Autor Cointelegraph By Sam Bourgi

A $116 million hardware wallet exploit has reopened one of Bitcoin’s oldest debates: Is holding your own keys worth the risk? Days later, US spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded their strongest inflows since April, prompting Bloomberg analyst Eric Balchunas to wonder whether security scares could eventually push more investors away from self-custody and toward ETFs.Elsewhere, Strategy is preparing to resume Bitcoin purchases after a rare bout of selling, Riot Platforms is reportedly turning its mining infrastructure into a $9 billion AI deal, and Trump Media is rethinking its crypto treasury strategy after a $238 million quarterly loss.Strategy CEO says company will resume Bitcoin accumulation this yearStrategy CEO Phong Le said the company plans to resume Bitcoin accumulation later this year, seeking to reinforce its long-term strategy after a series of relatively small sales drew scrutiny over its once-firm “never sell” stance.Le told FOX Business that Strategy bought roughly 175,000 BTC and sold about 7,000 BTC this year — about 25 times more buying than selling. The company now holds more than 840,000 BTC, making it the largest institutional holder, but has sold Bitcoin on four occasions since May, most recently unloading 1,690 BTC to support preferred dividends, buybacks and its dollar reserve.Those sales have highlighted the competing demands facing Strategy as it balances its Bitcoin accumulation strategy with obligations to common and preferred shareholders. The treasury model has also come under pressure. According to Novaque Research, when companies trade below Bitcoin net asset value, raising capital becomes increasingly dilutive and the financing cycle harder to sustain.Phong Le appearing on FOX Business. Source: FOXBitcoin ETF demand rebounds as self-custody risks come into focusUS spot Bitcoin ETFs attracted roughly $1 billion in net inflows for the week, signaling renewed institutional demand even as Bitcoin’s price remains subdued and a major hardware wallet exploit puts fresh attention on the risks of self-custody.Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas said it was the third-best week since October, a period he described as Bitcoin’s “silent IPO,” a term popularized by investor Jordi Visser. The theory holds that early investors have been selling into growing ETF and institutional demand, creating enough supply to keep Bitcoin subdued despite fresh capital entering the market.The rebound also followed a Coldcard hardware wallet exploit linked to faulty key generation that drained about $116 million in Bitcoin. Balchunas said the incident could ultimately bolster ETFs’ appeal among investors concerned about self-custody risks, pointing to post-hack inflows as a possible, though unproven, connection.He cautioned that correlation does not imply causation, but added that “long-term I can’t imagine there aren’t some who migrate over.”Source: Eric BalchunasAnthropic reportedly struck a $9 billion compute deal with Bitcoin miner RiotAnthropic reportedly struck a $9 billion deal with Riot Platforms for 191 megawatts of capacity from the Bitcoin miner’s Texas campus, highlighting how access to power is becoming increasingly valuable as AI data centers face capacity constraints.Riot said it secured a 20-year agreement to supply 191 megawatts from its Rockdale campus to a “leading frontier AI” company, which Bloomberg identified as Anthropic. The deal follows Anthropic’s $19 billion TeraWulf data center lease and adds Riot to a growing list of Bitcoin miners expanding into AI, including Bitdeer, CleanSpark, MARA Holdings, Core Scientific, Hut 8 and IREN.Riot shares fell 5.4% Monday before rising 21% overnight and are up roughly 50% year-to-date. The fourth-largest Bitcoin miner has a $7.33 billion market capitalization, while Bernstein said partnerships between AI companies and miners could help address the power crunch constraining data center expansion. Trump Media to revamp crypto treasury strategy after $238 million Q2 lossTrump Media said it will revamp its digital asset treasury strategy after unrealized losses on crypto and securities helped push the company to a $238 million second-quarter net loss, highlighting the balance-sheet risks of corporate crypto holdings.The company reported $190.4 million in unrealized losses across its digital assets, and pledged digital assets and equity securities in the second quarter. It held 9,477.16 Bitcoin as of June 30, down from 9,542.16 the prior quarter. In July, it sold $159.6 million in Bitcoin-related securities and used the proceeds to buy more Bitcoin, bringing its holdings to about 14,139 BTC worth $890.5 million by July 31.Trump Media warned that generating additional income from its Bitcoin holdings could expose it to counterparty risk, particularly if a partner should default or become insolvent. In some cases, the company could be unable to recover Bitcoin committed under unsecured arrangements. It also plans to direct more resources to Truth Social, Truth+ and other media operations as part of a broader shift in capital allocation.Crypto Biz is your weekly pulse on the business behind blockchain and crypto, delivered directly to your inbox every Thursday.

Robinhood’s partnership with Uniswap is helping the brokerage rapidly build liquidity on its new blockchain, potentially removing a key obstacle to attracting users and assets, according to Standard Chartered.In a recent note, Standard Chartered analyst Geoffrey Kendrick said Robinhood Chain has grown to nearly $1 billion in total value locked (TVL), which he described as the fastest growth of any blockchain by that measure. Virtually all of Robinhood Chain’s liquidity needs are being met through Uniswap V2, V3 and V4, Kendrick said.The arrangement gives Robinhood access to established decentralized finance infrastructure as it scales its blockchain, potentially strengthening its ability to attract users without having to build liquidity from scratch.The partnership is also having a significant impact on Uniswap’s token economics. According to Standard Chartered, protocol fees generated through Robinhood are now the largest source of UNI token burns.The UNI burn rate has roughly doubled since a Robinhood-linked fee switch was activated on July 27, reaching an annualized pace of about $90 million. At UNI’s current price of roughly $3.50 apiece, that would translate to 25 million UNI tokens, or just over 4% of the circulating supply, being burned annually.Robinhood Chain’s liquidity sources. Source: Standard CharteredRobinhood Chain launched on July 1 with a focus on bringing real-world assets onchain. Adoption accelerated quickly after launch, reaching 194,000 daily active users during its first week.Related: Robinhood Chain sees over $70M in ETH bridged during first weekRobinhood’s crypto push expands into tokenization and prediction marketsRobinhood Chain is part of the brokerage’s broader push beyond traditional stock trading, with the company expanding into crypto, prediction markets and tokenization. The strategy has drawn attention from Wall Street, with analysts at Bernstein raising their price target for Robinhood (HOOD) stock to $160 per share and identifying tokenization and prediction markets as key growth drivers.HOOD shares were up more than 4% on Thursday, extending six-month gains to almost 30%. Source: Yahoo Finance.The expansion has coincided with mixed trends across Robinhood’s crypto business. The company reported record revenue and earnings in the second quarter, even as crypto trading volumes and revenues declined. Related: Robinhood in talks with Crypto.com over prediction markets: WSJ

Publicly traded Bitcoin miners are cutting mining capacity faster than the Bitcoin network overall, suggesting that more operators are redirecting electricity and infrastructure toward data centers and high-performance computing (HPC), in another sign of the sector’s evolution beyond creating more crypto.In the latest Miner Weekly newsletter, BlocksBridge Consulting reported that realized hashrate among a cohort of public Bitcoin miners fell from 368.3 exahashes per second (EH/s) in the fourth quarter of 2025 to 319 EH/s in the second quarter of 2026, a 13.4% decline.The contraction was even sharper when excluding Bitdeer, which continued to expand its mining operations. Without Bitdeer, the cohort’s realized hashrate fell 21.2% over the six-month period, from 324.6 EH/s to 255.9 EH/s. Bitdeer’s realized hashrate, meanwhile, increased 44% to 63 EH/s.By comparison, the Bitcoin network’s average hashrate declined 10.6% over the same period.The shift comes as more miners report a growing share of revenue from non-mining activities. Core Scientific generated $136.7 million in colocation revenue during the second quarter, compared with just $27.5 million from Bitcoin mining. TeraWulf reported $31.9 million in HPC lease revenue, compared with $12.8 million from mining.Core Scientific and TeraWulf are now generating the majority of their revenue from non-mining activities.Source: TheEnergyMagRiot Platforms and Bitdeer remain much earlier in the transition, with Bitcoin mining continuing to account for the vast majority of their revenue in the most recent quarter.Related: CoreWeave shows how crypto-era infrastructure quietly became AI’s backboneUnwinding post-China mining boomBlocksBridge framed the current pullback as an unwinding of the expansion cycle that followed China’s Bitcoin mining ban in 2021, which triggered one of the sharpest declines in network hashrate before a rapid recovery as miners relocated overseas.In North America, that migration helped fuel an expansion among public miners, which raised capital and acquired new power sites to expand their operations. One halving cycle later, the economics have shifted significantly. Weaker mining profitability, coupled with surging demand for AI infrastructure since 2022, has prompted several public miners to repurpose sites and power capacity away from Bitcoin mining entirely. Related: Crypto Biz: Crypto’s biggest business is starting to look a lot like banking

Anchorpoint Financial, a Hong Kong-licensed stablecoin issuer, has added HashKey Exchange as an authorized distributor for its Hong Kong dollar stablecoin, HKDAP, potentially expanding access to the fiat-backed asset as Hong Kong’s regulated stablecoin market takes shape.The companies announced on Tuesday that the arrangement is part of a beta rollout allowing eligible institutions and professional investors to access the stablecoin through HashKey and other supported channels. HashKey said it has already completed its first HKDAP minting and redemption transaction with eligible clients, including fiat on- and off-ramping.The companies said they plan to expand distribution over time and explore additional uses for HKDAP, including cross-border payments, settlement and tokenized finance.HKDAP, short for “HKD At Par,” is a regulated Hong Kong dollar stablecoin designed to function as tokenized money for payments and other financial transactions. Anchorpoint is a joint venture established by Standard Chartered Bank (Hong Kong), HKT and Animoca Brands, and was among the first companies to receive a stablecoin issuer license from the Hong Kong Monetary Authority.As Cointelegraph reported, Anchorpoint was established in April 2025, two months after Standard Chartered and Animoca announced plans to launch a Hong Kong dollar-backed stablecoin.Related: Circle expands USDC to OKX ecosystem with X Layer launchHong Kong stablecoin market takes shapeHong Kong dollar-backed stablecoins could develop into a sizable market, with a 2025 Citi report estimating that circulation could reach $16 billion following the introduction of the city’s stablecoin licensing regime.For now, however, US dollar-pegged tokens account for the overwhelming majority of the global stablecoin market, while synthetic stablecoins represent a smaller emerging segment. Reliable data on the circulation and adoption of Hong Kong dollar-backed stablecoins remains limited, making it difficult to gauge the market’s current size or growth trajectory.Meanwhile, stablecoin transactions continue to surge, with the combined adjusted transaction volume of USDC (USDC) and USDt (USDT) reaching roughly $3.8 trillion in the first quarter of the year, according to Bernstein. Magazine: The real reason DeFi projects that survived 2022 crash are shutting down now

Strategy CEO Phong Le said the company plans to resume accumulating Bitcoin later this year, even after shifting business priorities prompted it to sell portions of its holdings in moves that drew scrutiny from the market.In a Monday interview with FOX Business, Le said Strategy had purchased around 175,000 Bitcoin since the beginning of the year while selling roughly 7,000 BTC, making the company a significant net buyer.That’s “about 25 times more” buying than selling, Le said. He added that Strategy has gone from the world’s second-largest institutional Bitcoin holder to the largest.“We’ll get back to buying more Bitcoin throughout the course of the year,” Le said.Strategy CEO Phong Le appears on FOX Business. Source: FOXWhile Strategy has accumulated more than 840,000 BTC, it has sold Bitcoin on four occasions since May, with the most recent sale totaling 1,690 BTC. The company has used proceeds from its recent sales to support preferred stock dividends, share repurchases and its US dollar reserve.Despite the relatively small size of the sales compared with its overall holdings, Strategy has faced scrutiny for departing from its long-standing “never sell” approach to Bitcoin. The shift highlights the competing demands facing Strategy as a public company, including obligations to common and preferred shareholders alongside its Bitcoin accumulation strategy.Related: Strategy unveils capital framework to preserve Bitcoin exposure, pay dividendsBTC treasury model faces pressure amid bear marketThe corporate Bitcoin treasury model has come under pressure as weaker market conditions challenge the economics that helped fuel its rapid expansion. Public companies hold more than 1.26 million BTC, trailing exchange-traded funds and other funds, which hold more than 1.6 million BTC, according to BitcoinTreasuries.NET.The model has historically benefited from a financing cycle in which Bitcoin treasury companies traded at premiums to the value of their BTC holdings, allowing them to raise capital through equity or debt and use the proceeds to buy more Bitcoin, according to Novaque Research. However, that cycle becomes more difficult to sustain when companies trade below the net asset value of their Bitcoin holdings because raising new capital becomes increasingly dilutive to shareholders.Magazine: Sorry everyone, Bitcoin is headed down to $43,500: Michael Terpin