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A potential September rate hike could signal a more aggressive Fed approach, impacting market expectations and economic growth forecasts.
The post Boston Fed’s Collins supports September rate hike if inflation remains high: FT appeared first on Crypto Briefing.
Global shipping faces increased costs and potential delays, impacting trade efficiency and market stability amid environmental and geopolitical strains.
The post Panama Canal fees rise amid El Niño drought, Hormuz tensions impact shipping appeared first on Crypto Briefing.
Nvidia's rising credit risk highlights potential vulnerabilities in AI-driven growth strategies, impacting investor confidence and market dynamics.
The post Nvidia credit risk spikes as CDS spreads near record levels appeared first on Crypto Briefing.
Flanagan's lead suggests a potential shift in Democratic strategies, impacting centrist candidates' influence and future party dynamics.
The post Flanagan leads Minnesota Democratic Senate primary as Craig’s odds decline appeared first on Crypto Briefing.
A stronger yuan could reshape global trade dynamics, influence inflation control, and impact commodity markets, including gold prices.
The post China sets yuan midpoint at strongest level since February 2023 appeared first on Crypto Briefing.
Bitcoin Magazine
Bitcoin Magazine
Regulators To Push Pro-Crypto Initiatives Following Clarity Act Delay
The long-awaited crypto Clarity Act has stalled and is due a September vote but regulators are ready to step in to advance crypto rules regardless, according to reports.
Bloomberg reported Tuesday that the Securities and Exchange Commission was preparing to roll out this week initiatives to help the crypto industry. The regulator has said that it will hold an open meeting Friday “to create a tailored offering regime for certain investment contracts involving crypto assets.”
JUST IN:
— Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) August 11, 2026SEC to unveil 'major crypto plans' as Clarity Act stalls — Bloomberg
pic.twitter.com/H1OpsGBJP9
And JD Supra reported Tuesday that Commodities and Futures Trading Commission Chairman Michael Selig was ready to proceed with “rulemaking whether or not the Clarity Act is enacted, with the goal of finalizing rules before the end of the current administration.”
The news from the regulators comes as the Clarity Act stalls. Pro-crypto lawmakers were last week hoping the Clarity Act passed before Congress departed for August recess. After a delay, a vote will now go ahead in September.
Lawmakers started mulling over a new draft of the bill, which was passed by the House of Representatives last year, in July. The text that tackled the issue of ethics, banning government officials from promoting or making money from crypto.
But Democrats still had a problem with it and some were deliberately holding it back, according to Republicans like Cynthia Lummis.
Regulators the SEC and CFTC have become remarkably more crypto-friendly since President Trump took the White House.
When Gary Gensler was in charge of the SEC under Democratic President Joe Biden, the regulator went after crypto firms like Coinbase and Kraken.
Under the Republican Administration, the regulators have scrapped a number of high-profile lawsuits against crypto companies.
President Trump campaigned on a ticket to help make the United States digital asset capital of the world, and has passed pro-crypto legislation since taking office.
This post Regulators To Push Pro-Crypto Initiatives Following Clarity Act Delay first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.
Bitcoin Magazine
Should Bitcoin Companies Build USD Reserves? Understanding The Truth
Strategy’s U.S. dollar reserve has reached $4.65 billion, up from $3.75 billion two weeks earlier. It has also sold almost 7,000 BTC since late June 2026.
Many are wondering why a company built around accumulating Bitcoin would choose to hold billions of dollars in fiat. More importantly, should other Bitcoin businesses do the same?
Strategy holds cash because it’s in a very unique position
Strategy increasingly operates as an issuer of Digital Credit: preferred securities backed economically by an enormous Bitcoin balance sheet. These instruments create fixed dollar dividends obligations.
Bitcoin produces no cash flow. Strategy’s software business produces far too little cash to cover its capital structure.
Traditional credit analysis compounds the problem. S&P assigned Strategy a B- rating in October 2025, citing its Bitcoin concentration, weak dollar liquidity, and very weak risk-adjusted capital. Under S&P’s methodology, Bitcoin is effectively excluded from the capital base used for this analysis because of its market risk.
In our coverage of the S&P rating, we specifically mentioned that a cash reserve, amongst other things, was worth exploring to improve credit ratings.
Strategy therefore holds dollars to support its credit issuance. That is literally the whole reason.
More dollar liquidity can improve the perceived safety of its preferred securities, broaden investor demand, and potentially lower its cost of capital—in the eyes of credit ratings agencies.
The cash still carries an economic cost. Excess capital should produce a return. A conventional company can reinvest it, repurchase shares, or distribute it. A Bitcoin company can buy more Bitcoin. Every dollar held in cash replaces potential positive returns with guaranteed negative real returns.
Strategy accepts that cost because its business model depends on issuing more credit. Three unusual conditions exist at once: Bitcoin dominates its balance sheet, rating agencies heavily penalize that Bitcoin exposure, and management intends to keep issuing Digital Credit.
All three conditions are pretty unique individually and it is exactly the combination of all three that creates the situation where they need to hold cash. For instance, if Strategy did not want to issue credit, then it wouldn’t need the cash.
The economic consequence of cash reserves
The math creates some glaring problems with cash reserves.
Suppose Strategy issues $100 of preferred stock carrying a 10% annual dividend and holds three years of dividend coverage in cash. It must reserve $30 and can deploy only $70 into Bitcoin.
The preferred still costs $10 per year. The $70 invested into Bitcoin must therefore generate:
$10 ÷ $70 = 14.29%
A stated 10% cost of capital becomes a 14.29% hurdle rate on the capital actually deployed. The reserve raises the required return by 42.9%. Interest earned on the cash reduces the hurdle somewhat, but the structural drag remains.
The true hurdle is actually higher, however, because BTC’s volatility means it will heavily underperform the hurdle rate in some years, and these years still require the dividends to be paid (here I am assuming that dividends are not skipped). So aside from the cash drag, there is also a volatility drag imposed by attempting to amplify a volatile asset. This risk must be compensated for by adjusting the hurdle rate higher.
The larger the required reserve, the less of every new dollar reaches Bitcoin. If Bitcoin appreciation fails to exceed this higher hurdle over time, common shareholders bear the cost.
However, cash is far from useless. Cash creates useful optionality. It can cover dividends and interest during Bitcoin drawdowns, reducing the risk of forced Bitcoin sales. It can also support opportunistic repurchases of securities when they trade below their stated value.
Strategy recently did exactly that. In late July, it paid $25 million for $28.89 million of STRC stated value, a 13.47% discount. It later used $108.6 million from Bitcoin sales to retire another 1.15 million STRC shares. Buying preferred stock below par removes more senior claims and future dividend obligations than the cash spent. It is also accretive to Net Bitcoin Per Share.
Should Bitcoin companies accumulate cash or bitcoin?
For most Bitcoin companies, cash needs should be tied to the operating business rather than to an arbitrary reserve target—consider that Strategy literally does not know how much reserves it needs to get a better rating or for more credit investors to become interested in STRC.
A cash-flowing company usually has a good understanding of its cash outlay. It should hold enough dollars to cover payroll, taxes, debt service, vendor payments, near-term capital expenditures, and a reasonable buffer for volatility in operating cash flow.
The right reserve depends on the stability of those cash flows. A profitable business with recurring revenue, low fixed costs, and predictable expenses can operate with a smaller buffer. A cyclical or capital-intensive business needs more. The reserve should rise because the business requires liquidity, not because management simply wants a large cash balance.
Once operating needs and a prudent liquidity buffer is covered, additional cash needs a specific economic purpose. Otherwise it dilutes returns by generating a large opportunity cost. For any company, excess capital should compete directly against the company’s hurdle rates, repurchasing undervalued shares, reducing expensive liabilities, or investing in projects that can earn a higher return.
In conclusion, Strategy is a very, very rare case. Its cash reserve exists only because it is building a large credit issuance business on top of a Bitcoin balance sheet while credit ratings agencies impose significant institutional inertia which treats legitimate, liquid assets as zero value. Companies without that liability structure—which is basically all other companies—have far less reason to accumulate dollars beyond their working capital buffer.
Disclaimer: This content was prepared on behalf of Bitcoin For Corporations for informational purposes only. It reflects the author’s own analysis and opinion and should not be relied upon as investment advice. Nothing in this article constitutes an offer, invitation, or solicitation to purchase, sell, or subscribe for any security or financial product.
This post Should Bitcoin Companies Build USD Reserves? Understanding The Truth first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Allard Peng.
Bitcoin Magazine
CFTC Charges Goliath Ventures With $400M Bitcoin Fraud
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has sued a Florida crypto trading firm and its chief executive, alleging they ran a Ponzi scheme that took in at least $397 million from about 1,600 customers and spent it on fake payouts and personal luxuries.
The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, names Goliath Ventures Inc. and its CEO, Christopher Delgado, a Florida resident.
According to the CFTC, Delgado and his company solicited money from the public for crypto asset trading, primarily in Bitcoin and other cryptos, then misappropriated all of it.
Rather than trading customer funds as promised, the agency alleges, the defendants used incoming money to pay fictitious profits to earlier investors and to bankroll what the complaint describes as Delgado’s lavish lifestyle.
The CFTC also says the defendants guaranteed customers the return of their principal, their profits, or both, and sent out account statements showing gains that did not exist.
Delgado has already admitted criminal responsibility. In June, in a parallel case brought by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Florida, he pleaded guilty to federal charges tied to the fraud.
The Securities and Exchange Commission filed its own civil action against Delgado and Goliath on Tuesday, the same day as the CFTC complaint.
CFTC Chairman Michael S. Selig framed the case as part of a broader posture toward digital asset markets, saying the agency would keep policing fraud and manipulation while it develops clearer rules so legitimate firms can build domestically. David I. Miller, the agency’s director of enforcement, said the division remains what he called an important cop on the beat on digital commodity fraud.
The CFTC is seeking restitution for customers, disgorgement of ill-gotten gains, civil monetary penalties, trading and registration bans, and a permanent injunction barring further violations of the Commodity Exchange Act and the agency’s regulations.
The allegations in the civil complaint remain unproven. Counsel for Delgado and Goliath Ventures was not identified in the CFTC’s announcement.
Restitution orders in cases like this one are frequently difficult to collect. The agency routinely notes that wrongdoers may not have enough remaining assets to repay what victims lost.
This post CFTC Charges Goliath Ventures With $400M Bitcoin Fraud first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.
Bitcoin Magazine
Casa CEO Nick Neuman: 233k BTC Moved To Safety After Coldcard Exploit Proves Self-Custody Resilience
Casa CEO Nick Neuman pointed to onchain data from the recent Coldcard firmware exploit as evidence that self-custody strengthens Bitcoin’s resilience as an asset class.
In an X post on Aug. 9, Neuman cited figures showing that in the days after the Coldcard hack, where approximately 2.1k BTC was stolen, 22k BTC moved to exchanges and 233k BTC left long-term holder wallets in on-chain transactions, according to data by Checkonchain. “The onchain metrics around the Coldcard incident reinforce how important self-custody is to the resilience of Bitcoin as an asset class,” Neuman wrote.
Galaxy Research has tracked confirmed losses from the Coldcard entropy flaw as low as 1.7k, ranging to more than 2k BTC. The stolen coins are tracked across multiple attack waves beginning July 30, with higher estimates approaching $130 million. The vulnerability stemmed from a March 2021 firmware issue that weakened seed generation on certain Coldcard models.
Neuman said Casa’s own customer conversations indicated that some of the 233k BTC movement reflected holders shifting from non-Coldcard single-key setups (such as Ledger or Trezor) into multisig wallets after reassessing single-key risk. Other flows involved multisig users removing Coldcard devices from their keysets.
“So somewhere between ~10x-100x the amount of bitcoin stolen was moved to safety as people sounded the alarm,” he wrote. “This is a giant flashing neon sign showcasing the resilience that self-custody adds to the network.”
Neuman contrasted the outcome with a hypothetical centralized custodian breach. In that scenario, he argued, the numbers would likely reverse: limited funds might escape while the majority would be lost in a single event. With self-custody, attackers had to target individual wallets, limiting the scale of any single success and giving holders time to react.
“If all that BTC was held at a custodian and the custodian was hacked instead, those numbers would have been flipped,” Neuman stated. “As it was, the thieves had to crack one wallet at a time (and are still going), earning a little BTC each wallet, instead of cracking one wallet and getting a massive payday.”
He concluded that self-custody benefits not only individual holders but the Bitcoin network itself by distributing risk and preserving confidence.
Casa, founded in 2018, provides multi-signature vault solutions aimed at higher-value holders and institutions seeking practical self-custody. Bitcoin Magazine has previously covered the company’s multisig products and Neuman’s views on sovereignty and institutional adoption.
The Coldcard incident has prompted renewed discussion across the industry about single-signature hardware wallets, key generation practices, and the relative merits of multisig and emerging covenant-based vault designs. Onchain data cited by Neuman suggests that, whatever the technical shortcomings of specific devices, the ability of holders to move funds independently limited the systemic impact.
This post Casa CEO Nick Neuman: 233k BTC Moved To Safety After Coldcard Exploit Proves Self-Custody Resilience first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Juan Galt.
Bitcoin Magazine
Twenty One to Become ‘More Than a Bitcoin Treasury,’ Says New CEO
Bitcoin treasury Twenty One’s new CEO has reassured investors that the firm will become “more than a Bitcoin treasury” following shareholder concerns about the company.
The Tuesday letter to shareholders comes after the Bitcoin treasury — the second biggest in the space — released its quarterly earnings: the company posted a net loss of $413.5 million in Q2 2026, driven almost entirely by a non-cash “change in fair value” of its BTC holdings.
Bitcoin treasuries have faced a rough 2026 so far following Bitcoin’s price plunge. The leading cryptocurrency has shed about 50% of its value since it notched a all time high of $126,080 in October, hurting such companies’ stock price.
“Twenty One owns one of the largest Bitcoin balance sheets in the public markets. That is a real advantage, but if Twenty One is going to be worth owning, it must become more than a Bitcoin treasury,” wrote Raphael Zagury, who took the helm in July, replacing Jack Mallers.
Zagury said investors had voiced concerns about the stock trading at a discount to the Bitcoin it holds, and that some thought “the build is not happening fast enough.”
“That work has started: searches for key operating roles are underway,” he said to reassure investors. “Ultimately, actions, not words, will address these concerns and move the company forward.”
Zagury added that the company was going to build a conservatively leveraged Bitcoin-backed lending/credit business, and support Bitcoin developers, “no-strings attached.”
“I will finish with this: Twenty One is not a substitute for Bitcoin,” Zagury said. “Investors who want pure Bitcoin exposure should understand that Bitcoin itself is the cleanest expression of that view. Twenty One must earn the right to be something different: a way to own the build around Bitcoin.”
Twenty One was the product of Tether, Bitfinex, Cantor Fitzgerald, and SoftBank (which now no longer is part of the project). It has the second biggest public Bitcoin treasury, according to Bitcointreasuries.net, with a total of 43,514 coins — or $2.7 billion in Bitcoin’s current price of $63,464.
It debuted last year through a SPAC merger with Cantor Equity Partners, a blank check company affiliated with financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald.
Bitcoin treasuries exploded last year as public companies wanting to boost their stock prices rushed to accumulate Bitcoin — and other cryptocurrencies.
Following in the footsteps of software company Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy), such firms have seen their stock suffer as crypto markets have sold off since October. Even Strategy, the largest corporate holder of Bitcoin, has sold chunks of Bitcoin to create a cash buffer.
Twenty One in July said it would try and create a model like Berkshire Hathaway: build and acquire high-quality operating businesses that “leverage Twenty One’s balance sheet while maintaining disciplined capital allocation at the parent company and create a long-term ownership model inspired by Berkshire Hathaway.”
Twenty One’s stock (NYSE: XXI) was down over 1% over the past day on Tuesday. Year-to-date, the company’s stock is down by more than 50%.
This post Twenty One to Become ‘More Than a Bitcoin Treasury,’ Says New CEO first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.
CryptoSlate
Strategy said it held 840,447 BTC as of Aug. 9 and has begun treating its Bitcoin reserve as a source of balance-sheet flexibility.
Michael Saylor said Strategy sold $108 million in Bitcoin and $653 million in MSTR shares to increase its dollar reserve by $650 million, and repurchased $109 million of STRC, its variable-rate preferred stock.
The timing aligns the three moves without proving that each dollar from the Bitcoin sale directly funded the repurchase. Strategy is also willing to convert a small portion of its BTC into liquidity while supporting a capital structure whose dividends and interest are measured in dollars.
The success of Strategy's Bitcoin experiment now depends on preserving enough flexibility to meet dollar obligations while retaining control over when and how much Bitcoin it sells.
Bitcoin becomes a managed reserve
Saylor said in an Aug. 3 post that his personal “never sell” position did not bind Strategy, a public company that has disclosed since 2020 that it may buy or sell Bitcoin to manage capital.
A Bitcoin holder can measure success solely by the number of coins retained, while Strategy also tracks how long its cash can cover dividends and interest across its capital structure.
On Aug. 10, Saylor said the company’s dollar reserve had increased by $650 million to $4.65 billion. Strategy also repurchased $109 million of STRC and extended what Saylor called its dollar duration by 143 days to 2.7 years. The same post put its Bitcoin reserve at 840,447 BTC as of Aug. 9.
The update followed an Aug. 7 company post that placed coverage at 2.3 years, already above Strategy’s one-year minimum. Taken together, the posts show management lengthening its dollar runway while continuing to hold a large BTC reserve.
Bull Theory described the latest Bitcoin sale and similarly sized STRC repurchase as a matched transaction. The company’s primary post confirms the repurchase, the reserve increase, and the longer duration, while leaving the exact funding path unspecified. Bitcoin sales, dollar reserves and preferred-stock support now sit inside the same treasury toolkit.
QR Capital co-founder João Paulo Mayall estimated in an Aug. 11 thread that Strategy sold $213 million of Bitcoin over two weeks, about 0.4% of its position. He interpreted the sales as small, voluntary steps to protect liabilities rather than a panic response.
Pete Rizzo also attributed comments to Saylor that framed the transactions as a demonstration that Strategy could sell BTC without breaking the market while strengthening the case for STRC’s credit profile.
Strategy’s position remains that it intends to be a net buyer of Bitcoin. Selective sales can coexist with long-term net accumulation when dollars improve reserve coverage or when preferred-stock support improves.
The core question is whether sales remain a choice made from strength.
Voluntary selling is the real test
A $4.65 billion dollar-denominated reserve and a stated duration of 2.7 years give Strategy time. They create distance between a Bitcoin drawdown and pressure on the company’s dividend and interest coverage.
A deeper or prolonged Bitcoin decline could make additional liquidity more valuable, while expanding sales would reduce the asset reserve supporting the broader strategy. The significance would change if small, voluntary transactions grew into sales driven by shrinking dollar coverage.
Mayall’s estimate of $213 million over two weeks represented only 0.4% of the position he cited. The scale supports his voluntary-management interpretation, while future transactions could be larger.
Strategy common shareholders are exposed to how well management balances BTC ownership with the demands of its capital structure.
STRC holders are exposed to the durability of the dollar reserve and the company’s ability to keep supporting the preferred security. Companies studying the Bitcoin-treasury model should also notice that the design problem spans both asset acquisition and obligations management.
Three measures will show whether the model is holding: the size and duration of the dollar reserve, the scale of Bitcoin sales relative to total holdings, and whether Strategy remains a net buyer over time.
At its current scale, the latest sale looks like a controlled test of whether Bitcoin can support corporate credit while the company continues accumulating over time. The experiment succeeds only while Strategy controls the timing of its sales.
The post Strategy’s $4.6 billion cash buffer gives it almost 3 years before Bitcoin sales create real stress appeared first on CryptoSlate.
Hashdex will stop trading its DEFI Bitcoin ETF after the Aug. 17 close, giving investors a final window to exit before the fund is liquidated.
According to an SEC filing, investors who remain after trading ends will receive cash from the liquidation of its Bitcoin holdings by Aug. 28. The eventual payout will reflect the fund’s net asset value after Bitcoin price movements, transaction costs, and other closing expenses.
The approaching deadline is already shrinking the fund.
Hashdex data showed DEFI held about $8.7 million in assets and 134.95 BTC on Aug. 11, down from $11.77 million and 180.26 BTC on Aug. 7.
More significantly, shares outstanding fell to 120,000 from 160,000 over those three days, a 25% decline that indicates investors were redeeming positions ahead of the shutdown.
Bitcoin ETF rebound bypasses DEFI
The contraction comes even as money has returned to US spot Bitcoin ETFs, highlighting how unevenly that demand is distributed.
During the previous week, US spot Bitcoin ETFs attracted $865.3 million in net inflows between Aug. 3 and Aug. 7, Farside Investors data showed.
BlackRock’s IBIT accounted for $693.5 million, or 80.1%, of the total, leaving roughly $171.8 million for the rest of the market combined.
The five-day streak ended Aug. 10, when the group recorded $144.6 million in aggregate outflows.
While IBIT’s dominance does not explain Hashdex’s decision to close DEFI, the contrast shows how strong headline Bitcoin ETF flows can coexist with weak demand for individual products.
Meanwhile, that weakness predates the firm's liquidation effort.
DEFI converted from its earlier Bitcoin futures strategy to permit direct Bitcoin holdings on March 27, 2024, but did not record its first daily inflow until December that year.
Since the conversion, the fund has registered only six inflow days and three outflow days, reflecting how rarely it attracted fresh capital despite the broader expansion of the spot Bitcoin ETF market.
Its filings show the same difficulty attracting capital. DEFI issued $2.14 million of shares in 2025 but redeemed $4.61 million, resulting in $2.47 million of net capital outflow and leaving about $11.90 million in net assets at year-end, its annual filing showed.
Activity then stalled in early 2026. The fund recorded no creations or redemptions in the first quarter, while management fees fell to $6,453 from $20,385 a year earlier. Its annualized gross expense ratio also declined to 0.25% from 0.56%, according to its quarterly report.
Despite its Bitcoin ETF's imminent shutdown, the firm maintains that it is not abandoning the US market and said it continues to manage more than $200 million in products available to US investors.
The post This spot Bitcoin ETF only logged six inflow days ever – now investors have until August 17 before forced cash liquidation appeared first on CryptoSlate.
Bitdeer’s existing at-the-money program could raise up to $1 billion through Class A share sales, about twice the roughly $500 million the Bitcoin miner says it still needs to build its Tydal AI data center.
Its latest prospectus supplement filed Aug. 10 sets no minimum sale amount, however, and does not commit the company to sell the full authorization or spend all of it on Tydal.
At the filing’s illustrative price of $10.88, a full draw on Bitdeer’s $1 billion ATM capacity would require about 91.9 million new shares. That issuance would equal 40.4% of the 227.4 million Class A shares outstanding on June 30.
After simply adding the new shares, they would make up about 28.8% of the enlarged Class A pool, the more direct ownership-dilution measure for existing holders. The scenario is price-dependent and is not a forecast; it is also distinct from the prospectus’s net-tangible-book-value dilution figure.
The ATM can support more than one business line. Bitdeer lists data-center expansion, high-performance computing and AI cloud growth, ASIC mining-rig development and manufacturing, working capital, and other general corporate purposes. Management retains broad discretion over the proceeds, making the $1 billion ceiling a financing option rather than a disclosed Tydal budget.
Bitdeer has used the ATM structure before. The company’s annual report says the sales agreement dates to January 2025 and had generated about $160.7 million in net proceeds from 9.05 million Class A shares. The Aug. 10 filing registers up to $1 billion for sale under that existing structure while leaving the pace and price of any issuance open.
Tydal puts a clock on that flexibility. Bitdeer’s Aug. 10 lease disclosure targets Dec. 31, 2026, for Phase 1 commencement and March 31, 2027, for Phase 2. Volta Tydal AS, the tenant, is anticipated to have its obligations backed by roughly $1.3 billion of letters of credit arranged by affiliates of JPMorgan and another top-tier global financial institution, subject to customary conditions.
Those letters of credit are expected to provide support, not cash already secured. Bitdeer may terminate the agreement if Volta misses certain credit-backstop milestones. Volta, meanwhile, has a no-fee termination right after year 10 of the 16-year base term. For shareholders, the immediate test is how much of the ATM Bitdeer actually uses before Tydal’s target dates, at what prices, and whether the anticipated tenant credit support arrives on schedule.
The post Bitcoin miner Bitdeer unlocks a $1B cash tap that dilutes shareholders by up to 30% to build its AI empire appeared first on CryptoSlate.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission will vote Friday on whether to authorize proposed crypto fundraising rules that could give some token projects a tailored route to raise capital without full securities registration. If approved, the proposal would open for public comment when released. It would not give issuers an exemption they could use immediately.
The open meeting is scheduled for 10 a.m. ET on Aug. 14. It could translate parts of a framework that SEC Chair Paul Atkins outlined in March into a formal Commission proposal, but Atkins presented those ideas as his own views and used example figures rather than settled limits.
The two proposed crypto fundraising rules address capital raising. A startup exemption could run for up to four years and allow an illustrative $5 million over that period. Projects could publish principles-based disclosures about the investment contract and its underlying crypto asset, then notify the SEC when entering and leaving the exemption. A separate fundraising exemption could allow an illustrative $75 million in any 12-month period. Atkins said issuers could file the same disclosure plus a discussion of financial condition and financial statements.
The third idea serves a different purpose. It would create a safe harbor for certain crypto assets after an issuer completes or permanently ceases all essential managerial efforts it represented or promised to buyers. The SEC’s March interpretation already explains how a non-security crypto asset may separate from an investment contract, but it preserves the requirement that the original offering be registered or qualify for an exemption. The first two concepts govern fundraising; the third concerns the asset’s status after the issuer’s work ends. None would erase an earlier registration obligation.
Before the meeting, token developers still cannot tell which issuers or offerings would qualify, whether bad-actor exclusions or investor-level limits would apply, how resale would work, or whether Atkins’s $5 million, $75 million and four-year examples survived staff drafting. The published agenda supplies none of those details. Eligibility and resale rules could separate a broadly useful exemption from a channel available to only a few project types.
The federal regulatory agenda describes a crypto-assets project that may cover offers, sales, exemptions and safe harbors, without supplying operative terms. Atkins has also said that only Congress can future-proof crypto regulation through comprehensive market-structure legislation. The SEC can pursue nearer-term relief under existing authority, but the draft crypto fundraising rules released after Friday’s vote will define its scale and identify the issuers able to claim it.
The post Friday’s SEC vote could unlock $75 million crypto raises – or trap token issuers in unexpected legal fine print appeared first on CryptoSlate.
The JAN3 Bitcoin index placed the United Kingdom third in its 2025 B20 after weighing policy advances and more than 60,000 BTC in law-enforcement custody. UK records classify the coins as seized criminal property subject to court proceedings. A March 2026 Treasury answer said central government held no cryptoassets.
JAN3 promoted the UK result this month alongside its full B20 ranking. The scorecard gave the UK 6.44 and a BB rating, behind the United States at 7.42 and Bhutan at 6.64. Its evidence window ran through to the end of 2025.
The publisher's framework combines national Bitcoin holdings, state mining, legal and tax treatment, strategic-reserve policy, pro-Bitcoin political leadership, and the extent to which Bitcoin can be used in the economy. Britain's placement reflects that composite approach, not a government decision to build a Bitcoin treasury.
JAN3 cited roughly 61,000 BTC in government custody as one reason for the score. The Crown Prosecution Service confirmed that authorities seized more than 60,000 Bitcoin in a major investment fraud and money laundering case. Prosecutors described it as alleged criminal property. They said confiscation and civil proceedings would determine its disposition.
Why seized Bitcoin is not a reserve
UK asset-recovery guidance describes seizure as a temporary step while proceedings continue. Following a court order, authorities may sell recovered cryptoassets to compensate victims or direct the proceeds to the public purse and economic-crime enforcement.
The ownership distinction is also explicit in the government's dated statements. In a March 2, 2026, parliamentary answer, the Treasury said neither it nor central government held cryptoassets at that time.
A September 2025 answer said there were then no plans to change the seized-asset or official-reserve frameworks or commission a review of Bitcoin as a reserve asset.
The Property (Digital Assets etc) Act took effect on Dec. 2, 2025, in England and Wales and Northern Ireland. It removed a categorical obstacle that could prevent certain digital or electronic things from being treated as personal property. Its scope concerns property rights, not legal tender or reserve policy.
The Financial Conduct Authority also permitted retail access to qualifying crypto exchange-traded notes on approved UK exchanges from Oct. 8, 2025, subject to promotion and consumer-protection rules. The government has said its wider crypto regulatory regime will begin in 2027.
The scorecard rewards several kinds of engagement under one score. Britain's 6.44 combines regulation and access with enforcement custody, while its dated official reserve policy remained separate from the large seized balance.
The post The UK now ranks 3rd in global Bitcoin adoption, but court rules mean it can’t keep its 60,000 BTC as a reserve appeared first on CryptoSlate.
CryptoTicker.io
Chainlink trades at 8.78 USD, roughly 67 per cent below the 12-month high of 26.75 USD set on 23 August 2025, and about 22 per cent above the 12-month low of 7.19 USD from 1 July 2026. LINK has recovered almost 10 per cent over the past 30 days and remains the fifteenth-largest cryptocurrency by market value at 6.57 billion USD. Hence the question: is Chainlink a good buy at current prices, or is the market pricing the oracle network correctly after a year of heavy losses?
The price data in this article was collected by cryptoticker.io on 12 August 2026. Market data comes from CoinMarketCap. We used 365 daily closing prices up to and including 11 August 2026 and calculated the moving averages, the relative strength index and the 12-month extremes ourselves, using the standard formulas: exponential smoothing for the averages and Wilder's method for the RSI.
Chainlink price analysis: where LINK trades and which levels matter
At 8.78 USD, Chainlink sits in the middle of the range that has contained the market since early summer. The lower boundary is the 12-month low of 7.19 USD from 1 July 2026, which held on the first test and has not been challenged since. Above the current price, the 200-day exponential moving average at 10.01 USD marks the first significant hurdle. Between those levels lies the zone in which LINK has spent most of the past ten weeks.
The 50-day exponential moving average at 8.25 USD is the closest reference point. Chainlink reclaimed it during the July recovery and has traded above it since, which is why the shorter average now curves upwards while the longer one still points down. The gap between the two averages, roughly 18 per cent, measures how much ground the recovery would still have to cover before the trend structure changes.
Three levels therefore frame any decision at current prices: 7.19 USD as the floor of the range, 8.25 USD as the short-term average separating recovery from relapse, and 10.01 USD as the line that has capped every advance since spring. The distance to the 12-month high of 26.75 USD is a reminder of scale rather than a near-term target.
Is the Chainlink downtrend broken or only interrupted
Over twelve months Chainlink has lost 58.4 per cent, measured against the close of 21.11 USD on 12 August 2025. Over 90 days the loss narrows to 14.0 per cent, and over 30 days the figure turns positive at 9.9 per cent. The sequence describes a decline that has slowed, not one that has reversed.
A downtrend is generally considered broken when a market stops setting lower highs and reclaims its longer-term average. Chainlink has met the first condition since July: the low of 7.19 USD was not undercut, and each subsequent pullback has ended higher. The second remains unmet. While the price trades below the 200-day average of 10.01 USD, the recovery from 7.19 USD reads as a move within a falling market.
The trend is therefore interrupted. That distinction defines what would have to happen for the picture to change: a weekly close above 10.01 USD would turn the interruption into a break, while a close below 7.19 USD would confirm that the summer stabilisation was a pause in a continuing decline.
What RSI and moving averages mean for a Chainlink entry
The 14-day relative strength index stands at 51.4, close to the neutral mark of 50 and well away from both the oversold threshold of 30 and the overbought threshold of 70. For an entry decision the reading offers neither the discount of a washed-out market nor the warning of an overheated one. Buyers at 8.78 USD are paying a price that momentum indicators describe as fair rather than cheap.
The moving averages are more layered. The 50-day exponential average at 8.25 USD lies below the current price, the 200-day at 10.01 USD above it. The simple averages sit at 8.05 USD over 50 days and 8.87 USD over 200 days; the gap to the exponential figure shows how much weight last autumn's losses still carry.
A market positioned between its two main averages is undecided by construction. The technical picture supplies no timing signal, only boundaries: below 8.25 USD the short-term recovery is in question, above 10.01 USD the longer-term structure would have to be reassessed.
What Chainlink trading volume reveals about demand
Chainlink turned over 418.4 million USD in the past 24 hours, roughly double the 30-day average of 210.2 million USD, alongside a 5.2 per cent daily gain and an 8.2 per cent advance over the week. Rising volume on rising prices distinguishes genuine demand from a drift higher on thin books.
The longer averages temper that observation. Over 90 days Chainlink averaged 294.6 million USD in daily turnover, and over the full year 672.0 million USD. Activity runs well below the level of a year ago, when the price was near its high and speculative interest was correspondingly greater.
Read together, the figures support the case that the July low attracted real buyers rather than a technical bounce, while cautioning against extrapolating one active day into a trend. At 210.2 million USD, the 30-day average describes a market that has thinned considerably over the year.
Structural factors that speak for Chainlink: supply mechanics, usage and regulation
Chainlink's supply is capped at one billion LINK, of which 748.1 million are in circulation, just under 75 per cent. The remainder is released over time to fund node operators and ecosystem growth, so the circulating figure rises gradually. The ceiling is fixed, but the distribution schedule is administered rather than algorithmically final.
The network's function is to deliver external data to smart contracts. Its price feeds serve as reference oracles for a large share of decentralised lending and derivatives protocols, and the cross-chain interoperability protocol extends that role to transfers between blockchains. This is infrastructure demand rather than retail demand, which historically makes it steadier than sentiment but slower to translate into price.
On regulation, the European framework for crypto-asset markets has been in force since 2024 and is supervised by the European Securities and Markets Authority. It brings licensing requirements for exchanges and custodians rather than rules aimed at individual tokens, so the effect for LINK holders in Europe is a more regulated set of venues.
What speaks for buying Chainlink at current prices
First, the range has held. The low of 7.19 USD was tested once and has not been revisited in six weeks, and the price now sits 22 per cent above it. A defined floor allows a position to be sized against a specific invalidation level.
Second, the discount to the longer-term average is substantial. At 8.78 USD, Chainlink trades 12 per cent below its 200-day exponential average of 10.01 USD. Investors who expect the network's role as an oracle provider to persist are buying below the market's average price of the past year.
Third, sentiment is depressed. The CoinMarketCap fear and greed index reads 37, in the fear zone, while volume has picked up against the 30-day average. Weak sentiment with improving participation has historically been a more favourable starting point than the reverse, though it says nothing about timing.
What speaks against buying Chainlink at current prices
First, the trend has not turned. A loss of 58.4 per cent over twelve months and a price 67 per cent below the high of 26.75 USD describe a market in which every recovery so far has failed. Until 10.01 USD is reclaimed, buying at 8.78 USD means buying into a falling structure.
Second, liquidity has thinned. Daily turnover averaged 672.0 million USD over the year but only 210.2 million USD over the past 30 days. Thinner books amplify moves in both directions and make larger positions harder to exit at the quoted price.
Third, the entry offers no technical edge. With the RSI at 51.4 and the price wedged between the 50-day average of 8.25 USD and the 200-day average of 10.01 USD, there is no oversold discount on offer. Anyone buying now is expressing a view about the network rather than acting on a chart signal.
How to buy Chainlink at current prices: costs, custody and providers
LINK is listed on all major regulated European exchanges, so the decision is usually about fees and custody rather than availability. Spot fees typically range from about 0.1 per cent on volume-tiered venues to well over 1 per cent on convenience-oriented brokers, and the spread matters as much as the headline fee. Our exchange comparison sets the cost structures side by side, and the overview of regulated exchanges narrows the field to licensed venues.
On individual providers, our Bitpanda review, our Kraken review and our Bitvavo review cover fees, deposit methods and withdrawal conditions. Withdrawal terms deserve attention if you intend to move LINK off the exchange, because network fees and minimum amounts vary considerably.
Custody is the second decision. Coins left on an exchange remain in that platform's control, which is convenient for trading and a counterparty risk for holding. A hardware wallet moves the keys into your own hands at the cost of responsibility for the recovery phrase; our hardware wallet comparison covers the current devices. LINK can also be staked for a yield in return for a lock-up, and the staking platform comparison shows the terms. Conditions change, so check them with the provider before every purchase.
So is Chainlink a good buy at current prices, short-term and long-term
For the short term, the technical picture argues for patience rather than urgency. At 8.78 USD, with the RSI at 51.4 and no clear edge in either direction, a buyer is entering the middle of a range. The levels that would resolve the question are known: a sustained move above the 200-day average of 10.01 USD would signal that the market has stopped selling rallies, while a drop below 8.25 USD would put the July recovery in question and a close below 7.19 USD would end it.
For the long term, the question is whether demand for oracle infrastructure grows faster than the remaining 25 per cent of supply enters circulation. Chainlink's price feeds and cross-chain protocol are used across decentralised finance, and that usage has held up better than the token price. An investor who expects the gap to close is buying an established network 67 per cent below its 12-month high. One who expects token value to stay loosely coupled from usage has no reason to act at 8.78 USD rather than at 7.19 USD.
The assumption behind the constructive case is that the low of 7.19 USD marked the end of the decline. It should be treated as refuted if Chainlink closes a week below that level, or if the price fails a third time at the 200-day average while the 30-day volume average stays under 210.2 million USD. Both are observable conditions rather than matters of opinion. Our Chainlink price prediction follows the same levels as they develop.
Buying Chainlink: what to take away
- Chainlink trades at 8.78 USD between its 50-day average of 8.25 USD and its 200-day average of 10.01 USD, 22 per cent above the 12-month low of 7.19 USD and 67 per cent below the high of 26.75 USD. The downtrend has slowed without breaking. Ongoing analysis is in our Chainlink price prediction.
- The RSI of 51.4 gives no entry signal, and 30-day volume of 210.2 million USD against a yearly average of 672.0 million USD shows a thinner market. That argues for position sizes that survive a retest of 7.19 USD. Fees are compared in our exchange comparison.
- The structural case rests on a fixed cap of one billion LINK with 748.1 million in circulation and on oracle demand that has held up better than the price. If you buy, decide on custody at the same time. Our hardware wallet comparison covers the options.
Disclosure: Some of the providers mentioned in this article work with us through partner programmes. This has no influence on the price analysis or the assessment of the chart situation; the price data comes from a public market data source and can be verified there.
(As of 12 August 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices, fees and conditions change; check them with the provider before every purchase. Crypto assets are subject to high price volatility, and a total loss is possible.)
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.
The European crypto regulation MiCA has applied across the EU without transitional relief since July 1, 2026. Coverage since then has centred on the exchanges that left the European market. For staking the picture is murkier, and there is a simple reason for it: the regulation does not recognise the term as a service in its own right.
Anyone delegating coins through a provider still has a clear question to answer. Does that provider need a licence, and what happens to the balances it holds if it does not?
Staking under MiCA: why the regulation does not treat this service as a category of its own
Regulation (EU) 2023/1114 works from an exhaustive list of crypto-asset services. Recital 21 groups them into two sets. The first covers the operation of a trading platform, the exchange of crypto-assets for funds or for other crypto-assets, the custody and administration of crypto-assets on behalf of clients, and transfer services. The second covers placement, the reception, transmission and execution of orders, advice and portfolio management.
Staking does not appear anywhere in that list. It would be wrong, though, to conclude from this that staking is unregulated. The licensing requirement attaches to what the provider actually does, not to the label on the product. Almost every staking offering aimed at retail investors involves at least one of the listed activities.
What matters is who controls the coins
Deposit your coins with a platform and press its staking button, and you hand over the private keys. That is precisely the custody and administration of crypto-assets on behalf of clients from the first set. Whether the provider then delegates the balance to a validator, places it in a pool or settles it internally makes no difference to the licensing requirement. Providers that disclose their rewards and their registered office appear in our comparison of staking platforms.
Custody and administration of crypto-assets: the licensing trigger that captures custodial staking
Custodial staking means that a third party holds the keys. This covers centralised exchanges, broker apps and most providers that advertise rewards as an annual percentage. Such firms are fully subject to authorisation as crypto-asset service providers, or CASPs.
Authorisation brings obligations that rarely surface in day-to-day use but make the difference when something goes wrong: the segregation of client holdings from proprietary ones, requirements on organisation and complaints handling, disclosure duties. In Germany the Crypto Markets Supervision Act, the KMAG, implements the regulation and provides in Section 45 that a crypto-asset held in custody for a client is deemed to belong to that client. In the insolvency of the institution, that is the basis for separating it from the estate.
The carve-out in Section 45 KMAG hits staking clients in particular
The protection is not unlimited. The statute expressly excludes the case where the client has consented to the asset held in custody being disposed of for the account of the institution or of third parties. Agree to the terms of a provider that passes the coins on or deploys them for its own account, and you may forfeit the very attribution that counts in an insolvency.
Editorial assessment: for staking clients this is the most consequential line in the act, and it does not appear in the marketing material. Where the terms of use grant the provider the use of the coins for its own account or for third parties, the balance stands on a different legal footing from plain custody.
Non-custodial staking and solo staking: the cases where MiCA does not apply at all
Keep the keys yourself and delegate straight from your wallet to a validator, and no intermediary sits between you and the network. Recital 22 of the regulation records that crypto-asset services provided in a fully decentralised manner without any intermediary fall outside its scope.
That cuts both ways for you. The upside is that there is no provider that can fail and take your coins with it. The price is that there is no supervision either, and no claim against anyone if a validator is misconfigured and triggers slashing. Wallet interfaces change nothing as long as the keys stay with you. As soon as a service takes in coins and pools them, the case falls back under the licensing requirement.
Transitional period over: in Germany, grandfathering under Section 50 KMAG expired on December 31, 2025
A misunderstanding has proved stubborn here. Article 143(3) of the regulation allowed providers that had supplied their services before December 30, 2024 under applicable national law to carry on until July 1, 2026, or until their application for authorisation had been decided. The same paragraph expressly permits member states to disapply that transitional regime or to shorten its duration.
Germany shortened it. Section 50(2) no. 3 of the Crypto Markets Supervision Act provides that the authorisation deemed to continue lapses at the end of December 31, 2025 at the latest. Anyone seeking to rely on the old law therefore had six months less than the European framework allowed. July 1, 2026 was never the operative cut-off for incumbent German providers.
In practice this means that a provider offering you staking today, holding your coins and invoking an old German registration, has had a problem since the beginning of 2026. Either an authorisation is in place or a valid legal basis is missing.
Checking CASP authorisation: where to look up your staking provider's licence status
The evidence takes a few minutes to gather. Authorised providers are notified by the national supervisor and listed in the European registers; BaFin also maintains a company database of its own. Two points matter more than they first appear to.
First, the legal entity is what counts, and the brand name often obscures it. Many groups run several companies, and the authorisation attaches to a particular legal person with a home state. If the imprint names a different company from the one in the register, the matter is unresolved. Second, an authorisation covers only certain services: a firm can be licensed for exchange and custody without anything following from that about an individual yield product.
How thin the cover is across those licences is clear from our analysis of the MiCA register: only a small share of authorisations relates to the operation of a trading platform. Firms with a documented supervisory status appear in our overview of regulated crypto exchanges.
Tax on staking rewards: the 256-euro exemption threshold under Section 22 no. 3 EStG
The licensing question settles where your balance sits and says nothing about what the tax office makes of the income. For private investors the German tax authorities routinely treat staking rewards as income from services under Section 22 no. 3 of the Income Tax Act. The statute provides that such income is not subject to income tax where it came to less than 256 euros in the calendar year.
The mechanism is a cut-off threshold, which is something other than an allowance. At 255 euros everything stays tax-free; at 256 euros the full amount becomes taxable. The threshold also applies to all other income of this kind taken together, so anyone running lending alongside staking has to add the amounts up. Receipts are valued at the price on the day they accrue, which calls for clean records where payouts arrive daily. How to keep that evidence is set out in our guide to documenting staking rewards.
Holding period for staked coins: why one year does not turn into ten
Section 23(1) sentence 1 no. 2 of the Income Tax Act covers disposals of other assets within one year. Sentence 4 extends that period to ten years where income is generated in at least one calendar year from the use of the asset as a source of income. Read the provision for the first time and staked coins look like a ten-year case.
The tax authorities take a different view. Under the Federal Ministry of Finance circular of March 6, 2025 on individual questions of the income tax treatment of crypto-assets, staking and lending do not extend the disposal period. Several specialist publications report this consistently, among them the advisory firms CMS and Winheller. For the coins deployed, the period therefore remains one year.
The rewards themselves follow a calculation of their own. On receipt they count as acquired and start their own one-year clock. Sell them at a gain within that year and Section 23 applies on top; there, gains stay tax-free where the total gain from private disposals in the calendar year comes to less than 1,000 euros. A reward showing up twice, once on receipt and once on sale, is the most common error in self-prepared records.
Slashing, lock-up and withdrawal periods: the risks a licence does not cover
A CASP authorisation belongs to the world of supervision; it is no guarantee of returns. Whether an advertised yield is achievable, whether a validator runs reliably, or whether you can reach your balance quickly in an emergency: a licence says nothing about any of it.
Three variables determine the actual risk. Slashing describes the mechanism by which a network penalises the faulty behaviour of a validator by deducting from the stake. Lock-up denotes the period for which the holding is tied up. The withdrawal period governs how long unwinding takes, and technical network periods can diverge from a provider's internal ones. There is no statutory deposit protection for crypto-assets of the kind that exists for bank balances.
Centralised exchange, wallet delegation or liquid staking: how to tell which legal form your offering takes
Two questions are enough to classify it. First: can you move the coins without a company's involvement? Second: does your stake earn you a claim against a company, or a token anchored in the protocol?
For staking through a centralised exchange the answer to the first question is no, and to the second: a claim against the company. The licensing requirement then applies in full. Delegating from your own wallet leaves control with you. Liquid staking sits between the two, because you receive a tradable token whose legal classification depends on how the protocol is arranged. For tax purposes the swap into the liquid staking token can itself trigger a disposal; no ruling from the highest court has settled the point so far.
What to take away from this
- Establish first who holds your keys. If a company holds them, that company has needed an authorisation under the regulation since the German transitional period expired on December 31, 2025. Check the legal entity named in the imprint against the registers; the candidates with a documented status appear in our overview of regulated crypto exchanges.
- Read the terms of use with an eye on the power of disposal. Grant the provider the right to deploy the coins for its own account or for third parties and you lose the attribution under Section 45 KMAG that matters in an insolvency. To avoid this, compare the terms in the staking comparison and look closely at what is stated about custody.
- Record every receipt with its date and price. The 256-euro threshold is reached faster than the amounts in a wallet suggest, and the evidence is hard to reconstruct after the event. A tracker that values rewards automatically takes the work off your hands; the common programs are set side by side in our comparison of crypto tax tools.
The primary sources to read for yourself: the full text of Regulation (EU) 2023/1114 with the transitional measures in Article 143, and the Crypto Markets Supervision Act with the German shortening in Section 50 and the attribution rule in Section 45.
(As of August 8, 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.
Since August 4, 2026, a submission has been open for signature on the German Bundestag's petition portal that bears directly on private crypto investors. Petition 201716 calls for the one-year holding period for crypto assets under Section 23 of the Income Tax Act (EStG) to be kept in place. The quorum of 30,000 signatures was passed within a few days; on August 8, 2026 the portal showed 38,286 online signatures. The deadline runs until September 15, 2026.
The trigger is a decision taken by the federal cabinet on July 6, 2026 on the draft budget for 2027. Under it, crypto assets held as private wealth would in future be assigned to income from capital assets, and the tax exemption after twelve months of holding would fall away.
What the one-year crypto holding period under Section 23 EStG means today
Under the current view of the tax authorities and the case law of the fiscal courts, crypto assets count as “other assets”, so sales fall under the private disposal transactions of Section 23 of the Income Tax Act. Taxable there, under subsection 1 sentence 1 number 2, are transactions “in which the period between acquisition and disposal is not more than one year”. The familiar rule follows by implication: after more than twelve months of holding, the gain stays tax-free.
Sell earlier and the gain is charged at your personal income tax rate, plus the solidarity surcharge and, where applicable, church tax. Depending on your other income, that rate sits between zero and 45 percent. An important secondary rule appears in Section 23 subsection 3 sentence 5: gains stay tax-free if the total gain from private disposal transactions in the calendar year came to less than 1,000 euros. The threshold is often quoted as 600 euros, which reflects the position that applied up to and including 2023. What counts is the current statutory text, which you can read in Section 23 EStG at gesetze-im-internet.de.
This is an exemption limit rather than an allowance. At a total gain of 999 euros the amount stays entirely tax-free; at 1,000 euros it becomes taxable in full, and not merely for the portion above the line. Which unit was acquired when is something the tax authorities routinely allocate on a first-in, first-out basis. We have set out those basics in our explainer on the holding period for cryptocurrencies.
Cabinet decision of July 6, 2026: crypto gains are to become investment income
On July 6, 2026 the federal cabinet adopted the draft federal budget for 2027. Part of that draft is the intention to assign crypto assets held as private wealth to income from capital assets. Federal Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil had already announced a change to crypto taxation at the end of April and is quoted as saying that crypto gains should in future be taxed in the same way as investment income.
In fiscal terms the plan is a consolidation measure. Following the reporting on the cabinet draft, the Federal Ministry of Finance puts the contribution from tackling tax crime together with crypto taxation from 2027 at around one billion euros; in April the figure under discussion was still around two billion euros. The sums therefore do not relate to crypto assets alone.
One point is decisive for placing this in context. A draft budget quantifies expected revenue and states intentions, yet it amends no tax law. As long as Section 23 EStG applies in its present form, the one-year holding period applies.
Withholding tax instead of tax exemption: the crypto tax rate under discussion
Two figures are circulating in the reporting. The one cited most often is a rate of 26.375 percent, made up of 25 percent withholding tax plus the solidarity surcharge. Add church tax and the burden comes to roughly 28 percent, depending on the federal state. Neither figure has been officially confirmed so far, because the relevant statutory text does not yet exist. We therefore present them as a range and not as a settled quantity.
For investors on a high personal tax rate, the switch would not be a disadvantage in every constellation. Anyone selling within the one-year period on a marginal rate of 42 percent pays more today than 26.375 percent. The deterioration falls above all on those who hold positions for longer than twelve months and have so far been able to sell free of tax. That group is the one behind the petition. Two further questions remain open: whether the 1,000 euro saver's allowance would apply, and how losses would be offset in future. Both follow only from the statutory text.
Petition 201716 in the Bundestag: 38,286 signatures against a quorum of 30,000
The petition carries identification number 201716, is assigned to the income tax subject area and shows May 30, 2026 as its creation date. Its status reads “open for signature”, and it went live on August 4, 2026.
The text of the petition calls for the tax holding period for private disposal transactions in crypto assets under Section 23 EStG to be preserved; in particular, the one-year period after which gains are tax-free should not be abolished. The submission also asks that the classification of crypto assets as “other assets”, in line with the current administrative view and case law, be retained. The petitioners cite legal certainty, protection of legitimate expectations and private wealth formation as their grounds.
On August 8, 2026 the portal showed 38,286 online signatures and an entry of “Yes” in the “quorum reached” field. By its own account the campaign is carried by the initiative prohaltefrist.de, behind which stands an alliance from the German bitcoin scene around the Bitcoin Bundesverband. You will find the full text and the current count in Petition 201716 on the Bundestag portal.
Signature deadline September 15, 2026: how to sign the crypto tax petition
You can sign until September 15, 2026. That requires a one-time registration on the Bundestag's petition portal, where your name and address are stored; the petition can then be supported through the corresponding button. The right of petition under Article 17 of the Basic Law is open to everyone, and participation is possible regardless of nationality and place of residence.
According to the portal's guidance, the committee checks whether the quorum has been reached at regular intervals rather than after each individual signature. Further signatures are counted until the deadline expires. Where the quorum has been reached, a public hearing in the Petitions Committee is normally provided for, which is a hearing format and not a vote on legislation.
Grandfathering for existing holdings: the decisive open question
For investors with older holdings, the financial impact hangs on a question that has gone unanswered so far. Would there be grandfathering for crypto assets acquired before a change in the law? The reporting on the cabinet decision expressly notes that this point is unresolved; neither the draft budget nor the accompanying statements commit either way.
What follows from that is an observation rather than a recommendation. Anyone who sells holdings as a precaution ahead of a possible cut-off date is deciding without knowing the future legal position, and may trigger a tax liability that would not have arisen on holding. Editorial assessment: as long as no ministerial draft exists, the economically right moment for a sale cannot be determined credibly. Individual tax questions belong in the hands of a tax adviser.
From cabinet decision to law: the hurdles still ahead in the Bundestag and Bundesrat
The road from a draft budget to changed taxation is still largely untravelled. So far there is no ministerial draft from the Federal Ministry of Finance, meaning the first fully formulated text with concrete provisions. Without it there is neither a legally reviewable wording nor a consultation of the associations. After that come the government draft, deliberation in the Bundestag and consideration by the Bundesrat. The reporting mentions a first reading in September 2026 and a conclusion in December; those dates have not been officially confirmed.
Politically the outcome is open. A majority would require the support of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, which had rejected a corresponding change in the finance committee beforehand. Whether a compromise will be found is not foreseeable at present, and this text deliberately offers no forecast of the result.
Documenting acquisition data: why your crypto transaction history now matters more
Whatever the outcome of the legislative process, preparation pays off in every scenario: full documentation of your acquisition dates and acquisition costs. If the holding period survives, that is how you prove the tax exemption to the tax office. If it is abolished, you need the data to calculate the disposal gain. Were grandfathering to come, the acquisition date would decide how each individual position is treated.
In practice that means downloading the transaction histories of your trading venues as CSV exports while the accounts are still active, and storing them outside the platform. Record wallet addresses together with what they belong to, and note transfers between your own addresses so that a transfer is not read later as a sale. With several exchanges and wallets, a spreadsheet quickly reaches its limits; a portfolio tracker with a tax report handles the first-in, first-out allocation automatically. Which providers deliver German tax reports is shown in our comparison of crypto tax tools and portfolio trackers.
A second point concerns the data available to the tax authorities. With the implementation of the EU directive DAC8, crypto service providers have been reporting their customers' transaction data to the tax authorities since January 1, 2026, and the first transmission is scheduled for September 2027. The authorities will therefore hold material to compare against what appears in a tax return. If you are sorting through accounts anyway, check the tax reports of your trading venue; our overview of the best crypto brokers lists the providers along with their terms.
Staking, lending and the ten-year period: what the crypto tax reform could mean for income
Alongside disposal gains there are ongoing earnings. Rewards from staking or lending have so far been treated by the tax authorities as other income under Section 22 number 3 EStG, taxable at the moment of receipt at your personal tax rate and with an exemption limit of 256 euros per calendar year. If you later sell the units received, Section 23 EStG with its one-year period applies again to that sale.
The worry keeps surfacing that using holdings as a source of income extends the holding period to ten years. That extension does appear in the statutory text, yet the tax authorities do not apply it to crypto assets following the Federal Ministry of Finance letter of March 6, 2025; the one-year period remains decisive. Were the assignment to capital income to come, how staking rewards are to be classified would have to be settled afresh. The cabinet decision says nothing on the point. Anyone buying regularly through a savings plan should also bear in mind that under first-in, first-out each instalment forms its own position with its own period.
What you should take away
- Check your acquisition data and close any gaps before the legal position settles. Export the transaction histories of every exchange and wallet and store them away from the platforms. A tool with a German tax report takes the first-in, first-out allocation off your hands; you will find the providers compared in the hub for crypto tax tools and portfolio trackers.
- Decide by September 15, 2026 whether you sign Petition 201716. Registering on the Bundestag's petition portal takes a few minutes, and the deadline is fixed. If you are going through your trading venues anyway, check their tax reports against the terms in the broker comparison.
- Do not take a decision to sell on the strength of the cabinet decision alone. Without a ministerial draft, neither the cut-off date nor any possible grandfathering is known. If you want to keep building a position, you will find the terms for regular purchases in the comparison for bitcoin savings plans; for anything to do with tax in an individual case, a tax adviser is the right port of call.
(As of August 8, 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.
Ethereum trades at roughly $1,889 on 11 August 2026. That leaves it almost 61 percent below the twelve-month high of $4,818 and about 21 percent above the twelve-month low of $1,566. Over the past 30 days the price is up 4.6 percent.
Ethereum has therefore fallen considerably further than Bitcoin and recovered somewhat better of late. Taken together, that makes the buying decision harder rather than easier. This article sets out what the chart supports, what demand is saying, and the conditions under which an entry at current prices is defensible.
The price data was compiled by cryptoticker.io on 11 August 2026. It is based on daily closing prices for the past 365 days from CoinGecko's public market data interface; moving averages and the relative strength index were calculated from that series using the standard formulas. Anything beyond the data is marked as assessment.
Ethereum price analysis: where does the Ethereum price stand in August 2026?
The 200-day moving average sits at $2,228. The price trades 15.2 percent below it, and the line continues to fall. The dominant trend therefore still points down.
The short-term picture looks friendlier than Bitcoin's. The 50-day moving average stands at $1,863, and the price is 1.4 percent above it. Ethereum has reclaimed that line while Bitcoin still hangs just below its own. That is a modest edge, not a change of trend.
The levels that matter for an entry:
- Support: $1,566, the twelve-month low from late June, roughly 17 percent below the current price.
- Next zone: $1,863 at the 50-day average, currently serving as the fallback level.
- The decisive hurdle: $2,228 at the 200-day average, some 18 percent away.
Over 90 days the price is down 16.4 percent, over twelve months down 55.3 percent. The drawdown is therefore markedly deeper than Bitcoin's 45.8 percent over the same period.
Is the Ethereum downtrend broken or merely interrupted?
In technical analysis, reclaiming the 50-day average is usually followed by a test of the next line up. That test is still ahead of Ethereum, and it will settle the question.
Reaching the 200-day average requires 18 percent. The market has to cover that distance under its own power, without a structural catalyst visible in the chart. The line itself also keeps falling, because the high prices from autumn 2025 are dropping out of the calculation window. Both effects push the possible crossing point lower and further out in time.
Until then, the same reading applies as for Bitcoin: the recovery since the June low is a counter-move inside an intact downtrend. It has been somewhat stronger for Ethereum, which argues for relative strength, not for a reversal.
What the RSI says about Ethereum demand
The relative strength index stands at 52.2, slightly above the midline. For the buying decision this implies the same as with Bitcoin: Ethereum is not oversold. The contrarian argument that worked in June at prices around $1,570 no longer exists at this level.
An RSI just above 50 combined with a price just above the 50-day average describes a market without conviction in either direction. Anyone waiting for a technical buy signal is waiting for the RSI to rise above 60 while volume expands. Neither is in place.
What trading volume reveals about the Ethereum price
Average daily volume over the past seven days was roughly $6.6 billion. Measured over 30 days it was $8.3 billion. Volume has therefore fallen by more than 20 percent while the price rose by 4.6 percent.
A recovery on falling volume is technically the weakest kind of recovery. It indicates that the advance stems from fading selling pressure rather than from fresh demand. In our assessment this is the most important caveat against the friendly price action of the past four weeks.
Which structural factors support Ethereum
Ethereum is not a pure store of value but the settlement layer for applications. Two quantities follow from that, and both can be observed independently of the price.
The first is the fee mechanism. Part of every transaction fee is permanently removed from circulation when it is paid. If usage rises, net issuance falls; if usage declines, it rises. Unlike Bitcoin, Ethereum's supply path is therefore tied to actual demand for block space.
The second is the development agenda. The Ethereum Foundation documents the planned upgrade stages publicly in its roadmap, including the respective goals for scaling and data availability. This matters for a buying decision because the network's value rests on whether transactions can be settled there cheaply and reliably.
The honest counterpoint: much of the activity has migrated to downstream networks that use Ethereum as a security anchor while passing considerably fewer fees back to the main chain. If the ecosystem grows without the main chain earning from it, the price does not automatically follow.
What argues in favour of buying Ethereum at current prices
The drawdown of almost 61 percent from the high is the deepest among large crypto assets of comparable market capitalisation. Anyone who assumes the network holds its role is buying a share of it today at a price last seen years ago.
The second point is the relative strength of recent weeks. Ethereum trades above its 50-day average while Bitcoin trades below its own, and over 30 days it shows a gain against a roughly flat result for the market leader. In recovery phases Ethereum has historically outrun Bitcoin, because it carries the higher beta.
The third point is the definable support at $1,566. It sits about 17 percent below the current price and makes downside risk plannable. How longer-term scenarios follow from this, with the weightings disclosed, is set out in our Ethereum price prediction.
What argues against buying Ethereum at current prices
Higher beta cuts both ways. If Bitcoin breaks below its June low, Ethereum has typically fallen further. The distance to its own support is definable at 17 percent, but wider than Bitcoin's roughly nine percent.
Then there is the path upward. Reaching the 200-day average requires 18 percent, reaching the twelve-month high roughly 155 percent. And the recovery of recent weeks happened on falling volume, which limits how much weight it can carry.
The structural caveat remains value capture. A network can gain in importance while its token earns little from that growth. For Ethereum this possibility is real and belongs in any honest assessment.
How to buy Ethereum at current prices
With Ethereum a second question joins the cost question, one that does not arise with Bitcoin in the same way: staking. Holders can commit their coins to securing the network through many providers and receive a reward for it. Whether this is offered, on what terms and with which lock-up period differs considerably between platforms.
The cost side follows the same logic as any crypto purchase: trading fee, spread and withdrawal fee together determine the entry price. An overview of venues ranked by cost, regulation and custody is available in our crypto exchange comparison.
For the European market, providers licensed under the European markets in crypto-assets regulation are the relevant candidates; the supervisor lists them in the public register of the European Securities and Markets Authority. Which ones qualify is set out in our comparison of regulated crypto exchanges. Our detailed assessment of one such provider, including scores for cost, usability and support, is in the Bitvavo review.
So is Ethereum a good buy at current prices?
For a short-term entry the conditions are absent. The dominant trend points down, the RSI provides no contrarian case, and the recovery of recent weeks is not supported by volume.
For a long-term build-up the situation is defensible but more demanding than with Bitcoin. The price is low, support sits 17 percent below, and the structural question of value capture is open. Buying Ethereum means betting on network usage, not on a fixed supply mechanism.
A smaller position size than for Bitcoin therefore seems appropriate to us, spread across several purchases, with a clearly defined point at which the assumption counts as refuted. The June low at $1,566 lends itself to being that point.
Buying Ethereum: what to take away
- Measure the recovery by volume, not by price. Ethereum trades above its 50-day average, yet trading volume fell by more than 20 percent over the same period. Only rising volume turns a counter-move into a trend. The longer-term scenarios with disclosed weightings are in our Ethereum price prediction.
- Size the position smaller than your Bitcoin position. Higher beta delivers more in recoveries and more in downturns. Anyone accounting for both buys in tranches rather than all at once.
- Settle the staking terms before you buy, not after. Rewards, lock-up periods and custody differ markedly between platforms and affect the outcome over years more than the entry price does. The terms of the venues are set out in our exchange comparison.
Disclosure: Some of the providers mentioned in this article work with us through partner programmes. This has no bearing on the price analysis or the assessment of the chart; the price data comes from a public market data source and can be verified there.
(As of 11 August 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices, fees and terms change; check them with the provider before every purchase. Crypto assets are subject to high volatility and a total loss is possible.)
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.
Bitcoin trades at roughly $64,300 on 11 August 2026. That is about 48 percent below the twelve-month high of $124,740 and close to 46 percent below where it stood a year ago. At the same time, the price sits some ten percent above the twelve-month low of $58,566, reached at the end of June.
Which raises the question that gets asked at the same point in every bear market: is this the price at which you buy? This article does not answer it with a number. It answers it with the chart structure, the demand side, and the two conditions under which buying at current prices has any logic at all.
The price data in this article was compiled by cryptoticker.io on 11 August 2026. It is based on daily closing prices for the past 365 days taken from CoinGecko's public market data interface; moving averages and the relative strength index were calculated from that series using the standard formulas. Anything beyond the data is marked as assessment.
Bitcoin price analysis: where does the Bitcoin price stand in August 2026?
The most important line for anyone considering an entry is the 200-day moving average. It sits at $73,356, leaving the price 12.3 percent below it. That configuration is the textbook definition of an established downtrend. Every recovery of the past few months played out beneath this line, which makes each of them a counter-move inside a bear market.
The 50-day moving average tells a different story. It stands at $64,593, and the price is 0.5 percent below it. Bitcoin is effectively glued to its medium-term average. That is the real finding of this week: the short-term trend has turned neutral, the longer-term one has not.
The levels are therefore clearly distributed:
- Support: $58,566, the twelve-month low from late June. Below that, the chart offers open ground.
- First hurdle: the zone around $64,600, where price and the 50-day average are currently wrestling.
- The decisive hurdle: $73,356 at the 200-day average. As long as the price stays below it, any advance is technically a recovery rather than a trend reversal.
Over 30 days the price is up 0.9 percent, over 90 days it is down 18.9 percent. The market lost significant ground in early summer and has since stopped falling. Having stopped falling is not the same as having started to rise.
Is the Bitcoin downtrend broken or merely interrupted?
For a buyer this is the most expensive question of all, and the data gives an uncomfortable answer. Three conditions would have to be met for a genuine trend break, and none of them currently is.
First, the 200-day average would have to stop declining. It continues to fall, because the high prices from autumn 2025 are gradually dropping out of the calculation window. Second, the price would have to clear that line from below and hold above it, which from current levels would require a rise of roughly 14 percent. Third, such a breakout would have to come with rising trading volume. That is where the shortfall is most obvious.
What exists instead is stabilisation. The late-June low has not been retested, and the price has settled into a range. Historically, phases like this resolve in both directions. They work as an accumulation zone for investors with a long horizon. They do not work as evidence that the bottom is already in.
Why the 50-day average currently decides the Bitcoin price
When price and the 50-day average sit as close together as they do now, the market has no short-term direction. The relative strength index confirms it: at 50.7, it is almost exactly on the midline.
That number matters more for the buying decision than it looks. An RSI near 50 means Bitcoin is not oversold, which removes the most popular argument for a contrarian entry. At the June low the reading was considerably lower, and the recovery grew out of precisely that sell-off. At today's level that spring is missing. Buying now means buying a sideways phase inside a downtrend, not a capitulation.
The practical boundary follows from this: the area around $64,600 is a point to watch, not a signal. A signal would require the price to clear the 50-day average convincingly over several days while volume expands.
What trading volume reveals about Bitcoin demand
This is the weakest part of the current picture. Average daily volume over the past seven days was roughly $18.7 billion. Measured over 30 days it was $23.3 billion. Volume has fallen by about a fifth while the price held steady.
That combination is unfavourable. A base that holds usually forms when a lot of trading happens at low prices, because holdings move from short-term to long-term owners. When volume falls while price moves sideways, it points to fading attention rather than beginning accumulation.
In our assessment, that is why the current price on its own does not constitute a buying argument. A price is only cheap once somebody is willing to pay it. That willingness shows up in volume, and right now it is decreasing.
Which structural factors support the Bitcoin price long term
Against the weak chart stands the supply side, and for Bitcoin that side is unusually well documented. The cap of 21 million units and the halving of issuance at fixed intervals are written into the protocol and described in the original Bitcoin whitepaper. Unlike almost every other crypto asset, this commitment does not require trusting a company. It can be read in the code.
That is the core of the long-term argument: new issuance declines on a fixed schedule while demand fluctuates. In a bear market this helps little, because the supply currently pressing on the market comes from existing holders selling rather than from new issuance. Over multiple years, however, this mechanism has proven the most stable factor in the entire crypto market.
The second structural point is regulation. Under the European markets in crypto-assets regulation, trading venues in the EU face uniform licensing and custody obligations, and the supervisor lists authorised firms in the public register of the European Securities and Markets Authority. For a buyer this means counterparty risk is easier to contain today than in any earlier cycle. For a detailed view of which venues meet those requirements, see our comparison of regulated crypto exchanges.
What argues in favour of buying Bitcoin at current prices
Three points can be defended on the evidence. The first is the distance from the high. In previous cycles a drawdown of 48 percent has marked the area where Bitcoin became interesting for long-horizon investors. That is a historical observation, not a guarantee, because a 48 percent drawdown can also be an interim stop on the way to 60.
The second is the support that has held. The June low at $58,566 has not been tested since. As long as that level holds, downside risk is definable, and a definable risk is the precondition for any sensible position size.
The third is the time horizon. Anyone buying across several years is not buying this price but an average of many prices. That is exactly what savings plans are built for. Which providers offer automated Bitcoin purchases with transparent accounting is set out in our savings plan comparison.
What argues against buying Bitcoin at current prices
Three points again, and at the moment they carry more weight. The trend points down, and buying against a falling 200-day average means buying against the probabilities. The RSI at 50.7 provides no contrarian case, because nothing is oversold. And falling volume suggests the current calm comes from disinterest rather than confidence.
Then there is the distance to the upside. Reaching the 200-day average requires roughly 14 percent, reaching the twelve-month high roughly 94 percent. A buyer at today's level therefore needs either considerable patience or a catalyst for a recovery that the chart does not yet show.
If you want to read the longer-term scenarios along with their assumptions and weightings, they are laid out in our Bitcoin price prediction. It discloses which methods enter the scenarios at which weight, and where the calculation can fail.
How to buy Bitcoin at current prices
Once the decision to enter has been made, the key question shifts from price to execution. Three things shape the outcome more than the entry date does.
First, total cost. Trading fee, spread and withdrawal fee add up, and with small recurring amounts the spread weighs more heavily than the advertised order fee. An overview of the terms is available in our buy Bitcoin comparison, which ranks providers by cost, regulation and custody.
Second, custody. Anyone planning to hold for years should know whether the coins stay with the provider or can be moved to a personal wallet, and what such a transfer costs. Not every platform permits withdrawals to an external wallet.
Third, the provider itself. For the European market, licensed venues with audited fee models and custody practices are the relevant candidates. Our detailed assessment of one EU-regulated provider is in the Bitpanda review, including scores for cost, usability and support.
So is Bitcoin a good buy at current prices?
For a short-term entry, the answer based on today's data is no. All three conditions that would technically justify a purchase are missing. The trend points down, there is no oversold situation, and volume does not confirm the stabilisation.
For a long-term, staggered build-up the answer is more nuanced. The price sits almost half below the high, support at $58,566 is holding, and the supply mechanism is unchanged. Anyone thinking in years, buying in tranches and able to tolerate a drop below the June low is not buying the optimum today, but neither are they buying the top.
The decision therefore depends less on the price than on two questions you have to answer for yourself: how long can you hold the position, and how much drawdown can you take without selling? If you have no clear answer to either, the correct position size is zero, regardless of the chart.
Buying Bitcoin: what to take away
- Use the 200-day average at $73,356 as your trend marker, not the daily price. While Bitcoin trades below it and the line keeps falling, every recovery is technically a counter-move. The resulting scenarios and the assumptions behind them are set out in our Bitcoin price prediction.
- Decide on your time horizon first, then on the entry. Short term the technical conditions are absent; long term the level is defensible. For staggered purchases across months, savings plans are the appropriate instrument, and the terms are in our savings plan comparison.
- Check cost, custody and licensing before placing the first order. Over long holding periods, the fee model and withdrawal options determine returns more than a few percent on the entry price. Our comparison of regulated crypto exchanges shows which providers meet the European requirements.
Disclosure: Some of the providers mentioned in this article work with us through partner programmes. This has no bearing on the price analysis or the assessment of the chart; the price data comes from a public market data source and can be verified there.
(As of 11 August 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices, fees and terms change; check them with the provider before every purchase. Crypto assets are subject to high volatility and a total loss is possible.)
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.
Decrypt
The former operating chief is starting a new venture following several departures across the ChatGPT developer’s leadership and safety teams.
The reward aims to recover Bitcoin stolen after attackers gained access to connected LND wallets.
Solana is holding its 50-day average after a pullback from August's $90 spike, but the death cross above it keeps pressure pointed down.
The agency has set an open meeting to consider moving forward with its Regulation Crypto proposal.
The newly reported incident is raising fresh concerns about autonomous AI after models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta exploited websites and online services.
U.Today - IT, AI and Fintech Daily News for You Today
The market is in a complicated position as multiple assets are unlikely to recover from their local support levels.
Billionaire venture capitalist Tim Draper has doubled down on his ultra-bullish Bitcoin outlook.
Earlier today, the Ripple-affiliated XRP token was briefly worth less than $1.
Four dormant 2014 Bitcoin wallets just awoke to move 114 BTC with up to 8,000% gains, but this rare post-Satoshi whale activity actually signals a potential market risk.
RippleX engineering head J. Ayo Akinyele has urged Elon Musk to add Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin to X Money.
Blockonomi
TLDR:
- The Bank of Russia proposes a 300,000 ruble ($3,645) annual crypto cap per intermediary.
- Unqualified investors limited to Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Tether USDT under draft rules.
- Qualified investors face no purchase limit on exchange or OTC crypto trading.
- Public consultation on the draft crypto rules remains open until August 24.
Russia Crypto Purchase Cap for retail investors would limit annual digital asset buying to 300,000 rubles, or about $3,645, according to a new Bank of Russia proposal.
The draft rule restricts unqualified investors to Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Tether USDT only. Officials opened the framework for public comment through August 24.
Crypto Purchase Cap Applies Per Intermediary for Retail Buyers
The Bank of Russia published its draft instruction on August 11, outlining a yearly spending ceiling. Unqualified investors would be limited to 300,000 rubles worth of crypto purchases annually.
That cap applies separately through each broker, crypto exchange operator, or asset manager used.
An investor working across several platforms could reach the limit multiple times over. Each intermediary tracks purchases independently, meaning the ceiling resets per provider rather than per person.
This structure allows retail investors some flexibility while still capping total exposure per channel.
Regulators designed the crypto purchase cap to reduce risk for less experienced market participants.
Digital asset prices can shift quickly, and unqualified investors often lack tools to manage volatility. The Bank of Russia positioned the limit as a safeguard rather than a ban.
Officials linked the proposal to a broader law governing digital asset access for retail investors. That law directs the central bank to define which cryptocurrencies qualify for public trading. Selection depends on measurable criteria rather than discretionary choices by regulators.
Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Tether Meet Eligibility Standards Under Draft Rules
The Bank of Russia evaluated eligible assets using market capitalization, trading volume, and price history.
Any cryptocurrency considered for retail access needs five years of documented overseas pricing. This threshold excludes newer tokens regardless of current market performance or popularity.
Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Tether USDT satisfied these requirements and made the approved list. These three assets currently represent the only cryptocurrencies retail investors could purchase domestically. Other tokens remain excluded until they accumulate sufficient trading history and volume data.
Qualified investors, by contrast, face no purchase cap under the proposed framework. They can trade any cryptocurrency listed on exchanges or over-the-counter markets without restriction. This creates a clear divide between retail-level access and qualified investor privileges.
Before executing any crypto transaction, all investors must pass a mandatory risk assessment test.
The requirement applies uniformly, regardless of an investor’s qualified or unqualified classification status. The Bank of Russia is accepting public feedback on the draft until August 24.
The post Russia Proposes $3,645 Annual Crypto Purchase Cap for Retail Investors appeared first on Blockonomi.
Key Takeaways
- Ethereum is the anchor of the altcoin market at about $226.0 billion on August 10, 2026.
- Litecoin, Hedera and Avalanche all sit between $2.8 billion and $3.5 billion, which is the mid-cap band.
- Bullski has no market price at all. Stage 1 of its sixteen-step sale is fixed at $0.00001.
- Every traded name here is more than 80 percent below its record, which is where value hunters look.
Shopping for altcoins to buy now in August 2026 means working with a flat market. Ethereum, Litecoin, Hedera and Avalanche are all well below their best levels and all drifted lower over the last day. Bullski ($BULLSKI) is the exception on this page, because a presale price does not drift.
Stage 1 costs $0.00001 and holds there. Start at the live stage on bullski.io to see the rung for yourself.
Altcoins to Buy Now, Ranked by Market Cap
Quick answer: Ethereum is the safest altcoin holding by size and usage. For an entry that a flat market cannot reprice while you think about it, Bullski is on stage 1 at $0.00001.
The four traded names below are ordered by size, with the presale entry at the top of the page.
1. Bullski ($BULLSKI)
Bullski is the only name here you cannot buy on an exchange. Its price comes from a schedule instead, and right now that means $0.00001 on the first rung, with $0.000015 waiting at stage 2.
The token is an ERC-20 on Ethereum and the supply stops at 120 billion. A 16-stage ladder runs from today’s price up to a $0.0025 listing reference, so the whole path is on the table before you decide.
The usual checks are open. The verified contract sits on Etherscan for anyone to inspect. An audit is under way.
Liquidity gets locked at launch. Staking and referrals both pay during the sale. The plain drawback is the lack of a market until listing.
2. Ethereum (ETH)
Ethereum traded at $1,872.98 on August 10, 2026, worth about $226.0 billion, and slipped 2.6 percent on the day. Its record was $4,946.05 in August 2025. It is where most token activity settles, which is steady demand rather than a story.
Cheaper competing chains are the pressure that never lets up.
3. Litecoin (LTC)
Litecoin was $45.07 for a cap near $3.49 billion, per CoinGecko. It reached $410.26 in May 2021. It is one of the oldest coins still in daily use and moves value quickly and cheaply.
Being old and reliable also means it rarely captures attention when money rotates.
4. Hedera (HBAR)
Hedera sat at $0.068 for roughly $2.98 billion, down from $0.5692 in September 2021. Its governing council includes large multinational companies, which is a real point of difference. Corporate adoption moves at corporate speed, so patience is part of the position.
5. Avalanche (AVAX)
Avalanche changed hands at $6.48 for about $2.80 billion, a long way from $144.96 in November 2021. It is genuinely fast and carries real application activity. The gap between that activity and the token price is the frustration its holders have lived with for years.
Why Bullski’s Entry Price Is Still Fixed
A staged sale prices by rung, not by demand. Nobody outbids you and no chart moves against you while you decide. That is unusual enough to be worth stating plainly.
Three fixed facts sit under it. The supply cannot grow. The contract is public.
Liquidity locks when the token launches. The $BULLSKI presale structure sets all of it out in one place on the official site.
Fun fact: Litecoin peaked at $410.26 in May 2021 and trades at $45.07 today. The gap between a record and a present price is the single most common feature of any altcoin list.
What Would Start an Altcoin Run
Two things usually come first. Bitcoin steadies at a level for a few weeks, and money starts moving down the size ladder looking for bigger percentage moves.
A third thing helps, which is a stretch of calm. Sharp moves in either direction keep money in the largest coins, because that is where it can be moved quickly. Weeks of small changes are what push buyers to look further down the list for something with more room.
Neither is happening yet. Most of this list is down 1 to 3 percent over a day and the mood is patient rather than excited. Quiet periods are when positions get built, which is the same conclusion our earlier look at the top altcoins to watch reached in July.
|
Altcoin |
Price, August 10, 2026 |
Market cap |
Record high |
|
Bullski ($BULLSKI) |
$0.00001, stage 1 of 16 |
Not listed yet |
No trading history |
|
Ethereum (ETH) |
$1,872.98 |
$226.0 billion |
$4,946.05 in August 2025 |
|
Litecoin (LTC) |
$45.07 |
$3.49 billion |
$410.26 in May 2021 |
|
Hedera (HBAR) |
$0.068 |
$2.98 billion |
$0.5692 in September 2021 |
|
Avalanche (AVAX) |
$6.48 |
$2.80 billion |
$144.96 in November 2021 |
Making Room for a Presale Position
An altcoin basket built only from traded names moves as one when the market turns. Adding an entry that is priced by schedule rather than by sentiment changes that shape, and the meme coins buyers are picking up right now covers the same idea from the meme side.
There is a second reason to hold one position outside the traded set. When altcoins do move together, they also fall together, and a fixed presale price is the one line on a portfolio that a bad week cannot touch.
The steps are short. Fund an Ethereum wallet with ETH or USDT, open the official site, read the live rung, then add $BULLSKI at stage 1 today. Stake the tokens straight away if you want the rewards running.
Keep it the smallest slot in the basket.
Altcoin Buying Questions
Which altcoin should I buy right now?
Ethereum is the default choice for size and usage, and it trades 62 percent below its 2025 record. For a fixed early entry, Bullski is on stage 1 at $0.00001.
Is Litecoin still worth holding in 2026?
At $45.07 it is far from its $410.26 peak and still processes payments reliably every day. It is a slow, steady holding rather than a fast one.
Why do altcoins fall harder than Bitcoin?
Smaller markets have thinner order books, so the same selling pressure moves the price further. The same arithmetic works in reverse when money comes back.
Can I buy Bullski with USDT?
Yes. The sale takes ETH or USDT from an Ethereum wallet, and the current stage price of $0.00001 is shown on the official site.
For More Information
Website: Visit the official Bullski website at bullski.io
Telegram: Join the Bullski Telegram channel at t.me/BullskiCoinOfficial
X (Twitter): Follow Bullski on X at x.com/bullskicoin
The post Altcoins to Buy Now: Bullski’s Stage 1 Beside Four Traded Names appeared first on Blockonomi.
TLDR
- CoreWeave stock jumps 15% after Q2 revenue more than doubles year over year
- CoreWeave posts $2.58B in Q2 revenue as its backlog climbs to a massive $104B
- CRWV rallies after hours as CoreWeave adds more than $25B in new commitments
- CoreWeave doubles adjusted EBITDA to $1.51B despite wider quarterly net losses
- CoreWeave expands power capacity and secures billions to support future growth
CoreWeave (CRWV) shares surged after hours Tuesday after the company reported sharp second-quarter revenue growth and a massive contracted backlog. CRWV closed at $90.32, up 2.42%, before jumping 14.79% to $103.68 after the results. Revenue more than doubled as CoreWeave expanded computing capacity and secured additional customer commitments.
CoreWeave, Inc. Class A Common Stock, CRWV
CoreWeave Revenue Jumps 112% as Demand Expands
CoreWeave reported second-quarter revenue of $2.58 billion, compared with $1.21 billion one year earlier. That represented an increase of about 112% as the company expanded services across large corporate customers. Operating expenses climbed to $2.62 billion from $1.19 billion during the same period.
The company recorded an operating loss of $49 million, compared with operating income of $19 million last year. Consequently, its operating margin fell to negative 2% from positive 2% in the prior-year quarter. CoreWeave also recorded $640 million in net interest expense, up sharply from $267 million.
Meanwhile, net losses widened to $626 million from $290 million in the second quarter of 2025. Basic and diluted losses reached $1.14 per share, compared with losses of $0.60 one year earlier. Still, adjusted EBITDA doubled to $1.51 billion from $753 million as revenue growth supported operating scale.
$104 Billion Backlog Supports CoreWeave Growth
CoreWeave ended June with approximately $104 billion in revenue backlog under committed customer contracts. Furthermore, that figure excluded more than $25 billion in new customer commitments secured during early third-quarter activity. The backlog gives CoreWeave substantial contracted revenue opportunities as new infrastructure becomes available.
The company continued expanding relationships with large technology groups, corporations, and research-focused businesses during the quarter. New customer activity included Bentley Systems, Caterpillar, Grammarly, Isomorphic Labs and Sunday Robotics. CoreWeave also expanded existing relationships with Databricks, Cognition, Rescale, Runway ML, and several other customers.
Infrastructure growth supported those commercial agreements as CoreWeave added nearly 500 megawatts of active power. As a result, active power capacity reached 1.5 gigawatts by the end of June. Total contracted power also increased to about 3.7 gigawatts across a broader group of infrastructure providers.
CRWV Stock Rallies as CoreWeave Strengthens Finances
CoreWeave continued raising capital to support infrastructure construction and rising computing requirements across its customer base. During the quarter, the company secured a $3.1 billion syndicated term loan backed by high-performance computing infrastructure. Jane Street also provided a $1 billion strategic investment following an expanded commercial relationship earlier this year.
CoreWeave raised more than $10 billion through unsecured debt and convertible bonds during its latest financing push. The fundraising included the company’s first Eurobond issuance and added funding for further capacity expansion. However, higher debt levels also contributed to the sharp increase in quarterly interest expenses.
CoreWeave also joined the Nasdaq-100 Index as its market value and business footprint expanded. The inclusion placed CRWV among the Nasdaq market’s 100 largest listed non-financial companies
The post CoreWeave (CRWV) Stock: Soars 15% as Revenue Jumps 112% and $104B Backlog Fuels Rally appeared first on Blockonomi.
TLDR
- Tesla recalls 20,349 Model 3 and Model Y vehicles over overly bright headlights.
- NHTSA says excessive low-beam brightness could raise the risk of road collisions.
- Tesla has not yet finalized a repair plan for the affected headlight assemblies.
- The recall covers 18,735 Model Y vehicles and 1,614 Model 3 cars across the U.S.
- TSLA closes at $332.81, up 0.58%, despite fresh U.S. vehicle safety scrutiny.
Tesla (TSLA) closed at $332.81, up 0.58%, as a new U.S. safety recall increased regulatory scrutiny. The recall covers 20,349 Model 3 and Model Y vehicles with low-beam headlights that may exceed federal brightness limits. NHTSA says the defect could affect visibility for other road users and increase crash risk.
Tesla, Inc., TSLA
Tesla Recalls Model 3 and Model Y Vehicles
The recall covers certain 2017 through 2023 Model 3 cars and 2020 through 2023 Model Y vehicles. Tesla identified 18,735 Model Y vehicles and 1,614 Model 3 cars within the affected population. The company used manufacturing and service records to identify vehicles fitted with specific headlamp assemblies.
NHTSA assigned recall number 26V507 to the action after reviewing the headlamp issue. The affected assemblies include units carrying a supplier manufacturing date of June 2, 2023, or later. Marelli Automotive Lighting in Mexico supplied the headlamp assemblies covered by the recall.
The low beams can produce excessive light in parts of the federally defined testing zone. That output can create glare for drivers traveling in the opposite direction. NHTSA says the condition may reduce road visibility and raise the risk of a collision.
Tesla Has Not Finalized the Headlight Fix
Tesla submitted the recall report on August 4, 2026, and informed stores and service centers shortly afterward. The company has not finalized a remedy for the affected headlights. NHTSA has also not confirmed whether Tesla can correct the problem through software.
Tesla has often used over-the-air updates to resolve software-related recalls across its vehicle lineup. This recall may require a different approach because it involves specific headlamp assemblies. Owners must wait for Tesla to provide repair instructions once the company approves a remedy.
Tesla plans to mail owner notification letters on September 15, according to the recall filing. The company may also alert affected owners through its mobile application before those letters arrive. Owners can then follow Tesla’s instructions for service once the remedy becomes available.
NHTSA Scrutiny Extends Beyond Tesla Headlight Recall
The headlight recall follows a separate NHTSA investigation involving about 1.2 million Tesla vehicles. Regulators opened that review after receiving 156 complaints about possible front suspension component failures. The investigation covers certain Model 3 and Model Y vehicles built across several model years.
Some complaints allege that the front lower lateral link detached and affected steering control. Drivers also reported vehicles becoming undrivable after the component failed. NHTSA has not linked the issue to any reported crashes, injuries, or deaths.
Tesla previously recalled smaller Model 3 groups over similar lower-link problems in 2021 and 2023. Regulators will now assess the cause, scope, and severity of the newer suspension complaints. Meanwhile, TSLA ended the session higher despite the latest recall and continuing federal safety reviews.
The post Tesla (TSLA) Stock: Headlight Recall Hits Model 3 and Model Y Vehicles appeared first on Blockonomi.
TLDR
- Nasdaq buys LeveL Markets to expand institutional trading and digital liquidity
- LeveL Markets brings Nasdaq a major ATS handling hundreds of millions of shares
- Nasdaq will fold LeveL into Digital Liquidity Networks after the deal closes
- LeveL posted 56% annual volume growth in 2025 as its institutional reach grew
- NDAQ closed at $95.02, down 0.63%, before rising 0.12% to $95.13 after hours
Nasdaq (NDAQ ) agreed to acquire LeveL Markets as the exchange operator expands its digital liquidity and institutional execution business. NDAQ closed at $95.02, down 0.63%, before gaining 0.12% to $95.13 after hours. The planned acquisition strengthens Nasdaq’s position across off-exchange trading, digital markets, and future always-on financial infrastructure.
Nasdaq, Inc., NDAQ
Nasdaq Expands Institutional Equity Execution Network
Nasdaq will acquire all equity interests in LeveL Markets under a definitive agreement announced Tuesday. LeveL operates a major Alternative Trading System serving institutional equity market participants across the United States. The transaction will add another large execution venue to Nasdaq’s growing market infrastructure network.
LeveL processes hundreds of millions of shares each day across more than 7,000 listed symbols. Furthermore, the platform connects with more than 2,500 buy-side and sell-side clients through established trading systems. Nasdaq plans to invest in LeveL’s technology, services, and capacity after completing the acquisition.
LeveL ranked as the third-largest United States ATS by trading volume before the announced transaction. Meanwhile, its average daily trading volume increased 56% year over year during 2025. That growth gives Nasdaq an established platform as institutional demand shifts toward broader liquidity and execution options.
LeveL Markets Deal Supports Digital Liquidity Strategy
Nasdaq previously acquired a minority stake in LeveL Markets during 2021 before pursuing full ownership. LeveL later merged with Luminex in 2022 and expanded its network across institutional trading firms. The platform now serves more than 300 institutional buy-side firms through multiple execution management integrations.
Nasdaq will place LeveL within its newly organized Digital Liquidity Networks business after the transaction closes. The division combines liquidity platforms, tokenization capabilities, and financial technology supporting digital asset markets. LeveL will provide Nasdaq with established equity execution infrastructure inside the broader digital market operation.
Nasdaq appointed Roland Chai to lead Digital Liquidity Networks as the company advances its market modernization strategy. Chai previously led Nasdaq’s European Market Services business and helped develop its digital assets strategy. His new role links traditional trading infrastructure with Nasdaq’s growing digital liquidity operations.
Nasdaq Maintains LeveL Markets Structure
LeveL will continue operating as a separate trading venue with its own dedicated management team. Additionally, Nasdaq plans to preserve participant confidentiality, operational integrity, and structural separation after completing the deal. LeveL will also remain a registered ATS under oversight from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.
Nasdaq sees continuous trading models as an important part of the changing global financial market structure. Accordingly, LeveL gives the company greater reach across institutional execution while supporting future digital liquidity services. The acquisition also strengthens Nasdaq’s ability to connect traditional markets with newer programmable trading infrastructure.
The transaction remains subject to standard closing conditions and required regulatory approvals before Nasdaq can complete ownership. Until completion, Nasdaq and LeveL Markets will continue operating independently under their existing business structures. Nasdaq did not disclose the purchase price or other financial terms of the agreement.
The post Nasdaq, Inc. (NDAQ) Stock: Rebounds as LeveL Markets Acquisition Targets Digital Liquidity Growth appeared first on Blockonomi.
CryptoPotato
Arthur Hayes published a new essay this week arguing that the US Treasury and Japan’s Ministry of Finance have settled on a single method to strengthen the yen: running newly printed dollars through the Federal Reserve’s currency swap facility.
Hayes says the mechanics point to a wave of dollar liquidity hitting the global markets, and he’s positioning Bitcoin (BTC), gold, and Ethereum (ETH) to catch the bulk of it.
The Plan, and Why Hayes Says It’s the Only One That Works
Hayes lays out three ways Japan could push the yen higher. The Bank of Japan could raise rates aggressively, but doing so would deepen losses on its own mountain of low-yield bonds and raise Tokyo’s debt service costs.
Japan could also lean on institutions like the pension fund GPIF to sell foreign assets and buy domestic ones, but that would turn one of the largest holders of US Treasuries into a seller, something Washington can’t stomach given how dependent American markets are on that demand.
The third option, which Hayes calls the preferred one, works differently. The MOF would repo its Treasury holdings to the Fed through the FIMA facility in exchange for dollars, then sell those dollars to buy yen in the open market.
The catch now is size. The facility caps each counterparty’s outstanding loan at $60 billion, and a recent joint intervention burned through more than $100 billion while only pushing the yen up 5% for a few trading days. Removing that cap and adding counterparties like GPIF would change the math. Between Japan’s government and GPIF, Hayes counts $1.373 trillion in Treasury holdings that could theoretically flow through the facility, a number he compares to the roughly $4 trillion the Fed printed during COVID.
Hayes frames the outcome bluntly. “The more they print, the higher Bitcoin goes,” he wrote, adding that he’d rather see the liquidity land in Bitcoin and gold than in AI infrastructure spending he considers wasteful.
Among altcoins, he singled out ETH as undervalued relative to other majors and named Ethena’s ENA token as a smaller bet he thinks could still multiply several times over.
The Yen Backdrop Driving the Bet
Hayes’s essay follows weeks of analysts flagging the same currency pressure from different angles. After the Bank of Japan held rates at 1% in late July, EGRAG CRYPTO warned that Japan is approaching one of the most dangerous monetary crossroads in modern financial history, cautioning that unwinding yen-funded trades could force selling across stocks, bonds, and Bitcoin alike.
That came weeks after the yen fell to its weakest level against the dollar since 1986, a move Spot On Chain’s Hupzy said would keep supporting crypto as long as the macro tailwind from currency depreciation persists until the rate differential narrows.
The post Arthur Hayes: Japan Yen Fix Could Fuel Bitcoin and Ethereum Rally appeared first on CryptoPotato.
Prominent blockchain investigator ZachXBT identified Tiffany Milanovich as a US-based threat actor tied to at least $5 million in thefts through hardware wallet and centralized exchange support impersonation scams.
He said Milanovich worked as a “caller” and posed as exchange or wallet support, convincing victims to give up access to their funds. ZachXBT said she has recorded herself taunting victims on calls after draining their accounts. He also said she openly shows luxury purchases, stolen funds, and casino gambling on social media.
From Support Calls to Crypto Flexes
In June 2026, one victim lost $1.2 million in BTC and ETH after Milanovich and her group drained a Trezor wallet. According to the on-chain sleuth, the theft followed a spoofed BitcoinIRA email sent under the alias “Patricia Massie.” The accused later began showing off the theft in Telegram groups.
Another threat actor using the aliases “bled” and “harm” appears to have provided the phishing panel infrastructure. Most of the stolen funds have not moved and remain dormant. In October 2025, another victim lost $500,000 in Bitcoin after Milanovich and her group drained a Coinbase account.
ZachXBT said she was recorded complaining about her share of that theft and later posted a screenshot of the withdrawal herself. In February 2026, she also allegedly went “band 4 band” with another threat actor during a Discord call and showed balances to prove who held more.
The investigator claimed that she moved $100,000 to an Exodus wallet. The address now holds 631,000 DAI, which was funded through multiple instant exchanges from Monero.
Connection to John Daghita
As reported by CryptoPotato, ZachXBT had exposed John Daghita, known as Lick, for allegedly stealing $46 million in seized crypto from the US government. He said Milanovich, who was already close to Daghita, recorded him on a call and shared the recording to troll him.
Daghita later retaliated by posting her name in his public Telegram channel. Milanovich was accused of gambling a victim’s stolen funds at a casino while calling and mocking the victim.
ZachXBT said he reported the account, and that Shuffle reviewed the evidence and confirmed the account would be locked. Milanovich appeared to have altered several videos flaunting funds to make it look like she had stolen more than she actually had. In one Ledger Live clip, she is said to have pretended to be the owner of a service hot wallet that received 7.7K JITOSOL.
Milanovich also shared a screenshot of a search and seizure warrant against her in Connecticut, according to the findings. The warrant was dated before several of the incidents described in his posts. In a separate recording, she mentioned a booked flight and said her funds remained untouched.
“Hopefully Tiffany faces legal consequences soon. She stole from people, taunted them directly, and flexed the proceeds online without a trace of remorse. At the same time, she’s left a complete paper trail of chat logs, recordings, and onchain data.”
The post ZachXBT Names Tiffany Milanovich in Alleged Wallet and Coinbase Theft Network appeared first on CryptoPotato.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said Monday it will hold an open meeting this Friday, August 14, to consider proposing new rules that would create a tailored offering path for certain crypto investment contracts.
The announcement lands just days after the Senate pushed its next procedural vote on the CLARITY Act to mid-September, leaving federal regulators to press ahead on their own while lawmakers work out what’s left of the bill’s disputes.
What the SEC Is Weighing
Friday’s vote only decides whether the agency issues a proposal, not whether it becomes law. Attorney Anne Kelley pointed out that a formal proposal would still need to clear a public comment period, economic analysis, possible revisions, and a separate final vote, a process that has typically taken major SEC rules somewhere between twelve and eighteen months from start to finish.
Still, she called it “welcome progress,” noting the agency is choosing to act rather than sit and wait on Congress.
In March, the SEC and CFTC issued a joint interpretation that set out a five-category token taxonomy and defined when a crypto investment contract begins and ends.
And while the meeting notice did not mention the interpretation, crypto investor Mark Chadwick believes it will eventually lead to rules that would let projects sell tokens to buyers expecting profit from the team’s work without going through the full weight of IPO-style registration.
Coinbase’s chief policy officer, Faryar Shirzad, wrote that the effort shows “the work of bringing clear rules to digital assets isn’t waiting on Congress.”
Separately, the CFTC said its new Innovation Advisory Committee, with representatives from Coinbase, Ripple, Robinhood, Kraken, Gemini, Polymarket, Kalshi, CME, and Nasdaq, holds its first meeting on August 20.
The CLARITY Act’s Longer Road
Senate Majority Leader John Thune filed cloture early Saturday on the motion to proceed to the CLARITY Act, setting up a procedural vote for September 15, the day after the chamber returns from recess. It’s a test of whether the bill can formally move forward, not a vote on its contents, and it still needs 60 votes to clear.
Bill sponsor Cynthia Lummis didn’t hide her exasperation after the earlier delay, saying, “You all know me and how long and hard I’ve fought for this bill, so you know how frustrated I am.”
Negotiators still have to sort out disagreements over the bill’s stablecoin yield language, an issue that resurfaced after banks pushed to change the wording, plus a bipartisan ethics agreement tied to Trump’s crypto holdings. The President told Punchbowl News he wasn’t against a blind trust but objected to being treated differently from other lawmakers.
Michael Saylor, never one to stray from his usual talking point, said Bitcoin doesn’t need CLARITY even if the country does. Meanwhile, Grayscale has floated its own plan, arguing regulators can still tackle custody, tokenized securities, and trading rules on their own if Congress can’t get the bill done this year.
The post SEC Plans Vote on New Crypto Investment Contract Rules as CLARITY Act Stalls appeared first on CryptoPotato.
Ethereum has declined by more than 2% over the past 24 hours, but still holds a small weekly gain. ETH is currently at $1,875, while many traders are waiting for a deeper flush to $1,475 before buying.
But the latest analysis by trader Nonzee indicates that such a move may not come, as the main shakeout already took place in June and July.
Final Trap
The leading altcoin swept below the range twice during that period and recovered within days, although the quiet moves did not look like a typical market bottom. The next move is expected to come in October, when ETH pulls back to $1,537. The market expert explained that this pullback will mark a retest and a higher low, not a new low.
According to Nonzee, ETH would move back above $2,203 and test the $2,872 range high. The 2027 target is $4,500, with a full measured target of $4,500 to $4,700. That makes the October dip a major buying opportunity, even though it would be about 15% above the $1,475 level many traders are waiting for.
Last week, Crypto Patel said Ethereum was showing one of its strongest high-timeframe bullish structures. The asset had reclaimed its long-term descending trendline after several failed attempts and was consolidating above it. The structure remained valid above $1,510 on daily closes. The analyst identified upside targets at $2,400, $3,000, $3,600, $4,200, and $5,000.
Beyond these targets, Crypto Patel also outlined a much bigger Ethereum move playing out through 2030. The analyst mapped a long-term roadmap that puts the ETH accumulation zone at $1,000-$1,600, followed by targets of $10,000 and eventually $20,000.
“If this HTF roadmap plays out, today’s ‘fear’ could look like the best entry of the decade.”
Mixed Picture
On the corporate side of things, Bitmine expanded its Ethereum holdings beyond 5.8 million tokens after acquiring another 7,391 ETH. Its total stash is now worth approximately $11.2 billion at the reported price. However, the accumulation pace has slowed compared with earlier purchases exceeding 27,000 and 42,000 units.
The company has also repurchased 19.1 million shares since July 1, while Bitmine Chairman Tom Lee remains optimistic about the asset’s long-term potential, even as he expressed disappointment that the CLARITY Act will not see a Senate vote before the August recess.
Meanwhile, US-based spot Ethereum ETFs saw $14.59 million in net withdrawals, ending a four-day streak of inflows. So far in August, these funds have attracted around $230 million in net investment.
The post The Ethereum (ETH) Chart Everyone Is Watching Has a Problem: $1,475 May Never Come appeared first on CryptoPotato.
The leading cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH), experienced substantial volatility over the past week, ultimately posting minor gains.
ICP – the utility token of Internet Computer – outperformed all top 10 digital assets within that period, and some believe it could be gearing up for a much more substantial rally.
The Next Potential Targets
Earlier today (August 11), the asset’s price soared to almost $2.40, the highest level since mid-June. It later retraced to the current $2.28 (per CoinGecko), representing a 10% weekly increase.
It remains unclear what exactly caused the resurgence. One possible catalyst could be the fact that Internet Computer is close to reaching the massive target of 300 billion processed transactions. According to the X account BSCN, the number has risen to roughly 298 billion since launch.
“To give some context, Solana (a network known for its scalability) has generated a cumulative total of 121 billion transactions – still extremely impressive, but not even close to Internet Computer’s figure,” the entity added.
Following the latest revival, crypto X is full of analysts envisioning further gains. Clifton Fx argued that ICP is getting ready for a 100-150% “massive bullish rally,” while CW thinks the asset has reached the sell wall zone, which ranges between approximately $2.35 and $2.45. In their view, breaking above would open the door to a rise to $3.
Crypto With Gopal also chipped in, claiming that ICP has printed a falling wedge formation on its price chart. He believes “a clean breakout” above $3.50-$4 could trigger a strong expansion move to as high as $7.
Still Light-Years From the Record
Despite the recent move north, ICP remains nearly 99.7% down from the historic peak of around $700 witnessed in the spring of 2021. Back then, its market capitalization briefly surpassed $18 billion, while as of now the figure stands at less than $1.3 billion. This makes ICP the 56th-biggest cryptocurrency.
Not long ago, X user Cryptorphic envisioned a potential slump to $1.67 if $2.10-$2.12 turns into resistance, whereas Crypto Patel forecasted a possible crash to $0.50 should the psychological level of $2 fail to hold. Given the ongoing bear market, a fall that deep is still on the table, so traders and investors should remain cautious.
The post Internet Computer (ICP) Rebounds 10% Weekly: What’s Happening and What’s Next? appeared first on CryptoPotato.
