Bitcoin Magazine

Metaplanet’s Bitcoin Japan Announces Plan to Scoop Up Coins Despite Market Downturn 

Bitcoin Japan, a subsidiary of Asia’s answer to Strategy, Metaplanet, has announced it entered into a financing agreement to start buying the leading cryptocurrency for its treasury. 

The Tokyo-based, publicly-listed company said Thursday that it had approved a convertible bond deal with EVO Fund to raise 9.66 billion yen ($59.5 million). The deal will see the company spend over 662 million yen — or over $4 million — on its first Bitcoin transaction. 

Bitcoin Japan works on Bitcoin-related media, data platforms and events to promote the understanding of the leading cryptocurrency in Japan and “contribute to the development of its ecosystem globally,” according to its website. 

Its parent company, Metaplanet, is a publicly-traded company following in the footsteps of Nasdaq-listed Strategy — formerly MicroStrategy — by buying and holding Bitcoin on its balance sheet. It first started buying the asset in 2024. 

Metaplanet is one of the biggest Bitcoin treasuries in the world, with 43,000 digital coins worth over $2.8 billion in its coffers. Its stock is currently down over 50% year-to-date. 

JUST IN: Japan Public company Bitcoin Japan Corporation has raised $60 million through convertible bonds, allocating $4.08 million to make its first buy for their BTC treasury

BULLISH pic.twitter.com/gn7hihxJ68

— Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) July 17, 2026

Treasury woes 

Bitcoin Japan’s announcement comes as treasury companies see their stock slide. Last year, the business model of buying and holding Bitcoin and other digital assets with spare cash suffered with a plunge in crypto prices. 

Strategy, the biggest and oldest Bitcoin treasury, has seen its Nasdaq-listed stock nosedive by nearly 80% over the past year. 

Little known publicly traded companies in 2025 rushed to announce they were buying digital assets in a hope to boost their stock prices. The strategy worked but since the market downturn, a number of firms in the space have had to sell a portion of their holdings as the price of Bitcoin has slumped. 

But companies are still accumulating during the downturn — and firms like Bitcoin Japan are seeing the current market price of the leading asset as an opportunity to start a crypto treasury. 

Regulatory push 

While Japan has long been a hub for crypto enthusiasts — former major Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox was based in Tokyo before a 2014 hack and its subsequent closure — lawmakers are now working on regulating the asset class. 

Japan’s parliament last week passed a law ​amendment to designate ‌cryptocurrency assets as “financial assets,” making the assets subject to ​stricter regulations, eventually paving the way for products like Bitcoin exchange-traded funds to debut in the Asian nation. 

The regulation is likely to come into effect within a year, Reuters reported, citing NHK news. 

This post Metaplanet’s Bitcoin Japan Announces Plan to Scoop Up Coins Despite Market Downturn  first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Source: Bitcoin Magazine – Read More

Bitcoin Magazine

Coinbase Executive Says Clarity Act Has ‘Tremendous Momentum’ in the Senate

Coinbase Vice Chair Ryan VanGrack said the Clarity Act has gained “tremendous momentum” in the Senate, in a CNBC “Squawk Box” appearance that made the case for a federal crypto framework and touched on bitcoin, blockchain, and the industry’s uneasy truce with Wall Street.

VanGrack, a former SEC official, framed the Clarity Act as an overdue set of rules rather than a giveaway. “It’s not about no regulation,” he said. “This is about imposing regulation on the industry for the first time.” He described a “win-win-win” for American investors, innovators, and standards should the measure pass, and said a bipartisan group of senators has kept up work “even in the last few weeks and days.”

Clarity Act updates

The House passed its version of the Clarity Act last year, and attention has shifted to the Senate, where the path to 60 votes remains the central hurdle. 

The Senate Banking Committee advanced the bill in a 15-9 vote this spring, with two Democrats crossing over, and House members have urged the Senate to act before the August recess. The measure sits in a narrow window as negotiators work out remaining terms.

President Trump added his voice last week, posting on Truth Social in support of Senator Lindsey Graham and calling on the Senate to pass the bill. Trump framed the stakes in terms of competition with China, a message he has repeated as he presses the chamber to move.

VanGrack said Democrats have won concessions that strengthen the bill’s consumer protections. 

JUST IN: Coinbase Vice Chair talks CLARITY ACT on CNBC

“The Democrats have obtained meaningful concessions to make what was already a strong consumer protection bill, THAT much stronger” pic.twitter.com/y3n04dKdRi

— Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) July 20, 2026

He pointed to an illicit-finance framework, an “FTX loophole” that the text would close, insider-trading safeguards, and added disclosures. 

“Across the board, the Democrats have obtained meaningful concessions to make what was already a strong consumer protection bill that much stronger,” he said. 

He said the bill would not change how crypto is classified as a commodity or a security in a fundamental sense, and would preserve the registration, examination, and surveillance structure from the House version.

Asked how the industry reconciles with skeptics like JPMorgan chief Jamie Dimon, VanGrack pointed to a wave of bank and institutional deals. 

“Not a week goes by,” he said, where a firm fails to announce a new crypto project or investment. He predicted an “inevitable convergence,” a point at which the market stops separating traditional finance from crypto and treats each as a modern financial institution.

That convergence has played out in public, and in conflict. JPMorgan and Coinbase announced a partnership to widen crypto access, and the bank has moved to accept bitcoin as loan collateral and to let clients trade it. 

Dimon, for his part, has declared war on the Clarity Act and aimed a crude insult at Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, a reminder that the détente carries friction.

Is bitcoin real? 

The interview turned to a sharper question from CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin: whether blockchain is real but bitcoin is not. VanGrack called it “a fair question” and said the technology’s benefits stand on their own — faster settlement, more transparency, and round-the-clock transactions. 

He argued that no one building a financial system today would recreate the infrastructure of the past century. He cited Citadel Securities, which he said made another large investment in the crypto economy last week, as a sign that major institutions are trending the same course.

Sorkin pressed the harder edge of the design: the technology aims to remove the counterparty a customer might call when something goes wrong. VanGrack conceded the point as fair, then countered with the costs of the current system — days to reconcile trades and the counterparty risk that delay creates. 

“I’m not here to tell you it’s the wrong technology,” he said. He acknowledged open questions, including whether crypto accounts should carry interest or loyalty rewards, a debate that bankers have raised and that the law will settle as “a blunt instrument.”

He closed on the case for Clarity Act passage. “In the absence of clarity, you do not have a federal oversight and framework,” he said. “So whether you love crypto or hate crypto, you should want” the Clarity Act.

This post Coinbase Executive Says Clarity Act Has ‘Tremendous Momentum’ in the Senate first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Source: Bitcoin Magazine – Read More

Bitcoin Magazine

Ocean Mining VP Jason Hughes: BIP-110 on Track to Fail as Miner Signaling Stays Below 1%

BIP-110 – My Notes to Miners

This is a guest post by Jason Hughes, VP of Development and Engineering at Ocean Mining. Opinions expressed are entirely his own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc. or Bitcoin Magazine. The article originally appeared on X.com and has been published with the permission of the author. 

Let me start off by saying I’m not pro BIP110, and I’m not anti-BIP110. If it actually succeeds as something that gains true consensus within the network and ends up being enforced by a majority of the network… cool. If so, then we’ll go with it because the network has spoken and accepted it, and all nodes, including non-BIP110 nodes, will be pulled along for the ride. Unfortunately for proponents of the proposal, that simply isn’t currently the case by any measurable metric, nor does it appear to have a trajectory suggesting that will change, either. 

There’s been a lot of misleading information about this whole thing, especially in the context of mining. A few quick key bullet points to briefly counter some hyperbole from proponents: BIP110 is NOT inevitable. It CAN fail. BIP110 can and will cause a chain split/fork in a minority hashrate situation. BIP110 is NOT without risk to miners choosing to adopt it. Miners not supporting BIP110 are not suddenly mining “invalid” blocks just because a proposal that isn’t yet adopted simply exists. You’re not a bad person or evil simply because you don’t like or support BIP110. (The fact that I feel the need to point out that last part is actually kind of sad…)

I was going to write a long post to help keep miners informed about things they need to remain aware of as this all plays out… before realizing I already did so months ago, as a document I authored that I had hoped could be put out as a miner education piece at OCEAN. Sadly, it never got published. So I went ahead and updated it, and well, here it is.

Again, keep in mind this was written months ago, intended to be as agnostic as possible in an effort to make it acceptable as a corporate post. That effort failed, so I’m posting it as a personal document today instead. As a miner making important decisions about your operations, you need to be aware of all of this without the sugarcoating and, frankly, outright misleading information coming from some of the BIP110 proponents.  You must be vigilant and decide what’s right for you. 

While there is certainly some misleading information from the opposition as well, nothing I’ve seen is nearly as egregious as the extremely premature claims of victory and accompanying hyperbole pushed by the BIP110 side. Summarizing my doc a bit, my personal suggestion to miners is this: Signal if you support BIP110. Do not signal if you don’t support BIP110 or don’t care. Either way, monitor the network on/around/before block 961632. 

If you continue to see non-signaling blocks from major pools, you can be reasonably certain they’re not going to suddenly decide later to throw away millions of dollars’ worth of revenue to backtrack and signal for BIP110. If they do, by some chance, start to signal for BIP110, you should monitor that and consider switching as required to stay on the heaviest chain. The key point is that, realistically, only one side can win. It’s either BIP110 succeeds, and miners not on the BIP110 side fail, or BIP110 fails, and miners on the non-BIP110 side succeed. 

Moving on, let’s dive into a small fraction of my rationale. 

QUICK FACT: Between 7 and 15% of Bitcoin Nodes are signaling support for BIP110.

Depending on which centralized crawler you look at… no way to know for sure [how many BIP110 nodes are signaling support]. My personal private crawler puts this number much lower, but that’s a discussion for another day. Suffice it to say, I think it’s logical and correct to say that even 15% is not a majority. 

“But Jason! UASF got Segwit activated with fewer nodes!” 

Yep, because many miners, merchants, users, etc., all actually wanted Segwit. There was tremendous economic and community weight behind it. Without rehashing that whole thing, as plenty of resources on the topic from before BIP110 are worth a read, suffice it to say that BIP110 and Segwit activations are not quite comparable, as many have already pointed out. Segwit, for example, went into its UASF territory with around 1/3rd of the network’s hashrate already signaling support. With that kind of backing, the UASF to help push the MASF over the tipping point made a lot of sense. It doesn’t make sense here for BIP110.

QUICK FACT: 0.6% of blocks over the past 60 days have signaled support for BIP110.

[0.6% is a] pretty stark contrast to even Segwit’s low baseline support. Yes, I know it’s increased slightly in the past couple of weeks, but no new entrants. Just more clearly rented hashrate from one of the same small proponents.

Something to keep in mind is that mining BIP110 signaling blocks via DATUM on OCEAN carries virtually no risk to the miner up until the fork point at block 961632. The cost is negligible, as you’re effectively guaranteed to recoup rental costs, etc.

It’s awesome that the ability to do so exists, and I wouldn’t have it any other way… but just something to keep in mind when weighing signaling from such blocks in the grand scheme of things from a risk-reward, money-on-the-table perspective.

“But Jason! Miners have no incentive to signal until the last minute!”

I also see no evidence to suggest that this could be the case. Subjectively, I disagree with the premise, as it’s not in a mining pool’s best interest to destabilize the network in such a way.  Part of the reason for early signaling and lock-in periods is to help coordinate upgrades in a smooth fashion. Waiting until the last minute negates that benefit entirely. I see no compelling rationale or upside to doing so.

Continuing on this, as part of my personal node monitoring setup, I specifically monitor nodes known to belong to various entities, such as other mining pools, exchanges, large lightning nodes, merchants, etc. A supermajority of which are monitored with explicit permission and confirmation/coordination.

QUICK FACT: All major mining pools I monitor are currently running some variant of Bitcoin Core v30 or v31 (except OCEAN). 

Expanding on that, most [mining pools] have updated their nodes since the proliferation of BIP110’s release, even since the release of Knots 29.3. Additionally, it is known that many mining pools run modified versions of their node software to facilitate various requirements of their specific infrastructure. Such changes would need to be ported to a BIP110-compatible client, tested, evaluated, and deployed ahead of time. I currently see no evidence that this is the case currently.

As far as I can tell, the pools are aware but ignoring. 

“But Jason! Miners don’t determine consensus! Nodes do! Otherwise, they’ll just cancel halvings!”

This is one of the funniest and most ridiculous arguments I’ve heard from the pro-BIP110 crowd.  Comparing a consensus change that can be unilaterally enforced upon the network by miners and accepted by 100% of existing nodes (a soft fork), with a hard fork which no existing node will accept… is disingenuous at best. T

ightening rules (like BIP110): Soft fork, can be enforced by miners if they choose to do so. Loosening rules (like canceling a halving): Hard fork, can not be enforced by miners without effectively 100% buy-in from the entire network… which isn’t likely to happen. Comparing the two is, bluntly, just stupid.

“But Jason! If you don’t upgrade to the latest consensus rules, you’re insecure! You’ll lose funds! You’ll mine invalid blocks! You’ll [insert additional hyperbole here]!”

This would be true of a consensus change that has, well, consensus. While BIP110 has made a valiant effort to gain that consensus, it has yet to have any measurable majority at what is now arguably the 11th hour. Not in nodes, not in hashrate, not in the social layers (consensus.health has a cool visual there where you’ll find me in the middle).

If somehow BIP110 gains 51%+ of the network hashrate on/before block 961632… then, alright. It’s enforced, since as a soft fork a majority of miners can unilaterally enforce it in the absence of a fully adopted URSF (effectively a misnomer, as this would kind of be a hard fork).

“But Jason! It can’t gain consensus by already having consensus! You have to give it a chance!”

Firstly… no I don’t, even though I have.  Second, it’s a rushed proposal that never had the time to even try and gain real consensus. It’s been 7 months since the release of the first BIP110 client. There’s ~3 weeks to go before “mandatory” signaling starts as of now (less by the time you read this). 90% of the time available has passed with no change in overall sentiment from any relevant players. If it hasn’t gained sufficient adoption in the past 7 months, it’s not likely to do so in the next 3 weeks.

“But Jason! CSAM! CSAM! Pedophiles! CSAM!”

I’ll be the first to say, even I personally overstated the risk here early on when Core proposed its OP_RETURN change. I personally expected something particularly egregious to hit the chain almost immediately, and to the best of my knowledge, that’s not yet happened. Could it still happen? Yeah, I suppose.

But considering from a technical perspective, byte-for-byte the same contiguous arbitrary data can provably end up stored in the current chain or the BIP-110 chain without much issue… this particular argument for BIP-110 falls pretty flat to me at this point.

Do I want CSAM in the chain? Of course not. Am I a pedophile if I don’t support BIP110? Also not.

Concluding Thoughts

I could continue to go on and on and on, but I’ll stop here. I’ve wasted enough time on this. I’m sure I’ve done plenty to annoy both sides of the BIP110 debate at this point, as I don’t adopt either stance. I’m sure I’ll catch flak from all angles simply for daring to speak my mind on it.

Overall, I mostly think it was silly to approach addressing a real problem (the OP_RETURN default change in Bitcoin Core) with the maximum anti-spam manifesto based soft fork proposal… which provably cannot stop spam, arbitrary data, etc. (Yes, I know, proponents will claim it’s not about spam… and will also make semantic arguments that it does stop data as well… neither of which appears to be correct.)

I’ll close with the concession that I could be wrong. I’m not Nostradamus, and I can’t accurately predict the outcome with 100% certainty.  I can only go by what the data tells me, and so I give BIP110’s success less than a 5% chance of actually succeeding… and I consider that generous. You can take my opinions on this however you wish, but I highly recommend you don’t discount the actual data points, remain vigilant, and do what’s best for you and your mining revenue. Don’t be gaslit by either side of the debate, and make your own decisions.

Here’s a link to the same document linked above for ease of access.

This post Ocean Mining VP Jason Hughes: BIP-110 on Track to Fail as Miner Signaling Stays Below 1% first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Jason Hughes.

Source: Bitcoin Magazine – Read More

Bitcoin Magazine

T. Rowe Price Debuts New ETF With Bitcoin and Crypto Exposure

Asset manager T. Rowe Price on Thursday debuted its first crypto exchange-traded fund, giving investors exposure to Bitcoin and other digital coins. 

T. Rowe Price, which with $1.89 trillion in assets is one of the largest U.S. asset managers, said that its Active Crypto ETF is the first actively managed multi-token spot ETF on the market. 

The ETF, which trades on the NYSE Arca under the ticker TKNZ, mainly gives investors exposure to Bitcoin and Ethereum, weighed 40.75% and 18.42%, respectively, but includes other assets like Solana, XRP, Hyperliquid, Dogecoin, and BNB. 

T. Rowe Price applied to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for the product last October. 

“Through the launch of the T. Rowe Price Active Crypto ETF, investors can gain access to a thoughtfully curated, professionally managed multi-coin portfolio that helps eliminate the guesswork of building a crypto allocation on their own,” Blue Macellari, who works as head of digital assets at the firm, said in an announcement.  

The announcement added that the product was the “first of the firm’s lineup” for the digital asset space, hinting that more ETFs could soon follow. 

Writing on X Thursday, Bloomberg Intelligence’s senior research analyst, James Seyffart, said: “Launching during a bear market and I know for a fact this product was years in the making. Legacy asset managers continue to build in the crypto space despite the pullback in prices.”

JUST IN: $1.9 trillion T. Rowe Price launched the first actively managed multi-token spot crypto ETP

40.75% of the fund is in Bitcoin pic.twitter.com/lbguyJr6RO

— Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) July 16, 2026

Explosion in crypto and Bitcoin ETFs 

In January 2024, the SEC approved Bitcoin ETFs by BlackRock, Fidelity, Grayscale and other asset managers after years of denying applications. 

The funds had the most successful debut in the ETF industry’s history, and now manage billions in dollars in assets. 

Ethereum funds followed the same year and a number of altcoin products are now on the market for U.S. and European investors. 

More traditional investors and Wall Street institutions can now buy crypto via shares that trade on traditional stock exchanges. 

Investors were previously put off by some of the harder aspects of crypto management, such as keeping private keys safe and digital coin storage. 

The Bitcoin ETFs in particular have helped integrate the asset into traditional finance, making it easier to borrow against or use as collateral. 

Under President Trump’s crypto-friendly administration, regulators have become more relaxed towards regulating the digital asset space; many SEC lawsuits and investigations targeting crypto firms have been scrapped since the Republican took office. 

This post T. Rowe Price Debuts New ETF With Bitcoin and Crypto Exposure first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Source: Bitcoin Magazine – Read More

Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin VC Veterans Launch $40 Million Holding Company Targeting Small Business Acquisitions

Another day, another Bitcoin treasury. 

But this time, with a twist: Earlier this week, macroeconomist and all-round Bitcoin legend Lyn Alden announced Orange Juice — an investment firm that aims to buy, improve and get businesses on a Bitcoin standard. 

The idea is that Orange Juice will buy small and mid-sized businesses at low prices, improve their operations, and hold them indefinitely rather than reselling them. 

A portion of the businesses’ profits will get converted into Bitcoin, which serves as the company’s treasury asset. 

“Pure-play Bitcoin holding companies exist, but their cash-flowing operations tend to be small or non-existent,” Alden wrote in a blog post. 

She added: “Orange Juice instead will emphasize building a strong and diversified base of cash flows, with a portion of the retained earnings of its businesses accumulating into a Bitcoin treasury.”

Ego Death Capital partners Jeff Booth, Lyn Alden, Nico Lechuga, Andi Pitt founded the company along with Adrian Steckel and Ruben Zweiban, while Mexican billionaire Ricardo Salinas participated as the anchor investor, a Wednesday announcement read. 

Salinas — one of Mexico’s richest men — has long-praised Bitcoin and last month admitted he had increased his allocation in the asset from 10% to 70% of his portfolio. 

It added that the company had already raised $40 million and intends to pursue a public listing in the future.

“Over the coming decades, a significant wave of business successions will take place,” the announcement said. “Unlike traditional private equity, Orange Juice is not constrained by fund cycles or the pressure to resell, allowing it to focus on the long-term health of its businesses.”

JUST IN: Lyn Alden’s ‘ORANGE JUICE’ Raises $40 million to launch a permanent capital holding company backed by a BTC treasury

“It’s a company that acquires, improves, and permanently holds cash-flowing businesses, backed by a bitcoin treasury” – Lyn Alden pic.twitter.com/A8kyVpIVVx

— Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) July 15, 2026

Bitcoin treasury craze

The announcement comes at a time when Bitcoin treasuries have taken a hit: the business model — of buying and holding Bitcoin and other digital assets with spare cash — suffered last year with a plunge in crypto prices. 

Strategy, the biggest and oldest Bitcoin treasury, has seen its Nasdaq-listed stock nosedive by nearly 80% over the past year. 

Little known publicly traded companies in 2025 rushed to announce they were buying digital assets in a hope to boost their stock prices. The strategy worked but since the market downturn, a number of firms in the space have had to sell a portion of their holdings. 

There are currently over 360 digital asset treasuries, according to BitcoinTreasuires.net, made up of private and public entities holding a variety of digital assets. 

This post Bitcoin VC Veterans Launch $40 Million Holding Company Targeting Small Business Acquisitions first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

Source: Bitcoin Magazine – Read More

Bitcoin Magazine

Traders Took $8.2 Million From Polymarket’s Five-Minute Bitcoin Bets, Study Found

A new study argued that Polymarket’s five-minute Bitcoin contract became a machine for wealth transfer. It moved money from retail bettors to a small band of manipulators, and it made Bitcoin’s spot price worse in the process.

The paper, “Settlement Manipulation in Prediction Markets” by David Dai, Ruizhe Jia, and Shihao Yu of Stanford and Singapore Management University, studied a product that did not exist before February 12, 2026. 

On that date Polymarket launched a binary contract that paid $1 if Bitcoin closed a five-minute window above where it opened, and $0 otherwise. A fresh contract opened every five minutes around the clock. 

Within months, Polymarket’s five- and fifteen-minute crypto up/down markets traded more than $4 billion and tripled the platform’s daily volume. The flaw in polymarket was when the contract settled against a Chainlink oracle that averaged Bitcoin’s price across major spot exchanges. 

A trader who held the contract could buy or sell real Bitcoin in the closing seconds, drag that reference price across the strike, and win the bet.

The oracle’s blend of exchanges looked like a defense, because moving it seemed to require moving many venues at once. The authors showed it was not much of a defense. Binance, the largest crypto exchange, sat about two and a half basis points from the oracle and moved near one-for-one with it. It finished on the same side of the strike as the resolution about 85%of the time. A push that drove the Binance price a few basis points past the strike carried the outcome.

The pattern was in the Binance data. After the five-minute contract went live, net order flow in the final ten seconds before each close jumped about 50% above the pre-launch level. The spike was sharpest where a push mattered: in the 6% of cycles the market judged near-even, the jump was about 3.9 times the rest.

The reversal gave it away. Real information stays in a price; a manipulative push does not. Within ten seconds the price reverted, by about a quarter in the near-even cycles. The pushes clustered in thin hours, when a dollar of flow moved the price the most: 56% landed overnight and 44%on weekends.

Who won, who paid with these Polymarket bets

In near-even cycles, a push against the favored side flipped the winner 65% of the time, against 41% in normal trading. Even when one side held a 90-to-100% chance before the close, a push against it reversed the outcome 34% of the time, against 1% in cycles with no push. A bet the market treated as near-certain lost one time in three.

Because Polymarket settled on a public blockchain, the authors traced each wallet. Just 821 traders fit the manipulator profile, about one in three hundred of the 243,000 who traded the contract. They took $8.2 million in the pushed cycles and broke even in the rest. Of the losses, 93% fell on retail.

The authors ruled out hedging as the innocent explanation. A binary contract carried little exposure to hedge once one side was near-certain, yet those were the cycles a push flipped. And the trades arrived in one burst in the final fifty seconds, not as a position built over the window.

The remedy

The fix was the contract’s horizon. Manipulation was absent from the fifteen-minute contract, because a longer window took in more ordinary trading before the close and made a fixed push a weaker force. The stakes reached past crypto: Nasdaq and Cboe each filed with the SEC to list binary asset-price contracts on equity indices, which would carry the same risk onto larger markets.

This post Traders Took $8.2 Million From Polymarket’s Five-Minute Bitcoin Bets, Study Found first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Source: Bitcoin Magazine – Read More

Bitcoin Magazine

China’s Prosecutors Move to Treat Crypto Mixers as Evidence of Money Laundering

China’s Supreme People’s Procuratorate has published a set of recommendations that would reshape how the country investigates and prosecutes cryptocurrency-related money laundering, including a proposal to treat the use of mixers and privacy coins as evidence of criminal intent.

The article, released in the official Procuratorial Daily, was written by two prosecutors from Hunan Province’s Yuhu District and an associate law professor at Xiangtan University. 

The authors argue that the decentralized, pseudonymous, and cross-border design of virtual currencies has outpaced China’s legal framework and created a three-part problem: defining the offense, gathering evidence, and recovering stolen assets.

At the center of the debate is a gap between statutes. China’s Anti-Money Laundering Law has dropped restrictions on which predicate offenses qualify, but Article 191 of the Criminal Law still limits money laundering charges to seven categories. 

As a result, most crypto cases fall under Article 312, which covers concealing criminal proceeds, a charge the authors describe as a catch-all. They call for wider use of the money laundering statute and a “one case, two checks” principle that would require investigators to look for laundering indicators in every major criminal probe.

Burden shifts in China’s courts

Three proposals stand out. The first, described as blockchain self-authentication, would treat on-chain records from public block explorers as reliable when hash values match, and would preliminarily establish their integrity. 

The second would shift the burden of proof: once prosecutors submit a transaction-chain analysis report, the defense would need to disprove it. 

The third would allow courts to presume laundering intent from conduct alone. Under that standard, the use of mixers or privacy coins, the sale of large holdings at off-market prices, or high-value transactions through anonymous wallets with no clear source would establish intent unless a defendant offered a reasonable rebuttal.

The authors also address evidence collection, noting that mixers, privacy coins, and decentralized exchanges allow multi-layered splitting and cross-chain transfers that traditional methods struggle to trace. 

They propose adaptive rules for electronic data, tiered standards of proof, and clearer authorization for technical measures such as real-time monitoring and traffic analysis, with limits to protect personal information and cybersecurity.

Asset recovery presents a further obstacle. With crypto trading banned in China, authorities hold seized coins without a legal channel to liquidate them. 

The paper recommends a national platform to store, value, and dispose of confiscated assets through compliant channels, along with an expert committee that would set values using on-chain data and international exchange prices.

It also urges bilateral and multilateral agreements and a blockchain-based “judicial cooperation chain” to trace and freeze funds moved abroad.

The recommendations carry no legal force, but they signal a possible direction for China’s courts. The proposals arrive as Chinese-language laundering networks processed $16.15 billion in 2025, about 20% of the global total, according to Chainalysis. 

In 2024, Chinese prosecutors brought charges against more than 3,000 people in crypto-related laundering cases, a figure that underscores the scale of the challenge.

This post China’s Prosecutors Move to Treat Crypto Mixers as Evidence of Money Laundering first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Source: Bitcoin Magazine – Read More

Bitcoin Magazine

CleanSpark Signs $6.6 Billion Data Center Lease as Bitcoin Miner Pivots to Compute

CleanSpark, the Nasdaq-listed bitcoin miner, said on July 14 that it has signed a 20-year infrastructure lease with an unnamed high-investment-grade global technology company at its campus in Sandersville, Georgia. 

The deal marks the firm’s largest step from pure bitcoin mining toward high-performance computing for hyperscale clients.

The lease covers data center infrastructure that will support 175 megawatts of critical IT load. CleanSpark expects the initial term to generate $6.6 billion in contracted revenue, a figure that would climb to $11.6 billion if the tenant exercises both extension options. 

The company has recently announced that it would repurpose part of its electricity capacity and mining infrastructure to power AI data centers, aiming to diversify beyond bitcoin mining. 

CleanSparks’ average annual net operating income from the agreement should reach $330 million. First deliveries are due in the fourth quarter of 2027.

In a further sign of the tenant’s appetite, the two sides executed a letter of intent and an exclusivity arrangement covering CleanSpark’s entire Texas portfolio, a base of up to 885 megawatts of secured and planned power capacity. Should that convert into firm contracts, CleanSpark’s transition into an infrastructure landlord for artificial-intelligence and cloud workloads would deepen.

CleanSpark holds 13,924 bitcoin

The announcement lands as CleanSpark’s core mining business posts records. The company produced 614 bitcoin in early July and lifted its operational hashrate to 50 exahashes per second, a company high. 

Treasury holdings rose to 13,924 bitcoin, one of the larger corporate stashes among public miners. Management has kept much of its mined bitcoin rather than sell into the market, a bet on the asset’s long-term price.

Wall Street has warmed to the compute pivot. Citizens began coverage with an Outperform rating and a $27 price target, citing the shift toward hyperscale compute capacity. Chardan lifted its target to $19 from $16 and kept a Buy rating. Both notes framed the Sandersville lease as proof that CleanSpark can monetize its power and land assets beyond mining, where margins swing with bitcoin’s price and network difficulty.

Investor reaction has been mixed. Shares of CleanSpark gained more than 20% in pre-market on the news but have since dropped to 9% gains on the day. 

The Georgia lease offers somewhat of a hedge. Contracted rent from a creditworthy tenant provides a revenue stream that does not rise and fall with hash prices, while the company keeps its mining fleet and bitcoin treasury intact. 

The next test is execution: bringing 175 megawatts online before the close of 2027 and turning the Texas letter of intent into signed leases.

This post CleanSpark Signs $6.6 Billion Data Center Lease as Bitcoin Miner Pivots to Compute first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Source: Bitcoin Magazine – Read More

Bitcoin Magazine

‘Don’t Let China Win’: President Trump Presses Senate on Clarity Act in Final Stretch

The Senate returns to Washington on July 13, with the clock running down on the most consequential piece of crypto legislation in years. Lawmakers now have roughly four weeks to schedule, debate, and pass the CLARITY Act before the August recess. 

President Trump weighed in directly on Monday, posting on Truth Social that “in honor of Senator Lindsey Graham, a big supporter, the U.S. Senate should pass the Clarity Act” and warning that China and other countries “would like to take complete and total control of this major financial ‘happening,’” as well as A.I. 

White House crypto adviser Patrick Witt amplified the urgency, noting the critical week coincides with the one-year anniversary of the GENIUS Act and cautioning, “We cannot afford to delay any longer.”

This is a window many policy watchers see as the last realistic chance to enact comprehensive digital-asset market structure legislation this Congress.

The CLARITY Act would draw a firm regulatory line between the SEC and the CFTC, granting the commodities regulator exclusive jurisdiction over spot markets for “digital commodities” while leaving the SEC to oversee investment-contract assets. 

It cleared the House in July 2025 by a bipartisan 294–134 vote and advanced out of the Senate Banking Committee in May by a 15-9 margin, with two Democrats joining all Republicans. 

Those committee votes, however, came with warnings that floor support was not guaranteed.

This week’s milestone is the release of updated text merging the Senate Banking and Agriculture Committee versions, the clearest signal yet of what survived negotiations and what remains unsettled. 

JUST IN: President Trump says “The U.S. Senate should pass the Clarity Act.” pic.twitter.com/9Y7VxKZ3ck

— Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) July 13, 2026

Clarity Act issues remain 

The bill missed the July 4 signing ceremony that White House crypto adviser Patrick Witt had targeted, and while meetings ran through the recess, the thorniest issues remain unresolved, according to Crypto in America. Getting to 60 votes may prove harder than getting this far, and with the Republican conference shrinking, Democratic buy-in matters more than ever.

Chief among them is the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act, folded into the CLARITY Act as Section 604, which would shield non-custodial software developers from being treated as money transmitters. 

Law enforcement groups argue the language, as written, would hamper investigations into on-chain crime, and Democratic support may hinge on revisions.

An ethics standoff

The more explosive fight is over ethics. Negotiators have yet to reach a CLARITY Act deal with the White House on guardrails around conflicts of interest tied to President Trump’s crypto ventures, after disclosures showed he earned more than $1 billion from crypto-related businesses last year. 

House members have pressed the Senate to act while addressing those concerns, and a coalition of more than 200 companies has urged leadership to bring the bill to the floor. The coalition argued that the bill would establish a clear federal framework for digital assets and help keep innovation in the U.S.

Complicating the math, the death of Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and the continued absence of Mitch McConnell (R-KY) leave Republicans with almost no room for error in reaching 60 votes.

Sentiment is split. Solana Policy Institute President Kristin Smith says momentum is building and a floor vote before recess remains achievable, echoing CFTC leadership calling the bill “so close.” 

Others are wary: Galaxy Digital cut its passage odds to 50-50, citing the shrinking calendar and competing priorities like the NDAA. The firm said the legislation still faces procedural hurdles, unresolved ethics and developer-protection disputes, and a crowded Senate agenda that could delay consideration until September. Galaxy said the odds would improve if Senate leaders commit to a July vote. Odds were as high as 70% earlier this year.

The next four weeks may be CLARITY’s last chance in the 119th Congress.

This post ‘Don’t Let China Win’: President Trump Presses Senate on Clarity Act in Final Stretch first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Source: Bitcoin Magazine – Read More

Bitcoin Magazine

U.S. Representatives Urge Senate to Vote on CLARITY Act in July, Address Ethics Concerns

Rep. French Hill wants a deadline. 

One year after the House passed the Digital Asset Market CLARITY Act, the Arkansas Republican who chairs the House Financial Services Committee used a Fox Business interview with anchor Maria Bartiromo to press Senate leaders for a floor vote before the August recess.

“I’ve encouraged Senate leadership to put it on the floor,” Hill said. “I think if you schedule a floor date here in the month of July, that will cause these final meetings, these final discussions to take place. You’ve got to have a deadline in Congress to get people to move and find consensus.” 

Hill thanked Senators Kirsten Gillibrand, Cynthia Lummis, John Boozman and Tim Scott for working toward a deal, and pointed to the 78 Democrats who backed the House measure a year ago.

Hill’s central argument is that the CLARITY Act would resolve the ethics concerns now used to block it, rather than deepen them. 

Critics point to President Trump’s crypto ventures, including $TRUMP meme coin licensing and World Liberty Financial token sales, which a July 1 financial disclosure tied to about $1.4 billion in 2025 income. 

Hill contends a market framework offers the transparency those critics want. 

“If we passed the CLARITY Act last summer, many of the things that people are expressing concern about — meme coin issuance, co-investment, use of exchange, investing in exchanges — all that would be under a market framework of regulation with clarity, no pun intended, and that would provide a lot of transparency to people that are concerned about the Trump family’s investments,” he said.

JUST IN: Congressman French Hill says lawmakers are going to have a field hearing for the Clarity Act in New York next week

“We’ve got to get this market framework in place to be combined with the GENIUS Act” pic.twitter.com/F1b9QpSdQT

— Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) July 10, 2026

Clarity Act pairs with the GENIUS Act

Hill framed the bill as the missing half of a system that pairs it with the GENIUS Act, the stablecoin law enacted last year. 

“Stablecoin is like a cell phone not connected to a cell phone network,” he said, “and the market framework is in fact that network that we need.” To keep the pressure on, Hill plans a field hearing in New York next week, led by digital assets subcommittee chair Rep. Bryan Steil, to make the case for a market structure.

His push drew support from two other voices in the same Bartiromo appearance. CFTC Chairman Michael Selig warned of “mission creep beyond what’s really critical here” and cautioned that a stalled bill leaves the rules to regulators. 

Coinbase Vice Chair Ryan VanGrack, a former SEC official, described the measure as “on the one-yard line,” with senators from both parties “working around the clock to get this across the finish line.”

JUST IN: Coinbase Vice Chair says Clarity Act has bipartisan support

“Democratic and Republican senators are working around the clock to get this across the finish line.” pic.twitter.com/OvKPU3SHuC

— Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) July 10, 2026

The Senate returns July 13 with about three weeks before recess. Prediction market Polymarket prices Clarity Act 2026 passage near 39%, a fall from the prior month’s 74%.

This post U.S. Representatives Urge Senate to Vote on CLARITY Act in July, Address Ethics Concerns first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Source: Bitcoin Magazine – Read More

Bitcoin Magazine

Metaplanet Announces Joint Study to Bring Bitcoin-Backed Digital Credit to Japan

Metaplanet wants to turn its bitcoin pile into a credit market. On Friday, Japan’s largest corporate bitcoin holder said it has opened a joint study with three partners to build tokenized credit products backed by bitcoin, a step that pushes the company past simple treasury accumulation and toward the role of a financial platform.

The study group brings together Metaplanet, the yen stablecoin issuer JPYC, the regulated security token platform Progmat, and Siiibo Securities, the licensed brokerage Metaplanet bought last month for 2.1 billion yen, or about $13 million. Siiibo becomes Metaplanet Securities on July 13.

The four firms will examine whether bitcoin can serve as collateral for credit instruments that pay interest each day. Metaplanet frames this as a product that exists in the United States but not in Japan. 

Digitization, the company said, would allow trading and settlement of these instruments around the clock, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, with rights management at the holder level, pro-rata interest math handled in software, and redemptions recorded on a public ledger.

Bitcoin-backed credit is a young product class. Public companies that hold bitcoin use the asset as core collateral for debt offerings, and those offerings pay dividends or interest. The design takes a static coin balance and turns it into an instrument that throws off cash.

Metaplanet was blunt about how early this is. “The four companies will examine issues in product design, the need for proof-of-concept initiatives, and the possibility of future issuance,” the company said. “At this time, nothing has been determined regarding issuance timing, terms, yield, product details, distribution methods, or the form of collaboration.” 

Why Japan?

The pitch rests on a gap in Japan’s debt market. That market favors large corporations that can float public bonds. Mid-sized and growth companies face steep costs and heavy operational load around issuance, sales, investor management, interest payments, and redemptions. Many of them stay shut out.

Digital credit, in Metaplanet’s telling, could open the door to those smaller firms. Onchain infrastructure would bridge traditional capital markets and blockchain rails, cut the manual work, and give issuers a path to raise money that a public bond sale did not offer them. If it works, a growth company in Tokyo could raise debt on a system that settles at any hour and tracks every holder in code.

Each partner brings one piece. Metaplanet and its securities arm will design the products that fuse bitcoin with credit, sell them to investors, field customer questions, and manage the instruments after issuance. 

JPYC will test whether its yen-pegged stablecoin can move payments and redemptions through the system. Progmat will supply the regulated tokenization layer, which tracks ownership, processes transfers, and wires the whole thing to the stablecoin payment system.

The division of labor maps onto a full stack: an issuer and distributor with a license, a settlement asset, and a token platform.

Metaplanet’s bigger plan

The study fits a strategy the company calls Project Nova, its plan to build a bitcoin-centric financial platform in Japan. The Siiibo purchase gave Metaplanet a Type I Financial Instruments Business Operator registration, the license Japan requires to structure and sell financial products to retail investors. 

Siiibo, founded in 2019, runs an online platform for private-placement corporate bonds and has backed more than 40 issuers across 100-plus offerings. Metaplanet gains that track record, plus a shareholder base of about 250,000 investors to sell into.

Simon Gerovich, Metaplanet’s president and CEO, has cast the shift in stark terms. “We view Bitcoin not as a treasury reserve asset, but as the foundation of the next generation of financial ecosystems,” he said when the Siiibo deal was announced.

Metaplanet holds 43,000 BTC, worth about $2.47 billion. Strategy and Twenty One Capital are the two public holders ranked above it.

For the moment, the digital credit plan is a set of questions and four companies willing to study them. Whether it becomes a product depends on the proof-of-concept work that remains. But the direction is clear: Metaplanet wants its bitcoin to do more than sit on a balance sheet. It wants the coin to underwrite a market.

This post Metaplanet Announces Joint Study to Bring Bitcoin-Backed Digital Credit to Japan first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Source: Bitcoin Magazine – Read More

Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin’s New Debt Machine is Facing Its First Major Test

Public companies kept stacking Bitcoin in June, but the month’s real story played out in a corner of the market that did not exist a couple of years ago: the preferred shares that treasury firms now use to fund their coin purchases. 

A new report from BitcoinTreasuries.net calls June the first true stress test for this “digital credit” market, and the results offer a mixed but telling verdict on where corporate Bitcoin adoption goes next.

First, the buying. Public treasuries added close to 9,000 BTC before sales in June, or about 7,300 BTC on a net basis, worth some $427 million at the month-end price of $58,398. That counts as moderate growth, and two names did most of the work. 

Michael Saylor’s Strategy added 3,625 BTC net, and Strive added 3,364, with each company spending in the neighborhood of $200 million. 

Strip out those two and the rest of the field bought about 2,000 BTC. For the full second quarter, the report estimates 110,000 BTC in net additions, a pace that beat the two quarters before it.

The context matters here. Bitcoin sat well below its October 2025 peak near $126,000 and dipped under $60,000 during the month. That backdrop set the stage for the drama in digital credit.

Preferred shares to fuel bitcoin

To understand why that drama matters, it helps to know how the model works. Companies such as Strategy no longer rely on their own cash to buy Bitcoin. They issue preferred shares that promise investors a fixed or variable dividend, sell them near a $100 par value, and route the proceeds into coins.

Strategy’s flagship product, STRC, and Strive’s version, SATA, became the two biggest of these instruments. For a stretch, they traded in a tight band around par, and investors treated them as a place to park money at a healthy yield.

That calm bred risk. As the report explains, a long run near par let leverage build inside STRC as buyers borrowed to amplify the trade. When Bitcoin’s price slid, that leverage turned into a trigger. 

Starting June 18, STRC and SATA fell below their $100 par. Leveraged holders got margin-called, forced sales pushed prices down, and STRC bottomed near $75. SATA weakened from a mix of its own pressures and spillover from STRC. 

This was not a crisis of the underlying dividends, which kept flowing, but a crisis of positioning, the report framed.

The recovery came fast enough to reassure the faithful. By July 2, STRC changed hands near $87 and SATA near $97, prices that held into the report’s July 9 publication. Neither Strategy nor Strive missed a dividend. 

Strategy’s bitcoin holdings

The report notes that Strategy held 847,363 BTC at an average cost near $75,651 and had a $1.1 billion dollar reserve in mid-June, while Strive kept an 18-month dividend reserve. The pitch: these are cash-flow questions, not solvency questions.

Strategy did not sit still. Saylor’s firm rolled out share and digital-credit buybacks, raised STRC dividends, and set up a dollar reserve, a package meant to steady prices while it keeps buying coins. Saylor framed it as a balance between commitment to Bitcoin and the “liquidity, discipline, and active capital management” the credit strategy demands.

Since then, Strategy has sold $3,588 and now holds 843,775 bitcoin. 

The market voted with volume. Combined STRC and SATA trading topped $10 billion in June, a monthly record for each, and that came without new at-the-market share sales feeding the pipeline. Demand for the paper, in other words, did not vanish when the price broke.

BitcoinTreasuries.net polled its readers, an audience it concedes leans pro-digital-credit, and found more optimism than fear. A slim majority, 52%, did not see the price drop as a major problem. Most holders sat tight, and 52% of all respondents bought STRC or SATA after June 18. 

At the same time, three-quarters expect price swings to recur, so nobody is calling the risk gone. Looking ahead, 77.8% expect the digital-credit supply to grow by the end of 2027, and about a fifth expect it to clear $50 billion.

This post Bitcoin’s New Debt Machine is Facing Its First Major Test first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Source: Bitcoin Magazine – Read More

Bitcoin Magazine

BitGo Adds Quantum-Risk Controls to Bitcoin Custody

BitGo Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: BTGO) introduced a set of tools to help institutions measure and reduce the quantum-computing risk tied to their Bitcoin holdings. The digital asset infrastructure company said the features apply to UTXO-based wallets and its multi-signature custody service.

The release builds on BitGo’s multi-signature architecture, which the firm pioneered for Bitcoin to reduce single points of failure. The new controls give clients more visibility into wallet-key exposure, better handling of unspent transaction outputs, and workflows for institutional wallet operations.

At the center of the launch is a Quantum Risk Score, an in-platform system that rates potential quantum exposure across supported Bitcoin wallets. A Fix Exposed Addresses Workflow guides clients through moving funds from addresses with elevated exposure into new addresses with stronger key hygiene. 

A new UTXO Selection Method groups and prioritizes coins by address to limit the exposure that partial spends create. Updated default address-type controls steer wallets away from transaction patterns that raise quantum concerns.

Bitcoin could face quantum attacks

The risk stems from how Bitcoin addresses work. An address whose public key has appeared on-chain could, in a future with capable quantum machines, face attack. 

Estimates place 6.9 million Bitcoin in addresses with exposed public keys. Funds in address types that reveal a public key from creation, such as Taproot or Pay-to-Public-Key, fall outside the scope of the application and need separate remediation.

“We believe the safest key is one whose public key has never been revealed on-chain,” said Mike Belshe, CEO and co-founder of BitGo. “These capabilities give institutions a practical way to understand and reduce quantum exposure while continuing to rely on the proven security of multi-signature.”

BitGo said no quantum computer can break Bitcoin at present. Adam Back, co-founder and CEO of Blockstream and BSTR, framed the timing as a reason to act. “Nobody has a quantum computer that can touch Bitcoin today, but that’s exactly why the work should start now, while it’s calm and optional rather than urgent and forced,” he said.

The company described the tools as a complement to future protocol-level post-quantum signature upgrades to Bitcoin, rather than a replacement. 

The features cover supported UTXO-based assets and multi-signature configurations.

This post BitGo Adds Quantum-Risk Controls to Bitcoin Custody first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Source: Bitcoin Magazine – Read More

Bitcoin Magazine

Bull Bitcoin Files Landmark Legal Challenge to Annul France’s DAC8 Crypto Data Surveillance Rules

Bull Bitcoin exchange, recently licensed under MiCA, is challenging the European directive in French courts that sets up a mass surveillance database, putting millions of crypto users at risk. 

Bull Bitcoin, the world’s oldest Bitcoin-only and non-custodial exchange, recently licensed under MiCA by France’s financial markets regulator AMF, has filed a legal challenge before the Conseil d’État, France’s supreme administrative court. The challenge seeks to annul Decree No. 2025-1276, the main measure transposing the European DAC8 directive into French law, on the grounds that it creates a massive surveillance grid and database that institutions can not secure from leaks and data hacks, ultimately putting civilians at risk of kidnapping and physical harm. 

Alongside the legal action, the company is making dac8.com public: “a complete, fully sourced resource for citizens, journalists and policymakers,” according to a press release shared with Bitcoin Magazine. 

In recent years, there has been an alarming rise in kidnappings and physical attacks on crypto users, most concentrated in Europe, with France being an epicenter. Organized crime seems to be exploiting poor data reporting laws of law-abiding crypto users who, by paying their taxes, expose their ownership of crypto assets. Given that Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are not reversible and can be transferred internationally with ease, criminals are hunting down crypto users. France has had the second most physical attacks on crypto users after the USA, which has a much larger population, according to Gart, a company dedicated to protecting users from this rising threat.

High-profile figures in the Bitcoin and broader crypto industry have been targeted in recent years, such as Binance France CEO David Prinçay and Ledger co-founder David Balland, who lost a finger during the incident, among many others. Jameson Lopp, co-founder of Casa, a high-security Bitcoin and Ethereum wallet company, has organized ‘wrench attack’ data for years in a database on GitHub showing an accelerating trend of attacks. 

Bull Bitcoin argues in its legal challenge to the DAC8 that further consolidation and sharing of crypto user data will only perpetuate this trend of physical attacks. However, they also argue that these personal security risks created by the DAC8 are also working against the stated intentions of the regulations. They argue that users will simply find legal alternatives to centralized, regulated exchanges, opting to purchase the assets off the grid via peer-to-peer exchanges, home mining or offshore unregulated alternatives, making tax collection even more difficult.

User Data Honey Pots

DAC8 turns the natural incentive a company has to protect its users’ data into a valuable multinational database with many entry points, which cybersecurity experts have for a long time called a honey pot. Bull Bitcoin points out that regulated crypto-asset service providers (CASPs) under MiCA, DORA and the GDPR are supervised, sanctionable professionals with financial incentives to protect their customers. DAC8, in turn, does the opposite: it moves data into administrative reporting networks where access is broader, and accountability is harder for users to assess. The security of the whole — Bull Bitcoin concludes — is then only as strong as its weakest link. 

The history of data security over the past decades shows that amassing user data and keeping it safe over time is very difficult. Just this year, the French National Agency for Secure Credentials (ANTS, also known as France Titres) suffered a major breach detected on April 15, 2026, exposing data from up to 11.7–19 million accounts. Compromised information included login IDs, full names, email addresses, dates of birth, account identifiers, and, in some cases, postal addresses, places of birth, and phone numbers. 

Months earlier, the French National Bank account registry also suffered a major hack, exposing data tied to approximately 1.2 million accounts. The compromised information included IBANs, account holder names, addresses, and, in some cases, tax identification numbers, though officials stated the attacker could not view balances or conduct transactions.

In the United States, the situation is not much better. The Equifax Data Breach in 2017 affected 147 million Americans, and the National Public Data Breach of 2024 affected over 200 million Americans, leading to leaks of social security numbers among other critical information. And back in 2015, the Office of Personal Management of the U.S. government was also breached, compromising a large number of U.S. Government officials. The data stolen included everything from social security numbers to medical records. 

The list of such breaches is long, and the only logical conclusion to draw from it is that the less user information that ends up in these honeypots, the better, as ultimately all of these hacks put civilians at risk either from physical attacks or from identity-theft related fraud. 

Families On the Front Lines

Of the many issues identified by Bull Bitcoin and documented on the DAC8 website, the most alarming one might be how even individuals who have not purchased crypto might end up harmed by this concentration of data, just by familial association with a Bitcoiner or crypto user.

Citing data by Certik, Bull Bitcoin highlights that more than half of the violent incidents recorded in 2026 against crypto owners targeted a family member — spouse, child, elderly parent — as a direct victim or as a pressure lever over the key holder. On the topic, Bull Bitcoin assets that  “DAC8 therefore exposes not only crypto-asset holders, but their entire close family circle: between 40 and 135 million Europeans fall into a physical-risk zone, without any of them ever having consented.”

Francis Pouliot, CEO of Bull Bitcoin considers this overreach into the privacy of Euroeans to be potentially catastrophic for the prosperity of the continent, he minced no words in the press release saying that “DAC8 has transformed the concept of Know Your Customer into Kill Your Customer.” He added, “We cannot let the very foundations of civilization be shattered by this attack on privacy rights. We must draw a line in the sand and refuse to cede any more territory before we have nothing left. Someone must take a stand. It appears that no one else is willing and able to do so. Therefore, it falls to BULL to lead this fight.”

The DAC8.com is rich with facts, figures, official sources (EUR-Lex, OECD, Legifrance) and analysis, in French, English and other European languages for those interested in reviewing it and freely using it.

This post Bull Bitcoin Files Landmark Legal Challenge to Annul France’s DAC8 Crypto Data Surveillance Rules first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Juan Galt.

Source: Bitcoin Magazine – Read More

Bitcoin Magazine

Polymarket Turns On Instant Bitcoin Deposits Via Lightning Network, Powered by Spark

Polymarket, the crypto-native prediction market, has begun supporting instant Bitcoin deposits over the Lightning Network. The feature uses infrastructure from Spark, a Bitcoin protocol built for payments and stablecoins. 

In a post on X, Spark told users they can deposit BTC to the platform with more speed and more privacy than the older method offered.

The move extends a funding push that started in October 2025, when Polymarket switched on standard on-chain Bitcoin deposits. Those deposits carried a wait: most on-chain Bitcoin transactions need three to six confirmations, a window of 10 to 60 minutes, before a platform credits an account. 

The on-chain route carried a higher minimum deposit, a reflection of bridging costs. For a trader who wants a position on a live market, both the delay and the fee are a cost.

Lightning and Spark close the gap. Spark validates a Bitcoin transaction at the moment it broadcasts, checking for double-spend risk, fee adequacy, and replace-by-fee flags. 

JUST IN: The world’s largest predictions market Polymarket now accepts Bitcoin Lightning deposits! pic.twitter.com/CxOObnbyJ2

— Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) July 7, 2026

The protocol credits the deposit in under a second and absorbs the confirmation risk, a design Spark markets as zero-conf. 

Polymarket does not have to manage confirmation thresholds or run its own Lightning nodes; a single Spark SDK handles on-chain, Lightning, and stablecoin rails.

Spark keeps deposits self-custodial. Each wallet ties to the user’s own keys, so the protocol, not Polymarket, carries the operational load, and users retain control of funds until a trade. 

Spark counts wallet providers such as Breez, Xverse, and Cake among the teams building on the same rails, and Tether chief Paolo Ardoino has praised the protocol as a route to programmable Bitcoin over Lightning.

Polymarket’s boom over the years

Timing matters for a company in a growth phase. 

Founded in 2020, Polymarket rose to prominence during the 2024 U.S. presidential election and has added Chainlink oracles, earnings markets, and a fresh contest with regulated rival Kalshi. 

Faster, cheaper funding lowers the barrier for the Bitcoin holders who make up a large share of the crypto audience, and it hands Polymarket a fresh answer to a rival that has pressed it on volume.

This post Polymarket Turns On Instant Bitcoin Deposits Via Lightning Network, Powered by Spark first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Source: Bitcoin Magazine – Read More

Bitcoin Magazine

Vanguard Warms to Crypto With Search for Digital Assets Chief

Vanguard, one of the world’s largest asset managers and a longtime skeptic of cryptocurrency, has opened a search for a head of digital assets, a senior role that would shape the firm’s strategy across crypto and blockchain-based finance.

The job, posted this week within Vanguard Personal Wealth and based in Dallas, calls for an executive to develop the firm’s digital asset vision, identify business opportunities, and lead execution across product, technology, operations, legal, and compliance teams. 

According to the posting, the hire would serve as Vanguard’s “senior subject matter expert,” advise senior leadership on market developments, and represent the firm in discussions with regulators and industry groups. 

Vanguard also wants the executive to help shape “market standards” and build a scalable, end-to-end strategy for personal wealth clients.

The listing extends beyond crypto trading. It names tokenization, stablecoins, digital wallets, custody, and blockchain-based settlement as areas the new leader would evaluate, along with deciding whether Vanguard should build capabilities in-house, partner with outside firms, or hold off on entering parts of the market. 

The role would involve constructing a multi-year roadmap and designing governance and risk frameworks.

Vanguard’s journey into bitcoin 

Vanguard reported $12 trillion in assets under management at the end of 2025, a scale that places it second only to BlackRock. 

The move appears to mark the first time the firm has sought to hire someone dedicated to cryptocurrency strategy, and it comes after years in which the bank stood apart from rivals. BlackRock, Fidelity, and Franklin Templeton rolled out spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds and other blockchain products while Vanguard declined to follow.

The firm’s public posture has been pointed. Vanguard has described Bitcoin as an “immature asset class” ill-suited to long-term investors. 

Chief Executive Salim Ramji, who joined the company from BlackRock in July 2024 after leading its iShares business — the unit behind the large iShares Bitcoin ETF — has said the decision not to launch a Bitcoin ETF was “entirely consistent” with the firm’s investment philosophy, stressing the value of consistency in the products a firm offers.

Even so, Vanguard has not stayed on the sidelines entirely. In December, the firm began allowing brokerage clients to trade cryptocurrency ETFs and mutual funds on its platform, a shift that opened access to funds holding Bitcoin and some other crypto.

At one point last year, the bank also became the largest shareholder in Strategy, the company that holds the world’s biggest corporate Bitcoin treasury — a position that flowed from its index funds rather than an active bet on the asset.

The new search does not signal an imminent product launch, and Vanguard has maintained that it has no plans to issue its own crypto investment vehicles. 

What the posting does suggest is a broadening of focus beyond simply granting access to third-party funds, toward assessing how digital assets might fit within its wealth management business over the long term.

This post Vanguard Warms to Crypto With Search for Digital Assets Chief first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Source: Bitcoin Magazine – Read More

Bitcoin Magazine

USDT Returns to Bitcoin: RGB and UTEXO Enable Private Lightning Settlements

Tether, the company behind USDT, is preparing to issue the stablecoin natively on Bitcoin through the RGB protocol version v0.11.1. Deployed by the UTEXO software lab, USDT is set to return to the chain where it first launched in 2014 via the Omni-Mastercoin Layer. 

UTEXO, the company leading the commercial rollout, has positioned itself as the issuer and distributor of this Bitcoin-native USDT in partnership with Tether.  “Finally, after eight years of development—if not more—we are the company that is launching USDT over Bitcoin with strong support from Tether,” said Viktor Ihnatiuk, UTEXO co-founder, in an exclusive interview with Bitcoin Magazine. 

The RGB protocol combines its novel client-side validation with the Lightning network for instant, private settlements, while anchoring security to Bitcoin’s UTXO model. Users can expect to be able to handle USDT on native Bitcoin addresses as well as send and receive it over the Lightning network with compatible wallets. 

The RGB protocol on Bitcoin also offers significant privacy features to USDT users as the asset benefits from Bitcoin’s UTXO model, which standardizes fresh addresses for every transaction compared to the account-based address reused commonly in EVM blockchains like Tron, Ethereum or Solana. Address reuse is the first mistake of onchain privacy, yet most altcoins built their interfaces to reuse addresses, despite the risk it poses to users. RGB’s integration with the Lightning network further protects user privacy by moving USDT via the offchain payments network, which leaves few marks on the public blockchain. The deep integration with Tether also means that there are fewer middleman companies charging extra fees or collecting data. 

On the topic, Vktor emphasized that, “We built Utexo so that USDT could move on Bitcoin the way money is supposed to move: instantly, privately, with no surprises on costs. Our partners integrate our API once and can route USDT on the most resilient open network ever built, with full control over cost structure.”

UTEXO vs TRON

UTEXO emerged from a joint venture involving Viktor’s Boosty Venture Studio, Fulgur Ventures, and Tether Investments. The goal was straightforward: bring RGB to mainnet after years of delays under prior development teams. The protocol had been in active development since at least 2016, but failed to be ready for the 2017 bull market, giving the TRON blockchain dominance over USDT volume and usage throughout the developing world, a dominance which it still retains. 

UTEXO of specifically building “the last mile” of software needed for wide USDT deployment across the Bitcoin ecosystem, which includes a software development kit, APIs, mid-level protocols, UI design work and even a mint bridge that is live today at mint.utexo.com. This bridge lets users move USDT across popular blockchains with “deterministic low fees” and no middlemen thanks to its direct integration with Tether as the primary mint. The RGB protocol layer was developed by Bitfinex R&D Strategist Federico Tenga.

“Right now if you want to swap USDT to Bitcoin you need to pay high fees for all these wallets who charge you a one percent wallet fee plus a swap provider charge of one percent plus, and you have slippage one percent as well, so you pay three percent, and also you wait forever until the swap happens” Viktor told Bitcoin Magazine, adding that; “with USDT and Bitcoin over Lightning, for the first time you have two main assets on one chain, you can swap instantly without any slippage. You can swap decentralized USDT to Bitcoin and back on-chain. The price is almost the same as spot markets in Binance.”

Networks like Tron that are primarily used to move USDT also add extra fees, swap commissions and friction to the user experience. They require a different address type, with fees paid in an asset like TRX, which is only ever used to move the stablecoin. With most of the monetary volume in the crypto market concentrated in Bitcoin and Tether, having to buy an altcoin just to pay fees ends up feeling like red tape. 

Bitcoin, as the payment rails of USDT, also comes with blockchain levels of security that other chains simply can not offer. While USDT will always be fundamentally centralized in Tether as a corporation, the rails can also add risk, for example, if a contentious fork occurs or major bugs are found on novel blockchain systems. Bitcoin, being the oldest and most conservative blockchain, delivers a quality assurance of sorts that can not be matched by other chains. 

RGB traces its roots to Peter Todd’s single-use seals back in 2014 and was formalized in 2016 by Giacomo Zucco and Riccardo Casatta. The RGB acronym, originally derived from “Riccardo Giacomo Bitcoin,” was later rebranded “Really Good Bitcoin”. Tether explored the protocol early but faced delays with the previous team. Had RGB shipped on schedule around 2019, the stablecoin landscape and broader DeFi industry might have developed differently around Bitcoin’s UTXO model instead of Ethereum’s account-based system.

As such, bringing USDT back to Bitcoin is a core motivation for UTEXO. Viktor minced no words on the matter: “For the first time in eight years or nine years, USDT is coming back home. We have no chance to fail. If we fail, no one will think about Bitcoin as a settlement layer anymore.”

USDT on Bitcoin via RGB is expected to be launched within weeks, possibly this July, with wallets like Tether Wallet among others announcing support, and exchanges across the world announcing integrations. 

This post USDT Returns to Bitcoin: RGB and UTEXO Enable Private Lightning Settlements first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Juan Galt.

Source: Bitcoin Magazine – Read More

Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin Exchange Inflows Spike to 49,000 BTC in a Day, Signaling More Volatility is Coming: Report

CryptoQuant’s weekly report, “Incoming Volatility?”, makes a clean, data-backed case that something is about to break.

Bitcoin exchange inflows spiked to roughly 49,000 BTC on June 30 — an extreme reading seen only four other times in 2026. Ethereum inflows blew past 1.25 million ETH the same week. Altcoin deposit transactions hit nearly 45,000 a day, the highest in two months and the exact pattern that front-ran Bitcoin’s slide from $82K in early May to below $58K in late June. 

Every one of those signals has historically preceded a directional move, usually down.

And yet, as of Thursday morning, Bitcoin is trading around $61,600 — back above the $60K support the report frames as the line in the sand, and up several thousand dollars from Wednesday’s print near $58,600. The chain is screaming risk-off but the price just shrugged it off. 

The most bearish detail in the report isn’t the raw inflow volume — it’s the composition. The average deposit size doubled from 1 BTC to 2 BTC. That’s not retail panic-selling in dribs and drabs; that’s whales and institutions deliberately repositioning coins onto exchanges. 

As CryptoQuant’s Julio Moreno notes, a jump in average deposit size is a more bearish tell than high volume alone, because it signals intent rather than noise. When large holders queue up to sell, they usually know something, or think they do.

So why did price go the other way? Because the flows aren’t happening in a vacuum. Bitcoin’s June bleed had less to do with anything crypto-native than with capital rotating out of digital assets and into the semiconductor trade, U.S.-Iran tensions stoking inflation fears, and Strategy trimming its stack. 

Mt. Gox moving 10,422 BTC last month revived creditor-selling anxiety ahead of the October repayment deadline. Spot Bitcoin ETFs, meanwhile, have bled billions across a double-digit streak of outflow sessions. 

The whales moving coins to exchanges may simply be positioning for that same macro storm and not really causing it. 

Thursday’s bounce came courtesy of dovish Fed commentary that eased rate-cut fears. That’s the tell within the tell: in this market, macro is the dog and on-chain flows are the tail. 

Bitcoin price action

At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading at $61,469.98, up $1,322.54 (+2.2%) on the day after bouncing off a 24-hour low of $59,520 and peaking near $62,148 around 10 a.m. 

The recovery back above $60,000 — with $32.49B in daily volume and a $1.23T market cap — lines up with the report’s read that $60K is the battleground level, and today the bulls are holding it.

This post Bitcoin Exchange Inflows Spike to 49,000 BTC in a Day, Signaling More Volatility is Coming: Report first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Source: Bitcoin Magazine – Read More

Bitcoin Magazine

Bitget Bolsters Stock+ Platform With U.S. Stock Options Trading

Crypto exchange Bitget has launched US stock options, allowing users to trade options on US-listed companies. 

The company described itself in a note to Bitcoin Magazine as the world’s largest Universal Exchange and states that it is the only major crypto exchange offering US stock options alongside crypto and contract-for-difference markets in gold, forex, commodities and indices.

The initial release includes long call and long put strategies for eligible users. A call option lets a trader take a bullish position on a stock, while a put option allows a trader to express a bearish view or manage downside exposure. 

Risk for buyers is limited to the premium paid, and an option can expire without value if the expected price movement does not occur.

The launch expands Bitget’s stock product line. 

The company’s earlier products include tokenized stocks and pre-IPO access to private market opportunities. Stock options join the Stock+ offering, which the company positions as a direct-access venue for US equities built for traders familiar with established stock market products and regulated market infrastructure. 

Bitget stated that the addition supports its goal of combining crypto, stocks, commodities and other assets in one trading environment.

Bitget: The U.S. options market is booming

Demand for listed options has reached record levels. The US options market processed more than 15.2 billion contracts in 2025, an average of about 60 million contracts per trading day. The figures reflect wider use of options among retail and institutional participants for directional trading, hedging and capital management.

“We have moved first to connect stock opportunities with our users,” said Gracy Chen, CEO of Bitget. “From tokenized stocks to now options, we are executing on convergence. Our products provide advanced trading access to stocks, gold, crypto and worldwide assets.”

The first release focuses on single-leg options buying to provide an entry point for users. The company plans additional functionality, including multi-leg strategies, as the Stock+ options product develops.

For the launch, eligible users who complete a first US stock options trade may receive $15 in NVIDIA stock, subject to campaign terms and regional availability.

Bitget said they have more than 125 million users and access to over two million crypto tokens, along with 500-plus tokenized stocks, ETFs, commodities, foreign exchange and precious metals such as gold. 

The company holds partnerships with MotoGP and UNICEF, the latter to support blockchain education for 1.1 million people by 2027. Bitget states that it leads the tokenized traditional-finance market across 150 regions.

This post Bitget Bolsters Stock+ Platform With U.S. Stock Options Trading first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Source: Bitcoin Magazine – Read More

Bitcoin Magazine

Moody’s Flags Quantum Threat to Bitcoin and Digital Assets After Trump Orders

A pair of executive orders signed by President Trump on June 22 has pushed the quantum computing question from the research lab into the boardrooms of crypto exchanges, custodians and stablecoin issuers. 

In a June 24 sector comment, Moody’s Ratings warned that the credit implications for digital assets are significant, and that the industry now faces pressure to prove it can defend the cryptography at its foundation.

The orders make quantum computing and its security a strategic national priority. One directs the development of a quantum computer “powerful enough to initiate the era of quantum-enabled scientific discovery,” with system specifications due within 90 days. 

A second accelerates the federal migration to post-quantum cryptography, moving preparedness deadlines to 2030-31 from the prior 2035 target. 

That four-year jump is the detail crypto builders should note.

Moody’s frames the risk in stark terms for public blockchains. Bitcoin relies on public-key cryptography to secure ownership, authorize transactions and manage core infrastructure. A sufficiently capable quantum computer could break the elliptic-curve signatures that guard private keys. 

Unlike a bank wire, an on-chain transaction offers limited ability to reverse a theft or recover funds. As the analysts put it, compromised keys “may lead to immediate and irreversible on-chain outcomes.”

The finality that makes Bitcoin trustless also removes the safety net.

Moody’s: There is a 2030 deadline for a decentralized network

The near-term danger is not a working quantum machine but a strategy called “harvest now, decrypt later.” Adversaries capture encrypted data today and store it for the day a capable machine arrives, an event the industry calls “Q-Day.” 

For Bitcoin, dormant wallets and reused addresses with exposed public keys form a standing target. Satoshi-era coins, held in early pay-to-public-key outputs, sit among the most exposed.

Moody’s expects market participants to face growing demand for “cryptographic agility,” the ability to inventory, update and replace vulnerable algorithms without severe disruption. 

The firm suggests exchanges, custodians and tokenization platforms will need migration paths toward quantum-resistant standards, plus honest assessments of the exposure in existing wallets, custody arrangements and smart contracts.

There is a credit-rating logic underneath the warning. Institutions that present credible quantum transition plans, Moody’s argues, stand better positioned to win adoption from regulated financial players and to satisfy rising supervisory expectations on cyber resilience. 

For a sector courting Wall Street and pension money, quantum readiness becomes a gatekeeping requirement rather than a distant science project.

For Bitcoin, the technical fix exists in the form of proposed quantum-resistant signature schemes, but adoption demands consensus, soft forks and coordinated wallet migration across a decentralized network. That is the harder problem. Moody’s has now put a date on the deadline, and the clock reads 2030.

This post Moody’s Flags Quantum Threat to Bitcoin and Digital Assets After Trump Orders first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Source: Bitcoin Magazine – Read More

Bitcoin Magazine

Standard Chartered and LMAX Group Execute First Live Digital Asset Prime Brokerage Trades

Standard Chartered has executed its first digital asset prime brokerage trades with LMAX Group, a milestone in the build-out of institutional market infrastructure for crypto. 

With this move, the bank became one of the first Global Systemically Important Banks (G-SIBs) to test a prime brokerage model for digital assets inside established risk, compliance and market frameworks.

The pilot covered spot Bitcoin (XBT/USD) with T+1 settlement through Standard Chartered’s UK branch. These were the bank’s first digital asset credit intermediation trades under a prime brokerage structure. 

The transactions ran on LMAX Digital, LMAX Group’s regulated institutional venue, with Standard Chartered Prime Brokerage acting as the credit intermediary between counterparties. Settlement completed through the bank’s digital asset custody platform in the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC).

Prime brokerage has underpinned equities and foreign exchange for decades, giving institutions a single counterparty for credit, execution and settlement. Crypto has lacked that layer. As capital shifts away from direct exchange access, the gap has widened: in 2025, flows through prime brokers and OTC desks grew at more than 10 times the rate of flows into exchanges.

A digital asset prime brokerage at scale needs a counterparty with the governance, risk discipline and credit capacity to stand behind institutional trades. Most global banks have partnered with crypto-native firms or stayed on the sidelines. 

Standard Chartered said their approach differs: the bank is stepping in as credit intermediary on its own balance sheet, with LMAX Group supplying the regulated execution infrastructure beneath it. 

In short, a bank is bringing its own balance sheet to digital assets rather than renting someone else’s.

What the Standard Chartered pilot validated

The transactions confirmed core controls across credit, margin, risk management, trade booking, settlement and reporting, and showed the model operating inside existing regulatory frameworks. 

The test brought together LMAX Group’s execution and matching technology with the bank’s client connectivity, electronic messaging, trade matching and an early validation of netting approaches. It offered a view into how traditional and digital asset infrastructure can operate as one workflow.

The two firms describe the pilot as a step toward a roadmap for scalable, institutional-grade market infrastructure. 

It builds on the digital asset trading capability Standard Chartered launched in 2025.

“This pilot is part of our broader strategy to build a comprehensive institutional-grade digital asset platform, spanning custody, trading and prime brokerage,” said Alison Higgins, Head of Prime Services at Standard Chartered. “As demand accelerates, we are helping our Prime Brokerage clients capture new opportunities backed by the risk management, controls and balance sheet strength they expect from a G-SIB.”

David Mercer, CEO of LMAX Group, framed the trade as a fix for a structural gap. “The lack of credit counterparties with robust balance sheets on the scale that we see in traditional finance has been a critical missing mechanism in the digital asset market to date,” he said. “This is a great example of the impending convergence of TradFi and digital assets to a cross-asset capital markets future.”

This post Standard Chartered and LMAX Group Execute First Live Digital Asset Prime Brokerage Trades first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Source: Bitcoin Magazine – Read More

Bitcoin Magazine

Visa, Mastercard, And Over 140 Companies Launch Stablecoin Open USD

A coalition of more than 140 companies — among them Visa, Stripe, Mastercard, BlackRock, and Coinbase — announced today the formation of Open Standard and the launch of Open USD (OUSD), a new dollar-pegged stablecoin built to redistribute the economics of the $300 billion stablecoin market.

The project is led by Zach Abrams, co-founder of Bridge, the stablecoin infrastructure firm that Stripe acquired in 2024. 

“Existing stablecoins have great strengths,” Abrams said in a statement, “But to use them at scale, businesses need something that’s open, low-cost, high-throughput, broadly accessible, and aligned to their interests.”

The announcement sent Circle shares down as much as 15% Tuesday, a sign of how directly Open USD targets the USDC issuer’s business model.

The core proposition of Open USD is straightforward: no minting fees, no redemption fees, no volume limits — and most of the interest generated by the stablecoin’s reserves goes to the companies using it, minus a management fee retained by Open Standard.

That reserve income is what makes Circle and Tether profitable. Both issuers park stablecoin backing in short-term U.S. Treasuries and keep the yield themselves. Circle’s USDC carries a market cap of roughly $73 billion; Tether’s USDT sits at around $145 billion. Open USD proposes to share that yield with its distribution network instead.

Governance follows the same logic. Rather than a single issuer calling the shots, Open Standard will be managed by an independent organization with decision-making shared among partner companies.

Who is backing Open USD

The partner list spans nearly every corner of finance. Payment networks include Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Discover. Banks include BNY, Standard Chartered, DBS, and U.S. Bank. On the technology side: Google, Shopify, and IBM. Crypto firms include Coinbase, Ripple, MetaMask, Aave, Bybit, OKX, Galaxy, Fireblocks, and Anchorage Digital.

“Today, we announced Visa is joining Open Standard alongside Stripe, Coinbase, Mastercard, American Express, BlackRock, U.S. Bank, BBVA, Standard Chartered and 100-plus initial partners with the mission of issuing Open USD,” Visa’s head of crypto, Cuy Sheffield, wrote on X.

Open USD is expected to go live later in 2026 on Solana, Stellar, Base, and Polygon. Tempo CEO Matt Huang confirmed OUSD will be natively issued on its network from day one, with support for payments, liquidity, exchanges, and DeFi.

Open Standard is not the first consortium to try this model. Paxos leads the Global Dollar Network (USDG) — backed by Robinhood, Kraken, and Galaxy Digital — on the same premise: share reserve income, grow adoption. 

In Europe, 37 banks and payment providers have organized around Qivalis, a euro-denominated stablecoin, as institutions push back against U.S. dollar dominance in the digital asset space.

The timing is not accidental. Stablecoins have migrated out of crypto trading and into cross-border payments, merchant settlements, and corporate treasury operations. 

Citi projects the market will reach $4 trillion by 2030. 

This post Visa, Mastercard, And Over 140 Companies Launch Stablecoin Open USD first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Source: Bitcoin Magazine – Read More

Bitcoin Magazine

JPMorgan Backs U.S. Crypto Bill, But Puts a Warning Label Front and Center as Senate Eyes August Deadline

JPMorgan threw its support behind federal digital asset legislation Monday, but the bank’s message to Congress was as much a caution as an endorsement: get the framework right, or risk recreating the financial vulnerabilities regulation was designed to prevent.

In a joint op-ed, Umar Farooq, global co-head of JPMorgan Payments, and Peter Muriungi, CEO of Digital Assets and Blockchain Solutions, argued that the United States has a genuine opportunity to lead in digital finance — provided lawmakers pair regulatory clarity with durable safeguards. 

The piece arrived as the Senate race to advance the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act before its August recess, with negotiators still working through sticking points on stablecoin yield provisions, ethics rules for government officials with crypto ties, and liability protections for decentralized finance developers.

“Regulatory clarity matters only if paired with durable safeguards,” Farooq and Muriungi wrote. “Clarity with gaps or loopholes can push activity into lightly supervised channels and weaken long-standing protections.”

The op-ed stands out less for what it celebrates than for what it warns against. Rather than leading with the promise of tokenization and programmable money, the executives spent much of their argument flagging how crypto innovation could go wrong without proper guardrails.

JPMorgan’s take on stablecoins, blockchain

On market structure, JPMorgan’s position was blunt: the blockchain on which a product is issued does not change its economic function. Assets that look and behave like securities should face disclosure, custody, and market integrity rules. 

Decentralized trading platforms that operate like brokers or exchanges should be held to the same standards. Tokenization, the executives argued, should improve how markets operate, not serve as a mechanism for bypassing the rules that have made U.S. capital markets the most trusted in the world.

The bank reserved particular focus for stablecoins, where JPMorgan sees both commercial opportunity and competitive threat. Stablecoins and tokenized deposits could enable faster settlement and reduce friction in cross-border payments, Farooq and Muriungi wrote. 

But when those products offer yield-like incentives or hold balances without meeting bank-level capital, liquidity, and consumer-protection standards, payments innovation becomes shadow banking by another name.

Features such as rewards or cashback on held balances lead many consumers to assume the product carries familiar protections. When it does not, the result is heightened run risk — a concentrated vulnerability that surfaces in the worst moments. 

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon has been among the banking industry’s loudest voices on the issue. “The banks will not accept it,” Dimon said last month, vowing to fight stablecoin yield provisions in the Clarity Act “down to the wire.”

The executives also pressed for strong anti-money laundering and law enforcement tools across the digital asset ecosystem. Broad exemptions for infrastructure that processes core transactions, they argued, can enable opaque arrangements that shield true ownership — a risk for both national security and market integrity.

The op-ed did not arrive without commercial context. Also Monday, JPMorgan announced the expansion of its Kinexys blockchain payments platform to eight currencies, adding the Australian dollar, Hong Kong dollar, Japanese yen, Chinese renminbi, and Singapore dollar to a system that already supports the U.S. dollar, euro, and British pound.

The platform has processed more than $4 trillion in transactions to date, with average daily volume exceeding $7 billion. Payoneer and Japanese energy trader JERA Global Markets are among the first clients using the new currency accounts.

Kinexys earlier this year also launched JPM Coin, a deposit token designed to give institutional clients near-instant, 24/7 settlement without stepping outside the regulated banking system. The token runs on a permissioned blockchain network operated by J.P. Morgan, where client deposits are represented digitally and transfers settle within the network rather than on public rails.

Earlier this week, Fidelity wrote that Bitcoin’s current crypto winter could end if one or more major catalysts emerge, including the continuation of the four-year halving cycle, clearer crypto regulation, Federal Reserve rate cuts, a new breakout crypto use case, or a fresh wave of institutional adoption. 

While none of these factors are guaranteed, the bank argued that history suggests major bull markets have often followed similar shifts in supply dynamics, policy, macro conditions, and investor demand.

JUST IN: JPMorgan on the Clarity Act: “The United States must take great care in how it establishes a framework for digital assets.”

“The promise is clear.” pic.twitter.com/gqVse4GKFy

— Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) June 29, 2026

This post JPMorgan Backs U.S. Crypto Bill, But Puts a Warning Label Front and Center as Senate Eyes August Deadline first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Source: Bitcoin Magazine – Read More

Bitcoin Magazine

Clarity Act Enters Critical Two-Week Window as Senate Heads Into Recess

The Senate has left Washington for the July 4 recess, and the fate of the Clarity Act, the most sweeping digital asset market structure legislation Congress has ever attempted, now rests on negotiations happening out of public view, according to reporting from Crypto in America.

Senators return July 13. From that point, the window to pass the bill before August recess is narrow, and the remaining obstacles are substantial. 

Senate Majority Leader John Thune has signaled he wants to use the week of July 13 for the National Defense Authorization Act, the must-pass defense bill. That would push Clarity Act floor consideration to late July or the first week of August, the final stretch before Congress breaks for summer.

The 60-vote threshold is the central problem. Assuming all 53 Republicans vote yes — not a safe assumption, given Senators Josh Hawley and Rand Paul both voted against the GENIUS Act — the bill still needs at least seven Democrats. 

JUST IN: U.S. Senator Tim Scott says “The Senate should vote on crypto market structure legislation in July.”

“It’s time to deliver for the American people.” pic.twitter.com/S8oCglJCmM

— Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) June 29, 2026

Clarity Act disputes

Getting there requires resolving a core dispute: whether the Clarity Act will include a meaningful ethics framework to address President Trump’s crypto holdings, which have generated more than $2 billion in new wealth for him since he returned to office, according to Reuters.

As of now, no deal has been reached. Senator Cynthia Lummis floated one possible path last week: language that would allow state attorneys general to sue crypto exchanges that list tokens issued by public officials in violation of the act. 

Whether that satisfies the Democrats whose votes are in play remains an open question — and the White House, which would need to sign off on any compromise, has not yet weighed in.

A second fault line runs through Section 604, which incorporates the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act. 

Law enforcement groups argue the provision, as written, would impede their ability to investigate and prosecute on-chain crime. Some industry stakeholders have indicated openness to targeted revisions, but no agreement has been reached.

The Agriculture Committee text presents a third set of problems. Sources familiar with the negotiations point to federal preemption of state law, conflict-of-interest rules for crypto exchanges, and restrictions on affiliate trading as unresolved sticking points that staff will need to work through before senators return.

On July 17, the House Financial Services Committee has scheduled a field hearing to examine “how the Clarity Act unlocks innovation.” 

Senator Tim Scott, chair of the Senate Banking Committee, has been among those pushing for the bill’s passage — a signal that Republican leadership remains committed, at least in principle, to getting it done.

This post Clarity Act Enters Critical Two-Week Window as Senate Heads Into Recess first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Source: Bitcoin Magazine – Read More

Bitcoin Magazine

Billionaire Investor Jeremy Grantham: Bitcoin Will ‘Dwindle Away With a Whimper’

Legendary investor Jeremy Grantham — co-founder of asset management firm GMO and one of Wall Street’s most prominent bubble-spotters — came at Bitcoin again on Friday, calling the asset a “useless, speculative mechanism” destined for slow decline into irrelevance.

Speaking on CNBC’s Squawk Box, Grantham predicted that Bitcoin will “dwindle away, I suspect — not with a bang, but a whimper.” He said he has never owned Bitcoin and believes it will fall to zero, not through a sudden crash but through a gradual erosion of interest over years and decades.

“All Bitcoin does is allow fraudsters to move money around,” he said.

Grantham pointed to Bitcoin’s instability as evidence against its status as a store of value. The coin “halved for no particular reason in a strong economy,” he noted — a critique with fresh teeth given where Bitcoin stands today. 

Gold, he added, has delivered solid gains over the same period.

Perhaps Grantham is right, the selloff has been severe. BTC hit an all-time high near $126,000 in October 2025. Since then, the digital asset has shed more than 50% of its value. As of Friday, BTC traded in the $60,000 range, testing what analysts consider a critical support zone that, if broken, could open a path to the $40,000s.

Bitcoin fell toward $62,000 in mid-June as hawkish signals from the Federal Reserve spooked risk markets. Rising U.S.–Iran geopolitical tensions sent oil prices higher and reignited inflation fears, pushing Fed officials to abandon any talk of rate cuts — with some floating the possibility of rate hikes. U.S. spot BTC ETFs posted four consecutive days of net outflows totaling around $113.8 million.

Bitcoin’s attempt to reclaim higher ground ran straight into its 200-day moving average, which served as hard resistance and triggered a roughly 30% decline from that ceiling. The current drawdown is among the 5th worst in Bitcoin’s history — territory that tests the resolve of long-term holders. Some institutional buyers, however, are treating the dip as an entry point, with Coinbase reporting that major institutions have stepped in to buy the crash.

Another billionaire bets big on bitcoin

On the flip side, Mexican billionaire Ricardo Salinas Pliego has placed 70% of his investment portfolio into BTC — up from just 10% in 2020 — and has even convinced his wife to mortgage their home to buy more. 

The founder of Grupo Salinas traces his skepticism of fiat currency to family dinner table conversations about Nixon ending the gold standard, and views Bitcoin as superior to both cash and gold because it is unseizable and borderless. 

His conviction has survived a $150 million loan scam, regulatory pushback on his plans to make Banco Azteca Mexico’s first Bitcoin-accepting bank, and multiple market cycles. 

He recently pointed to a decade of London property prices as proof of his thesis — a home that cost 4,000 BTC in 2016 now costs fewer than 30 — and urges ordinary investors to convert their home equity into BTC exposure, calling it “an asymmetrical bet to the upside.” 

This post Billionaire Investor Jeremy Grantham: Bitcoin Will ‘Dwindle Away With a Whimper’ first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Source: Bitcoin Magazine – Read More

Bitcoin Magazine

‘I See Volatility as Opportunity’: Bitcoin Tests Critical Support as Key Level Hangs in the Balance

Bitcoin has shed more than 50% of its value since hitting an all-time high near $126,000, and the market is now locked in a tense standoff at a support level that technical analysts say could determine the digital asset’s next major move.

The cryptocurrency has been testing the $58,000–$60,000 range for the third time in recent months, a zone that chart watchers consider critical. Below that threshold, the next meaningful support sits in the low $40,000s, a drop that would push Bitcoin into drawdown territory comparable to its most brutal prior cycles.

The sell-off has been swift and precise. Bitcoin’s failed attempt to break higher ran straight into its 200-day moving average, a level that served as near-perfect resistance and triggered a roughly 30% decline from that ceiling. The pattern has left the asset in a clear downtrend, though some technical indicators are beginning to flash warning signs for bears.

“We’re looking for stabilization,” said Katie Stockton, founder and managing partner of Fairlead Strategies on CNBC’s Squawk Box. “Ideally it does happen in this range because it is a key Fibonacci retracement level, below which a full retracement often happens.”

Stockton noted that Bitcoin has been in a long-term oversold condition for a duration that, based on historical patterns, tends to precede a shift in momentum. That does not mean a bottom is confirmed, she said she would want to see two to three weeks of price stabilization before feeling conviction that support is holding.

The $60,000 level carries weight beyond Fibonacci math. It represents a psychological marker and has been a contested battleground across multiple test cycles. A clean break below it would erase a layer of confidence among retail and institutional holders alike.

80% drawdowns in bitcoin’s price

Some Bitcoin bulls have argued this cycle is structurally different from previous crashes. The presence of spot Bitcoin ETFs, growing institutional adoption, and broader mainstream acceptance, they say, may cap the depth of any drawdown compared to the 80%-plus collapses seen in earlier bear markets. Stockton is not convinced the argument holds.

“I think we can still see those 75 to 80% drawdowns,” she said, “but as a technician, I almost see the volatility as opportunity.”

That framing cuts to a tension at the heart of Bitcoin trading: the gap between what investors say they want and what they do when prices fall. At $125,000, many buyers felt priced out. At $60,000, the same buyers hesitate to pull the trigger. 

Market psychology, Stockton noted, runs counter to rational accumulation.

On the question of four-year halving cycles — a framework many Bitcoin traders treat as gospel — Stockton said the sample size is too small to place confidence in the pattern. She described herself as a Bitcoin bull from a “very, very long-term perspective,” while maintaining that short-term risk management through trend-following tools remains the more reliable approach.

For now, Bitcoin sits at a crossroads. The coming weeks will test whether institutional infrastructure and long-term demand are enough to hold a line that, if broken, leaves a long way down to the next floor.

This post ‘I See Volatility as Opportunity’: Bitcoin Tests Critical Support as Key Level Hangs in the Balance first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Source: Bitcoin Magazine – Read More

Bitcoin Magazine

Matt Corallo Urges Bitcoin Projects to Exit GitHub After Rust Lightning Ban

GitHub has been the home to Bitcoin Core and many other software projects in the Bitcoin industry for over a decade, but it was not the first collaborative version control platform to host the digital currency’s code, and it may not be the last.

Recent performance issues in GitHub have triggered a new wave of criticisms of the platform, reviving old concerns and dissatisfactions with its design and reliability. Matt Corallo, one of the longest-acting Bitcoin core contributors, took to X recently to announce the decision to migrate off the platform, not Bitcoin core’s code base yet, but the Rust Lightning dev kit, a code base he is closely involved with. 

In an X quote retweet thread that goes back through multiple viral posts complaining about the platform, Corallo said, “our org currently has no CI (quality testing processes) because GitHub wrongly flagged a contributor, not an admin or maintainer, just someone new who opened a few pull requests. We’ve escalated it through corporate account managers and still basically nothing.” A week or so later, he added: “GitHub has decided our open-source project has been permanently banned with no explanation and no option to appeal, pointing to a ToS that clearly does not cover anything we’ve ever done.” – “I guess it’s time for Bitcoin projects to leave GitHub.”

The banned contributor appears to be Luis Schwab, who replied “I’ve had my account banned twice within a week “by mistake”. Relying on GitHub’s goodwill is not a good long term strategy.” Multiple other Bitcoin and crypto engineers replied with similar experiences, saying they too had migrated off the platform or been banned without recourse, like Roman Storm, who replied, “In 2022, GitHub locked my account over Tornado Cash sanctions. I’m a US citizen. They told me to get an OFAC license to access my own account. The sanctions were later ruled unlawful and overturned. The account is still locked. I’ve filed ticket after ticket – now they don’t even respond. Abolish GitHub.”

Corallo blames the AI wave on the recent mass banning of accounts and increasingly aggressive measures taken by the massive platform. The popularity of vibe coding has brought a new wave of attention, amateur projects and automated bot-like behavior to the already overburdened platform. Today, GitHub claims to host over 420 million repositories and over 4 million organizations worldwide. GitHub was acquired by Microsoft in 2018, which, to some, also explains its steady downfall. 

Even Andrew Poelstra, another senior Bitcoin Core and Rust Lightning contributor, with over a decade of experience in the industry, wrote a devastating take-down of GitHub, defending the decision to migrate. “This site has an overwhelming amount of LLM slop, and they have no intention of stopping it, though they did write this insane blog post taking credit for FOSS as a way of acknowledging the problem,” he began, continuing to explain that the merging of code into the master repositories had now been  “broken for several days.” This caused cascading issues that confused the “merge script,” a security program that makes sure updates to a code base are done properly. 

The bug meant that tracking and merging pull requests — contributions from other developers — didn’t work as expected. “Tracking PRs is the one thing GitHub is supposed to do, and it’s broken. It’s no longer more convenient to stay here than to leave, which was the only reason we’ve stayed so long,” Poelstra continued. “The usual problems where diffs and comments are hidden, the site being slow and unreliable, the permissions model being insane and broken, the lock-in, the crappy and slow API, etc. [All of] which we could live with if the basic functionality worked, but it doesn’t.”

As a result, the next destination for Rust Lightning and perhaps other Bitcoin projects in the industry may be Forgejo, a lightweight GitHub alternative optimized towards self-hosting and high agency projects. Corallo confirmed to Bitcoin Magazine that “rust-bitcoin already started migrating to git.rust-bitcoin.org” and Rust Lightning would follow. 

The repositories will likely continue to host a copy on GitHub, though no public statements have been made about any kind of long-term mirroring strategy of the code base, meaning it will eventually just live on their own site. 

This post Matt Corallo Urges Bitcoin Projects to Exit GitHub After Rust Lightning Ban first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Juan Galt.

Source: Bitcoin Magazine – Read More

Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin Price Collapses to $59,000 — and the Worst May Not Be Over

Bitcoin price has crashed through $60,000, touching lows not seen since October 2024 and erasing months of gains in a matter of days. At press time, bitcoin price trades at $59,566 — down more than 10% in 24 hours and roughly 53% off its all-time high of $126,277 set last October.

The drop has been brutal, fast, and — for many holders — a gut punch that raises a question nobody wants to ask: how much lower can this go? No single event really broke bitcoin price. What happened instead was a convergence of bad news that hit all at once.

U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs posted net outflows of approximately $113.8 million as of June 23, marking a fourth consecutive day of withdrawals. BlackRock’s IBIT led the exits with roughly $182 million in outflows, while Fidelity’s FBTC and ARK 21Shares’ ARKB attracted about $23 million and $31 million, respectively.

The Federal Reserve made things worse. With U.S.-Iran tensions pushing crude oil prices higher and reigniting inflation fears, Fed officials began walking back any talk of rate cuts — and some floated the possibility of rate hikes. That sent a clear signal to risk asset markets: the liquidity spigot is closing.

Then came Strategy. The company, long seen as an anchor of corporate Bitcoin conviction with its “never sell” posture, sold 32 BTC between May 26–31. 

This might (or might not) be the end for bitcoin price

Standard Chartered’s Geoffrey Kendrick, Global Head of Digital Assets Research, put out a client note in early June declaring that Bitcoin price’s drop to $59,000 marks the definitive cycle bottom — and reaffirmed the bank’s year-end target of $100,000. That’s roughly 70% upside from current levels. Kendrick tied his conviction to three signals he said needed to materialize: renewed ETF inflows, fresh corporate treasury purchases, and declining oil prices as geopolitical tensions ease.

On June 23, the first of those signals flickered. Spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded $39.2 million in net inflows — the first positive day after a prolonged bleeding streak — led by ARK 21Shares’ ARKB at $31 million. 

Corporate buyers have not stopped. Strategy purchased 520 BTC for approximately $35 million this week. Strive Asset Management added 759 BTC at an average price near $65,850. These are not panic sells — these are institutional bids placed into a falling market.

On-chain, roughly half of all Bitcoin supply is now underwater. In prior cycles, that crossover has marked the floor — not the beginning of a deeper collapse.

This post Bitcoin Price Collapses to $59,000 — and the Worst May Not Be Over first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Source: Bitcoin Magazine – Read More

Bitcoin Magazine

The 2036 Issue: Here Come The Sovereigns

By the year 2036, Bitcoin mining looks nothing like it did five years ago, much less ten. Long gone is the model of Bitcoin miners that dominated the landscape of the early to mid-2020’s. These large, often publicly traded, mining companies looked for large tranches of cheap power in mostly first-world countries they could monetize at scale. These corporations did not generate their own energy, nor did most design and manufacture their ASICs. They looked for a confluence of attractive power terms from an electric utility, available land near substation infrastructure, and timed the purchase of ASICs for as short a payback period as possible. 

The compressing margins had already strained this business model by the middle of the decade. Then the explosion of artificial intelligence and high-performance compute (AI/HPC) data centers created a more profitable use of grid connected electricity. This effectively ended the availability of power for public Bitcoin miners in the markets they had adapted for. Many simply took their model and altered it slightly to accommodate the AI/HPC data center buildout. The process was similar, and the companies who successfully pivoted were rewarded by their shareholders. The opposite was true for those public mining companies who failed to build more traditional data centers

As the era of public Bitcoin mining companies ended, governments started to notice the advantages of Bitcoin mining for expanding and managing a national grid. Rapid growth in generation commonly outpaced transmission capacity necessary for broader grid connectivity, creating pockets of electricity that could not be delivered and utilized. Several nations possessed surplus energy at off-peak hours, but deficits during peaks in the morning and evenings. Many of the grids throughout the Global South lacked a buyer or high-capacity transmission infrastructure to export surplus energy on day ahead markets. 

There was a growing realization that mining Bitcoin with the excess electricity was akin to exporting the power over the internet, rendering the expensive cross-border transmission infrastructure unnecessary for this specific sales activity. Countries began to use the design of mineral extraction deals as archetypes. In those arrangements, a joint venture or special purpose vehicle was formed between a foreign mining company and the government. The mining company would extract the mineral, but the country received a royalty in the form of a predetermined percentage of profits given it was the resource of the nation.

The sovereign level Bitcoin mining deals were similar. The surplus power was a national asset just like minerals in the ground, but the difference being the temporal aspect of the electricity. Every hour that excess was not monetized, that electricity was unproductive, thus minutely changing the economics of the power plant that generated the electricity. If hours turned into days, months or even years, the finances of the mostly state-owned electric utilities deteriorated. Countries increasingly followed the pioneering nations like Bhutan into similar sovereign level Bitcoin mining deals as they realized they couldn’t afford inaction.

In the late 2020’s, the U.S. and China played tug-of-war with the world economies via their digital currencies. The Americans exported the dollar through stablecoins, while the Chinese offered cheap debt if denominated in the Renminbi and offered swap lines with countries in the Digital Yuan, their central bank digital currency issued directly from the Bank of China. “Middle powers”, or countries with excelling economies and ability to influence their region but were a rung below great power status, sought to extricate themselves from the middle of the American-Sino economic struggle. For many, Bitcoin was such an escape hatch.

Take for instance the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve (SBR) legislative proposal in Brazil in 2026. Not only did it codify the country’s ability to put up to 5% of national reserves into Bitcoin, but it also abolished capital gains tax on Bitcoin and allowed payment of taxes in Bitcoin. Other middle powers followed suit with similar adoption measures. By leaning into alignment at the state or citizenry level with a neutral reserve asset not controlled by either America or China, they were able to avoid the trap of choosing one financial system and boxing themselves out of the other. 

For those countries that assumed this strategy and possessed any measure of energy independence, Bitcoin mining became the most cost-effective method of accumulation. Some energy heretofore exported to neighbors was kept for the purpose of Bitcoin mining. Abundant energy potential without nearby offtake or grid connectivity that was previously deemed nonviable for development was now prioritized. Such projects now became a source of pride as they expanded the energy portfolio of the country while simultaneously creating a measure of economic independence.

Examples of this type of adoption were pockmarked all over the globe. Russia partially pioneered the strategy by turning isolated energy production in Siberia into sanction proof assets during the war with Ukraine. Turkey lessened exports to countries like Bulgaria and Iraq and further developed hydroelectric generation in the eastern part of the nation. Brazil and India similarly developed the plentiful hydroelectric potential in the Amazon and Himalayas respectively, far from population centers along the coast. Indonesia and Malaysia finally found a suitable use for the vast geothermal energy on Borneo Island. Ethiopia turned their private electricity sales to Bitcoin miners into more of a state pursuit with profit share between miners and their sovereign wealth fund. 

These state involved Bitcoin mining operations served as a sandbox to advance grid management practices using curtailable electric load or reserve capacity. While pundits for years argued whether battery energy storage systems (BESS) or Bitcoin mining was the better dispatchable demand, it turned out the answer was a combination of the two because of differing and complimentary characteristics. Bitcoin mining can handle large scale load shedding or absorption for long stretches of time, while batteries can respond in milliseconds with precision but lack long-term management ability due to finite storage capacity and limited cycles over their lifespan.

The combination of economic resiliency and grid improvement that these nations enjoyed from Bitcoin mining created envy in their regional neighbors. In about half a decade, sovereign level Bitcoin mining projects went from viewed as risky to essential. Even countries with expensive electricity tariffs found it more economical to institute Bitcoin mining than to deal with the variability of renewables with BESS alone. ASICs, even ones several generations old, sold at a premium for a time as the sudden FOMO-driven demand took hold. Before long, it was more unique to find a ministry of energy without Bitcoin mining integration than one with such a program.

Now that it is 2036, we will experience the next halving event this year in which the block reward will drop to 0.39 Bitcoin per block. Luckily, Bitcoin becoming extremely valuable as a global macro asset, exceeding the market cap of gold, caused nations to use the digital asset as a neutral reserve asset in trade between different economic and currency blocks. This drove more large transfers to the base chain for immutability, subsequently increasing revenue from fee collection which surpassed the value of block rewards. Still, the margins of mining have continued to compress because of global adoption at the state level and created an area of geopolitical competition. 

Early Bitcoin enthusiasts lament the state capture of the mining industry, but unfortunately it was inevitable from a game theoretical perspective. As Bitcoin gained adoption in the underpinning of the global financial system, the production of the asset became an issue of geopolitical importance. No private industry had the ability to compete with national governments in the aspects of scale, coordination and control of energy. In a sense, the only way to avoid the government concentration of Bitcoin mining would have been for the Bitcoin network to stall in its adoption somewhere short of becoming the most prominent neutral reserve asset on the planet. If that had been the case, Bitcoin mining would have remained a private sector industry, but the network would have never gained significance beyond a niche alternative asset. 

That’s not to say that the mining industry is operated completely by governments. Public private partnerships are the backbone of the space, much like the energy industry of ten years ago. While petrochemical companies are private sector entities, they are heavily reliant on licensed government-owned oil and gas deposits. Similarly, independent power providers build electric generation facilities to sell energy for a profit, but they must jump through regulatory hoops and market to an electric utility that is at a minimum under government oversight, if not owned outright. Bitcoin mining began to operate under a similar paradigm in that private companies built and operated the data centers but with government sanctioned contracts outside of very rare circumstances.

The companies making the most profit in the space are those that design and manufacture ASICs. These companies are highly specialized and export controlled in the ways that chip companies were in the 2020s during the initial AI boom. These corporations are domiciled in either the U.S., China, or countries closely aligned with one of the two. Other countries could not compete with the chip design advances and other technological byproducts of the defense tech race between the two great powers.  

Given that mining efficiency is a source of national advantage, the research and development of machines that provide that edge has been partially funded by government grants and spurred by classified technological information. In exchange for that aid, the government disqualifies or approves foreign sales through legislation that looks similar to International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) or the CHIPS Act. Access to cutting edge ASICs by countries not sophisticated enough to design and manufacture their own are sweeteners for trade deals much like access to NVIDIA chips were during the AI boom.

While the cypherpunks of the early part of the century would bristle at the nation state involvement of Bitcoin mining, in an odd way the decentralization of the network is as strong as ever. The proliferation of hash rate has guaranteed that no single actor could ever attack the network. Additionally, any emerging threats to the network created by a single nation would quickly supersede disagreements and temporarily unite the rest of the world against that country as a rogue actor threatening the global financial system. While many countries kept their fiat currencies as the backbone of their economies, every country on earth recognizes the value of Bitcoin therefore allowing individuals to live on a Bitcoin standard in every corner of the world. If Satoshi had to choose between decentralization of money or the proof of work algorithm, he likely would have chosen the former. Let’s hope that’s the case at least, because that’s what happened.

This piece is featured in the latest Print edition of Bitcoin Magazine, The 2036 Issue. We’re sharing it here as an early look at the ideas explored throughout the full issue.

This post The 2036 Issue: Here Come The Sovereigns first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Jacob Langenkamp.

Source: Bitcoin Magazine – Read More