io. If that email is not in your inbox, you are not on the list. Worth noting given what comes next: scammers will absolutely impersonate that notification email in the coming days.
Was Trezor itself hacked and are the devices still safe?
No, and yes. This is a supply chain and vendor breach, not a wallet breach.
Trezor's own systems were not compromised. No private keys, wallet backups, seed phrases or firmware were involved, and no funds are at risk from the incident itself. The hardware did its job. The weak point was the commercial layer around the product, not the product.
That distinction matters technically, but it offers limited comfort in practice. Attackers now hold infrastructure-grade targeting data: a fresh list of confirmed crypto holders matched to real home addresses and phone numbers. An email leak is a nuisance. A name plus a home address plus a phone number identifies a specific person at a specific door as someone who very likely holds cryptocurrency.
Trezor also confirmed this is the first breach since the company was founded in 2013 to expose customer phone numbers and shipping addresses. A separate January 2024 incident at a third-party support portal exposed contact details of nearly 66,000 users, but not physical addresses.
Why is this data leak more dangerous than a typical password breach?
Because the crypto industry already has a playbook for what happens next, and it has been running since 2020.
When roughly 272,000 Ledger customer records including names, addresses and phone numbers were published following that company's 2020 e-commerce breach, the fallout never really ended. Victims reported waves of phishing emails and SMS, counterfeit hardware wallets mailed to their homes in 2021, physical letters with malicious QR codes, and phone calls from people who spoke as though they knew them personally. Some received ransom demands with threats of violence.
The physical risk is no longer theoretical. CertiK verified 52 physical attacks on crypto holders worldwide in the first half of 2026, up from 39 a year earlier, with home invasions overtaking kidnapping as the most common method. Chainalysis put the amount stolen through violent attacks at more than $30 million over the same period, on pace to pass 2025's full-year total of roughly $58 million.
Vendors keep proving to be the weakest link in this chain. Ledger's payment processor Global-e leaked customer order data in January 2026, and within days attackers were sending phishing emails announcing a fake Ledger and Trezor merger, personalized with the leaked order details. One uncomfortable detail on ShipMonk: the provider holds SOC 2 Type II certification, an audited security standard, and was breached regardless.
What should Trezor customers do right now?
Trezor's guidance is short, and the industry track record says it works:
- Never enter your wallet backup or seed phrase on any website, ever. No legitimate company will ask for it, including Trezor.
- Treat urgency as a red flag. Any message demanding immediate action or asking for personal information should be assumed hostile until proven otherwise.
- Cross-reference everything against official Trezor channels, the official blog and verified social accounts. Type URLs manually rather than clicking links.
- Expect contact across every channel, not just email. Fake phone calls, SMS, physical letters and impersonation of banks, exchanges or Trezor itself are all on the table.
- Consider your physical security posture if your full address was exposed. Discussing holdings publicly, especially alongside a real identity, becomes materially riskier.
Anyone who wants to check status or raise a concern can contact Trezor support directly through the official site.
What is Trezor's Anonymous Delivery option?
Trezor says it is accelerating an Anonymous Delivery option designed to break the link between a hardware wallet purchase and a real world identity. Under the planned system, orders would use:
- A dedicated checkout process
- A nickname or label ID instead of a real name
- Automated parcel locker pickup
- Unbranded packaging with a generic sender label, with the carrier receiving only an email or SMS pickup PIN
- Automatic deletion of shipping identifiers after delivery
Trezor is targeting availability in the EU by September 2026 and in the US by the end of 2026, and describes the project as a top priority.
In the meantime, the company suggests ordering with an email address not linked to your real identity, paying with crypto or a disposable virtual card rather than a credit card, and using a P.O. Box where practical.
SpaceX stock has staged one of the most violent reversals of the year. SPCX closed Wednesday at $146.15, up 9.65% on the day, and is now roughly 40% above the $104.83 low printed in the first days of August. On a float basis that swing is worth around $530 billion in added market value, taking the publicly traded market capitalisation back toward $1.9 trillion. Calculated across all share classes, the number sits above $2.2 trillion.
Five sessions ago the stock was an all-time-low story. It is now trading above its IPO price again, with short sellers in retreat and Wall Street reopening the bull case. Below is what actually caused the move, what the 4-hour chart is signalling, and where the risk sits.
Why is SpaceX stock up 40% in five days?
Four separate catalysts stacked on top of each other in the space of one week.
The lockup did not break the stock. On 6 August, more than 911 million insider shares became eligible for sale, more than doubling the tradable float. The market had spent the previous session pricing in a flood of selling, sending SPCX to an all-time low near $105. The flood did not arrive. Shares rose on the unlock day itself and have not looked back since. That single fact removed the largest overhang on the name.
- Short sellers capitulated. Short interest collapsed from around 34% to roughly 11% as the expanded float gave bears an exit and the lockup thesis failed. A move of that size in a stock with a still-tight float mechanically amplifies every buy order.
- Musk reset the story. An all-hands video released on 11 August moved the narrative from rockets to artificial intelligence, and the market repriced accordingly.
- Wall Street piled in. Morgan Stanley's Adam Jonas reiterated an Overweight rating with a $300 base target and laid out a $600 bull case, a scenario that implies an $8 trillion valuation. Arete lifted its target to $450 from $401. Goldman Sachs then published The Second Space Age on 12 August, projecting a $1.8 trillion global space economy by 2035 and flagging launch infrastructure as the sector chokepoint where value accrues disproportionately.
What did Elon Musk say about SpaceX AI revenue?
The all-hands was the pivot point. In a roughly 30-minute video posted to X, Musk told employees that AI revenue would "exceed all other SpaceX revenue probably in September" and would "significantly exceed" the rest of the business in the fourth quarter. He went further, arguing AI would account for 99% of the company's value within five years.
The supporting targets are aggressive:
- 10 gigawatts of AI compute capacity by the end of 2027, which Musk values at $30 to $50 per watt, implying $300 billion to $500 billion in annual AI revenue by 2028
- Grok 4.6 shipping within about a week, 4.7 three to four weeks later, and Grok 5 before year-end
- Grok trained on SpaceX's full internal corpus, spanning 25 years of engineering and operations data
- An exclusive hardware commitment to Nvidia's Vera Rubin architecture
- Starlink now serving 167 countries with 22 million mobile users and 13 million high-bandwidth subscribers
The starting point is real but the gap is wide. In Q2, AI contributed $2.56 billion of $7.81 billion in total revenue, behind the $4.29 billion from the Starlink-led connectivity segment. Group revenue rose 92% year over year, Starlink grew 67%, and launches were up 29%, but the company still reported operating losses on $18.4 billion of capital expenditure, $15.8 billion of it AI-related. Management is guiding to a roughly $100 billion annualised revenue run rate by December, more than triple the pace implied by Q2.
Layered on top is the pending $60 billion all-stock acquisition of Cursor, the AI coding platform built by Anysphere, expected to close in Q3. Morgan Stanley models Cursor at $2.5 billion of revenue this year and $13 billion in 2027, with annual recurring revenue reaching $8 billion by year-end and around $33 billion by 2030.
What does the SPCX chart say about the next move?
The 4-hour chart shows a textbook V-recovery off a well-defined base.
- Structure. After the post-IPO blow-off top at $225.64, SPCX spent seven weeks grinding lower in a clean descending channel into the $106 zone, marked on the chart as horizontal support at $106.33. That level held on three separate tests through late July and early August, forming the base. Since 6 August the stock has printed an unbroken series of higher lows and higher highs, with five consecutive large-bodied green candles taking price from the low $110s to the mid $140s.
- Immediate resistance is $150.31. That is the upper horizontal marked on the chart and it lines up with the June breakdown shelf. Price tagged $149.60 in the overnight session and was rejected, closing back at $146.24. A clean 4-hour close above $150.31 opens the door to the $160 to $161 zone, which is where SPCX closed on its first day of trading. Above that, the next meaningful level is the debut-day high at $176.52.
- Support levels to watch. The first is the $135 IPO price, which flipped from resistance to support on 10 August. Below that sits the $128 to $130 congestion zone from the 6 to 7 August reversal. A loss of $128 would put the $106.33 base back in play and invalidate the recovery structure entirely.
- RSI is the warning sign. The 14-period RSI sits at 66.62 against a signal line at 55.29. That is not yet overbought, but it is the highest reading since the June peak and it has gone near-vertical alongside price. Momentum this steep off a base typically produces a consolidation or a sharp mean-reversion candle before continuation. The gap between RSI and its moving average is the widest of the entire recovery, which historically resolves through either a sideways pause or a fast retrace to the 20-period average.
Net read: the trend is up and the base is credible, but the risk-reward for chasing at $146 into $150 resistance with RSI at 67 is poor. The cleaner setups are a confirmed breakout and retest of $150.31, or a pullback into the $135 to $138 pocket.
How does SPCX compare to its $135 IPO price?
SpaceX went public on 12 June in the largest IPO in history, raising $75 billion at an indicative $135 per share and a $1.75 trillion valuation. The stock opened at $150, ran to $176.52 intraday, and closed at $160.95, a 19.2% first-day gain. It then spent nearly two months underwater.
Here is where things stand against every relevant reference point:
| Reference | Price | SPCX at $146.15 |
|---|---|---|
| IPO offer price | $135.00 | +8.3% |
| First-day close | $160.95 | -9.2% |
| Post-IPO all-time high | $225.64 | -35.2% |
| August low | $104.83 | +39.4% |
So despite a 40% five-day rally and a $530 billion swing in market value, anyone who bought the first-day close is still down. Only IPO allocation holders and buyers below $135 are in profit. That matters, because it means overhead supply from disappointed June buyers sits directly in the $150 to $176 band the stock is now approaching.
What are the risks behind the SpaceX stock rally?
Three concrete ones.
A second lockup tranche lands on 20 August. Roughly 319 million additional shares become eligible. The first unlock was absorbed, but it came at an all-time low with sentiment already washed out. This one arrives after a 40% run, which is a very different setup for anyone sitting on paper gains.
Valuation is stretched on any conventional measure. Morningstar holds a $62 fair value estimate on SPCX with a one-star rating, implying roughly 58% downside, and Chief US Market Strategist Dave Sekera has explicitly urged investors to separate the stock's trading action from its underlying fundamentals. His argument is that the recent move reflects supply and demand mechanics around float and short covering rather than a change in intrinsic value.
The AI timeline is checkable and tight. Musk's September claim is not a vague vision statement. Within roughly six weeks the company either reports AI revenue above the roughly $5.25 billion that the rest of the business generates, or it does not. Goldman Sachs modelled about $15.6 billion in total AI revenue for all of 2026, which sits well below the run rate Musk is implying. Grok also currently trails leading models on several major benchmarks, which complicates a valuation that now leans heavily on AI monetisation.
Why does SPCX matter for crypto traders?
More than most equities. SpaceX carries 18,712 Bitcoin on its balance sheet according to its S-1, making it one of the larger corporate BTC holders. A tokenised version of SPCX trades on Solana via Backpack, redeemable for the underlying share, and SPCX-USDC perpetual futures trade on Hyperliquid. During the IPO window those perps traded around $176 while the offer price sat at $135, effectively front-running the listing.
That makes SPCX one of the first genuinely cross-market assets: a Nasdaq mega-cap with a Bitcoin treasury, an onchain tokenised twin, and a crypto-native perpetual market that often moves first.
SpaceX stock vs Bitcoin: which has actually performed better since the IPO?
This is the comparison that matters for anyone who had capital to deploy on 12 June 2026, the day SPCX listed. Using the same-day snapshot for crypto and the IPO price for the stock, here is how $10,000 would have fared through Wednesday's close.
| Asset | 12 June 2026 | 12 August 2026 | Return | $10,000 becomes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SPCX at IPO price | $135.00 | $146.15 | +8.26% | $10,826 |
| SPCX bought on day one | $160.95 | $146.15 | -9.20% | $9,080 |
| Bitcoin | $63,359.71 | $63,402 | +0.07% | $10,007 |
| Ethereum | $1,664.39 | $1,878 | +12.83% | $11,283 |
| XRP | $1.13 | $1.0044 | -11.12% | $8,888 |
| Equal-weight BTC, ETH, XRP basket | +0.60% | $10,060 |
Three conclusions fall out of that table.
- Ethereum beat everything. $ETH is the only asset in the comparison that produced a double-digit return over the two months, outperforming even the best-case SPCX entry at the IPO allocation price. It also beat the equal-weight crypto basket by a wide margin, because $XRP dragged the basket down with an 11% loss.
- Bitcoin did almost nothing, and that was arguably the point. $BTC is essentially flat over the period, up 0.07%. In a stretch where SpaceX shares fell 53.5% from $225.64 to $104.83 and then rallied 39% in five sessions, Bitcoin moved in a band of a few thousand dollars. The asset class usually described as the volatile one was the stable holding in this comparison. That is the single most surprising line in the table.
- Diversification mattered less than selection. An equal-weight three-coin basket returned 0.60%, barely distinguishable from holding Bitcoin alone, because ETH's gain and XRP's loss largely cancelled. Concentrating in the right asset beat spreading across the sector.
The honest caveat: almost nobody bought SPCX at $135. That price was reserved for institutions and a limited slice of retail participants in the bookbuild. Anyone buying on the open market at the day-one close of $160.95 is down 9.2%, which puts real-world SpaceX buyers behind Bitcoin, behind Ethereum, and behind the basket. The stock only looks like the winner if you had allocation.
It is also worth remembering that these are two very different two-month stories. Bitcoin is roughly 50% below its October 2025 all-time high of $126,198 and has spent 2026 in a drawdown driven by record ETF outflows and a cautious Fed, briefly touching a 21-month low near $58,000 in late June. SPCX, by contrast, completed an entire boom, bust, and recovery cycle inside eight weeks. Similar destination, wildly different journey.
What could SPCX and Bitcoin do by the end of 2026?
Nobody knows, and anyone claiming otherwise is selling something. What can be done is to lay out what published forecasts actually say, and be clear that these are scenarios rather than predictions.
- The SPCX range is extraordinarily wide. Morgan Stanley's framework runs from a $75 bear case to a $300 base target and a $600 bull case, the last of which implies an $8 trillion valuation. Arete sits at $450. Morningstar, at the opposite end, holds a $62 fair value estimate with a one-star rating. From $146.15, that spread runs from roughly 58% downside to more than 300% upside. A dispersion that wide is itself information: it tells you the analyst community has no consensus on what this company is worth, because the valuation now hinges almost entirely on an AI business that is two quarters old.
- The Bitcoin range is nearly as wide, for different reasons. Year-end 2026 forecasts currently span roughly $38,000 to $250,000. NYDIG's scenario analysis flags a potential bottom near $38,000 to $39,000 by October if the historical cycle repeats. Standard Chartered's Geoff Kendrick and Bernstein have both cut their targets while still pointing to a recovery toward $100,000 to $150,000. Arthur Hayes expects $125,000 by December on improving liquidity. Tom Lee remains the outlier at $200,000 to $250,000. Algorithmic models are far more conservative, clustering around $64,000 to $67,000 for December.
How the two compare on a scenario basis:
| Scenario | SPCX from $146.15 | Bitcoin from $63,402 |
|---|---|---|
| Bear | $62 to $75, roughly -49% to -58% | $38,000 to $39,000, roughly -39% |
| Base | $300, roughly +105% | $100,000 to $150,000, roughly +58% to +137% |
| Bull | $600, roughly +310% | $200,000 to $250,000, roughly +215% to +294% |
The shapes are strikingly similar. Both assets carry roughly 40% to 55% downside in a bear case and roughly 3x upside in a bull case. The difference is what drives them. SPCX resolves on a company-specific, checkable event: whether AI revenue actually overtakes the rest of the business in September and whether the $100 billion annualised run rate lands by December. Bitcoin resolves on macro liquidity, Fed policy, ETF flows, and whether the four-year cycle framework still holds.
That distinction is the practical takeaway. SPCX gives you concentrated, binary, single-company risk with a defined catalyst calendar. Bitcoin gives you diffuse, macro-driven risk with no earnings date. Holding both is not diversification in the conventional sense, since both are high-beta risk assets that sold off together in the first half of 2026, but they do respond to genuinely different catalysts on different timelines.
One final wrinkle worth flagging: SpaceX holds 18,712 BTC. If you buy SPCX, you own a slice of a Bitcoin position whether you wanted one or not.
Where can you trade SpaceX stock?
XTB offers direct access to SPCX shares on Nasdaq alongside thousands of other global stocks and ETFs, with 0% commission on monthly turnover up to 100,000 EUR. Above that threshold a 0.2% commission applies, minimum 10 EUR, and a 0.5% currency conversion cost may apply. The platform also gives you the charting tools to actually work the levels discussed above rather than market-buying into resistance.
👉 Open an XTB account and trade SpaceX stock
Solana launchpad Pump.fun took in more than $10 million in protocol fees in the week of 3–9 August, its first week ever above that mark. Three days later, 6.875 billion new tokens hit the market. The price barely moved. Taken together, the two facts say more about the state of meme trading on Solana than any price chart.
The record week in numbers
According to crypto.news, the platform earned $10.03 million in the week of 3–9 August, roughly twelve percent more than the week before.
| Metric (week of 3–9 August 2026) | Value |
|---|---|
| Protocol fees | $10.03 million (up twelve percent week-over-week) |
| Trading volume | $2.97 billion |
| Buyback and burn | 2.15 billion PUMP, worth $5.02 million |
| Revenue, last 30 days | $35.67 million — ahead of Hyperliquid at $32.46 million (DefiLlama) |
| Cumulative buybacks | more than $350 million |
Since the spring, the platform has directed half of its net revenue to buybacks and burns and the other half to operations. That it out-earned Hyperliquid over a 30-day window is notable — Hyperliquid is regarded as one of the highest-revenue protocols in the market.
The unlock that wasn't
On 12 August, according to Crypto Briefing, 6.875 billion PUMP were released: roughly 4.17 billion to the team and 2.71 billion to early investors. That is 0.69 percent of the fixed one-trillion supply, worth a low double-digit million sum.
Very little happened. PUMP trades at around $0.00278 on 13 August per CoinGecko, essentially flat on the day and about 18 percent above where it stood a week earlier. Market capitalisation sits near $1.09 billion across roughly 392.7 billion circulating tokens.
The comparison explains why: July saw 82.5 billion tokens released at once, more than ten times as many. After a twelve-month cliff, distribution to team and investors now continues monthly. The August date was not an event but an instalment — and the next one follows.
Why this case is atypical for the meme segment
For most meme tokens, supply and demand can only be guessed at. Here both sides can be quantified: buybacks funded by actual fee revenue on the demand side, a published vesting schedule on the supply side. Whether the arithmetic works out is an open question. That the arithmetic can be attempted at all is the exception in this segment.
One distinction matters and is routinely blurred: PUMP is not the meme token, it is the house where meme tokens are traded. The platform earns on turnover regardless of whether any individual token launched on it survives. For investors those are two entirely different risks. We described the same conflation of infrastructure and speculative object in more detail in our Robinhood Chain guide.
Where Solana's meme ecosystem stands
Meme tokens now account for roughly 42 percent of daily volume on Solana's decentralised exchanges, with Pump.fun contributing about $492 million of the roughly $1.18 billion traded daily. That is well below the peaks of more than $2 billion a day seen at the start of the year — but a clear recovery from the spring.
How thin the base under individual tokens remains is illustrated by JIMOTHY, launched on Pump.fun in July around a viral raccoon from Seattle. After Elon Musk posted a raccoon video on X, the price rose around 331 percent — to a valuation of roughly $16 million. A token with no product whose price hangs on somebody else's social media post is not an asset class. It is a derivative on attention.
What investors should take from this
- Fee revenue is a fundamental, not a price target. It shows that trading is happening on the platform. It says nothing about what the token should be worth.
- Supply keeps growing on schedule. Monthly distribution to team and investors runs for years yet. One well-absorbed date is no evidence that the next ones will go the same way.
- The platform and the tokens on it are two separate risks. Anyone wanting exposure to Solana meme activity should decide which one — and size either position as a possible total loss.
If you want to follow individual Solana meme tokens further, our running assessments are in the dogwifhat price prediction and the Bonk price prediction. Both state plainly that these tokens have no business model — something a record week for the platform they trade on does not change.
(As of 13 August 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)
Transparency note: This article was produced with the assistance of artificial intelligence and reviewed by our editorial team before publication. All figures and claims were checked against the primary sources linked in the text.
Decrypt
Bitcoin Red Team member Calle said Chinese models, including Moonshot AI’s Kimi K3, are finding bugs across Bitcoin’s open-source software.
In a new red-team study, Claude models deployed self-replicating malware against each other—and the transcripts explain why.
6th Man Ventures co-founder Mike Dudas says Solana’s infrastructure could carry crypto’s next wave.
Anthropic is weaving an invisible, machine-readable watermark into every word its newest Claude models write—and it hasn't said how.
Google's model is live and built for cheap agents; OpenAI's is quicker but locked behind a waitlist.
U.Today - IT, AI and Fintech Daily News for You Today
Things are getting more interesting on the market as volatility surges on multiple assets.
The company described the review as the largest inaugural financial audit in history.
Shiba Inu has flashed a bullish signal even as its price remains in the red, as exchange activity shows that selling pressure is gradually fading.
As Bitcoin mining margins hit historic lows, giant Riot Platforms liquidates 4,300 BTC to build more data centers amid massive shift into AI infrastructure.
Billionaire Mike Novogratz says the U.S. government's fiscal problems are keeping him bullish on Bitcoin.
Blockonomi
TLDR:
- SharpLink will stake $200M in ETH through Lido, receiving wstETH in return.
- Anchorage Digital will custody SharpLink’s staked wstETH position going forward.
- Lido holds roughly $16.5B in staked ETH, the largest liquid staking protocol.
- wstETH integrates across 100+ protocols, with $10B used as active collateral.
SharpLink, the second-largest corporate holder of Ethereum, will stake $200 million worth of ETH through Lido, the largest liquid staking protocol on the network.
The Nasdaq-listed company will receive wstETH, a token representing the staked ETH and its accumulated rewards, with Anchorage Digital serving as custodian.
The move expands SharpLink’s ongoing strategy to generate additional yield from its Ethereum treasury while retaining liquidity across decentralized finance applications and platforms.
SharpLink Expands ETH Treasury Strategy With Lido Allocation
SharpLink announced the $200 million staking allocation on August 13, 2026, describing it as part of a broader effort to make its Ethereum holdings more productive for shareholders.
The company has pursued staking and restaking approaches throughout the year, and the new Lido allocation adds another layer to that ongoing framework.
By staking through Lido, SharpLink gains exposure to Ethereum’s native staking rewards without giving up access to its capital.
The company will receive wstETH in return for its staked ETH. This token tracks both the underlying asset and the rewards it accumulates over time.
Because wstETH remains usable across decentralized finance platforms, SharpLink can theoretically deploy the token elsewhere while its ETH continues earning staking rewards in the background.
Joseph Chalom, Chief Executive Officer of SharpLink, commented on the rationale behind the allocation. “This is an exciting expansion in making our ETH even more productive, leveraging wstETH’s composability while maintaining institutional-grade risk standards,” Chalom said. He added that the move “reflects our commitment to working with the top Ethereum protocols.”
Anchorage Digital was selected to custody the staked position, giving SharpLink a regulated framework for holding its wstETH.
The arrangement is consistent with SharpLink’s broader approach of pairing large ETH allocations with institutional-grade infrastructure providers across its treasury operations.
Lido’s Scale and Institutional Reception Shape the Deal
Lido currently holds roughly $16.5 billion worth of ETH staked through its protocol, making it the dominant liquid staking platform on Ethereum today.
Its wstETH token is integrated across more than 100 separate protocols throughout the broader ecosystem. Approximately $10 billion worth of wstETH is actively used as collateral or deployed in other onchain applications.
Vasiliy Shapovalov, Executive Director of the Lido Labs Foundation, welcomed SharpLink’s decision to expand its use of Ethereum staking protocols.
“Being bullish ETH is being bullish on major Ethereum-based applications,” Shapovalov said, linking confidence in ETH to confidence in the applications built on top of it.
Kean Gilbert, Head of Institutional Relations at Lido Institutional, described a broader shift underway among corporate treasuries.
“Treasuries want their ETH working for them without losing liquidity, and Lido has become the standard for doing it at scale,” Gilbert said.
He noted that SharpLink’s allocation shows how a holder of its size can stake “while keeping the flexibility its deployment strategy demands.”
The post SharpLink to Stake $200 Million in ETH Through Lido, Anchorage Digital as Custodian appeared first on Blockonomi.
TLDR:
- The SEC crypto meeting was canceled over an unforeseen scheduling issue, delaying a vote on tailored fundraising rules for token issuers.
- Commissioners were due to consider a proposal, not final rules, meaning approval would have opened a public review and revision process.
- Paul Atkins previously floated a four-year startup exemption with a possible $5 million cap, alongside a broader fundraising pathway.
- The delay overlaps with the Senate’s five-week recess, leaving the CLARITY Act and the SEC proposal on separate, uncertain timelines.
The SEC crypto meeting planned for Friday has been canceled, postponing a vote on crypto offering rules. The Securities and Exchange Commission blamed an unforeseen scheduling issue and said officials would move the meeting. No replacement date was announced.
Commissioners planned to consider proposing a tailored regime for investment contracts involving crypto assets. The proposal could ease fundraising rules for qualifying token issuers while retaining disclosures and investor protections. The delay lands as the Senate pauses work on the CLARITY Act during its five-week recess. Together, both setbacks extend uncertainty around federal crypto policy in Washington for startups and investors.
SEC Crypto Meeting Delay Stalls Tailored Offering Plan
The SEC had scheduled the open session for 10 a.m. Eastern Time on August 14. Officials planned an in-person meeting at the agency’s Washington headquarters, alongside a public webcast. Its agenda listed one item, Regulation Crypto Assets.
NEW: The @SECGov is cancelling its planned open meeting tomorrow due to a scheduling conflict.
Per a spokesperson: “The SEC is committed to delivering on the President’s agenda to bring certainty to the crypto space. Due to an unforeseen scheduling issue, tomorrow’s Open… https://t.co/5A31sst9jq pic.twitter.com/6IkJxYiBOa
— Eleanor Terrett (@EleanorTerrett) August 13, 2026
That item asked commissioners to consider issuing a proposal, not adopting final requirements. An affirmative vote would have started formal public review and possible revisions. The SEC crypto meeting delay blocks the proposal before stakeholders can assess its full legal text.
The agency described the planned framework as a tailored offering regime for certain crypto asset investment contracts. That scope matters for developers whose token sales may fall under federal securities law. Traditional registration can require filings, financial disclosures, and ongoing compliance.
Chair Paul Atkins outlined possible components in March. His crypto startup exemption could give qualifying developers four years of regulatory runway. He also floated a $5 million fundraising limit. Participants could file notices when entering and exiting.
Atkins separately discussed a broader fundraising exemption with a possible $75 million annual cap. Issuers could still provide project disclosures, financial condition details, and financial statements. Another safe harbor could clarify when an investment contract ends after essential managerial work stops.
CLARITY Act Recess Deepens the Regulatory Timing Gap
The postponement does not withdraw the initiative. SEC officials said they would move the session but offered no replacement date. Rulemaking must wait until commissioners formally reconvene.
The SEC crypto meeting delay overlaps with a separate pause on Capitol Hill. Senators began a five-week recess without finishing action on the CLARITY Act. A procedural vote is planned after lawmakers return in mid-September.
The bill needs 60 votes to advance. If every voting Republican supports it, at least eight Democrats would still be required. Negotiations cover ethics, stablecoin rewards, and regulatory authority.
The CLARITY Act would establish broader federal rules for digital assets. It would help define when tokens are securities or commodities and allocate oversight. Agency exemptions have a narrower reach, and later commissions can revise them.
Atkins acknowledged that difference in March. He said only Congress could future-proof crypto regulation through comprehensive market structure legislation. The SEC can still reshape securities offerings while lawmakers debate a more durable framework.
Under Atkins, the commission has reversed the prior administration’s enforcement-focused crypto policy. It rescinded contested accounting guidance and dropped cases involving Coinbase, Binance, and other companies. Atkins also supports treating many tokens more like commodities than securities.
A separate innovation exemption could permit tests involving blockchain-based stocks. Its specific disclosure duties and investor safeguards remain unpublished.
For now, the SEC crypto meeting cancellation delays access to those details. Startups cannot evaluate the crypto startup exemption’s final thresholds. Investors also cannot assess its protections before the CLARITY Act’s next procedural test.
The post SEC Crypto Meeting Canceled as Token Exemption Vote Faces Delay appeared first on Blockonomi.
TLDR:
- The ShipMonk breach exposed names, emails, phone numbers and addresses of Trezor buyers online.
- Trezor says 11,742 customers had full data exposed, while 1,947 saw partial exposure occur.
- Trezor confirmed its internal systems and private keys were not compromised during the breach.
- CZ says the breach highlights an advantage software self-custody crypto wallets hold over hardware ones.
A Trezor data breach at shipping partner ShipMonk has exposed information linked to roughly 13,700 recent customers.
The hardware wallet maker confirmed that names, emails, phone numbers, and addresses were accessed by an outside party.
The exposure covers orders placed between May and August 2026. Trezor stated its internal systems and private keys were not touched. The company has begun notifying users and published guidance on avoiding phishing attempts.
Breach Details and Scope
ShipMonk informed Trezor on August 10, 2026, that unauthorized access had occurred within its order systems. The affected window covers orders placed between May 10 and August 8, 2026.
Customers in the United States, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Colombia, Brazil, Italy, and Portugal were included. Trezor said the breach was limited to fulfillment data rather than wallet security systems.
The company reported that 11,742 customers had full details exposed, including name, email, phone number, and address. A further 1,947 customers had partial exposure limited to name, city, and email.
Trezor credited its 90-day retention policy with limiting the scope. Older order records had already been deleted from ShipMonk systems by the time of the breach.
Trezor called the event the first breach since its 2013 founding to expose phone numbers and shipping addresses. Trezor said, “We absolutely understand how serious this is,” acknowledging the risk to affected customers. Support channels remain open for customers seeking further assistance.
Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao commented on the incident, noting hardware wallets are generally seen as more secure than software options.
He said the breach shows an advantage of software self-custody tools, which skip shipping a device tied to identity. Zhao added, “Not saying hardware wallets are ‘bad’. Just different risk profiles.”
Not a great month for hardware wallets.
Trezor disclosed a breach at its shipping provider affecting ~13.7K recent customers. ~11.7K had full name, email, phone and shipping address exposed. Trezor systems/private keys were not compromised. The leak directly links identities and…
— CZ
BNB (@cz_binance) August 13, 2026
Trezor Response and Safety Guidance
Trezor urged affected customers to treat unexpected emails, calls, or letters with caution. The company recommended checking any communication against its official blog and social channels before responding. Customers were reminded never to enter a wallet recovery phrase online or share it with anyone.
The company outlined steps buyers can take to limit data exposure on future orders. Suggestions included using an email address not linked to a real identity and paying with crypto or disposable cards. A P.O. Box can also reduce address exposure, though identification may still be required for pickup.
Trezor announced an upcoming Anonymous Delivery option built to reduce identity exposure during shipping. The feature will use a dedicated checkout, locker pickup, and neutral packaging with no visible sender name.
Trezor plans to launch the option in the European Union by September 2026 and in the United States by year-end.
Trezor reiterated that no company systems, products, or services were affected by the ShipMonk breach. Devices already in the customer’s hands remain secure, and private keys were never exposed. The company said the main risk going forward is an increase in targeted phishing attempts.
The post Trezor Data Breach: ShipMonk Hack Exposes 13,700 Customer Records appeared first on Blockonomi.
TLDR
- Intel climbs 4.6% as BofA keeps Buy rating despite lowering target price
- Intel raises $20B to accelerate foundry expansion and boost chip production
- Server chip pricing jumps 43%, adding fresh support to Intel’s growth outlook
- Intel expands foundry capacity while investors watch execution and customer wins
- Intel stock rallies as funding, foundry growth, and server strength lift sentiment
Intel shares traded at $105.60 Wednesday, gaining 4.60% after a strong morning advance. The move came as Bank of America maintained its Buy rating on Intel. Meanwhile, the company continues building funding for its foundry expansion.
Intel Corp., INTC
Intel Stock Advances After Strong Morning Move
Intel shares moved above the $105 level during Wednesday trading and held that area. The stock later approached $107.50 before easing toward $105.60. However, $105 remained an important level after the sharp intraday move.
The stock had traded near $100.95 earlier in the session before gaining momentum. It then climbed above $102.50 and continued higher through the morning. As a result, the session showed a clear shift from early trading levels.
Bank of America maintained its Buy rating as Intel advanced during the session. The bank also reduced its price target to $145 from $160. It cited share dilution and lower valuation multiples across AI-focused semiconductor companies.
$20 Billion Offering Supports Foundry Expansion
Intel plans to raise $20 billion through a public stock offering involving 210.5 million shares. The company priced the shares at $95 each as part of the transaction. The offering represents a significant new source of capital for Intel.
The share sale creates estimated dilution of four to 5% for existing holders. The proceeds support Intel’s broader plans for manufacturing and foundry operations. The company has made foundry expansion a central part of its manufacturing strategy.
Intel’s foundry business targets wafer manufacturing and advanced chip packaging for external customers. The company is also expanding production capacity as demand for advanced semiconductor manufacturing increases. In addition, packaging capabilities remain part of its wider manufacturing expansion.
Server Pricing Adds Support as Execution Remains Key
Intel also recorded stronger pricing in its server business during the second quarter. Server average selling prices reached about $1,200, representing a 43% increase from a year earlier. The increase provides another important development alongside the company’s foundry plans.
The foundry strategy requires Intel to expand manufacturing capacity and improve production processes. It also requires the company to secure large external customers for its manufacturing operations.Execution across these areas remains central to the company’s expansion.
Intel faces challenges involving manufacturing yields and new process ramps as capacity expands. The company also faces competition in advanced packaging while developing broader foundry capabilities. Overall, the stock advance coincides with new funding, stronger server pricing, and continued foundry investment.
The post Intel (INTC) Stock:Rallies as BofA Sees Upside From Foundry Expansion appeared first on Blockonomi.
TLDR
- Eco Wave Power stock trades near $7.10 as its Porto project advances further.
- APDL begins Barra do Douro breakwater rehabilitation works for Eco Wave Power site.
- CEO Inna Braverman travels to Porto this August to meet APDL directly there.
- Eco Wave Power seeks a grid-connection extension tied to the repair timeline.
- Portuguese subcontractors to join Eco Wave Power’s 1 MW installation execution phase.
WAVE shares traded at $7.10, sliding 1.91% intraday. The move came as Eco Wave Power confirmed progress on its Porto wave energy project. APDL began rehabilitation works at the Barra do Douro breakwater this week.
Eco Wave Power Global AB (publ), WAVE
Breakwater Repairs Clear Path for Porto Installation
APDL is handling repairs after storm damage hit the breakwater earlier this year. The port authority oversees maintenance and reinforcement of coastal infrastructure in the region. Eco Wave Power says the works directly affect the site chosen for its technology.
Eco Wave Power’s 1 MW installation depends on completion of this rehabilitation phase. Once finished, the company can access the site and begin equipment installation. The project marks a shift from pilot-scale testing toward commercial-scale deployment.
CEO Inna Braverman will travel to Porto in mid-August for talks with APDL. She plans to discuss the completion timeline for the breakwater rehabilitation works. The meeting will also cover Eco Wave Power’s site access and installation schedule.
Grid Extension and Local Contractors Support Execution
APDL agreed to issue a formal letter supporting Eco Wave Power’s grid-connection request. The company seeks an extension aligned with the breakwater repair timeline. Portuguese authorities will review the request before granting any formal approval.
Braverman will also meet Portuguese subcontractors during her August visit to Porto. Discussions will span civil engineering, steel fabrication, and hydraulic system design. Electrical works and grid connection also feature among the planned meeting topics.
Eco Wave Power aims to build a strong local execution team for Portugal. The company combines proprietary technology with regional engineering and construction expertise. Portugal remains a key European market under the company’s broader expansion strategy.
Wave Energy Technology and Broader Strategy
Eco Wave Power designs its technology for installation on existing man-made coastal structures. Engineers mount the system on breakwaters, jetties, and piers instead of open seabeds. This approach simplifies both installation work and long-term maintenance needs.
The method also avoids costly offshore deployment that many wave energy rivals require. The company views this design choice as a core competitive advantage. It also supports faster rollout across new international markets and regions.
The Porto project will give Eco Wave Power valuable megawatt-scale operating experience. That experience should support future projects planned across Portugal and beyond. The APDL agreement allows for up to 20 MW of total capacity.
This 1 MW installation represents only the first phase of that plan. Eco Wave Power expects further updates once the August meetings conclude. Market participants will track developments from Porto throughout the coming weeks.
The post Eco Wave Power Global (WAVE) Stock: Porto Breakwater Repairs Begin, CEO to Meet APDL in August appeared first on Blockonomi.
CryptoPotato
[PRESS RELEASE – Los Angeles, United States, August 13th, 2026]
MyEtherWallet (MEW), the world’s most intuitive digital wallet, today announced its integration with Ondo Perps, expanding its suite of decentralized financial products to include perpetual futures, derivative contracts with no expiration date. Through this integration, users can now trade continuous perpetual contracts with up to 20x leverage on leading U.S. stocks, ETFs, and commodities, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week on MyEtherWallet.com.
The integration bridges traditional financial markets and self-custodial Web3 technology. MEW customers can now access Ondo Perps to take long or short positions on major traditional market assets while maintaining full self-custody of their funds. Unlike traditional brokerages that restrict trading to rigid exchange hours and limited geographic access, eligible users can manage exposure to global markets around the clock using any supported wallet connected to the MEW web interface.
“Our mission has always been to make decentralized finance accessible, flexible, and fully self-custodial,” said MEW Founder and CEO Kosala Hemachandra. “Integrating Ondo Perps is the natural next step in our vision for the wallet as an all-in-one financial hub. Whether investors want to buy and hold tokenized equities or manage risk with up to 20x leverage on stocks and commodities, they can now execute advanced trading strategies 24/7 without surrendering control of their assets.”
Key Features of MEW’s Ondo Perps Integration:
- 24/7 Perpetual Trading: Users can access uninterrupted liquidity and trade leading U.S. equities, ETFs, and commodities outside of traditional stock exchange market hours.
- Up to 20x Leverage: Execute long and short position strategies with flexible leverage options tailored to different risk profiles.
- Universal Wallet Compatibility: Users can trade directly on MyEtherWallet.com using any wallet connected through MEW Portfolio—including MEW wallet mobile, Browser Extensions such as Metamask, hardware wallets, and WalletConnect.
- Non-Custodial Risk Management: Users can maintain full control over private keys while accessing advanced derivative products in a streamlined interface.
How to Access Ondo Perps on MEW:
- New users can create a wallet at MyEtherWallet.com to begin trading perpetual futures instantly.
- Existing wallet holders can connect their preferred wallet to MEW Portfolio to access Ondo Perps features directly.
For more information on MEW’s Ondo Perps integration and latest portfolio features: www.myetherwallet.com.
This product is not available nor intended for US citizens. Restrictions apply. For more information: https://docs.ondoperps.xyz/
About MyEtherWallet (MEW)
Focused on simple, free, and secure access to the global financial system, MyEtherWallet (MEW) empowers users to build wealth with digital assets. From launching the first Ethereum user interface in 2015 to bringing self-custodial RWAs and advanced trading tools to the masses, MEW is continually innovating its products to turn blockchain technology into a user-friendly and easy-to-use part of daily life.
The post MyEtherWallet (MEW) Integrates Ondo Perps, Unlocking 24/7 Leveraged Trading for Onchain Equities, & ETFs. appeared first on CryptoPotato.
Layer-1 chain Flare has announced that FXRP now works as collateral on Derive, letting XRP holders trade on-chain options and perpetual futures from their own wallets.
According to a press release shared with CryptoPotato, holders can mint FXRP through Flare’s FAssets system, deposit it on Derive, and run positions from a single Portfolio Margin V2 account, which covers hedging, premium generation, and directional trades on the same collateral.
Flare said XRP holders previously had limited ways to hedge a position or generate options premium without relying on centralized exchanges or custodians.
Options Cash Settle in USDC
Derive’s XRP options are cash-settled in USDC. When a contract expires in the money, the difference is paid out in USDC, and the FXRP stays posted as collateral, so settlement moves no underlying XRP. Sellers need enough USDC on hand to cover that payout, and they carry margin and liquidation risk on the position.
Derive is built on infrastructure from Lyra Finance and runs options, perpetual futures, and spot trading through one portfolio margin system. It traded more 30-day notional options volume than any other on-chain venue tracked by DefiLlama, which puts its total value locked near $118 million.
“Options are often the last major market to develop around an asset, and XRP has been waiting for the infrastructure,” said Nick Forster, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Derive. FXRP gives one of crypto’s largest holder bases “a credible path on-chain,” he stated.
XRPFi Stack Adds Derivatives
FAssets represents XRP on Flare through an overcollateralized system run by independent agents and the network’s data oracles, which pull cross-chain and real-world data through the Flare Time Series Oracle and the Flare Data Connector.
FXRP reached mainnet in September 2025, capped at 5 million tokens for its first week while Flare rolled out incentives, and the network said that the cap was filled within four hours. More than 155 million FXRP had been minted within seven months.
That supply already backs lending, borrowing, and yield tokenization. As CryptoPotato reported, FXRP deployed across DeFi applications rose from 82 million to 144 million since February, with more than 40 million XRP earned through Flare’s Smart Accounts across nearly 24,000 accounts. Flare has since listed an FXRP/USDC spot pair on Hyperliquid that lets the token move across chains.
“XRP has one of the most committed long-term holder bases in crypto, and until now they’ve had no permissionless options market to generate yield or hedge against their position,” said DeFi analyst Will Procheska.
The post Big Win for XRP Holders: On-Chain Options Arrive via Flare’s FXRP appeared first on CryptoPotato.
Boltz has suspended its Bitcoin swap service after a series of AI-assisted attacks caused losses for the bootstrapped five-person company, with the shutdown announced on August 3 and a new group of veteran Bitcoiners now preparing to take over the project.
The episode points to a growing security problem for small open-source crypto services, where automated attackers can move faster than small teams can investigate and patch vulnerabilities.
Boltz Suspended Swap After Repeated Attacks
Boltz said attackers had targeted its infrastructure with increasing frequency, intensity, and sophistication over the past several months. Several attacks succeeded, but the company stressed that its non-custodial design kept customer funds out of reach.
“The entirety of the risk was ours,” the team said, explaining that losses from the attacks led it to suspend the service on August 3 to prevent further damage. The company also said its API remained available for cooperative refunds, while unilateral refunds continued to work without relying on Boltz infrastructure.
The decision followed a difficult period for the service. On August 1, Boltz temporarily disabled EVM swaps involving USDT, USDC, TBTC, WBTC, and RBTC while fixing a bug in its EVM integration. Lightning, Liquid, and on-chain BTC swaps were still operating at that point.
Before that, it had faced other issues, including downtime in June of its API and related services, as well as the disabling of its USDT swaps on its .onion site in April.
By August 3, however, Boltz said the problem had become broader. The team reported a “steady rise in automated, AI-assisted probing” and several exploits, followed by a sharp acceleration in attacks during the days immediately before the shutdown. After reviewing its own security scans, the company said it could not responsibly restart swaps while multiple groups appeared to be targeting its infrastructure.
Boltz later said its five-person team did not have the resources to withstand that level of pressure over the long term. The company now has a new path forward. A group of veteran Bitcoiners has provided capital and engineering resources and agreed to take over Boltz.
Work on identifying and fixing vulnerabilities has already started, although no timetable for the return of swaps was given. The incoming group has not yet been named.
All three original founders, Kilian, Michael, and Karl, have stepped down and will have no formal role in the project.
AI Is Changing Both Sides of Bitcoin Security
Boltz’s experience comes as other reports point to a wider use of AI in cryptocurrency-related security work. On August 10, a report on North Korea-linked Kimsuky said the group had established local AI environments using tools including Ollama, GPT4AI, and Msty. Investigators said the setup could help with malware development, document analysis, and other attack techniques.
A separate security campaign showed the other side of the equation. Sixteen researchers used AI-assisted methods to examine 390 Bitcoin-related open-source projects and reported 4,962 software issues, including 85 critical and 635 high-severity findings.
That contrast shows AI can help defenders examine code at a pace that would be difficult manually, but the same tools can give attackers faster ways to probe exposed systems. Boltz’s founders said they had reached the point where their team could not keep pace.
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GSR said its Core3 model portfolio increased its allocation to Solana to 43.7%, while cutting its Ether holdings to 39.5% and Bitcoin slightly to 16.9%.
The change came as crypto markets stayed “constructive” over the past week, according to the trading firm.
GSR Leans Toward Solana
In its update, GSR noted that trading remained relatively calm, and that the move aligns with Solana’s stronger near-term price momentum. However, the asset’s trading volume has weakened over both the seven-day and 30-day periods. Ether still posted the strongest 30-day return of 6.4%, even after its portfolio weight was reduced. Meanwhile, Bitcoin remains the smallest allocation.
Longer-term trading activity for the world’s largest crypto has also stayed subdued.
For the uninitiated, GSR launched its first exchange-traded fund in April this year. The Crypto Core3 ETF trades under the ticker BESO on Nasdaq. The fund has a 1% management fee. It also offers active portfolio management and staking rewards on eligible assets. GSR had earlier said the fund actively shifts its allocation across the three assets. It rebalances every week based on research-driven signals designed to pursue additional returns.
One user on X speculated whether the move could signal the start of an altcoin rotation.
Solana is currently hovering above $76. As CryptoPotato recently reported, several technical signals have been pointing to additional upside. Analyst Ali Martinez said SOL is trading inside a parallel channel, and the $78 level has become important. A break above the mid-range could open the way toward the upper boundary near $100. A buy signal from the TD Sequential on its daily chart further supported the bullish thesis. The MACD has also formed a golden cross.
A Bottom, But Not Yet?
Glassnode, in its latest analysis, stated that the asset is stuck in a tight range as buyers remain largely absent. The price is sitting between the Median Realized Price at $63,000 and the Short-Term Holder Cost Basis at $68,700. Spot trading volume has also fallen to its lowest level since 2019.
The firm explained that sellers are showing signs of exhaustion, while several indicators are moving closer to levels seen during previous bear-market bottoms. At the same time, leverage has built up on the long side. If Bitcoin climbs back above $68,700 on stronger volume and ETF inflows pick up, it would be a positive sign. But if it fails to rally or falls below $58,500, the bottom could still be in doubt.
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The entity behind the world’s largest stablecoin has announced that KPMG U.S. issued an unqualified audit opinion on the financial statements of Tether International, S.A. de C.V. for the year ended December 31, 2025. This is the first full financial statement audit in the history of the company behind USDT.
An unqualified opinion carries no reservations, exceptions, or caveats, and is the strongest conclusion an independent auditor can reach. This means KPMG examined the balance sheet, income statement, statement of changes in equity, and cash flow statement under US generally accepted accounting principles, with each area subject to independent substantive testing. The audited statements report reserves exceeding liabilities by $6.81 billion.
KPMG physically counted and inspected every individual gold bar Tether holds, verifying its existence and identifying information. Tether said the procedure went beyond the reports supplied by custodians and counterparties.
The Attestations And The Audit
Tether has provided regular independent attestations of its backing assets for years, but an attestation just checks reserves at a point in time, while the KPMG engagement covered the full financial statements.
Back in 2022, BDO Italia replaced MHA Cayman on the reserves reports, a move Tether called “the next step in the company’s path toward a complete audit.” BDO still prepares the quarterly reports, among them the Q1 2026 attestation showing a record $8.23 billion excess reserve buffer.
Tether had also completed a SOC 2 Type 1 examination covering IT and security controls in 2024, but that examination stopped at the controls and never reached the financial statements.
Moreover, those quarterly figures sit outside KPMG’s opinion. Tether’s most recent attestation covered the second quarter of 2026 and reported $1.5 billion in net operating profit, roughly $184.6 billion of USDT issued, and more than 146 tons of gold.
Tether’s Long History With Regulators
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission fined Tether $41 million in October 2021, finding the company held sufficient fiat reserves to back USDT in circulation for only 27.6% of the days in a 26-month sample from 2016 through 2018.
The order also found Tether had told customers and the market that every token was backed by an equivalent amount of corresponding fiat currency, while its reserves included unsecured receivables and non-fiat assets.
“For years, some detractors said an audit of Tether could not be completed. They said the Company refused to subject itself to the most rigorous scrutiny. We have once again proven them wrong. Completing our financial statement audit sets a new standard for the industry and reflects the leadership we’ve brought to this market from the start,” said Paolo Ardoino, Chief Executive Officer of Tether.
Tether announced signing with a Big Four auditor earlier this year and described the completed engagement as the largest inaugural financial audit in history.
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