Autor Cointelegraph By Andrew Fenton

Bitcoin suddenly surges: Is the bear market over?Confidence has returned to crypto markets after Bitcoin saw a sudden rally to gain more than 23% this week to trade around $77,559 at the time of writing. The price briefly topped $79,000 on Friday.Charting platform Barchart highlighted on Thursday that Bitcoin’s (BTC) price had crossed above its 200-day moving average for the first time since November 2025.The 200-day moving average is widely used to gauge longer-term market trends, with moves above the indicator viewed as a sign of bullish momentum. Many now believe/hope the cycle has finally flipped positive. Ethereum gained 31%, Solana gained 28% and XRP surged an astonishing 53%.The Bitcoin and Ether ETFs took more than $2.61 billion in inflows between them last week, and Micheal Saylor’s Bitcoin investments via Strategy have crossed the breakeven point of $75,385 — officially returning him to the status of far-sighted Bitcoin visionary, rather than degenerate financial engineer. Polymarket odds of Bitcoin reaching $90,000 before 2027 hit 48%.Bitcoin’s weekly price chart. Source: CoinMarketCapThe rally in crypto prices was also reflected in the share prices of publicly listed crypto related firms including Canaan, Metaplanet, Coinbase and Robinhood which all saw double digit gains.US debt policy sees rush to crypto and precious metalsThe US debt pile crossed $40 trillion this week, and there’s absolutely no plan to balance the budget or to pay it down apart from a vague aspiration to grow the economy. The annual cost of paying interest on the debt has exceeded the cost of Medicare and is second only to social security as the Government’s largest expense. The Kobeissi Letter attributed the rapid gains in precious metals and crypto to a combination of inflation, deficit spending and US Treasury policy. Record government deficit spending and the Treasury Department’s pledge to at least double the size of certain debt buyback operations to $4 billion helped drive the rally in both asset classes, Kobeissi argued. The founder of the Bridgewater Associates hedge fund, Ray Dalio, believes investors should allocate around 15% of their portfolios to gold and “a bit of Bitcoin” to position for the impending fallout from the US’s debt problems.“My guess, which I suppose will be a bad one, is that [a US debt crisis] will come in three years, give or take two, if the course we’re on is not changed,” said Dalio. White House meeting with crypto leaders seeks CLARITYUS President Donald Trump has once again called for the passage of the CLARITY Act, following a meeting with crypto company executives including Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong and Gemini co-founders Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss. Trump said.He urged members of Congress to pass “a fair version” of the bill to keep the US “ahead of China.” The market structure bill, passed by the House of Representatives in July 2025, is up for a procedural vote on September 15 that will require 60 votes in favor.“It’s very bipartisan, I would say,” said Trump. “Lot of Democrats support.”However Democrat Senators appear unlikely to pass the bill without further concessions on ethics provision by Trump. “I think, unfortunately, what the President means is fair to him,“ said Senator Ruben Gallego. “The president doesn’t just get to decide what level of regulation he gets.“Trump also managed to goose the price of Hyperliquid by 20% at the meeting by revealing: “I understand that Mike [Selig, CFTC chair] is also working to bring Hyperliquid into the United States in a fully compliant and legal fashion.” SEC unveils proposal that could spark new ICO boomThe US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has proposed new rules for the cryptocurrency industry that could put pressure on lawmakers to pass the CLARITY Act or spark a new Initial Cryptocurrency Offering boom. Currently open for a 60 day comment period, the rules offer exemptions to crypto projects that allow the issuance of up to $5 million in tokens during a four-year period, and up to $75 million during a 12-month period with stricter reporting and structure rules. There is also a safe harbor proposal exempting cryptocurrencies from being treated as ”investment contracts.” Commissioner Hester M. Peirce said that a “whole generation has struggled” with the SEC’s application of, “a set of inapt rules to crypto.” She added the SEC’s new crypto guidelines mark an important step toward “putting clear, sensible, enforceable rules in place for crypto offerings.” CFTC chair vows to create its own crypto rules tooMichael Selig, who chairs the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), said the commission would move forward on crypto regulations if the CLARITY Act fails to pass the Senate. Selig said he had already directed staff to allow registered and non-registered entities to offer “crypto asset trading on a leveraged or margined basis” and explore developer protections.“We’re going to give CLARITY its breathing room for a vote, but if the Democrats cannot support a bipartisan work product, which reflects compromises from both sides of the aisle, and ultimately send a fair version of the bill to the President’s desk, then rest assured, I will direct CFTC staff to move swiftly to propose these new rules for the industry,” said Selig.Winners and LosersAt the end of the week, Bitcoin (BTC) is up 23.5% to trade at $77,559, Ethereum (ETH) is up 31.1% to trade at $2,456 and XRP (XRP) is up 53.3% to $1.52. The total market cap is at $2.63 trillion according to CoinMarketCap.Among the biggest 100 cryptocurrencies, the top three altcoin winners of the week are Pump.fun (PUMP) with a 98.9% gain, Ethena (ENA) on 98.3%, and Stacks (STX) on 94.8%.The top three altcoin losers of the week are JUST (JST) which was down 4.3%, MemeCore (M) down 2.9% and Sun (SUN) down 1%.Top Prediction of the WeekStandard Chartered says $100K Bitcoin year-end call may be ‘too low’Bitcoin may move toward its all-time high of $126,000 before the end of the year, with the recovery potentially accelerating after Oct. 6, according to Geoff Kendrick, global head of digital asset research at Standard Chartered.Kendrick said in a Friday note that the latest rally has been driven largely by short liquidations, while inflows into spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds have also started to recover. He said low open interest could leave room for more investors to return as prices rise.“For the first time this year there is now a risk my end year forecast (of USD100k) is too low,” Kendrick wrote.Top FUD of the WeekMost Americans say Trump family crypto investments are not ‘appropriate’A new poll conducted by Reuters/Ipsos found that a majority of respondents in the US believed it was not “appropriate” for US President Donald Trump and his family to earn billions through cryptocurrency investments while in office. According to the results of the poll of 1,166 people between Aug. 14-17, 63% of the respondents said it wasn’t appropriate for Trump and his family to earn money from crypto. Notably, 69% of Republicans polled said it was appropriate, while an overwhelming majority of Democrats, 92%, responded negatively.Bitget CEO sees Bitcoin near current levels at year-end, doubts US will buy BTCBitget CEO Gracy Chen expects Bitcoin to remain broadly around current levels through the end of the year despite its recent surge, citing interest rates and broader macroeconomic conditions as key factors shaping the cryptocurrency’s outlook.Cointelegraph host interviews Bitget CEO Gracy Chen. Source: Trade SecretsShe pointed to the possibility of higher interest rates as one of a number of factors that could pressure prices.“If any of that happens, the price should go down, at least theoretically,” Chen said, adding that BTC has become increasingly integrated with traditional finance and sensitive to broader macroeconomic conditions.Chen predicted that BTC could finish the year $10,000 to $20,000 above or below current levels.MANTRA token sinks 18% to record low amid blockchain haltMANTRA’s native token sank to an all-time low of $0.004126 around 11:00 pm UTC on Thursday shortly before MANTRA Chain stopped producing blocks and its team announced a precautionary halt over an unexplained incident.MANTRA said Friday it was “aware of an incident affecting MANTRA Chain” and had halted the network as a precaution while it investigated. “We don’t have a root cause or timeline to share yet,” the project said, adding that all endpoints and transactions were frozen. The halt prevents assets from moving on MANTRA Chain and has prompted affected exchanges to pause deposits and withdrawals, with no timeline given for either service to resume. On Aug. 22 MANTRA said it the “vulnerability in the Cosmos-EVM module has been fixed, the network has resumed, and no user funds were affected.”Cointelegraph publishes long-form journalism, analysis and narrative reporting produced by Cointelegraph’s in-house editorial team with subject-matter expertise. All articles are edited and reviewed by Cointelegraph editors in line with our editorial standards. Some articles contain affiliate links, from which Cointelegraph may earn a commission. These relationships do not influence which products we review or our editorial conclusions. Content published in here does not constitute financial, legal or investment advice. Readers should conduct their own research and consult qualified professionals where appropriate. Cointelegraph maintains full editorial independence.

Australian tech firm Apate deploys a vast array of AI-bot characters worldwide that play the role of gullible scam victims to waste millions of hours of con artists’ time each month.Hilariously, one of the company’s monthly performance metrics is how many times frustrated scammers swear at the idiot ‘victims’ who are playing dumb and stringing them along.“I think we’re the only company in the world that is actually keeping as part of their KPIs the number of F-words that scammers are dropping at them,” Apate founder Dali Kaafar tells Magazine with a chuckle. The company has a stable of almost 200,000 AI characters that are able to hold convincing phone conversations and to chat on social media and messaging platforms.”I can tell you that we’re basically servicing, as we call them, hundreds of thousands of calls a day, and pretty much hundreds of thousands of conversations on the other channels,” he says. Every hour of a con artist’s time they waste is another hour they’re not scamming a member of the public. In the six weeks up to the end of 2025, Apate’s bots engaged in 600,000 scam calls for a single telco called TPG in Australia. “Essentially, we wasted more than five hundred days of scammers’ time,” he explains. “That roughly equates to somewhere around thirteen million dollars being saved.”The bots’ other goal is to elicit actionable intelligence for banks and telcos to combat scam rings across Australia, Asia, Africa and the UK and Europe.Apate bots deal with scammers via chat. Source: ApateScam baiting at scale with AI victimsKaafar says he got the idea when he received a scam call while having a picnic with his family in Sydney back in November 2021.To his wife’s annoyance, but his kids’ delight, he strung the scammer along for 44 minutes by pretending to be a gullible rube falling for the scam. “What followed was really literally a full comedy show for my kids,” he says, adding that during the call he’d also learned a lot of potentially useful information about the mechanics of the scam and the tactics used.   “As I hung up that call, I remember thinking very clearly: if I could do that just for fun, imagine what technology can do at scale.”Working as a professor at Macquarie University at the time, he raised the idea with some of his doctoral students working on AI and security.“I said, ‘Guys, there has to be a much better way of doing this. Let’s build something that is really automating this whole process of engaging scammers at scale, but also, perhaps most importantly, extracting all sorts of intelligence from these conversations.’ And that’s literally how it started.”Related: AI-powered bot stands in for absent candidate in Virginia debateWithin a few months they’d secured funding from the Office of National Intelligence to research the idea, and the project was spun off from the university into Apate in 2023. The company now works with most of the big banks in Australia, as well as numerous banks in the UK, South Africa and South East Asia. Apate is far from the only company scam baiting fraudsters using AI bots — though they are doing it on a greater scale than most. United Kingdom telco O2 rolled out an AI Granny campaign last year, which frustrates scammers by taking up hours of their time talking about her 28 cats. It was as much an ad campaign to warn the public about the dangers of scam calls as anything else. O2’s highly entertaining AI Granny. Source: 02Creating the perfect AI victimsApate launched with 120 different personas across different genders, ages and personality types, and now have 197,000 personas with identifiable vocal tics, accents, and they make the same noises people make when they’re trying to think of what to say. “We spent a lot of time refining and building these AI bots that sound exactly like you and I and our neighbors,” he says. The AI models were trained on “hundreds and hundreds” of hours of recorded conversations between human scam baiters and scammers, so they can employ counter strategies.“They know that they’re talking to bad guys, if you like, and they really navigate the conversations so that it sounds really very, very realistic to any scammer out there, even if a scammer is skeptical about things.”The bots get sent out on WhatsApp and Telegram to act as honeypots for scammers. While the old cliché that you can’t scam an honest man is not true, it’s still very possible to exploit the scammer’s desire for money. “They are cybercriminals, really. I think we just very often forget that they’re cybercriminals who are trying to get people’s life savings. And so that element of greed is sometimes what our bots also exploit.”Bots collect valuable intel from each scam callIn the crypto industry, Apate works for “one of the leaders in blockchain analysis,” which may or may not be Chainalysis. They aren’t interested in wasting scammers’ time — they want intelligence on which wallets and methods scammers are using so they can track the flow of funds. “These bots, as they engage across different conversations, extract new crypto wallet addresses by the hundreds and by the thousands,” he says. “It’s data and intelligence that is coming literally before their damage happens.”Scamming is big business, and the call centers are “pretty much corporate organizations,” Kaafar explains. “This data is very, very important because, literally, that’s the new account or the new wallet where you really need to pay extreme attention to. Because this is where these… scammer compounds are collecting their money or their funds with.”“Think about it literally as being always ahead of the scammer’s tactics. And the more you know before the money gets transferred, the better it is.”In July, Apate’s bots uncovered a marketplace for brokers soliciting verified bank accounts in India, offering commissions of up to 5% paid in USDT on the proceeds from scams passing through the accounts.Apate’s human staff in Sydney. Source: ApateAI arms race between good guys and bad guysScammers are increasingly using AI bots themselves, and it won’t be too long before AI scammers are as ubiquitous as spam emails. Scamming people is a $1.24 trillion business, so the industry can afford the compute required to scale up operations.Apate’s research suggests that about 20% to 30% of scam text conversations employ AI already, but Kaafar isn’t too worried about the outcome of anti-scam bots fighting scam bots. He says their researchers believe that AI bots playing defense have an advantage, according to game theory, because they’re trying to extract intelligence, while the scam bots are trying to get the other AI to perform an action.“You can also demonstrate mathematically that that is to the advantage of a defender because it becomes easier to extract intelligence from the attacker’s AI model,” he says. “We can imagine a world where scammers become a lot more sophisticated and deploy such technology. But that also means that if they do, they’re actually deemed to lose the game, which is great news in the fight against scams.”Magazine: Agent wastes 14 hours of scammers’ time, LLMs ‘poisoned’ by Iran — AI EyeCointelegraph publishes long-form journalism, analysis and narrative reporting produced by Cointelegraph’s in-house editorial team with subject-matter expertise. All articles are edited and reviewed by Cointelegraph editors in line with our editorial standards. Some articles contain affiliate links, from which Cointelegraph may earn a commission. These relationships do not influence which products we review or our editorial conclusions. Content published in here does not constitute financial, legal or investment advice. Readers should conduct their own research and consult qualified professionals where appropriate. Cointelegraph maintains full editorial independence.

BitMart account demands founder explain funds status, Xia calls claims ‘fabricated’BitMart’s official Chinese-language X account has publicly demanded that founder Sheldon Xia explain the whereabouts of user funds and produce a repayment plan.It said some users were unable to withdraw funds and some employees have not received their final salary or compensation and threatened Xia that if he does not provide a verifiable asset disclosure and repayment plan by the deadline, it would continue to submit evidence to regulators, law enforcement, lawyers and the media.Xia called the claims in the post “fabricated rumors” and promised a counter-attack.“We have collected full evidence of the content on X, all of which is fabricated rumors. During daytime US time, we will file a police report and send a lawyer’s letter to X, demanding technical and data forensics,” Xia said.Binance bStocks pass xStocks as second-largest tokenized stock issuerBinance bStocks have overtaken xStocks to become the second-largest tokenized stock issuer by value less than two months after launch.BStocks reached about $624 million on Aug. 3, surpassing xStocks at roughly $579 million but trailing Ondo Finance at about $927 million, according to Token Terminal data. The issuer landscape has shifted sharply as the tokenized stock market has grown. A year earlier, xStocks led with $40.7 million, followed by Robinhood at $37.2 million, while Ondo held about $65,000. The total value tracked by Token Terminal has since surged from roughly $80 million to about $2.7 billion.NORTH KOREAInside the fake crypto startup that fooled North Korean IT workersSuspected North Korean IT workers joined a fake crypto startup — without realizing their every move was being tracked to extract valuable intel. Cointelegraph came along for the ride.Suspected DPRK IT workers pitch for venture capital backing from the fictitious Definitive Communications, played by Cointelegraph. Source: ANY.RUNISRAELIsrael’s largest bank taps Galaxy to offer Bitcoin, Ether, Solana tradingIsrael’s Bank Leumi will become the first local bank to offer crypto trading, after partnering with Galaxy Digital to let customers trade Bitcoin, Ether and Solana through the bank’s investment platform from early 2027.The companies said Friday that customers of Leumi and Pepper, its mobile banking arm, will be able to buy, hold and sell the three cryptocurrencies through a dedicated section of the Leumi Trade app. JAPANMetaplanet CEO shuts down Bitcoin sale speculation after $322M transferMetaplanet CEO Simon Gerovich has shut down speculation that the Japanese Bitcoin treasury company is selling its holdings after the company transferred 5,014 BTC ($322 million) over a 24-hour span last week.“This was a routine custody operation. No Bitcoin was sold, and our holdings remain 43,000 BTC,” Gerovich said.Metaplanet is the third-largest publicly traded Bitcoin treasury company and the largest in Asia. According to Arkham data, it is sitting on an unrealized loss of about $1.4 billion.MUFG PoC to bring Japanese government bond repo transactions onchainFour MUFG companies plan to bring Japanese government bond repo transactions onchain using the Canton Network, as part of a new proof of concept (PoC).The companies said they seek to improve operational efficiency through automation of the transaction lifecycle, enable real-time intraday settlement 24/7, as well as enhance funding and capital efficiency.SINGAPORESingapore introduces mandatory tax reportingSingapore has finalized regulations that require crypto firms to report user transactions to the tax department. The rules implement the OECD’s Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework into Singapore domestic law and take effect from January 1, 2027 for new users, while existing users can tarry until December 31, 2027.Singapore. Source: PexelsBinance and RedotPay stoush heats upBinance and RedotPay are disputing whether a Singapore case related to their nearly $473 million Hong Kong legal battle is coming to an end. The stablecoin payments card issuer told Cointelegraph it expects Binance to discontinue the Singapore proceedings and will seek legal costs.  Binance said that’s not going to happen and it “is not abandoning its claims and has informed both the court and RedotPay accordingly.”The plaintiffs previously alleged in a Hong Kong court that RedotPay diverted more than 470,000 Binance Card users by allowing Binance Pay funds to be used for stablecoin card top-ups outside the terms of a commercial agreement.Meanwhile RedotPay’s US IPO has reportedly been delayed as it seeks regulatory approvals.KOREAShinhan Asset Management partners with Plume on tokenized fund pilotSouth Korea’s Shinhan Asset Management signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with tokenization-focused blockchain network Plume to develop a proof of concept for a Korean won-denominated tokenized fund.The pilot is intended to test the overseas use of won-denominated financial products in onchain markets that have largely developed around dollar-denominated assets.HONG KONGHashKey begins beta distribution of Hong Kong-regulated HKDAP stablecoinThe Standard Chartered-led Anchorpoint Financial has started to rollout the first regulated Hong Kong dollar backed stablecoin called HKDAP. HashKey Exchange will be an authorized distributor, potentially expanding access to the fiat-backed asset as the territory’s stablecoin market takes shape. Retail access will be limited initially, with the focus on institutions.Meanwhile, the Securities and Futures Commission reportedly identified 65 fraudulent websites impersonating HashKey.Cointelegraph publishes long-form journalism, analysis and narrative reporting produced by Cointelegraph’s in-house editorial team with subject-matter expertise. All articles are edited and reviewed by Cointelegraph editors in line with our editorial standards. Some articles contain affiliate links, from which Cointelegraph may earn a commission. These relationships do not influence which products we review or our editorial conclusions. Content published in here does not constitute financial, legal or investment advice. Readers should conduct their own research and consult qualified professionals where appropriate. Cointelegraph maintains full editorial independence.

CLARITY odds narrow as bill enters the final straightGalaxy Digital has lowered its estimate of the CLARITY Act’s chances of passing in 2026 to just 10%. In May it had estimated the chance of passage at 75%.Multiple political issues remain unresolved and the Senate only has 14 days in session to pass the bill after it reconvenes on Sept. 14.Unless an initial motion to proceed vote occurs immediately upon lawmakers’ return to Washington, there would only be enough time for the CLARITY Act to pass if it “dominates basically the entire working session,” wrote Galaxy head of research, Alex Thorn.If the bill doesn’t pass, the SEC and CFTC plan to step into the breach by issuing their own rules for crypto markets. The SEC scheduled an open meeting on Friday to unveil its “clear rules of the road” but then cancelled it due to an “an unforeseen scheduling issue.” The White House was reportedly unhappy that the SEC going rogue on crypto rules could anger Democrats and scuttle the delicate negotiations underway to pass CLARITY.SEC chair Paul Atkins, President Donald Trump and a series of big wigs from Coinbase, a16z, Ripple, Chainlink, NYSE and Nasdaq will meet at the White House on Wednesday to discuss crypto regulation and explore ways to get the bill over the line. The following day the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s new Innovation Advisory Committee will meet to discuss regulation of crypto, AI and prediction markets. Crypto companies seek access to frontier AI cybersecurity capabilities as fears of more hacks growCryptocurrency companies including Anchorage Digital, BitGo, Bitwise, Blockstream, Ledger and Trezor have urged frontier artificial intelligence (AI) labs to give Bitcoin developers early access to their most capable models.An open letter, published by the Bitcoin Policy Institute said Bitcoin Core devs and other crypto developers are being blocked by guardrails on publicly available frontier systems, leaving them to rely on less capable open-weight models.“Without dedicated access programs, defenders may lack the tools needed to keep pace with evolving threats to the infrastructure they maintain.” The threat from AI identified exploits has become a key focus after $116 million was stolen from Coldcard hardware wallets. The Bitcoin Red Team subsequently used AI to identify thousands of potential cybersecurity issues using open source Chinese models.New threats to hardware wallet owners have continued to emerge over the past few days, with the personal details of more than 50,000 users leaked in two separate incidents. Trezor reported a breach of personal data affecting about 14,000 users through its shipping provider, ShipMonk. Users who received its products from the US, UK, Sweden, Colombia, Brazil, Italy, and Portugal between May 10 and Aug. 8 are now at high risk from potential phishing attacks using their personal information. Cryptocurrency wallet provider SafePal has also just disclosed its own data breach that saw unauthorized access to almost 40,000 customers’ order information, including names, addresses and purchasing data. It has since identified and taken down more than 30 fraudulent websites and phishing links tied to the breach.CFTC and states battle over who gets to regulate prediction markets like Kalshi and PolymarketThe US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has ordered prediction market Kalshi to ignore New York’s restraining order and continue operating normally. The CFTC said that New York’s enforcement action against Kalshi for operating an illegal gambling business constituted a market emergency as it would bar Kalshi from operating prediction markets nation-wide. It believes the Commodity Exchange Act requires the CFTC to provide a uniform national derivatives market. CFTC Chair Michael Selig said that Congress did not intend derivatives exchanges to face a “patchwork of state gaming laws.”A few days later a Washington state judge ordered prediction market platform Kalshi to stop operating in the state and rejected its argument that federal commodities law preempts Washington gambling law. Kalshi has been ordered to implement IP-address and residency-based geofencing by Aug. 19 and a GeoComply multi-source geofencing system by Sept. 2.Even the New York City Council wants to regulated prediction markets and it has launched an investigation into prediction market firms to examine if they are using “false and deceptive marketing” through influencers to target young adults.Ethereum Foundation revamps post-quantum plan and narrows scope for Hegota hard forkThe Ethereum Foundation is moving away from the Poseidon hash function in its planned post-quantum architecture, according to researcher Justin Drake. On Thursday, Drake said the foundation would instead rely on established and battle tested alternatives such as SHA or BLAKE. Poseidon is a relatively new hash function tailored to work better with zero knowledge proofs, which will help compress large post quantum signatures sizes. However, Drake said new developments mean that SNARKS can be tailored to work better with existing hash functions. A production-ready leanVM is targeted for 2027, followed by deployments across Ethereum’s consensus, data and execution layers in 2028. Ethereum developers are also reviewing 66 proposals to narrow them down as part of scoping the next major Ethereum upgrade to follow Glamsterdam called HegotáCensorship resistance proposal FOCIL is currently the only Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) scheduled for inclusion. A number of other EIPs are focused on privacy. Core developers aim to ship the Hegotá upgrade next year, while Glamsterdam is expected in the coming months.  Tether completes first full financial audit, receives clean KPMG opinionTether has finally completed the first full independent audit of its annual financial statements, with KPMG US issuing a clean opinion on the stablecoin issuer’s 2025 accounts.The audit covered Tether’s balance sheet, income statement and cash flows for the year ended Dec. 31, 2025, including the assets backing its issued tokens and the liabilities they represent. Tether said the audited statements showed reserves exceeding liabilities by $6.814 billion.Unlike Tether’s quarterly reserve attestations, which it has published for years, the full audit subjected the company’s broader financial statements and underlying evidence to independent examination.Winners and LosersAt the end of the week, Bitcoin (BTC) is down 3.3% to trade at $62,842, Ethereum (ETH) is down 2.3% to trade at $1,872 and XRP (XRP) is down 4.2% to 99 cents. The total market cap is at $2.16 trillion according to CoinMarketCap.Among the biggest 100 cryptocurrencies, the top three altcoin winners of the week are Velvet (VELVET) with a 131% gain, Ether.fi (ETHFI) on 31%, and Chainlink (LINK) on 14%.The top three altcoin losers of the week are Uniswap (UNI) which was down 18%, Aptos (APT) down 12% and Pepe (PEPE) down 11%.Top Prediction of the WeekBitcoin could bottom in October, altcoins are ‘basically dead,’ Swan CEO saysBitcoin could bottom in October before recovering to around $130,000 in 2028, according to Swan Bitcoin CEO Cory Klippsten.He argued that Bitcoin has so far bottomed about 12 months after each previous bull market peak, and the previous peak was in October last year.He told Cointelegraph that Bitcoin could fall to $57,000, or even $53,000, before a quick recovery, and could reach around $130,000 ahead of the 2028 halving.Top FUD of the WeekBitcoin to $1M by 2030 is ‘mathematically impossible’ says Markus ThielenThe numbers behind the oft-cited prediction that Bitcoin will reach $1 million by 2030 simply don’t add up, according to Markus Thielen, head of research at 10x Research.“It’s mathematically impossible,” Thielen told Trade Secrets, arguing that Bitcoin would need to attract another $15 trillion in capital to reach a per Bitcoin price of $1 million. This is equivalent to roughly 25% of the US stock market’s total value flowing into Bitcoin over the next four years.“We have seen $1 trillion US dollars of inflow to bring the market cap really to $1 trillion. To $1 million [per] Bitcoin. It’s 15x, I think, from here.”Bitcoin price-metric basket sees longest capitulation since FTX blow-up: GlassnodeBitcoin is seeing its longest capitulation since the end of the 2022 bear market, onchain analytics platform Glassnode reported on Monday.The firm said that forty-five Bitcoin (BTC) price metrics it tracks under the Bitcoin Cycle Position Heatmap show the longest “capitulation” phase since the collapse of FTX in late 2022. But it warned that aggregate readings will have to get even worse to match areas that marked previous bear-market bottoms, says creator Rafael Schultze-Kraft.“Today it sits in its coldest stretch since FTX: late in the bear, but not yet the unanimous deep blue that previously marked a floor,” he commented.Missouri trio charged over alleged Bitcoin kidnapping plotThree Missouri men were charged over an alleged August 2024 plot to kidnap a Bitcoin holder and steal his holdings.Sedric Louis, John Davis and Martel Williams were allegedly hired to kidnap and force a Bitcoin holder to transfer cryptocurrency to accounts controlled by organizers, according to a Tuesday press release by the US Attorney’s Office. They traveled from St. Louis to Connecticut, where they rented vehicles and obtained air rifles to stake out the victim.After staking out the intended target for two days, they abandoned the plan for fear of being caught on home security cameras. Shortly afterward, another crew from Florida arrived to carry out the plan.Top Magazine Features of the WeekFive years after El Salvador made Bitcoin legal tender, the experiment has fallen short of its original promises for locals, but it’s been great for Bitcoin’s global profile.Suspected North Korean IT workers joined a fake crypto startup — without realizing their every move was being tracked to extract valuable intel.Solana’s proposed fee overhaul would make resource-heavy transactions more expensive while cutting costs for simpler activity, and it increases the amount of SOL burned.Cointelegraph publishes long-form journalism, analysis and narrative reporting produced by Cointelegraph’s in-house editorial team with subject-matter expertise. All articles are edited and reviewed by Cointelegraph editors in line with our editorial standards. Some articles contain affiliate links, from which Cointelegraph may earn a commission. These relationships do not influence which products we review or our editorial conclusions. Content published in here does not constitute financial, legal or investment advice. Readers should conduct their own research and consult qualified professionals where appropriate. Cointelegraph maintains full editorial independence.

THAILANDThailand introduces 0% capital gains tax on cryptoFor the next few years crypto investors in Thailand won’t have to pay any capital gains taxes on sales made via platforms licensed by Thailand’s Securities and Exchange Commission. The exemption is for five years and covers the period of January 1 2025, through to December 31 2029. The scheme aims to boost Thailand’s attractiveness as a regional crypto hub, and it’s already home to a growing community of crypto digital nomads However trades on unlicensed or overseas exchanges will still face standard personal tax rates as high as 38%. The exemption aligns the tax treatment of crypto with capital gains from traditional securities in the country.Thailand previously waved 7% value added tax on crypto gains in early 2024.CHINABitcoin Red Team founder turns to Chinese AIBitcoin Red Team founder Rob Hamilton has been forced to rely on open-source Chinese AI models after finding himself restricted from analyzing codebases by OpenAI, highlighting a growing concern that the most capable AI tools aren’t being made available to defenders. “It absolutely guts me as a patriotic American to have to do this, but I will be going back to using Chinese open source models to conduct my research to protect Bitcoin infrastructure,” he said. “Black hats will not hit these issues. The white hats will. We’ve hit a local minima in policy,” said Hamilton. “Intelligence is unrestricted for those who don’t follow rules, and those who engage in harm reduction are left on the sidelines.”The Bitcoin Policy Institute and an alliance of blockchain firms subsequently issued a call to “frontier AI labs to establish a clear, trusted pathway for qualified open-source and digital asset defenders to access their strongest capabilities.” Source: Rob HamiltonCHINA NEWS IN BRIEF— A man in Shenzen was convicted of attempted extortion after he stole confidential R&D data from his company and then posed as an overseas hacker to demand a ransom paid in Bitcoin.ASIA PACIFICAPAC region sees big jump in onchain transactions year-on-yearA new report from Hashed Open Research and SCBX found that on-chain transaction volume across the Asia-Pacific region grew by 68% year-on-year, from $1.4 trillion to $2.36 trillion. It was the fastest growth of any region globally, driven mainly by countries in South East Asia. The report found that consumers in the region had skipped straight from cash, over cards and bank transactions, and went directly to mobile payments. Digital payments now account for 60% of all payments in the region. CLARITY Act delay gives Asian financial hubs an opening: First Digital CEOThe US Senate’s delay of a vote on crypto market structure legislation to mid-September could give Hong Kong and Singapore more time to strengthen their positions as digital asset hubs, according to First Digital founder and CEO Vincent Chok.Chok, whose company issues the FDUSD stablecoin, said the delay could give jurisdictions with clearer regulatory frameworks an advantage in attracting capital and talent as US uncertainty weighs on institutional adoption. “For Asia, this delay gives regional financial hubs like Hong Kong and Singapore additional time to demonstrate that clear regulation can coexist with innovation.” NORTH KOREAUS court backs Bybit’s bid to trace funds from $1.5B North Korea hackA US federal judge backed crypto exchange Bybit’s effort to trace assets stolen in the infamous $1.5 billion North Korea-linked hack in February 2025. According to newly revealed records, Bybit filed the lawsuit under seal on June 18 against North Korea, its Reconnaissance General Bureau, the Lazarus Group and 20 unidentified defendants. The court granted Bybit’s request for expedited discovery on June 19.The discovery authority gives Bybit a practical route to identify alleged intermediaries and pursue a small portion of stolen assets that remains traceable, rather than relying solely on a judgment against North Korea. Unfortunately, Bybit told the court that 90.2% of the stolen assets had become untraceable after passing through mixers, cross-chain bridges and over-the-counter dealers. The remaining 9.8% had been traced to identifiable wallets, including 5.3% of the total, about $75.5 million, that had been frozen or recovered.Bybit is seeking the return of the stolen assets and approximately $1.5 billion in damages.SOUTH KOREA NEWS IN BRIEF— Dunamu, which operates Upbit, has been selected by the National Police Agency to custody seized crypto assets for the next year after it obtained the highest technical evaluation score of 94.14 points. JAPANJapan FSA asks crypto exchanges to impose withdrawal delays to fight scamsJapan’s financial regulator has asked crypto exchanges to introduce withdrawal delays and other safeguards as authorities respond to increasingly sophisticated scams involving digital assets. The Financial Services Agency (FSA) said it had jointly requested the measures with the National Police Agency amid growing losses among crypto exchange users and cases where funds obtained through fraudulent schemes are being transferred to exchange accounts.The request calls on exchanges to restrict crypto withdrawals for a specified period after customers deposit fiat currency or purchase digital assets. Platforms were also asked to require users to pre-register crypto withdrawal addresses and impose a waiting period before newly added addresses can be used.JAPAN NEWS IN BRIEF— Tokyo Stock Exchange plans to introduce a re‑examination regime for companies that undergo a major business pivot. The TSE didn’t name digital asset treasuries but logic suggests they may well fall within the scope of the new rules. TAIWANTaiwan plans Travel Rule for domestic crypto transfers from OctoberTaiwan’s Financial Supervisory Commission will require crypto platforms to transmit customer information on all domestic platform-to-platform transfers starting in October. The rules would apply regardless of value, but transfers exceeding 30,000 New Taiwan dollars (about $930) would trigger additional data requirements, including an individual sender’s date of birth and residential address, or a corporate sender’s official identification number and registered address. Receiving VASPs would also be required to compare beneficiary information supplied by the originating platform with their own records. The FSC plans to extend the framework to transfers between domestic and overseas VASPs by the end of 2027.SINGAPOREBitdeer increased Bitcoin mining output by nearly fivefold in Q2Singapore headquartered Bitcoin miner Bitdeer mined 2,694 Bitcoin during the second quarter of 2026, up nearly fivefold from 565 BTC a year earlier. The miner closed the quarter with 150 BTC held on its balance sheet, down 90% from 1,502 BTC a year earlier, according to the company’s Q2 report published Monday.Bitdeer liquidated its entire 943 BTC treasury in February, citing liquidity decisions rather than a shift away from its core Bitcoin mining business. SINGAPORE NEWS IN BRIEF—UBS is sharpening its focus on wealthy Singapore residents. Over the past 25 years the number of Singapore residents who have between $5 million to $10 million compounded at an annual growth rate of 8 percent. In total there are 27,000 residents with between $5 million and $100 million.HONG KONGBinance sues RedotPay over alleged $473 million user losses: ReportBinance-affiliated companies have sued the founders of Hong Kong-based cryptocurrency payments company RedotPay, alleging it diverted more than 470,000 users from Binance Card in breach of their commercial agreement.The plaintiffs seek nearly $473 million in damages, alleging the conduct contributed to RedotPay’s valuation as the company considers a potential initial public offering.RedotPay said it is defending the proceedings and rejected what it described as “unfounded allegations” against the company and its co-founders. “RedotPay is strenuously defending the proceedings,” a RedotPay spokesperson told Cointelegraph, adding that it will respond through the appropriate legal process.HONG KONG NEWS IN BRIEF— Hong Kong police have arrested a 67-year-old woman accused of posing as a prospective tenant to scam property owners out of $510,000. She offered to pay rent in advance, then gave them a mobile phone with a genuine crypto app on it. However, the app had malware giving control over the wallet to the scammers, allowing them to steal funds once it had been funded. VIETNAM NEWS IN BRIEF— The Vietnam RWA Summit heard about how the country is developing groundwork for tokenizing RWAs from the securities regulator and Vietnam Blockchain Association.— Vietnam’s central bank governor presented a draft law to the National Assembly to make crypto asset services reporting entities under the country’s anti money laundering regulations. It also highlights suspicious transaction indicators specifically tailored to crypto asset activities.Cointelegraph publishes long-form journalism, analysis and narrative reporting produced by Cointelegraph’s in-house editorial team with subject-matter expertise. All articles are edited and reviewed by Cointelegraph editors in line with our editorial standards. 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