Nvidia's expanded partnerships could accelerate the global adoption of autonomous vehicles, reshaping urban mobility and transportation industries.

The post Nvidia expands self-driving partnerships with BYD, Nissan, Hyundai, Geely appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The IEA's revised forecast highlights the vulnerability of global oil markets to geopolitical tensions, potentially stabilizing future oil prices.

The post IEA cuts 2026 oil demand forecast amid Strait of Hormuz closure impact appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The potential extension of the US-Iran MOU highlights ongoing reliance on diplomacy, impacting market perceptions and geopolitical stability.

The post Pakistan says US-Iran MOU deadline can be extended appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

The trial could revolutionize SME financing by enhancing credit access and settlement speed, potentially transforming cross-border trade dynamics.

The post Bank of England taps NOBO, Polygon Labs and Dun & Bradstreet to pilot SME credit data in Digital Pound Lab appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

Ronaldo's pursuit of 1,000 goals could redefine the Saudi Pro League's global image, shifting perceptions from a retirement league to a competitive stage.

The post Saudi Pro League aims to elevate football standards as Ronaldo closes in on 1,000 career goals appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

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.” 

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.

Twenty One Capital says investors value its shares below its Bitcoin holdings even as 37% of the treasury remains pledged against debt.

On Aug. 11, the company's CEO Raphael Zagury told shareholders that XXI was trading at a “material discount” to the Bitcoin it holds, describing the gap as a potential misallocation of capital.

The company's second-quarter SEC filing shows why that comparison is more complicated than its headline Bitcoin balance.

Twenty One held 43,514 BTC as of June 30, but 16,116 BTC secure $486.5 million of 1% convertible notes due in 2030 and cannot be used for general corporate purposes or liquidity while pledged.

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At Bitcoin's current price near $63,700, the treasury is worth roughly $2.77 billion, compared with an equity value of about $1.56 billion based on XXI's Aug. 11 close.

That puts the stock roughly 44% below the gross value of its Bitcoin. However, the comparison excludes the liabilities attached to that balance sheet. Adding Twenty One's $106.1 million of cash and subtracting the $486.5 million note principal produces a simplified net value of about $2.39 billion, narrowing the implied discount to roughly 35%.

Meanwhile, the pledged BTC does not appear to create an immediate liquidity problem. Twenty One said it does not expect to sell any Bitcoin acquired when its business combination closed during the next 12 months to fund liquidity needs.

However, the company left open the possibility of Bitcoin sales in exceptional circumstances, including operational requirements, regulatory obligations, strategic investments, or other corporate purposes.

This revelation comes as the company reported a $1.27 billion net loss for the first half of 2026, driven overwhelmingly by a $1.25 billion decline in Bitcoin's fair value.

Twenty One Capital wants to become more than a Bitcoin treasury

The valuation gap matters because Zagury wants Twenty One to become more than a treasury vehicle.

In his shareholder letter, he stated:

“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.”

To achieve this goal, he outlined plans to build or acquire operating businesses, expand capital-markets capabilities, and develop Bitcoin-backed lending and credit products.

Zagury added that the company ultimately needs to generate positive cash flow around its Bitcoin balance sheet.

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However, execution of its long-term goals remains limited. Twenty One said July 21 that it was no longer pursuing Strike, one of two potential acquisitions identified earlier this year, while its broader operating, M&A and credit plans remain under development.

Twenty One therefore faces a two-part test: closing the discount investors apply to its Bitcoin while proving businesses built around the treasury can justify value beyond the coins themselves.

The post Twenty One’s $2.8 billion Bitcoin pile is worth far more than its stock, but there’s a catch appeared first on CryptoSlate.

TON Strategy reported a 17% annualized gross staking yield for the second quarter, but its new filing also revealed a mismatch between token-denominated income and operating cash flows.

The company recognized over $15 million of staking revenue after receiving 9,438,177 Gram, the TON blockchain’s native token formerly known as Toncoin.

Yet its $83.5 million in pre-tax income from continuing operations was driven by an $82.8 million net fair value gain on its digital assets. Operating income from continuing operations was $479,000.

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For the first half of 2026, continuing operations used $10.6 million of operating cash. TON Strategy ended June with nearly $29 million of cash and restricted cash, and its SEC-filed earnings release said it had no debt.

The debt-free balance sheet reduced near-term liquidity pressure, yet staking had not covered the company’s cash requirements across the verified period.

Protocol issuance lifted token revenue

TON Strategy said its second quarter rewards equated to an approximately 17% annualized gross staking yield. The figure extrapolates one quarter and is neither a net shareholder return nor a measure of company-wide costs.

The filing records the Gram received as non-cash consideration, so revenue can be recognized before token rewards produce cash proceeds. Its first-half cash-flow reconciliation deducted nearly $19 million of non-cash Gram consideration from net income.

The cash-flow statement separates token accruals and fair-value marks from the operating cash they may eventually produce.

The company attributed the increase in rewards primarily to Catchain 2.0. The April upgrade cut TON’s mainnet block interval from about 2.5 seconds to roughly 400 milliseconds, producing about 6.25 times more blocks per second.

TON documents creation rewards per block, so the faster cadence can issue more tokens to validators. Protocol settings, the amount of Gram staked and the token’s market price can all change the outcome.

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As of June 30, TON Strategy held 230.5 million Gram and had 229.9 million staked. The company said, citing TonStat data as of Aug. 4, that the position represented roughly 4.4% of supply and about 35% of all staked Gram.

Live TonStat data supports the broader description of roughly one-third of network staking, although the public page does not preserve the company’s dated denominator.

The filing says that BitGo and Blockchain.com manage and stake TON Strategy’s holdings through dedicated pools, and that those custodians may use third parties to operate validator infrastructure.

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The quarter produced substantial token rewards, while continuing operations still used cash during the first half. Sustained cash generation requires those Gram rewards to retain enough value to cover expenses as network conditions change, alongside lower cash use from continuing operations.

The post TON Strategy earned $15 million staking Gram while operations burned $10.6 million in cash appeared first on 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.

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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.

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Jun 17, 2026 · Oluwapelumi Adejumo

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

Polkadot trades at around 0.79 US dollars on 12 August 2026. That is 82.5 percent below the twelve-month high of 4.54 US dollars set on 19 September 2025, and only 4.8 percent above the twelve-month low of 0.76 US dollars from 28 July 2026. The price sits closer to its yearly low than to any other reference point of the past twelve months. Is Polkadot a good buy at current prices, or is this a downtrend that still has further to run?

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

Polkadot price analysis: where DOT trades and which levels matter

The Polkadot price of 0.79 US dollars sits below both moving averages. The 200-day average stands at 1.36 US dollars and therefore 41.6 percent above the current price. The 50-day average stands at 0.86 US dollars, which DOT would have to gain 7.6 percent to reach. The nearest level to the downside is the twelve-month low of 0.76 US dollars, which the price touched on 28 July 2026.

The range of the past 30 trading days is narrow: all trading has taken place between 0.76 and 0.86 US dollars. For an asset that has lost 79.5 percent over twelve months, that counts as a quiet phase.

The medium-term changes show how young this calm is. Over seven days DOT is down 6.1 percent, over 30 days 4.7 percent, and over 90 days the decline adds up to 40.4 percent. Most of the damage was done in the spring and early summer of 2026 rather than in recent weeks. With a market capitalisation of 1.35 billion US dollars, Polkadot ranks 45th among the largest crypto assets by market value. Where the price could go from here is something we track continuously in our Polkadot price prediction.

Is the Polkadot downtrend broken or only interrupted

A downtrend counts as broken once the price leaves a sequence of lower highs and lower lows and establishes itself above the medium-term average. For Polkadot the first part of that condition is met and the second is not. Since the low of 0.76 US dollars on 28 July 2026 the price has not marked a new trough, and the recovery to 0.86 US dollars in early August was sold off again.

That leaves DOT in a sideways range just above its yearly low. This differs from the free fall of the preceding months, though it does not yet amount to a change of trend. The 50-day average at 0.86 US dollars still runs above the price, and a test of the 200-day average at 1.36 US dollars would require a gain of more than 70 percent.

Two scenarios follow from this data. In the first, the zone around 0.76 US dollars holds and the price works its way back above 0.86 US dollars. In the second, it breaks below the twelve-month low, and from that point the twelve-month chart offers no further support to read from.

What RSI and moving averages mean for a Polkadot entry

The RSI over 14 days stands at 46.2 points. The indicator measures the ratio of price gains to price losses. Readings below 30 are considered oversold and readings above 70 overbought. Polkadot sits in the neutral middle of that scale.

For the entry question this is an uncomfortable position. An RSI below 30 would suggest that selling pressure had exhausted itself. No such reading is present here. The market has digested the sell-off without any buying pressure emerging from it.

The moving averages fill in the picture. As long as the price trades below the 50-day average of 0.86 US dollars, the short-term tendency runs against an entry. The gap of 41.6 percent to the 200-day average of 1.36 US dollars shows how far the price has moved away from its longer-term mean. That gap closes either through a rising price or through a falling average, and the average is falling at present because the high prices of autumn 2025 are dropping out of the calculation window.

What Polkadot trading volume reveals about demand

Polkadot worth 57.1 million US dollars changed hands over the past 24 hours. Measured against the market capitalisation of 1.35 billion US dollars, that equates to a turnover rate of around 4.2 percent, a figure in the lower middle of the range for assets of this size.

For a buying decision the direction of this measure matters more than its level. A floor that forms on rising volume is considered more durable than one that forms on thin trading: in the first case holdings move from willing sellers to committed holders, in the second the price simply stalls. At Polkadot the narrow range combined with moderate volume points to the second case.

The wider market backdrop fits that reading. The CoinMarketCap Fear and Greed Index stands at 37 points on 12 August 2026 and therefore in Fear territory. Investors are cautious without selling in panic. A gauge of market sentiment says nothing about the prospects of any individual asset.

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

On the supply side Polkadot differs from crypto assets built around scarcity. Around 1.70 billion DOT are in circulation according to CoinMarketCap, and the data provider lists a maximum supply of 2.10 billion DOT. Roughly 81 percent of that stated maximum is therefore already in the market. New units are created continuously because the network pays rewards to those who lock up DOT to secure it. The project sets out the details in its technical documentation.

For buyers the consequence is straightforward. A holding that is merely held loses relative weight as the total supply grows. Anyone who locks up DOT receives compensation for it, takes on additional risks and ties up the holding for the length of the unbonding period.

On the usage side Polkadot stands for an architecture that connects individual blockchains to a shared security layer instead of asking every chain to build its own. That approach has been competing for years with solutions built on top of Ethereum, and the price history shows that the market currently rates the bet cautiously.

The regulatory environment in the European Union has settled. Trading venues that serve customers in the EU fall under the rules for crypto asset service providers, whose interpretation is guided by the European securities regulator ESMA. For you as a buyer that means the requirements for custody and disclosure have risen. No conclusion about the price of an individual asset follows from it.

What speaks for buying Polkadot at current prices

First, the valuation measured over twelve months. At 0.79 US dollars you pay 82.5 percent less than at the high of 4.54 US dollars in September 2025. Anyone who considers the architecture viable acquires the same share of the network for a fraction of the price back then.

Second, the support that exists. The twelve-month low of 0.76 US dollars held in July 2026. An entry in this zone can be managed against a clearly defined level below which the assumption would be disproved.

Third, the neutral indicator picture. An RSI of 46.2 points means that neither sellers nor buyers dominate the market. An entry therefore does not chase a move that has already run its course.

What speaks against buying Polkadot at current prices

First, the intact downtrend. The price trades 41.6 percent below the 200-day average of 1.36 US dollars and 7.6 percent below the 50-day average of 0.86 US dollars. Neither line has been reclaimed. A purchase here bets on a reversal that the chart does not yet show.

Second, the proximity to the yearly low. Only 4.8 percent separate the price from the twelve-month low of 0.76 US dollars. If that level gives way, no further support remains from which to read the next target, and the downside becomes hard to bound.

Third, thin demand. A turnover rate of 4.2 percent shows no surge in buying interest. Without rising volume the attempt at a floor lacks confirmation, while the continuing expansion of supply works against the price.

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

DOT is listed on all the larger European trading venues. Three items determine what a purchase actually costs: the trading fee per order, the spread between bid and ask, and the cost of a later withdrawal to your own wallet. On small amounts the spread weighs more heavily than the stated fee, because it sits inside the price and does not appear separately on the statement. How the providers rank is set out in our comparison of the best crypto exchanges.

If regulatory status matters to you, the overview of regulated crypto exchanges is worth reading. For the individual venues we publish reviews, for instance on Bitpanda, on Kraken and on Bitvavo. Those reviews show where the respective strengths and weaknesses lie in everyday use.

On custody: holdings kept on an exchange are convenient to trade and depend on the security of the provider. Holdings on your own hardware wallet sit outside that risk, and in exchange you carry sole responsibility for the access credentials. The amount at which the switch becomes worthwhile depends on how long you intend to hold. Our hardware wallet comparison ranks the common devices.

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

Over a horizon of weeks the data argues against a purchase. The price of 0.79 US dollars trades below both moving averages, the RSI of 46.2 points delivers no buy signal, and trading volume does not confirm the attempt at a floor. Buying here means buying into a trend that still points downwards.

Over a horizon of years the calculation looks different. A discount of 82.5 percent against the twelve-month high of 4.54 US dollars values the project as though the technical bet were already lost. Whether that is accurate will be decided by the usage of the network over several years. Against it stands the supply mechanism, which releases new units continuously and dilutes a passive holding in relative terms.

The assumption of a floor counts as disproved if the price closes below the twelve-month low of 0.76 US dollars on a daily basis. It counts as confirmed if DOT reclaims the 50-day average of 0.86 US dollars and closes above it on rising volume. The test after that would be the 200-day average at 1.36 US dollars. These three levels let you check your own assessment against the market.

Buying Polkadot: what to take away

1. The Polkadot price of 0.79 US dollars sits 41.6 percent below the 200-day average of 1.36 US dollars and 4.8 percent above the twelve-month low of 0.76 US dollars. The zone just above that low is the level at which the situation is decided. The running assessment is in our Polkadot price prediction.
2. An RSI of 46.2 points and a turnover rate of 4.2 percent describe a market without clear direction. Anyone entering should know the cost of each purchase, and the exchange comparison shows where the differences lie.
3. For a holding intended to sit for years, custody is the second decision alongside the entry price. Suitable devices are ranked in the hardware wallet comparison.

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

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

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.

Offsetting Bitcoin gains and dividends: what investors in Austria need to know

Bitcoin and shares are treated differently for tax purposes, yet in Austria they can meet when losses are offset. The Ministry of Finance states explicitly that gains and losses from cryptocurrencies can in principle be offset against certain other types of investment income. Dividends and realised gains on shares are among them.

That can be of particular interest to investors who sold Bitcoin at a loss while dividend income came in at the same time.

A Bitcoin loss can offset dividends

An example:

• Dividend income: 5,000 euros
• Realised Bitcoin loss: 3,000 euros
• Remaining positive investment income: 2,000 euros

Where the conditions for offsetting losses are met, the Bitcoin loss reduces the taxable dividends accordingly. Both dividends and taxable crypto income are in principle subject to the special tax rate of 27.5 percent. One point matters, though: a paper loss sitting in a Bitcoin wallet is not enough. The loss has to have been realised for tax purposes, for example through a sale for euros.

The Bitcoin tax offset does not happen automatically

This is where an important feature of the Austrian system comes in. Within the holdings they administer, banks and Austrian crypto service providers do carry out automatic loss offsetting.

An automatic offset between cryptocurrencies and other investment income such as dividends is explicitly not permitted. That cross-category offset has to be made through the income tax assessment.

Say a bank has already withheld 27.5 percent capital gains tax on dividends while a taxable Bitcoin loss arose on a crypto platform. The investor can then claim the offset through the tax return. Capital gains tax already withheld can be refunded in part as a result.

Bitcoin losses must arise in the same calendar year

Another point carries weight: offsetting works in principle within one and the same calendar year. A Bitcoin loss from 2026 can therefore be set against dividends from 2026. An unused private capital loss generally cannot simply be carried forward into later years. That is what separates private investment income from certain business losses. Towards the end of the year it can therefore become relevant for investors which gains and losses have actually been realised.

Bitcoin losses cannot be offset against savings account interest

Not every form of investment income may be set against Bitcoin losses.

Offsetting against interest on bank deposits is explicitly ruled out. That covers classic savings account interest and certain account interest. Certain distributions from private foundations are excluded as well.

In simplified terms:

• Bitcoin loss plus dividends: possible in principle
• Bitcoin loss plus gain on shares: possible in principle
• Bitcoin loss plus other eligible crypto gains: possible in principle
• Bitcoin loss plus savings account interest: not possible
• Bitcoin loss plus salary: not possible

Tax reporting becomes more important as proof of a Bitcoin loss

For income from the 2025 calendar year onwards, Austrian entities obliged to withhold capital gains tax, such as banks and certain crypto service providers, have to produce standardised tax reporting on request.

It sets out income, losses and capital gains tax already withheld, among other items. The reporting can then serve as proof of an offset that is not applied automatically in the income tax return. Anyone holding dividends at a bank and Bitcoin on a separate crypto platform should therefore keep the tax documents from both providers.

Bitcoin gains can also be offset against losses on shares

Offsetting works in the other direction too.

Take an investor with:

• 8,000 euros of taxable Bitcoin gains
• 5,000 euros of realised losses on shares

In principle only the remaining positive amount of 3,000 euros is then subject to the corresponding taxation, provided the losses on shares may be taken into account under the loss offsetting rules. Here too, the offset between crypto income and other investment income is not applied automatically across the various providers and may have to be carried out through the income tax assessment.

Conclusion on Bitcoin, dividends and tax in Austria

Investors in Austria can in principle offset Bitcoin losses against dividends and certain other investment income. What is decisive is that the losses were actually realised and that they arise in the same calendar year as the positive income.

One thing matters above all: banks and crypto platforms do not offset Bitcoin losses and dividends against each other automatically. Anyone holding assets with different providers generally has to claim the cross-provider offset through the income tax return.

The standardised tax reporting available since 2025 is intended to help document crypto gains, losses and capital gains tax already paid to the tax office in a comprehensible way.

(As of August 12, 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.

Avalanche trades at 6.29 US dollars, 82.1 percent below the twelve-month high of 35.23 dollars set on 19 September 2025. Anyone opening the chart today sees an asset that fell for most of the past year and has moved sideways since June. The question here is narrow: is Avalanche a good buy at current prices, or is the discount to the high the market's verdict on what AVAX is worth?

cryptoticker.io collected the price data for this article on 12 August 2026, with market data from CoinMarketCap. The moving averages, the relative strength index and the twelve-month extremes were calculated by us from 365 daily closing prices using standard formulas: exponential moving averages over 50 and 200 days, and a 14-period RSI with Wilder smoothing. Market capitalisation, supply and volume come from the same source on the same day. Anything beyond the arithmetic is our own reading and is marked as such.

Avalanche price analysis: where the AVAX price stands and which levels matter now

The AVAX price of 6.29 dollars sits between two levels that have defined the past six months. Below it lies the twelve-month low of 5.90 dollars, printed on 20 June 2026, which the current price clears by 6.6 percent. Above it lies the 200-day exponential moving average at 9.62 dollars, roughly 53 percent away. Between them is a much closer reference: the 50-day exponential moving average at 6.71 dollars, some 6.7 percent above spot.

A market pinned between its annual low and its short-term average is not in free fall, and it is not recovering either. The simple averages agree: the 200-day SMA stands at 8.45 dollars and the 50-day SMA at 6.55 dollars, both above the current price.

For anyone weighing an entry the practical levels are 5.90 dollars on the downside and 6.71 dollars on the upside. A daily close below the June low would invalidate the base built over the past eight weeks. A sustained move above 6.71 dollars would be the first technical evidence in months that demand is returning. Our Avalanche price prediction tracks how these levels have shifted through the year.

Is the Avalanche downtrend broken or only interrupted?

On the evidence available on 12 August 2026 the downtrend is interrupted rather than broken. Over 90 days AVAX is down 34.9 percent; over twelve months it is down 72.5 percent, measured against a closing price of 22.85 dollars on 12 August 2025. Over 30 days, however, the price has given up only 2.4 percent, and over the past week 5.0 percent. The rate of decline has collapsed even though the direction has not reversed.

A broken downtrend requires a higher low followed by a higher high on the daily chart, confirmed by a reclaim of the shorter average. Avalanche has produced the higher low: the June bottom at 5.90 dollars has held for roughly eight weeks. It has not produced the higher high, and it has not reclaimed the 50-day EMA at 6.71 dollars.

Our assessment is that AVAX is in the accumulation phase that precedes either a reversal or a final leg lower, and the chart alone cannot say which. What would settle it is specific: two consecutive weekly closes above 6.71 dollars would mark the pause as a turn, while a weekly close below 5.90 dollars would confirm the downtrend is resuming.

What RSI and moving averages mean for an Avalanche entry

The 14-day RSI reads 47.0. Readings below 30 mark the oversold conditions that often precede bounces; readings above 70 mark the overbought conditions that precede corrections. At 47.0 Avalanche is neither. The pressure that drove the price from 35.23 dollars to 5.90 dollars has been worked off, and no buying pressure has replaced it.

The constructive reading is that capitulation is over: an asset down 82.1 percent from its high that still shows a neutral RSI is no longer being actively dumped. The discouraging reading is that a neutral RSI offers no edge.

The averages add the structural layer. With the price at 6.29 dollars below both the 50-day EMA at 6.71 dollars and the 200-day EMA at 9.62 dollars, and the shorter average below the longer, the medium-term configuration remains bearish. In June the price traded roughly 12 percent below its 50-day average; today the distance is 6.7 percent, and converging lines are what precede a resolution.

What Avalanche trading volume reveals about demand

Volume is the demand signal price alone cannot provide, and it reads as thin. Turnover over the past 24 hours came to 230.5 million dollars. The 30-day average is 236.3 million, the 90-day average 264.3 million and the 365-day average 450.7 million. Activity is running at roughly half the level of a year ago.

One reading is constructive: sellers have exhausted themselves, so less turnover is needed to hold the price steady. The other is discouraging: the asset has drifted out of investor attention, and a market nobody trades cannot rally until new participants arrive.

The ratio of volume to market capitalisation offers a partial check. Against a capitalisation of 2.72 billion dollars, daily turnover of 230.5 million means roughly 8.5 percent changes hands each day. Our assessment is that Avalanche has a participation problem rather than a liquidity problem. The CoinMarketCap Fear and Greed Index stood at 37 on 12 August 2026, in the fear range.

Structural factors that argue for Avalanche: supply, usage, regulation

Three structural features distinguish AVAX from a chart pattern. The first is supply mechanics. Circulating supply stands at 431.8 million AVAX against a hard maximum of 715,748,719, so roughly 60 percent of the eventual total is in the market. Avalanche also burns the base fee on every transaction, permanently removing tokens, and the documentation at docs.avax.network sets out both the cap and the burn.

The second is the subnet architecture. Avalanche lets independent chains run under their own rules while settling to the primary network, and validators must stake AVAX to take part. That creates demand tied to network usage rather than to speculation. How much depends on how many subnets attract real activity, which is an open question rather than a settled fact.

The third is regulatory position. AVAX trades on regulated European venues under the MiCA framework, and the European Securities and Markets Authority publishes the supervisory guidance governing those venues. Investors who intend to stake rather than hold will find the mechanics compared in our staking rewards platform comparison.

What argues for buying Avalanche at current prices

Three arguments carry weight at 6.29 dollars.

First, the valuation. A market capitalisation of 2.72 billion dollars for the 28th-largest crypto asset prices Avalanche as an also-ran. If the subnet architecture delivers even part of what it promises, that figure is low against the network's technical position. The argument is conditional and rests on adoption that has not yet happened.

Second, the price structure. The June low at 5.90 dollars has held through eight weeks of weak volume and a fearful market. A buyer at 6.29 dollars has a defined invalidation level 6.2 percent below the entry.

Third, the asymmetry of the discount. At 82.1 percent below the twelve-month high of 35.23 dollars, most of the disappointment is already in the price. The scenarios that take AVAX substantially lower require the network to lose relevance outright, whereas a return to the 200-day EMA at 9.62 dollars would deliver roughly 53 percent without a new bull market.

What argues against buying Avalanche at current prices

Three arguments cut the other way.

First, the trend is intact. Down 34.9 percent over 90 days and 72.5 percent over twelve months, AVAX is falling, and buying on the assumption that the fall has ended is a bet against the evidence. The price remains below the 50-day EMA at 6.71 dollars and the 200-day EMA at 9.62 dollars, and every rally since September 2025 has been sold.

Second, the supply overhang. With 431.8 million AVAX circulating and 715.7 million eventually issuable, some 284 million tokens are still to come. Fee burning offsets part of that, but at current transaction volumes only a small fraction. Fresh supply arriving into weak demand is arithmetic rather than sentiment.

Third, the volume problem. Turnover of 230.5 million dollars against a 365-day average of 450.7 million shows an asset that has lost the market's attention. Assuming this will change is a forecast rather than a signal.

How to buy Avalanche at current prices: costs, custody, providers

Spot trading fees on regulated European exchanges typically run between 0.1 and 0.5 percent per trade, and the spread on AVAX adds a cost that is rarely quoted. On a 1,000 euro position the gap between a cheap and an expensive venue is usually 5 to 20 euros per round trip. Our crypto exchange comparison sets the current fee schedules side by side.

The regulatory status of the venue is the second filter. Platforms operating under MiCA authorisation carry disclosure and custody obligations that offshore venues do not, Our overview of regulated crypto exchanges covers which venues hold which permissions, and we have documented fees and account processes in our Bitpanda review, our Kraken review and our Bitvavo review.

Custody is the third decision and the one most often deferred. AVAX held on an exchange is exposed to that exchange's solvency and security. For a position meant to be held through a multi-year cycle, a hardware wallet removes that exposure at a one-off cost of roughly 60 to 150 euros; our hardware wallet comparison covers the models supporting AVAX. For a position traded within weeks, exchange custody is the pragmatic choice.

So is Avalanche a good buy at current prices?

The answer separates two horizons.

For the short term, meaning weeks to a few months, the evidence does not support a purchase. The price at 6.29 dollars sits below both moving averages, the RSI at 47.0 offers no oversold signal, volume of 230.5 million dollars runs well below the 365-day average of 450.7 million. A trader looking for a signal has to wait for one: a daily close above the 50-day EMA at 6.71 dollars on rising volume would qualify, and it has not arrived.

For the long term, meaning two years or more, the calculation differs. The entry sits 6.6 percent above a floor at 5.90 dollars that has held for eight weeks, 82.1 percent below the twelve-month high of 35.23 dollars and 34.6 percent below the 200-day EMA at 9.62 dollars. An investor who believes the subnet architecture will find users is offered that view at a price assuming it will not. That is the shape of a reasonable long-term entry, provided the position is sized so a further decline is survivable.

Our assessment would be wrong under conditions worth stating explicitly. If AVAX closes a week below 5.90 dollars, the eight-week base has failed and the constructive long-term reading loses its foundation. If supply expands materially while daily volume stays below the 236.3 million dollar 30-day average, the overhang is winning. If the price reclaims 6.71 dollars and then 8.45 dollars on rising turnover, the cautious short-term reading was too conservative.

Buying Avalanche: what to take away

1. Avalanche trades at 6.29 dollars, 6.6 percent above its twelve-month low of 5.90 dollars and 34.6 percent below its 200-day average of 9.62 dollars. The base has held for eight weeks; the trend has not turned. Our Avalanche price prediction tracks the levels that would change that.
2. The RSI at 47.0 is neutral and volume runs at roughly half the 365-day average, so there is no entry signal at present, only a floor worth watching. Our staking rewards comparison covers earning while you wait.
3. Venue and custody decide a meaningful part of the outcome. Compare fees in our crypto exchange comparison and settle custody before the position grows.

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

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

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.

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

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.

Kalshi triggered the order, notifying the agency of a market emergency after New York moved to bar its contracts nationwide.

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.

ChainLink isn't rallying on the market, but the growing number of whales is certainly reassuring.

FBI joins the hunt for the 200,000 XRP thief after RWA platform tx provides investigators with critical on-chain data.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is preparing to roll out two major crypto initiatives as Congress struggles to advance the Clarity Act.

Ripple is extending its partnership with New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD), with the company’s University Blockchain Research Initiative (UBRI) providing financial support for blockchain research.

The market is in a complicated position as multiple assets are unlikely to recover from their local support levels.

Key Takeaways

• ASML shares climbed 4% to $1,803.23 following Bernstein’s Buy rating confirmation and upgraded WFE spending projections to $148B for 2026
• Bernstein forecasts wafer fabrication equipment spending could hit $259B by 2028, marking approximately 75% growth over two years
• Intel expanded its equity offering to $20B from $15B, indicating substantial upcoming capital investments in semiconductor manufacturing equipment
• Goldman Sachs recently included ASML on its European Conviction List, reinforcing positive analyst sentiment
• ASML’s extreme ultraviolet lithography order backlog now extends through 2028, with planned 30% capacity expansion in 2027

Shares of ASML surged 4% to $1,803.23 during Tuesday’s morning session, significantly outpacing the broader market’s flat performance, as renewed analyst optimism and Intel’s larger-than-expected capital raise directed investor attention toward semiconductor equipment manufacturers.

The momentum began early in the session. Bernstein confirmed its Buy recommendation on ASML while releasing substantially elevated projections for worldwide wafer fabrication equipment (WFE) spending. The investment firm’s updated forecast calls for approximately $148 billion in WFE expenditures during 2026, escalating to $204 billion in 2027 and reaching $259 billion by 2028.

This trajectory suggests approximately 75% expansion across a two-year period. For an enterprise maintaining virtual monopoly status in extreme ultraviolet lithography technology, such projections carry substantial weight.

ASML concluded U.S. market activity Tuesday with a 3.8% gain at $1,799.38.

ASML Holding N.V., ASML

Analyst support has been accumulating steadily. A day prior, analyst Scemama maintained a Buy recommendation with an unaltered €2,452 price objective, highlighting ASML’s dominance in lithography technology and its manufacturing throughput development plan. Goldman Sachs had previously elevated the stock to its European Conviction List earlier in the month.

Such concentrated institutional endorsements typically generate significant market interest.

Intel’s Expanded $20B Offering Indicates Strong Equipment Investment

The secondary catalyst emerged from Intel. On Monday evening, Intel announced an increase to its equity offering, expanding it to $20 billion from the initially planned $15 billion. The company is issuing 210.5 million shares priced at $95 apiece.

Intel’s stock declined 4.1% following Monday’s offering announcement, then recovered to close 0.2% higher at $97.71 Tuesday. With year-to-date gains of 165% and 348% appreciation over twelve months, Intel is capitalizing on its elevated valuation.

Market participants interpreted the expanded offering as confirmation that Intel is preparing for significant capital deployment. The chipmaker previously elevated its 2026 capital expenditure guidance above $20 billion during its latest earnings report, increasing from approximately $18 billion, attributing the adjustment to strengthening product demand.

Implications for Equipment Manufacturers

KeyBanc analyst Matt Bryson indicated the capital raise supports Intel’s financing needs for expanding current CPU production capacity alongside future custom ASIC, foundry operations, and advanced packaging requirements. While acknowledging the dilutive impact on current shareholders, he emphasized the positive demand implications for Intel, competitors, and capital equipment providers.

ASML stands as the primary beneficiary considering its exclusive position supplying EUV lithography systems. The company’s order pipeline for these advanced machines extends into 2028. ASML has additionally outlined intentions to increase Low-NA EUV and deep ultraviolet immersion production capacity by 30% during 2027.

Competitor equipment manufacturers registered similar gains. Lam Research advanced 1.64%, KLA Corp appreciated 4.01%, and Applied Materials increased 0.67% during Tuesday’s session.

Intel’s free cash flow is anticipated to remain slightly negative this year, following cumulative negative free cash flow totaling $44 billion spanning 2022 through 2025, per FactSet data.

The post ASML (ASML) Stock Climbs 4% on Intel Capital Raise and Upgraded WFE Forecasts appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• Sharplink posted a $394.3 million net loss for the second quarter, driven by falling ether prices.
• Staking income reached $11.2 million, a sharp jump from the prior year.
• The company booked $321 million in unrealized losses and $76.1 million in impairments on its crypto holdings.
• Sharplink held 888,938 ether by August 3, keeping its spot as the second largest publicly traded ether holder.
• After the quarter ended, Sharplink committed $100 million to a new onchain yield fund with Galaxy Digital.

Sharplink Gaming reported a $394.3 million net loss for the second quarter of 2025. The loss came largely from falling ether prices.

The company holds one of the largest corporate ethereum treasuries. It continues to grow that position even as prices swing.

Sharplink brought in $11.5 million in revenue for the quarter. That is up sharply from $697,000 a year earlier.

Most of the revenue came from staking its ether holdings. Staking alone generated $11.2 million.

The net loss was driven by non-cash accounting charges. These charges do not affect the number of tokens the company owns.

Sharplink booked a $321 million unrealized loss on its crypto assets. This was tied to weaker ether prices during the quarter.

The company also recorded $76.1 million in impairments. These were linked to its LsETH and weETH liquid staking positions.

Under accounting rules, impairments lower the value of assets on paper. They cannot be reversed even if prices recover later.

Crypto assets were valued at about $1.4 billion at the end of the quarter. Cash and cash equivalents totaled $56.2 million.

Sharplink’s Ethereum Holdings Keep Growing

Sharplink held about 886,881 ether and ether equivalents as of June 30. By August 3, that number grew to 888,938 ether.

The growth keeps Sharplink as the second largest publicly traded company holding ether. CEO Joseph Chalom said the company stayed active in treasury management and ethereum development during the quarter.

In June, Sharplink raised $75 million through a stock and warrant offering. The offering was priced above the company’s net asset value.

Part of that money went toward buying about 10,000 more ether. The average purchase price was $1,611 per token.

Buybacks and New Yield Fund

Sharplink also repurchased about 2.1 million shares for $10 million during the quarter. Since starting buybacks in August 2025, the company has spent $41.7 million buying back more than 4 million shares.

After the quarter ended, Sharplink committed $100 million to a new fund called the Galaxy Sharplink Onchain Yield Fund. Galaxy Digital added another $25 million to the fund.

The fund plans to use onchain strategies to generate extra returns. It is meant to work alongside Sharplink’s existing ether holdings.

The quarter shows how tied Sharplink’s earnings are to ether prices. Staking income grew, but so did losses from market swings.

The post Sharplink Reports $394 Million Loss as Ethereum Prices Fall appeared first on Blockonomi.

Key Takeaways

• MU shares finished Monday’s session up 0.9% at $869, marking the first positive close since the previous Wednesday
• Third quarter fiscal 2026 revenue reached $41.46 billion, representing a 346% year-over-year increase; earnings per share of $25.11, up 1,215%
• Vijay Rakesh from Mizuho maintained his Outperform rating alongside a $1,375 price objective
• Industry experts anticipate memory chip supply constraints to persist through 2027, with additional capacity delayed until 2028
• A pragmatic bullish projection suggests MU could reach $1,400 by 2030, representing approximately 13% annual returns

Shares of Micron Technology finished Monday’s trading session at $869, posting a 0.9% gain that ended a negative streak extending back to the prior Wednesday. The semiconductor giant’s stock has retreated 11% during the past month and continues trading significantly below its late June high of more than $1,200.

Micron Technology, Inc., MU

This recent decline has ignited discussions among financial analysts regarding MU’s realistic upside potential. While some scenarios circulating on Wall Street project a $2,000 price point by 2030, such forecasts face considerable skepticism.

The company’s most recent financial performance was undeniably impressive. Third quarter fiscal 2026 revenue, covering the period ending May 28, totaled $41.46 billion, marking a 346% surge compared to the equivalent quarter last year. Earnings per share reached $25.11, representing a staggering 1,215% year-over-year increase.

Yet despite these exceptional figures, the stock currently commands only 5.7 times forward earnings. Market participants remain doubtful that Micron can sustain this growth trajectory, particularly given the semiconductor sector’s well-documented cyclical patterns that have historically curtailed even the most impressive momentum.

Achieving the $2,000 price target by 2030 would require Micron’s earnings per share to expand at a 23.5% compound annual growth rate while maintaining the current forward P/E ratio of 5.7. This represents an exceptionally ambitious projection.

Wall Street’s Perspective

Following recent discussions with Micron’s executive team, Mizuho’s Vijay Rakesh reaffirmed his Outperform rating this week. His price objective remains at $1,375.

According to Rakesh’s analysis, Micron anticipates constrained DRAM and NAND memory chip markets extending “well through 2027,” with significant new production capacity not materializing until 2028. His valuation methodology assigns MU a multiple of 5.3 times his projected 2027 book value. Current trading levels show the stock at 3.4 times forward price-to-book, according to FactSet data.

The analyst also highlighted Micron’s recently established long-term supply contracts, which incorporate premium pricing for upcoming products, as a mechanism for maintaining gross margins exceeding 80%.

Addressing potential threats from Chinese competitors, Rakesh characterized worries about ChangXin Memory Technologies as “overblown.” His assessment suggests CXMT will concentrate primarily on serving the domestic Chinese market, with constrained ability to penetrate the high-bandwidth memory segment.

A More Realistic Projection

The $2,000 scenario demands near-flawless execution across four consecutive years within an industry known for pronounced cyclicality. Most market watchers consider this projection excessively optimistic.

A more measured bullish scenario positions MU at $1,400 by 2030. This target would deliver approximately 13% annualized returns from present levels, requiring earnings per share growth of 13% annually. Considering the established long-term supply agreements and constrained memory market conditions, this forecast appears more attainable.

Current industry expectations point to memory chip supply constraints continuing at minimum through 2027. Wall Street analysts continue projecting earnings expansion over the next three years, even accounting for accelerating AI infrastructure investments.

Apple has allegedly petitioned for authorization to procure memory chips from CXMT in response to the shortage, further illustrating the severity of current supply limitations.

The post Micron (MU) Stock Analysis: Should You Buy After Recent 11% Decline? appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• The CFTC used emergency authority to order Kalshi to keep operating despite a New York lawsuit.
• New York Attorney General Letitia James is suing Kalshi over its sports event contracts.
• New York is seeking a nationwide restraining order and more than $36 billion in damages.
• The CFTC says it holds exclusive jurisdiction over event contracts across the country.
• The order gives Kalshi relief just weeks before the NFL regular season starts.

The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission ordered Kalshi to keep operating this week. The move comes as the prediction market platform faces a lawsuit from New York state.

The CFTC used its emergency authority under the Commodity Exchange Act to make the order. It said the lawsuit itself created a risk to fair and orderly trading.

Kalshi told the CFTC in early August that the case could cause a market emergency. The company asked the federal agency to step in and protect its operations.

New York’s Lawsuit Against Kalshi

New York Attorney General Letitia James filed the lawsuit on July 31. She claims Kalshi runs an illegal, unlicensed gambling business.

The lawsuit points to Kalshi’s contracts tied to sports, elections, and culture. New York wants a court to stop these contracts nationwide.

The state is asking for more than $36 billion in damages and penalties. That includes a fine equal to three times what New York says Kalshi earned in the state.

New York also wants $100,000 for every unauthorized sports bet offered in the state. The case is still pending in federal court.

Kalshi argues that states cannot shut down a business that holds a federal license. The CFTC backs this view and says it has sole authority over these markets.

CFTC Chair Michael Selig said Congress never intended derivatives exchanges to deal with different rules in every state. He said New York has “no business regulating these interstate financial markets.”

A federal judge already denied Kalshi’s request to block New York’s gambling laws on July 7. An appeals court also turned down a request for temporary relief.

What the Order Means for the NFL Season

The CFTC’s order does not end the lawsuit. It simply lets Kalshi keep running its sports contracts while the legal fight continues.

The timing matters because the NFL regular season starts soon. Sports betting activity tends to rise sharply once football season begins.

The CFTC also filed its own request for a restraining order. It wants to stop New York from taking action against federally registered prediction markets.

This is not the first clash between the CFTC and New York on this issue. In April, the CFTC sued New York in a separate case over the same jurisdiction question.

A judge in that case denied the CFTC’s request for a restraining order in July. The judge said the agency had not shown a strong chance of winning that case.

The fight is not limited to New York. The CFTC said it has taken legal action against eight other states to defend its authority over event contracts.

The core question in all these cases is the same. It is whether federal law overrides state gambling laws for contracts traded on regulated exchanges.

For now, Kalshi can keep offering its sports contracts as the NFL season approaches. The larger legal question about who regulates these markets remains unresolved.

The post CFTC Orders Kalshi to Keep Operating During New York Lawsuit appeared first on Blockonomi.

TLDR

• Spot gold advanced 0.7% to approximately $4,400 per ounce Wednesday as markets prepared for the U.S. inflation report
• Gold-backed exchange-traded funds recorded their fifth consecutive day of inflows, with holdings reaching a six-week peak
• Geopolitical tensions surrounding potential Strait of Hormuz closure continue fueling energy market instability and bolstering gold demand
• The People’s Bank of China purchased gold for the 21st month running in July, accumulating approximately 640,000 troy ounces
• Technical analysts identify crucial resistance zones between $4,460 and $4,495, with $5,000 representing the next significant milestone

Precious metal valuations advanced Wednesday as market participants adopted a cautious stance before the release of U.S. Consumer Price Index figures, a critical inflation gauge expected to influence Federal Reserve monetary policy direction.

As of approximately 07:22 GMT, spot gold increased 0.7% to $4,400.02 per ounce. Futures contracts for gold gained 0.4% to $4,459.30. Silver posted a 1.8% rally to $65.88 per ounce, while platinum appreciated 0.7% to $1,755.16.

Inflation Report Takes Center Stage

Financial markets are intensely focused on Wednesday’s CPI release. Weaker-than-expected figures might reduce pressure on the Federal Reserve to maintain elevated interest rates, whereas stronger inflation readings could reignite speculation about additional rate increases. Interest rate swap markets currently price in roughly even odds for a 25-basis-point hike in September.

Market strategists at Saxo Bank noted that investors are monitoring whether gold’s advance beyond $4,200 possesses sufficient upward momentum to challenge the 200-day moving average positioned near $4,500. This technical level, combined with resistance around $4,460, represents the immediate challenge for bullion.

Tony Sycamore, a senior market analyst at IG, attributed gold’s recent retreat from $4,435 to investors locking in gains before the CPI announcement, combined with hawkish Federal Reserve rhetoric and climbing energy costs. According to Sycamore, a decisive move above $4,460 and the 200-day moving average at approximately $4,495 would be required to establish a trajectory toward $5,000.

Investment appetite has strengthened noticeably. Exchange-traded fund purchases of gold have continued for five straight trading sessions, elevating aggregate holdings to their highest level in six weeks.

Strait of Hormuz Standoff Heightens Concerns

Persistent tensions concerning the Strait of Hormuz continue injecting uncertainty into markets. Iranian officials have declared the critical waterway will remain blocked until Washington removes its blockade on Iranian ports and provides compensation for recent military operations.

Pakistan’s defense minister indicated that the United States and Iran were nearing an agreement, while intelligence suggested active diplomatic engagement between Oman and Iran. However, Tehran has maintained its demands without compromise.

Multiple incidents targeting maritime vessels in both the Strait of Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb were confirmed by U.S. and Houthi military sources. A U.S. Navy helicopter engaged a cargo ship in the Gulf of Oman. Additionally, a drone assault targeted a Libyan refinery.

Elevated energy costs resulting from these supply disruptions risk pushing consumer prices higher, potentially encouraging the Fed to maintain restrictive monetary policy. This scenario increases the opportunity cost associated with non-yielding assets like gold.

Beijing’s Persistent Gold Accumulation

China’s central bank expanded its gold reserves for the 21st consecutive month during July, acquiring approximately 640,000 troy ounces and elevating total holdings to 76.08 million ounces. Gold-backed ETFs in China have similarly experienced consistent inflows, signaling sustained institutional appetite.

Producer price index data scheduled for Thursday will provide markets with an additional inflation gauge to evaluate ahead of the Federal Reserve’s upcoming policy meeting.

The post Gold Hovers at Two-Month Peak Before Critical U.S. Inflation Data Release appeared first on Blockonomi.

Bitcoin’s price rejection at $65,400 from earlier this week brought another leg down in the past 24 hours as the asset slipped to a 9-day low of $63,200, where it finally found some support.

Interestingly, most larger-cap alts are slightly in the green on a daily scale now, even Ripple’s XRP, which dipped below $1.00 for the first time in nearly two years yesterday.

BTC Tried to Recover

The primary cryptocurrency’s August low came at the start of the month when it dipped to $62,200 on a couple of occasions, the latest being August 3. It reacted well and surged to $64,000 within a day. It kept climbing in the following days and eventually tapped $65,000 before it was halted there after the CLARITY Act stalled in the US Senate.

The weak US jobs report on Friday resulted in a relief rally for BTC, which jumped to $65,400. However, it was stopped there and spent the weekend trading sideways at around $65,000. It tried to break out on Monday, but it was halted at $65,400 again. This time, the correction was more violent as BTC slipped to $63,800.

It rebounded to $64,400 yesterday, but another leg down followed that drove it to its lowest level since last Monday at $63,200. It has recovered some ground since then but still trades below $64,000 as of press time.

Its market cap has stalled at $1.280 trillion on CG, while its dominance over the alts has dipped to under 57% on CG.

XRP Dipped Below $1

After a few days of gradually increasing selling pressure, Ripple’s XRP finally slipped below $1.00 yesterday for the first time since late 2024. Although it has currently rebounded to $1.02, analysts are still split on whether this is a warning of a bigger storm ahead or a hidden accumulation opportunity.

ETH has neared $1,900, BNB has reclaimed the $610 level, while TRX stands close to $0.34. SOL, DOGE, RAIN, XMR, and LINK are slightly in the green, while HYPE, ADA, and ZEC are in the red.

Uniswap’s UNI has dropped the most over the past 24 hours, losing more than 10% of value to $3.55. PUMP follows suit with a 7% nosedive.

The total crypto market cap has remained at essentially the same level as yesterday at $2.250 trillion on CG.

The post Ripple’s XRP Rebounds From Sub-$1 Dip, Bitcoin (BTC) Hit 9-Day Low: Market Watch appeared first on CryptoPotato.

The world’s third-largest public holder of Bitcoin made a substantial transfer hours ago, which raised some questions given the peculiar timing.

Metaplanet, which adopted its BTC strategy a few years ago and was described as Japan’s Strategy, has moved 3,881 units (worth around $250 million), according to data from Arkham and Lookonchain.

The company currently holds 43,000 BTC after its latest purchase, which was announced in early July, of 2,823 units for $222 million. Its goal of holding 100,000 BTC by the end of 2026 appears unreachable at the moment, given its current portfolio and a substantial reduction in the frequency of its purchases.

Its average acquisition price remains just over $96,000, meaning it has spent over $4.1 billion to accumulate its BTC fortune. However, the asset’s significant correction over the past several months has put Metaplanet’s position well in the red, with a paper loss of $1.4 billion.

Metaplanet (@Metaplanet) transferred a total of 3,881 $BTC ($247.3M) over the past 3 hours.

Metaplanet bought a total of 43,000 $BTC at an average price of $96,191 and is currently sitting on a loss of $1.4B(-34%).https://t.co/HGljOETBsX pic.twitter.com/L0JeP8wHxv

— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) August 12, 2026

The timing of the transfer is interesting. There’s no confirmation that the company intends to sell, but it wouldn’t be a surprise since many other BTC treasury companies have done so, including the leader, Strategy.

The largest corporate holder of the cryptocurrency has completed several sales this year, and the trend was mimicked by miners and other firms that hold Bitcoin on their balance sheets. Metaplanet has refrained from doing so for now, but such transfers raise some questions.

The post Metaplanet Moves $250M in Bitcoin as Paper Loss Swells to $1.4B appeared first on CryptoPotato.

An attacker has hit the Layer 1 blockchain Harmony and minted at least 4 billion of its native ONE token.

Data from CoinGecko shows the token plummeted to a new all-time low of $0.0005735 following the incident.

Hackers Mint 4 Billion ONE

X user Juiceberg was among the first to raise the alarm, posting on August 12 that an unknown person had minted 4 billion ONE tokens, which is about 26% of its supply, and moved about 2.8 billion of them into exchanges.

“The attacker has roughly 115M ONE left to sell onchain — about 2.9% of the ~4B they minted,” the on-chain analyst wrote. “(~97%) is already on exchanges and has either been sold or is sitting in deposit wallets ready to sell.”

Soon after, the protocol acknowledged the incident, although it did not disclose the root cause or confirm the amount that had been minted by the hacker. It also informed users that it was working with several exchanges in an attempt to freeze the funds. The team also said they were working on a patch to fix the issue as well as rollback options, promising to give an update as soon as they got new information.

Harmony has so far traced the theft to four wallet addresses, one1uap…43014510, one17u300a…6408efe5, one1a5hur07z…73bb08eb, and one1h56hkx…58ff1a70ba, and has asked all exchanges to “block and freeze” any funds that track back to them. Due to the incident, the team has also paused the LayerZero-Harmony bridge and asked validators to upgrade with a patch that prevents any further minting of ONE.

“We’ll follow up with another update to address already minted tokens,” the team promised.

This is not the first time Harmony has been attacked, as it lost about $100 million in 2022, when its Horizon Bridge was exploited.

ONE Dumps to All-Time Low

Following the incident, the ONE token, which had been trading around $0.00117, dropped suddenly to about $0.00057 to register a new all-time low. At the time of writing, the token had shaken off some of the shock and was changing hands 33% above that ATL, although the new level still represented a nearly 40% loss in 24 hours. Over seven days, the asset is 32% in the red per CoinGecko data and more than 28% on the monthly chart.

The attack happened right after another one that hit the XRPL-Coreum bridge, with nearly 200,000 XRP stolen in that incident where the hacker tricked the bridge’s deposit-checking system into treating a wallet-to-wallet transfer as an actual deposit.

The post ONE Dumps to ATL as Harmony Exploited in Unauthorized Mint of 4B Tokens appeared first on CryptoPotato.

After shifting its focus to rebuilding its USD stash and reinstating investors’ belief in STRC, Strategy’s CEO, Phong Le, explained that the firm plans to resume its BTC purchases by the end of the year.

As reported by Wu Blockchain, the exec noted that the world’s largest corporate holder of bitcoin remains a massive net buyer of the cryptocurrency, as it has purchased around 175,000 since the year started and has disposed of roughly 7,000. This means that the firm is still a 25x net buyer despite halting its purchases in late June.

Le also explained that the company has used the proceeds from its recent sale to support its preferred stock dividends, share repurchases, and the USD reserve, which is now well over $4.6 billion after the latest sale.

Meanwhile, the controversial STRC share has rebounded swiftly from the $75 lows. Nevertheless, it remains below its par price of $100 as it closed on Tuesday at just over $95.

Strategy’s CEO recently stirred additional controversy within the crypto community by admitting that the firm has turned its complete attention to pushing STRC to the par price. Numerous analysts and commentators questioned the statement, as it was just until a few months ago when the company swore its primary objective was to increase Bitcoin per share.

The post When Will Strategy Buy Bitcoin Again? CEO Phong Le Has the Answer appeared first on CryptoPotato.

On August 9, a bridge connecting the XRP Ledger and Coreum (now rebranded as tx) lost close to 200,000 XRP after an attacker tricked its deposit-checking system into treating a wallet-to-wallet transfer as a real deposit.

The bridge has since halted, and both the operator and outside researchers have traced the failure to Coreum-side software rather than anything on the XRP Ledger itself.

What Happened, and How the Alarm Went Out

The first public warning came from a trader posting as playa, who flagged that the bridge’s XRPL account rxXXXeMX8Gy5YvibvGLnQJ1XKKD7UswM1, was bleeding funds and pointed to the account’s DefaultRipple setting as the cause.

Playa said the balance had gone from 93,700 XRP to 77,200 XRP within minutes, a reading taken from an eleven-minute slice of what turned out to be a ninety-seven-minute drain.

Another user, Vet, pushed back in the same thread, writing that “the reason is the coreum bridge was being actively exploited.” Playa later agreed, posting, “I was rushing when I posted and didn’t dig in properly.”

The tx team confirmed the exploit in a statement, saying its software “incorrectly registered transactions that never actually delivered any XRP to the bridge.”

A technical breakdown from Reza Bashash filled in the mechanism: the attacker sent the bridge’s own wrapped token between two of their own wallets, attached a bridge-deposit memo, and because the token is issued by the bridge, the transfer showed up in its history and was read as a genuine deposit.

Relayers approved it, unbacked assets were minted on the Coreum side, and the attacker withdrew real XRP against them. Bashash put the total at 198,715.88 XRP, converted to ETH, routed through THORChain, and ultimately sent to Tornado Cash.

The tx says the vulnerability has been identified, the bridge remains halted, and it has filed a report with the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center. No other bridged assets were affected, and the operator says a plan for compensating users is still being worked out.

A Deeper Look, and a Market Already Under Pressure

A later on-chain review found the same root cause from a different angle: 21 separate Coreum relayers each attested to the same phantom deposit, letting the attacker mint bridge assets with nothing backing them, then repeated the trick with escalating amounts before cashing out.

Every payout that followed on the XRPL Ledger carried a valid multisignature from the bridge’s own relayer quorum, which is why the DefaultRipple explanation didn’t hold up once the transaction data was checked. Native XRP has no trust line to ripple along in the first place, and the flag governs only the bridge’s issued tokens.

The exploit landed while XRP was already sliding. The token sits near $1.02, close to a 21-month low, down roughly 4.4% this week as Bitcoin fell to about $64,000 and the broader crypto market shed some $40 billion in a day.

The post Attacker Drains 200K XRP From Bridge Using Fake Deposit appeared first on CryptoPotato.