Bitcoin is having another one of its family arguments, and this time it’s about what kind of data belongs on the blockchain. BIP-110, a proposed soft fork that would restrict non-financial data in Bitcoin transactions, is heading toward its mandatory signaling phase in early August with almost no miner backing and a community split that echoes the nastiest governance fight in Bitcoin’s history.
Miner support for BIP-110 has hovered between 0.3% and 0.4% since signaling began on December 1, 2025. To put that in context, the proposal needs 55% miner support for early lock-in. It’s not even in the same zip code.
What BIP-110 actually does Authored by developer Dathon Ohm, BIP-110 would constrain the storage of non-monetary data on Bitcoin’s blockchain for roughly one year. The proposal would grandfather existing data already on-chain. It’s not trying to erase history, just change the rules going forward, at least for about 12 months.
Opponents see it very differently. Blockstream CEO Adam Back and MicroStrategy founder Michael Saylor have both pushed back against BIP-110, viewing it as a dangerous consensus intervention. Their argument boils down to a philosophical point: Bitcoin’s strength comes from its resistance to top-down rule changes, and restricting what kinds of transactions are “allowed” sets a precedent that could be weaponized later.
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The activation timeline and why it matters BIP-110 signaling on bit 4 has been live since December 2025, but the proposal is now approaching the stages where things get real. Mandatory signaling is projected to begin around block 961,632, estimated to land between August 7 and August 15, 2026. If the proposal somehow clears that hurdle, enforcement could follow near block 965,664 in September 2026.
The activation strategy borrows from the UASF playbook, the same user-activated soft fork approach that played a pivotal role during the 2017 Blocksize Wars. Back then, a minority of nodes threatened to reject blocks that didn’t signal for SegWit, effectively forcing miners to comply or risk mining on a minority chain.
Node adoption sits in the low single digits, concentrated almost entirely among users running Bitcoin Knots rather than the far more popular Bitcoin Core client. On the mining side, no major pool has shown meaningful interest. F2Pool, one of the largest mining operations in the world, has given no indication of support. The only visible signals have come from small operators like Barefoot Mining, which barely registers as a rounding error in Bitcoin’s total hashrate.
Echoes of the Blocksize Wars The Blocksize Wars of 2015-2017 pitted those who wanted bigger blocks against those who preferred a more conservative approach to scaling. That conflict ultimately led to the Bitcoin Cash fork and established an informal precedent: changing Bitcoin’s consensus rules requires overwhelming agreement, and attempts to force changes through without it get rejected.
BIP-110 is testing whether that precedent holds in reverse. Instead of expanding what Bitcoin can do, it’s trying to restrict it. And it’s doing so through the same UASF mechanism that small-block advocates used successfully almost a decade ago, just with a fraction of the support.
What this means for investors BIP-110 is almost certainly going to fail on the primary Bitcoin chain. Sub-1% miner signaling seven months into the process, with mandatory activation weeks away, means the proposal has no realistic path to consensus-level adoption. The most likely outcome is that BIP-110 either fizzles out entirely or results in a tiny minority chain that attracts negligible economic activity.
Investors should watch for two things. First, whether any major mining pool breaks ranks and signals for BIP-110 before the August deadline, which would fundamentally change the calculus. Second, whether the debate spills over into broader market sentiment around Bitcoin’s governance model.
The inscription economy that BIP-110 targets, including Ordinals and BRC-20 tokens, has become a meaningful source of miner fee revenue. Restricting that activity would reduce transaction fee income for miners, which helps explain why pools aren’t exactly rushing to support a proposal that would shrink their revenue.
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BlackRock CEO Larry Fink says he is no longer concerned about excessive leverage in the Bitcoin market.
Earlier this Wednesday, he told CNBC that the cryptocurrency has become considerably more stable after speculative positions ended up being washed out.
Fink stated that he "was always worried about the leverage in Bitcoin and crypto."
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According to the BlackRock chief, that dynamic has largely changed. "That's why we had to wash out," he added. "And I think there's more stability at these levels here."
AI driving profitability Much of the interview focused on artificial intelligence rather than cryptocurrencies. Fink argued that demand for computing infrastructure continues to outpace supply and that the United States risks falling behind.
Fink expressed strong optimism about financial markets over the coming year. He has argued that advances in artificial intelligence will continue driving corporate profitability. "I'm very bullish on the markets over the next 12 months," he said.
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Fink attributed that optimism to rapid technological innovation. "I think the technological revolution is going to power better margins for more companies."
He pointed to BlackRock itself as an example of how AI is already improving efficiency. "We've raised our margins... by 260 basis points over the last 12 months. A lot of it is using more and more technology."
Later in the interview, Fink explained how artificial intelligence is transforming the firm's internal operations. "We're able to use technology to process more trades, to process more activities," he said.
Fink's Bitcoin transformationFor years, the BlackRock CEO was openly skeptical of cryptocurrencies. In 2017, he described Bitcoin as an "index of money laundering." He then changed his tune in 2023. Back then, BlackRock filed for what would become the industry's largest spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund. Around that time, Fink described Bitcoin as an "international asset" that could serve as a hedge against currency debasement. He has then argued that Bitcoin is "digital gold" and a portfolio diversifier.
Cryptocurrency analytics company Glassnode stated that the long-running bottom-forming process in the Bitcoin market is beginning to strengthen, but a sustained recovery requires the activation of spot market demand.
According to Glassnode’s analysis, Bitcoin reacted more strongly than major stock indices to the better-than-expected US inflation data released last week. The company noted that this was one of the strongest price reactions Bitcoin has given to positive macroeconomic developments in recent weeks.
The analytics company noted that the relationship between Bitcoin and stock markets has weakened, while the inverse correlation with the US dollar has strengthened. According to Glassnode, this indicates that global liquidity conditions, rather than risk appetite, are becoming the determining factor in Bitcoin’s price.
The report stated that long-term investor capitulation, a major source of selling pressure on Bitcoin throughout the year, has begun to decline from its peak. It also noted that profit-taking has largely dried up, and the supply from the June lows has been met by broad-based buying.
Glassnode noted that the ready-to-sell supply, which has previously limited every rise in Bitcoin, has begun to thin. This development, it was stated, allows the price to retest the resistance zones ahead.
According to Glassnode, Bitcoin’s biggest resistance will be the Short-Term Investor Cost Base, which is around $69,000. This level represents the average break-even price for investors who have recently entered the market.
The company stated that a strong market reaction could be seen if Bitcoin reaches the $69,000 region. For the price to rise above this level with the support of spot buying and maintain its position there is critical to confirming the recovery.
The analysis highlighted that investors in derivatives markets have begun reducing their short positions, but this move has not yet been supported by buying in the spot market. Glassnode stated that the missing piece in the current recovery outlook is strong and sustainable spot demand.
Glassnode warned that despite positive signals, a bullish move in Bitcoin has not yet been definitively confirmed. Key risks cited include continued outflows from spot Bitcoin ETFs, the failure of derivatives market position unwinding to translate into spot purchases, and volatility remaining at low levels.
According to the company, the key signal that will positively change the current market outlook is when spot market purchases push Bitcoin above the short-term investor cost basis and the price holds above that level.
Conversely, a renewed acceleration of loss-making sales by long-term investors, or a rejection of Bitcoin from the resistance around $69,000 and a retracement towards the current price level, could drag the market back into its current horizontal trading range.
Glassnode stated that while a price base has largely formed in Bitcoin, the buying momentum needed to sustain the uptrend has not yet emerged, commenting, “The base has formed, but the continuation of the movement has not yet arrived.”
*This is not investment advice.
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Bitcoin has underperformed compared to other “risk-on” assets this year — and if history’s anything to go by, its price could dip as low as $38,000 by October.
That’s according to a new report by NYDIG, which reveals that the asset’s current slump is down to supply mechanics rather than risk sentiment.
Bitcoin’s price has in the past moved with tech stocks but 2026 has been different: AI-related equities have soared while crypto markets have slumped. Bitcoin was recently priced at $64,809, down nearly 30% year-to-date and close to 50% less than its October all-time high of $126,080.
“Bitcoin’s 2025–2026 drawdown is bringing the 4-year cycle narrative back into focus, because the timing and structure increasingly resemble the prior reset years of 2014, 2018, and 2022 even though the path has not matched those drawdowns exactly,” the report read.
NYDIG revealed that Bitcoin’s year-to-date performance makes it the worst-performing asset — losing out against US treasuries, silver, and currencies like the Swiss Franc.
It added that if Bitcoin’s price action were to match other drawdowns — like the bear market of 2022 — a “potential cycle low near $38k-$39k” was possible.
The good news: Bitcoin had its least volatile year ever in 2025, and some analysts opining that this year’s drawdown may be shallower than in previous bear markets.
Is Bitcoin digital gold? NYDIG added that Bitcoin’s rolling correlation with gold increased during 2026’s second quarter, with both assets experiencing sell-offs.
Bitcoin has been correlated to the precious metal in the past and Bitcoiners have described the top digital coin as “digital gold.”
But the asset last year was more correlated with US equities — especially tech stocks.
NYDIG added that other commodities experienced sell-offs in the second quarter of 2026, with the so-called debasement trade losing momentum. Traders in 2025 spoke of the “debasement trade” as a hot move to hedge against the dollar — and other fiat currencies — losing value.
Bitwise said in a report last week that while Bitcoin closed Q2 2026 in its deepest and longest downturn since the last bear market, the fundamentals are in place for a quick recovery, with regulators passing crypto-friendly legislation.
NYDIG added that the passing of the market-structure CLARITY Act “is the most important forward catalyst for the digital asset industry.”
“For Bitcoin, CLARITY’s direct price impact is less significant than for altcoins and crypto equities, but the investment implication remains material because a clearer U.S. market-structure regime would benefit the entire industry,” it noted.
Mathew Di Salvo
Mathew is a reporter who's covered the space since 2019, reporting on everything from Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele's Bitcoin bet to crypto exchange FTX's bankruptcy.
In a recent statement, Strategy Inc. CEO Phong Le reaffirmed the company’s dedication to remaining a major Bitcoin purchaser despite existing debt concerns. Le highlighted that the company would only start evaluating risks associated with its debt if Bitcoin’s value fell to a range of $8,000 to $10,000. This statement underscores Strategy’s confidence in its financial stability and its commitment to its Bitcoin strategy. As the world’s largest corporate Bitcoin holder, Strategy Inc. currently holds 843,738 Bitcoin, valued at approximately $69,000 per coin. The company’s robust balance sheet appears to reassure market participants, even as the firm navigates significant debt obligations.
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Key Takeaways Strategy’s CEO Phong Le’s statement appears to reinforce the company’s ongoing commitment to Bitcoin purchases, with a focus on financial resilience. The company’s current financial position suggests it could cover its $6 billion debt even if Bitcoin prices dropped significantly. Market pricing implies a stable outlook for Strategy’s Bitcoin strategy, with no immediate debt-related concerns unless Bitcoin drops sharply. What to Watch Market participants will be closely observing any fluctuations in Bitcoin prices, specifically any movement toward the $8,000 to $10,000 range, as this could impact Strategy’s financial strategy. Additionally, any announcements from Strategy regarding further Bitcoin acquisitions or changes in financial strategy could influence market sentiment. The company’s financial health and Bitcoin strategy remain pivotal indicators for the future trajectory of its stock price, particularly as the December 31 deadline for STRC hitting $100 approaches.
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Term Structure
Contract Odds Δ since publish Volume 24h December 31 46% — — View market → September 30 24.5% — — View market →
While regulatory efforts targeting Bitcoin and altcoins continue worldwide, particularly in the US, the latest news comes from Japan.
According to Reuters, Japan has passed a major regulatory amendment that will fundamentally change the cryptocurrency market. The House of Councillors, the upper house of the country’s parliament, today approved a legislative amendment that officially classifies crypto assets as financial products for the first time.
With this step, Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, and other cryptocurrencies will now be regulated as “financial products” in the country and will have the same status as stocks and other financial products.
The change also introduces a tax of approximately 20% on cryptocurrency earnings. This change in taxation appears to be more advantageous than the old system, as in Japan, individual cryptocurrency earnings were sometimes included in income tax and fell into a much higher tax bracket.
According to reports, the tax reform is planned to be implemented as of January 1, 2028, following the regulations that will come into effect in the 2027 fiscal year.
The new law also paves the way for spot cryptocurrency ETFs in Japan. In this context, regulators reportedly aim to begin trading cryptocurrencies on the Tokyo Stock Exchange by 2027 or 2028. Indeed, major firms like Nomura Holdings and SBI Holdings have already begun preparations for cryptocurrency ETFs.
“The new regulation introduces several rules to cryptocurrencies that already apply in traditional financial markets. These include:
Insider trading prohibited: Transactions involving the use of confidential information will be strictly prohibited. Disclosure Obligation: Cryptocurrency issuers will be required to submit regular annual disclosures. Severe Penalties: Penalties for unregistered cryptocurrency exchanges have also been significantly increased. Those who fail to register may face imprisonment of 3 to 10 years or fines ranging from 3 million yen to 10 million Japanese yen. Individual investment limit: The individual investment limit for high-risk tokens will be 2 million Japanese yen. *This is not investment advice.
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Crypto clearing startup Glacis Labs has closed a $6.8 million seed round. The round was led by Lightspeed Faction, with participation from Franklin Templeton, Coinbase Ventures, A.GAIN (formerly IDC Ventures), Protein Capital, and Techni Ventures, structured as an equity-plus-token warrant deal. The funding will primarily be used to expand its core product, the ZeroDelta platform, and support the growth of its engineering, compliance, and marketing teams. ZeroDelta is a multi-chain clearing platform that facilitates matching, netting, and final settlement of cross-chain digital assets. It currently focuses on serving stablecoins and has processed over $1 billion in cumulative trading volume to date.
4 hours ago
The United States will issue a $1 Trump gold coin to commemorate the 250th anniversary of its founding.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced today that the U.S. Mint will produce a $1 commemorative "gold coin" — gold in appearance but containing no actual gold or precious metals — to mark the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States. The obverse features a portrait of President Trump in a suit and tie, paired with the inscriptions "LIBERTY," "IN GOD WE TRUST," and the dates 1776-2026; the reverse displays the U.S. Great Seal eagle, marked with "$1" and "250." The coin is expected to be released this fall. The move breaks the longstanding tradition that living presidents typically do not appear on U.S. currency, with Bessent describing it as a "lasting symbol of patriotism" and "a commemoration of the legacy of freedom."
4 hours ago
Trump: Data centers are a cash cow and one of the largest drivers of future job growth.
Trump posted that data centers are one of the biggest drivers of future job growth. They are large-scale, powerful, and have broad prospects, serving as cash cows for their respective states. However, for political reasons, the Governor of New York State terminated all data center projects under construction or planned in New York. These companies are now flocking to Alabama, Florida, Texas, Arizona, and many other states. The tax revenues and jobs brought by data centers are truly a huge source of wealth! New York State has made a bad decision. All this revenue and other benefits will flow to so-called "red states" (states dominated by the Republican Party) and some "blue states" (states dominated by the Democratic Party). These states not only have lower taxes but also can create record job opportunities. They will bear their own water and electricity costs, and the remaining funds will be returned to state governments and local communities. For the states and communities fortunate enough to secure data centers, these facilities are undoubtedly huge assets. New York State should immediately reverse its policy. We must never allow radical left-wing Democrats to make us lose data centers, artificial intelligence, and all these amazing new technologies, letting them fall into the hands of other countries!
4 hours ago
Goldman Sachs' View: Storage Market Shows Structural Shifts, Partial Replacement of DRAM by NAND for Cost Reduction Becomes a Practical Trend
Citirni analyst Jukan referenced Goldman Sachs’ monthly conference call remarks on the memory sector, noting clients’ strong resistance to DRAM price hikes approaching 30%, leading to a modest downward revision of third-quarter DRAM price growth expectations. Meanwhile, the outlook for NAND has grown more optimistic: AI-related KV cache offloading demand continues to exceed expectations, paired with an emerging trend of using NAND to replace expensive DRAM, further supporting NAND demand. The analyst holds a positive view on SK Hynix’s second-quarter performance, projecting revenue of approximately 85 trillion won and a gross margin of 63%. Relevant stocks include SK Hynix, Micron, and SanDisk. The commentary also reveals structural shifts in the memory market. Previously, explosive HBM demand from AI servers drove DRAM prices soaring, but once price increases hit the 30% threshold, clients began resisting further hikes, leading to a temporary slowdown in the pace of DRAM price growth. NAND is taking on a new role in AI infrastructure: KV cache is critical in inference scenarios, and using cheaper NAND to partially replace expensive DRAM to reduce costs is becoming a practical trend. This divergence also implies that internal capital rotation within the storage industry chain may continue; investors should exercise greater caution regarding short-term earnings expectations for DRAM-related stocks, while the fundamental improvement in the NAND segment may not yet be fully priced in.
4 hours ago
SpaceX falls below its $135 IPO price for the first time; US-listed space-related stocks decline across the board.
According to market data from BIT (bit.com), during U.S. stock intraday trading, SpaceX (SPCX) fell below its IPO price of $135 for the first time, currently trading at $133.6. U.S. space-related stocks declined across the board: AST SpaceMobile (ASTS) dropped 5.26%, Rocket Lab (RKLB) fell 3.4%, and Redwire (RDW) declined 3.4%.
4 hours ago
A certain address profited 23.75 million USDC via the Ostium exploit, then exchanged the funds for 12,085 ETH.
According to EmberCN’s monitoring, an hour and a half ago, the DeBank address under the username musti_akrep exploited a vulnerability on Perp DEX Ostium to gain 23.75 million USDC, transferred the funds to the Arbitrum blockchain, and immediately converted the USDC into 12,085 ETH at a purchase price of $1,965.
The cryptocurrency ETF complex is absorbing capital with a consistency that market veterans rarely see outside of commodity bull cycles. On July 14, spot Bitcoin ETFs hoovered up $181 million in net inflows, and in a rare clean sweep, all ten spot Ethereum ETFs ended the session in positive territory—no outflows anywhere. The combined haul of roughly $239 million, based on the original report citing SoSoValue data, is not just another data point. It’s a signal that institutional positioning in digital assets is broadening beyond a single-asset bet.
That absence of outflows on the Ethereum side matters. Since their launch, spot ETH products have endured mixed flows, partly because the Ethereum narrative is harder to distill into a one-line pitch. But a day with zero redemptions across the entire suite suggests sentiment is firming. Traders who rebalanced out of Bitcoin into Ethereum in recent weeks may now be holding, rather than rotating quickly. And the Bitcoin number, while not unprecedented, reinforces a pattern: every dip is being bought by someone with a longer time horizon.
The flow data arrives in a month where traditional finance’s engagement with crypto is becoming harder to dismiss as cyclical noise. Just days ago, Bullish bought Equiniti for $4.2 billion and Ondo settled the first live tokenized Treasury trade with JPMorgan, while on-chain real-world assets crossed $20 billion. ETF inflows are part of the same structural shift: institutions want exposure, and they are routing demand through regulated wrappers because it reduces compliance friction.
Why Zero Outflows on Ethereum ETFs Is a Tightening Signal Days with no Ethereum ETF outflows are unusual. They hint at a market where sellers are either exhausted or unwilling to part with positions at current prices. That is not necessarily a bullish price call; it is a liquidity signal. When supply thins, even modest incremental demand can move price more violently. Ethereum’s recent developer activity also provides a fundamental floor. According to BlockchainReporter’s analysis, Ethereum, BNB Chain, and Polygon still lead blockchain developer activity, which means the ecosystem’s brain trust is not leaving.
What Makes These Flows Different Now Earlier ETF inflow waves were often tied to momentum trading. The current wave feels stickier. Advisors are placing crypto in model portfolios; pension consultants are no longer rejecting it outright in every RFP. The July 14 data shows no single fund dominated the Bitcoin inflows disproportionately, which suggests distribution across multiple products. That is more consistent with broad platform inflows than with a handful of large traders placing tactical bets.
Regulation is still the wild card. The crypto bill that passed the House is now facing a make-or-break moment in the Senate, with banks pushing hard to alter key provisions four days before the vote. If the framework collapses, ETF issuers will face continued ambiguity around custody and capital treatment. That uncertainty is the main counterweight to the flow picture.
What We Don’t Know Yet Flow numbers are backward-looking. They tell you what happened, not what will happen. A single day of zero outflows on Ethereum ETFs does not mean the product line is permanently stable. Macro liquidity, yen carry trade risks, and the Treasury’s quarterly refunding announcement could all override crypto-specific sentiment within hours. Still, the market is pricing in something durable. When Bitcoin ETF inflows hold above $150 million on a nonevent day and Ethereum ETFs print no redemptions, the default assumption among professional traders shifts from u201cthis is a beta play on risk appetiteu201d to u201cthere is actual separate demand for these assets.u201d
AUTHOR
Brenda is a writer with three years of experience specializing in cryptocurrency, artificial intelligence and emerging technologies. She graduated from the University of Mombasa with a degree in Psychology. She has worked at Cryptopolitan and Blockchain Reporter.
$45.8 Billion In Market Losses Wiped Out Every Dollar Of New MoneyBlackRock attracted $15.1 billion in fresh crypto capital over 12 months, but $45.8 billion in market depreciation overwhelmed every dollar of those inflows, shrinking the business from $79.6 billion to $48.8 billion.
The second quarter made things worse.
What Does BlackRock’s Broader Business Look Like?Crypto was the one weak spot in an otherwise record quarter.
BlackRock posted $15.3 trillion in total assets under management after attracting $192 billion in net inflows, beating Wall Street expectations with adjusted earnings per share of $13.91 on $7.08 billion in revenue.
Crypto currently generates $40 million in base fees and securities lending, less than 1% of total fee revenue.
BlackRock is targeting $500 million in annual crypto revenue by 2030, a more than tenfold increase from today.
What Is BlackRock’s Long-Term Crypto Bet?Chief Financial Officer Martin Small pointed to 5 billion crypto wallets as a new distribution channel for traditional investment products.
“We want to build a digital wallet native asset manager,” Small said on the earnings call.
Where Does BLK Stand Technically?BLK trades at $1,094.68, sitting 7.9% above its 20-day SMA at $1,012.78 and 3.1% above its 200-day SMA at $1,059.81.
MACD sits above its signal line with a positive histogram, pointing to improving momentum after the earnings pop.
Key levels for BLK $1,107.50 — resistance just above current price where the rally may stall $1,030.00 — support near the 50-day SMA, first line of defense on any pullback Image: Shutterstock
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Bitcoin crossed $65,000 on Wednesday, with the Crypto Fear & Greed Index improving to 35 as prices rebounded.
Notable Statistics:
Coinglass data shows 79,273 traders were liquidated in the past 24 hours for $323.30 million. SoSoValue data shows net inflows of $181.08 million from spot Bitcoin ETFs on Tuesday. Spot Ethereum ETFs saw net inflows of $58.3 million. In the past 24 hours, top gainers include Pump.fun, Virtuals Protocol and ether.fi. Notable Developments:
Trader Notes:
Trader Jelle noted that Bitcoin briefly swept below recent lows in a deviation move but has since reclaimed key levels. The analyst says holding above $63,000 could pave the way for a recovery, potentially retracing part of the sharp decline seen earlier this year. He maintains a long-term strategy of dollar-cost averaging (DCA) throughout the summer.
Crypto analyst Benjamin Cowen explained Bitcoin continues to trade between the Bear Market Resistance Band and the 200W SMA, with neither side gaining a decisive advantage.
The analyst expects this range-bound price action to continue for another one to two months, until a sustained breakout or breakdown occurs.
Daan Crypto Trades says Bitcoin must hold the current green support zone to preserve its bullish momentum and breakout structure. Key liquidity targets lie at $65,600 and, more importantly, $67,200.
A sustained move above $67,200 could trigger a stronger rally toward $70,000+, positioning Bitcoin back in the middle of its broader $60,000–$80,000 trading range.
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In this patch of your weekly Dispatch:Altcoins round-upApple’s stock recordBitcoin’s starting recovery?Market cast
BTC: Bullish momentum buildsBitcoin's weekly chart is showing bullish momentum developing. Price has moved back above the 200-period SMA, a key long-term trend indicator. The RSI, a momentum oscillator, sits in neutral territory, while the Stochastic, another momentum oscillator, has crossed above the 20-level threshold – a move that could signal a trend reversal. The MACD, a trend and momentum indicator, has its signal lines edging close to a bullish crossover, adding to the constructive tone.
The daily chart tells a similarly bullish story. Price has crossed above the 50-period SMA and is now heading toward the upper Bollinger Band – a volatility indicator. RSI remains neutral, and while the Stochastic lines sit in overbought territory, they show no signs of fading momentum. The MACD histogram, meanwhile, sits comfortably in positive territory – all pointing to bullish momentum across both timeframes.
Key levels to watch: On the downside, immediate support sits around $62,000, with the next significant zone near $58,000–$59,000; the daily middle Bollinger Band could also serve as dynamic support. To the upside, the first resistance comes in around $65,000, followed by $67,000.
The big idea
Bitcoin's CPI moment: Macro comes back into focusTime and again this year, Bitcoin has gone looking for a catalyst, only to run headlong into geopolitics instead. Every attempt at a clean, rates-driven story got knocked off course by fresh friction out of the Middle East. Tuesday’s US CPI report gave Bitcoin a real one — and a friendly one at that.
June's headline inflation cooled sharply to 3.5% annually, well below the 3.8% consensus and down from 4.2% in May, with prices actually falling 0.4% on the month — the largest one-month drop since April 2020, and well past the mild 0.1% decline economists had expected. Core CPI told the same story: flat month-over-month against expectations for a rise, pulling the annual core rate down to 2.6% from 2.9% — a much bigger step toward the Fed's target than anyone had priced in.
That's not the "calm, in-line" outcome the market had been bracing for — it's a genuine downside surprise, and Bitcoin treated it as one. BTC quickly reacted by reaching toward $64,000 right after the release, climbing roughly 1% from around $62,800.
The bigger story is what it did to rate expectations. Markets are now pricing an 83% chance the Fed holds rates steady at the July 28–29 meeting, versus just 17% odds of a hike — a sharp reversal from the mood following Governor Waller's hawkish comments last week, when a hike looked like a live possibility. With a rate hike now largely off the table, one of the biggest overhangs on Bitcoin this year has meaningfully eased.
There's backup from other corners of the analyst community too. Standard Chartered reiterated its $100,000 year-end Bitcoin target this week, calling current levels near $64,000 "a screaming buy." Bitwise strikes a similar note, arguing the industry is twice the size it was at the last cycle's bottom despite bear-market prices, and flagging July's historically strong seasonality — Bitcoin has averaged a 10.7% gain in the month — as another reason for optimism. CryptoQuant adds to that seasonality case: in past bear-market years like 2018 and 2022, Bitcoin rallied roughly 17-20% in July alone, with the firm noting early signs that demand is already re-igniting off the recent lows. The on-chain picture backs up that optimism as Nexo analyst Dessislava Ianeva notes that spot selling pressure has faded. More on that in this week’s data story below.
If the last two issues were about regulatory clarity, this week looks like it's shaping up to be about macroeconomic clarity instead. Tuesday’s numbers make that label easier to defend: a clean downside surprise on both headline and core inflation, paired with rate-hike odds falling to just 17%, removes a real source of uncertainty rather than simply confirming expectations. That said, new Fed Chair Kevin Warsh struck a notably hawkish tone in his first Congressional testimony the same day, insisting the Fed has "no tolerance" for persistently high inflation and pushing back on any expectation of a policy pivot. One cool print hasn't changed the Fed's messaging, even if it's changed the market's odds. It's still one data point, and Bitcoin will likely keep reacting to whatever comes out of the Gulf too — but rates just handed the market a genuinely bullish tailwind to work with.
Bottom line: June inflation came in well below expectations on every measure, and the Fed now looks unlikely to hike this month — a clear, dovish surprise that gives Bitcoin's macro-driven recovery case its best data point yet, with BTC quickly reacting toward $64,000 right after the release.
Blue chips
Ethereum outperforms as its next chapter comes into focusETH was one of the better performers recently, up over to roughly $1,770 at the start of the week, as Bitcoin held firm above $63,000. That put it ahead of most majors, and it came despite wobbly AI stocks and a stronger dollar – two things that usually drag crypto down with them. Ethereum didn't just hold up; it led the pack.
The timing is fitting. Vitalik Buterin just dropped his vision for "Lean Ethereum", a multi-year rebuild he's calling the network's third major era – right up there with the Merge. The headline: a data storage redesign that could slash fees for everyday tokens and apps by 10x or more, no rewrites required. Quantum resistance and privacy are also getting fast-tracked as core priorities, not afterthoughts. Put together, it's a good reminder that Ethereum's momentum isn't only about price – there's real groundwork being laid for the next decade.
TradFi trends
Apple reaches ATH on AI memoryWhile Bitcoin watches the Fed, Apple is riding a different macro story — and it's paying off. Shares hit an all-time high on July 13, closing at $317.31 (a $4.7 trillion market cap), as an AI-driven memory chip shortage splits the smartphone market in two.
The cause: memory chips now cost nearly triple last year's price, as hyperscalers buy up supply for AI training. That's gutted margins for budget phone makers while barely touching Apple, which locked in supply early. Global smartphone shipments fell 6.7% last quarter, but Apple's grew 15.3% — best in years, alongside Samsung as the only other top-five vendor to grow. Institutions had already positioned for it, adding roughly 1.24 billion shares ahead of the rebound. The open question: with the memory crunch expected to run into 2028, whether buyers keep absorbing Apple's rising costs — a test the July 30 earnings print should help answer.
The week's most interesting data story
Bitcoin’s clearest signs of recovery?This week's chart adds a useful data point to the macro story: the market may be working through its last bit of overhand supply. A key on-chain metric — the share of realized value coming from longer-term holders adjusting their positions, recently reached its highest level since December 2022. In practice, this reflects holders who've been through months of drawdown finally deciding to move on, a pattern that has historically shown up in the later stages of a market finding its footing rather than at the start of a fresh leg down.
That matters because this kind of activity tends to be one of the last steps in a market working through excess supply. Once that cohort finishes repositioning, there's less overhead pressure weighing on price, which can set the stage for a steadier recovery.
The numbers
The week’s most interesting numbers$200,000 — A solo miner's payout from hitting a Bitcoin block with a hobbyist-grade Bitaxe, running just ~1 terahash per second for eight hours.
$50.85 billion — Cumulative net inflows into US spot Bitcoin ETFs since launch, a milestone that's held even through a choppy July.
$10.5 billion — Bitmine Immersion's ether treasury value, now the largest corporate ether stash and second only to Strategy's bitcoin position globally.
$3 billion — Strategy's USD reserve balance after a $450 million boost last week — funded via share sales, with its 843,775 BTC treasury untouched.
Hot topic
What the community is discussingFOMO time for XRP?
There is no stopping the long-term HODLER.
The power of Bitcoin as collateral.
Dispatch is a weekly publication by Nexo, designed to help you navigate and take action in the evolving world of digital assets. To share your Dispatch suggestions and comments, email us at [email protected].
According to monitoring by OnchainLens, a trader has taken large long positions on Hyperliquid, with a total position value of $13.31 million. Current holdings: Bitcoin worth $5.87 million, 40x leverage, average entry price of $65,473; Solana (SOL) worth $5.5 million, 20x leverage, average entry price of $78.8; Ethereum worth $1.93 million, 25x leverage, average entry price of $1,939.
Crypto clearing startup Glacis Labs has closed a $6.8 million seed round. The round was led by Lightspeed Faction, with participation from Franklin Templeton, Coinbase Ventures, A.GAIN (formerly IDC Ventures), Protein Capital, and Techni Ventures, structured as an equity-plus-token warrant deal. The funding will primarily be used to expand its core product, the ZeroDelta platform, and support the growth of its engineering, compliance, and marketing teams. ZeroDelta is a multi-chain clearing platform that facilitates matching, netting, and final settlement of cross-chain digital assets. It currently focuses on serving stablecoins and has processed over $1 billion in cumulative trading volume to date.
3 hours ago
The United States will issue a $1 Trump gold coin to commemorate the 250th anniversary of its founding.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced today that the U.S. Mint will produce a $1 commemorative "gold coin" — gold in appearance but containing no actual gold or precious metals — to mark the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States. The obverse features a portrait of President Trump in a suit and tie, paired with the inscriptions "LIBERTY," "IN GOD WE TRUST," and the dates 1776-2026; the reverse displays the U.S. Great Seal eagle, marked with "$1" and "250." The coin is expected to be released this fall. The move breaks the longstanding tradition that living presidents typically do not appear on U.S. currency, with Bessent describing it as a "lasting symbol of patriotism" and "a commemoration of the legacy of freedom."
3 hours ago
Trump: Data centers are a cash cow and one of the largest drivers of future job growth.
Trump posted that data centers are one of the biggest drivers of future job growth. They are large-scale, powerful, and have broad prospects, serving as cash cows for their respective states. However, for political reasons, the Governor of New York State terminated all data center projects under construction or planned in New York. These companies are now flocking to Alabama, Florida, Texas, Arizona, and many other states. The tax revenues and jobs brought by data centers are truly a huge source of wealth! New York State has made a bad decision. All this revenue and other benefits will flow to so-called "red states" (states dominated by the Republican Party) and some "blue states" (states dominated by the Democratic Party). These states not only have lower taxes but also can create record job opportunities. They will bear their own water and electricity costs, and the remaining funds will be returned to state governments and local communities. For the states and communities fortunate enough to secure data centers, these facilities are undoubtedly huge assets. New York State should immediately reverse its policy. We must never allow radical left-wing Democrats to make us lose data centers, artificial intelligence, and all these amazing new technologies, letting them fall into the hands of other countries!
3 hours ago
Goldman Sachs' View: Storage Market Shows Structural Shifts, Partial Replacement of DRAM by NAND for Cost Reduction Becomes a Practical Trend
Citirni analyst Jukan referenced Goldman Sachs’ monthly conference call remarks on the memory sector, noting clients’ strong resistance to DRAM price hikes approaching 30%, leading to a modest downward revision of third-quarter DRAM price growth expectations. Meanwhile, the outlook for NAND has grown more optimistic: AI-related KV cache offloading demand continues to exceed expectations, paired with an emerging trend of using NAND to replace expensive DRAM, further supporting NAND demand. The analyst holds a positive view on SK Hynix’s second-quarter performance, projecting revenue of approximately 85 trillion won and a gross margin of 63%. Relevant stocks include SK Hynix, Micron, and SanDisk. The commentary also reveals structural shifts in the memory market. Previously, explosive HBM demand from AI servers drove DRAM prices soaring, but once price increases hit the 30% threshold, clients began resisting further hikes, leading to a temporary slowdown in the pace of DRAM price growth. NAND is taking on a new role in AI infrastructure: KV cache is critical in inference scenarios, and using cheaper NAND to partially replace expensive DRAM to reduce costs is becoming a practical trend. This divergence also implies that internal capital rotation within the storage industry chain may continue; investors should exercise greater caution regarding short-term earnings expectations for DRAM-related stocks, while the fundamental improvement in the NAND segment may not yet be fully priced in.
3 hours ago
Kraken Launches Customized Crypto Vaults, Allowing Users to Earn Yields on Idle Bitcoin, Ethereum (ETH) and Stablecoins
Kraken Institutional has announced a partnership with on-chain yield platform Upshift, allowing qualified institutional clients to earn returns on idle Bitcoin, Ethereum, stablecoins and other crypto assets directly within Kraken’s compliant custody framework. Unlike traditional pooled vaults, Upshift will build dedicated, customized vaults for each client, fully tailored to their investment strategies, risk parameters, liquidity needs and asset portfolios. Assets will be allocated to these non-custodial vaults, then deployed to selected on-chain contracts, with clients’ segregated Kraken custody accounts receiving a receipt token.
3 hours ago
SpaceX falls below its $135 IPO price for the first time; US-listed space-related stocks decline across the board.
According to market data from BIT (bit.com), during U.S. stock intraday trading, SpaceX (SPCX) fell below its IPO price of $135 for the first time, currently trading at $133.6. U.S. space-related stocks declined across the board: AST SpaceMobile (ASTS) dropped 5.26%, Rocket Lab (RKLB) fell 3.4%, and Redwire (RDW) declined 3.4%.
Meme coins have faced $1.21 billion in cumulative net selling pressure on Binance since Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) made its last all-time high in October 2025.
Sustained Selling Pressure for Meme CoinsIn an X post on July 14, on-chain analytics firm CryptoQuant said the meme coins sector has remained under sustained selling despite occasional bursts of speculation.
Data highlighted the heavy risk appetite deterioration across crypto’s most speculative assets.
While Robinhood’s blockchain launch recently revived interest in meme coins, helping projects like CASHCAT reach a market capitalization of roughly $138 million, CryptoQuant noted that such rallies have been driven by novelty rather than sustained demand.
The significant net outflow underscores how severely meme coins tend to underperform during broader market corrections and serves as a reminder of the heightened capital-loss risk associated with the sector.
Why Meme Coins May Be GamblingIn an X post on July 14, crypto analyst Kevin echoed those concerns, saying the growing obsession with meme coins is making him reduce crypto’s weighting in his investment portfolio.
Kevin added that he expected retail participation to gradually rotate back toward Bitcoin after the previous cycle but instead believes much of the market has shifted toward speculative meme coin trading making it a gambling space.
"If the sector isn’t going to properly heal and instead continues to double down on memes, I see no choice but to take it less and less seriously as an investable asset class," he said, adding that exchanges have increasingly benefited from the trend.
In another X post, Kevin argued that more experienced crypto investors have shifted their attention toward artificial intelligence, robotics and quantum computing, while maintaining some Bitcoin exposure.
Many newer market participants are primarily focused on meme coin speculation, a trend Kevin believes will leave much of the broader altcoin market producing lower highs over successive cycles.
Also, many projects will eventual become "ghost chains" despite intermittent bull-market rallies.
Image: Shutterstock
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On-chain data flagged by Arkham Intelligence shows that $250,000 worth of Shiba Inu tokens (contract address ethereum:0x95ad61b0a150d79219dcf64e1e6cc01f0b64c4ce), seized from FTX and Alameda Research, have moved out of a US government wallet. The transfer is widely assumed to be earmarked for creditors as part of the ongoing FTX estate recovery process.
The memecoin movement is the latest in a series of government transfers that have drawn attention across crypto markets this week. On Monday, according to Arkham Intelligence, 3,940 Bitcoin and 30,014 Ethereum, totaling roughly $288 million, were sent to Coinbase Prime. A further $12.9 million followed on Tuesday, and another $9.29 million in $ETH moved on Wednesday.
A Deposit Is Not a Sale Despite the scale of the flows, market participants should note an important distinction. Coinbase Prime serves as both custodian and trading venue. The US Marshals Service selected the platform in 2024 to provide custody and advanced trading services for large-cap digital assets, which means a deposit there can reflect custody consolidation as easily as sale preparation.
On-chain records show where funds moved, but they do not reveal the government's final instructions to Coinbase Prime. A confirmed sale would require further wallet activity, trading records, or an official statement. Until then, the transaction remains a custody or asset-management move rather than proof of liquidation.
The pattern has produced false alarms before. Seized FTX-linked Chainlink moved to Coinbase Prime in June, and seized Alameda altcoins in May; neither became a confirmed sale.
Part of a Longer Liquidation Pattern The transfers continue a months-long pattern in which the US government has funneled millions in forfeited crypto into exchanges. The latest batches have included Chainlink, Aave, Chiliz, and Balancer. The FTX estate's creditor repayment effort has been running in parallel. The FTX estate delivered its fourth creditor distribution round, worth $2.2 billion, in March.
In March 2025, President Trump signed an executive order establishing a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, with a public commitment that the government would not sell its $BTC holdings. But that pledge specifically covered Bitcoin. It did not extend the same protection to Ether or any other digital asset. That distinction matters given the volume of $ETH now passing through Coinbase Prime.
For now, the government has not published a formal liquidation schedule for the remaining FTX and Alameda assets. Blockchain analytics firms including Chainalysis and Arkham Intelligence monitor public blockchain transactions for wallet addresses known to be associated with government agencies, and these transfers are publicly visible on the blockchain, allowing anyone to track movements in real time.
Sources
The Crypto Times: US Government Sends $288M in Seized Bitcoin, Ether to Coinbase Prime
Crypto Briefing: US Government Moves $288M in Seized Crypto to Coinbase Prime
Cryptopolitan: US Government Moves $984,000 in Seized FTX, Alameda Assets to Coinbase
At 14:18 UTC on Wednesday, July 15, 2026, a single Arbitrum transaction bundled twenty calls into Ostium’s trading contracts and walked out with roughly $11.86 million in USDC. The recipient wallet had opened its first position minutes earlier with a rounding-error deposit. By the time most people saw the security alerts, the money was already moving out.
Ostium is one of the more credible names in on-chain real-world-asset trading: a perpetuals exchange for stocks, commodities, indices, and currencies, backed by General Catalyst and Jump Crypto. What makes it work is a custom price layer that decides what every trade settles at. That layer is exactly what got turned against it, and not on some exotic asset either.
This piece reflects what was verifiable on the afternoon of July 15, 2026, a few hours after the first transaction. The on-chain facts here (the transaction, the contracts, the amount that moved, the receiving wallet) are confirmed directly against block explorers and are cited below so you can check them yourself. What is not settled is the reconciled total loss and the exact authorization failure that made the attack possible; both await Ostium’s own accounting. Treat the confirmed transactions as bedrock and any single loss total as provisional until the team or an independent analyst publishes one.
What Is Ostium, and Why Does It Matter? Ostium is a decentralized perpetuals exchange on Arbitrum whose pitch is real-world assets: leveraged exposure to gold, oil, the S&P, EUR/USD, or individual equities, all from a self-custodial wallet, on markets that traditionally close at 4pm and gate retail behind brokers. It is one of the clearer product-market fits in the RWA narrative. It also lists the major crypto pairs, BTC and ETH among them, and that detail matters more than it looks.
The traction is real. Ostium was founded by Harvard alumni, raised a $3.5 million seed in 2023 led by General Catalyst and LocalGlobe (with SIG, DeFi Alliance, and Balaji Srinivasan among the backers), and in December 2025 added a $20 million Series A co-led by General Catalyst and Jump Crypto, bringing total funding to roughly $27.8 million. As of its December 2025 raise, Ostium had advertised more than $25 billion in cumulative trading volume, including around $5 billion in metals. On July 15, DefiLlama showed Ostium’s TVL near $63 million.
Traders’ collateral and the counterparty liquidity that pays out winning trades sit in Ostium’s vault, called the OLP (Ostium Liquidity Pool). Liquidity providers deposit USDC and, in effect, take the other side of the book. That vault is what an attacker wants to reach, and on July 15 someone found a path to it.
How Ostium Prices a Trade, and Where the Trust Sits To understand the exploit you have to understand how Ostium gets a price at all.
A crypto perp can read an on-chain price from deep DEX liquidity. Gold and Apple can’t be priced that way, because they don’t live on-chain. So Ostium built its own pull-based oracle system, with real-world-asset feeds operated by Stork Network and crypto feeds from Chainlink Data Streams. In a pull design, prices aren’t sitting on-chain continuously. Instead, a signed price report is delivered on-chain at the moment it’s needed: when a trade opens, when it closes, when a limit order or liquidation fires. Automated “keeper” or forwarder services carry those signed reports to the contract and trigger settlement.
This is a sensible architecture for assets that trade off-chain. It also concentrates enormous trust in one place. Whoever is authorized to submit a price report effectively decides the number your PnL is calculated against. If that authorization leaks, or if the check that a submitted price is fresh and legitimate is missing or weak, then the party feeding the price can trade against a number they chose. That is the failure surface, and it is a close cousin of the one that broke Resolv’s USR stablecoin in March, where a single privileged role could mint without on-chain limits.
The Exploit: What the Transaction Shows Here is what the chain shows for the primary transaction, 0x359f8c05…d4870e0, confirmed on both Arbiscan and Blockscout:
It succeeded at 14:18:48 UTC on July 15, 2026. It called executeBatch, running twenty calls that alternated between Ostium’s Trading contract (0x6D0bA1f9…7702411, which Arbiscan labels “Ostium: Trading”) and a contract named OstiumPrivatePriceUpKeep (0xB71ec9eB…3d36), the piece that delivers signed prices on-chain. USDC moved through Ostium’s Trading Storage, Trading Callbacks, and Vault contracts along the way. Every trade in the batch was on pairIndex 0. Ostium’s own subgraph maps pair 0 to BTC/USD, so this was not an exotic real-world-asset market. It was Bitcoin. The trade events show the position opened at a delivered price of exactly $5,000 and closed at roughly $60,000. Bitcoin does not move twelvefold inside one atomic transaction, so at least one of those prices was fabricated and delivered on demand; the exactly-round $5,000 open is the obvious tell. A single deposit of about 1,000 USDC went in. Roughly 11,861,520 USDC came back out to the attacker’s wallet. The same batch that opened and closed the trades also drove OstiumPrivatePriceUpKeep to deliver the $5,000 and $60,000 prices those trades settled against. Whoever sent it therefore held, or had usurped, the right to submit prices, and used it to stand on both sides at once: the price authority and the counterparty were the same operation. The batch came from 0xD1794196…85869 through an entry contract at 0xfE12F636…5bd2E; the trades and the payout belong to 0x321df194…bfd9.
You do not need anyone’s alert to read this. The prices are right there in the trade events: open a Bitcoin long at $5,000, close it near $60,000, collect the difference from the vault, and a ~1,000 USDC deposit comes back as ~$11.86 million. That is not an inference from fund flows, it is in the price fields the contracts recorded. What the trace cannot tell you is how the attacker was allowed to deliver those prices at all, whether a signing key was compromised, a malicious price upkeep was registered, or a validation check on submitted prices was missing or weak. That distinction is the whole post-mortem, and only Ostium can close it.
Here is the part that should unsettle people most. The attacker did this on BTC/USD, the most liquid and most easily cross-checked market Ostium runs, not on gold, not on a thinly traded stock, not on an overnight forex cross. If the pricing layer will accept $5,000 for Bitcoin, the asset was never the point. The authorization to submit a price was.
The Cashout The receiving wallet, 0x321df194…bfd9, is a fresh externally owned account with no prior history and no Arbiscan label yet. It took in the $11.86 million from the primary transaction and additional USDC from several sibling batch transactions sent the same way.
The money did not stay. A few hours later, the wallet held no USDC at all, just about 99.6 ETH (gas-scale, a low six figures) and a spoofed lookalike “ETH” token of the kind that gets airdropped to any address in the news. Where the stablecoin went from there, whether swapped, split across wallets, or bridged off Arbitrum, I did not trace, and the balance snapshot may not be complete. What is clear is that it moved out fast, which is the entire point of moving before a protocol can react. It is the same race Resolv’s attacker ran in March, and the same reason “we’ve paused the protocol” statements so often land after the funds are already gone.
How Big Was the Hit? This is where the honest answer is a range, not a headline.
Figure Value Status Largest single transaction ~$11.86M USDC to the attacker Tx confirmed on-chain; amount read from explorer transfer logs Additional sibling transactions Several, same pattern Confirmed they exist; total not cleanly summed Ostium TVL on July 15 ~$63M (DefiLlama) Live figure; may lag the incident So the floor is real: at least the better part of $12 million left in the primary transaction, going by the explorer transfer logs, and the same wallet pulled more through several sibling batches I did not fully sum. Loss estimates circulating on launch day ran higher, into the high teens of millions, alongside a “$34 million vault, 35% drained” framing. I could not confirm those numbers, and note that a $34 million liquidity vault could sit inside the ~$63 million total TVL DefiLlama shows, so even those two are not necessarily in conflict. The honest position is a confirmed floor and an open total until Ostium or an independent analyst publishes a reconciled figure.
The Uncomfortable Questions How did an attacker become authorized to submit prices? Everything about this incident routes back to that question. A pull oracle only works if the set of parties allowed to deliver signed prices is tightly controlled and their reports are validated on arrival. Whether the attacker obtained a legitimate signer key, got a malicious forwarder registered, or exploited a gap in how reports are checked, the outcome is the same: they got to name the price that settled their own trades.
Where were the on-chain guardrails? The recurring lesson of 2026’s exploits is that off-chain trust needs on-chain limits behind it. Was there a bound on how far a settlement price could deviate from the last accepted one? A freshness or timestamp check strict enough to reject a “future-dated” report? A per-block or per-account cap on vault payouts? The batched, atomic nature of the theft suggests at least one of those checks was missing or bypassable.
What about the audits? This was not an unreviewed protocol. Zellic audited the contracts in early 2024 and returned 19 findings, two of them critical, with the price-upkeep and vault contracts in scope; it even raised upkeep-specific issues at the time, one titled “Chainlink feed ID not checked in upkeep.” Pashov Audit Group ran a further review in September 2025, and Ostium also lists a ThreeSigma audit, a Chaos Labs economic audit, and an Immunefi bug bounty. Two things stand out anyway. Zellic’s 2024 engagement expressly put “key custody” and “infrastructure relating to the project” out of scope, which is close to where the abuse of a registered PriceUpKeep would live. And the September 2025 review covered only the trading-engine contracts, not any price-upkeep or vault contract. The exact component the attacker used, OstiumPrivatePriceUpKeep, was either reviewed years ago on an older design or left out of the most recent pass entirely. Audits cut risk; they do not certify its absence, least of all for the price-authorization plumbing that sits at the very edge of what a contract audit covers.
The Asset Was Never the Point The intuitive worry about an RWA perp is the exotic feed. Gold, a single stock, an overnight forex cross: none of them have a deep on-chain market to check a submitted price against, so a bad number is harder to catch. That worry is legitimate and worth keeping. But it is not what happened here. The attack ran on Bitcoin, where a fabricated $5,000 print should have been the easiest thing in the world to reject. The weak point sat upstream of the asset, in whatever governs who may submit a price and whether the contracts bound-check it before paying out. An RWA venue carries that risk on top of the exotic-feed risk, not instead of it.
Ostium is not a fly-by-night project. It has real funding, real volume, and a design many people saw as one of the better expressions of the RWA thesis, this site’s coverage of onchain forex and tokenized metals included. That is exactly why the incident matters. A well-funded, name-backed team let its pricing layer accept $5,000 for the most-watched asset in crypto. The custom-oracle problem is not a rough edge on some immature protocol, and it is not confined to the exotic assets everyone was worried about. It is a category risk that the whole “bring global markets on-chain” movement has to solve before it asks users to post real size.
What Happens Next In the hours after the attack, Ostium had not posted an official statement or a loss figure. Expect the usual sequence: an acknowledgment, a pause of affected functions, a claim that the team is investigating and tracing funds, and eventually a post-mortem. The questions that post-mortem needs to answer are specific: how price-submission authorization was secured, what validation a submitted report had to pass, whether a key was compromised or a forwarder maliciously registered, and what caps or circuit breakers stood between a “profitable” trade and the vault.
For anyone with funds in Ostium, particularly OLP liquidity providers who sit on the counterparty side of every trade, the practical advice is the same it always is in the first hours of an incident: check your exposure directly, watch Ostium’s official channels rather than secondhand figures, and don’t assume a stated total is final.
And for everyone building or allocating in RWA land, file this next to Resolv. The mechanisms differ, but both trace back to the same weak point: a single privileged component, trusted off-chain, with too little standing between it and the money on-chain. RWA protocols are lining up to put a lot more of the world’s assets behind components exactly like that. This is what it looks like when one of them gives.
Not financial or tax advice. PANews content is strictly educational and informational and is not investment advice, financial advice, tax advice, legal advice, or a solicitation to buy or sell any digital asset, security, or financial product. Do your own research and consult qualified advisers.
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Pi Network price surged to $0.0826, becoming one of the top gainers across the cryptocurrency market during Wednesday’s trading session.
The Pi coin rose by 15% in 24 hours, far outpacing the 3% rise in the broader market.
Pi’s rebound followed a sharp decline that pushed the token to an all-time low of $0.07072 on July 14.
Although this is the latest recovery, PI is down 20% in the last week and this indicates strain throughout its market structure.
The gain seems to be associated with a technical bounce following extremely oversold circumstances which brought buyers close to record-low levels.
Bitcoin Price Breakout Above $64,600 Supports Broader Crypto Recovery Bitcoin price also strengthened market sentiment after rising above the $64,000 resistance zone during the previous trading session.
The leading cryptocurrency gained 3.39% to $64,776, while briefly trading near $64,600 during Wednesday’s market activity.
Cooler-than-expected United States inflation data helped support the rally by reducing fears of additional Federal Reserve rate increases.
Source: Coin360 That growth triggered risk-taking in digital assets, propelling Ethereum above $1,800 and boosting XRP price above $1.10.
The next key test of Bitcoin is closer to $65,000, as well as the 50-day exponential moving average of $65,142.
A decisive end above that area may initiate a push to the resistance zone of $68,000 to $70,000 as per the Bitcoin long-range prediction.
However, failure to maintain support above $64,000 could trigger another pullback toward the $63,000 level.
In the case of Pi Network, future profits could be determined by increased trading volume and overall robustness within the broader cryptocurrency market.
Any break above local resistance has the potential to lengthen the rally and a renewed weakness may re-test the recent all-time low.
Pi Network Exchange Holdings Reach $40 Million as Gate Leads According to Pi Scan, cryptocurrency exchanges currently hold roughly $40 million worth of Pi Network tokens.
The stated balances are reported in OKX, Bitget, and Gate, and MEXC, Pionex, LBank, and Kraken. Gate holds the largest share, valued above $20 million.
The Value of Pi Across Exchanges Will Shock You…
According to data from Pi Scan, the value of $PI across exchanges is roughly $40M.
This includes holdings across @OKX, @Bitget, @Gate, @MEXC, @Pionex, @LBank_Exchange, and @krakenfx.
Gate has the largest number of holdings,… pic.twitter.com/VlbNNF4Vtw
— BSCN (@BSCNews) July 14, 2026
With the headline figure, the amount of exchange holdings is less than 0.05% of Pi circulating supply. This number indicates that the majority of tokens existing are not on centralized cryptocurrency exchanges.
Additional token unlocks would slowly grow deposits as Pioneers transfer some holdings to exchanges. That change will however be as a result of market conditions, confidence as well as trading demand.
Will Pi Network Price Rally Continue? The PI coin shot up to $0.08430, indicating a drastic increase after the lows witnessed in the recent past. Pi Network price is within an ascending channel, and the larger volume indicates a revived interest by buyers.
The MACD created a bullish cross over and the histogram went back into positive territory. Nevertheless, both MACD lines are below zero, which constrains the belief in a long-term recovery. The RSI rebounded to 42.97 due to oversold, however the momentum is still below neutral.
Source: PI/USDT 4-hour chart: Tradingview A close above $0.085 could lift the future Pi Network outlook toward $0.090, followed by the major $0.095 resistance.
Breaking out of $0.095 can have open targets of $0.110 and $0.120 in case the market demand becomes strong. On the other hand, the loss of $0.080 might reveal $0.075 and further profitability would revisit $0.070.
Strategy, which had stated for a long time that it would not sell Bitcoin but subsequently sold BTC twice, has now formalized its sales.
While this situation reduces the risk of the company’s sales falling due to the BTC price, Strategy CEO Phong Le stated that they have not abandoned their BTC buying strategy.
Speaking to Bloomberg, Strategy CEO Phong Le stated that the company’s financial structure is strong and that its BTC strategy and purchases are not putting pressure on the company.
Lee stated that the Bitcoin price and purchases would need to fall to levels between $8,000 and $10,000 for it to create significant debt pressure on the company.
Le stated, “When Bitcoin approaches the $8,000-$10,000 range, we need to assess some risks related to our debt. However, at current levels, we are extremely confident in our balance sheet.”
The renowned CEO, recalling Bitcoin’s past experience of weathering numerous sharp declines and bull cycles, stated that Strategy has remained afloat despite challenging market conditions in both 2022 and this year, and will likely weather this bear market as well.
He also added that the company is preparing for its next growth cycle.
The Company’s USD Reserves Reach $3 Billion! The CEO announced that the company’s cash reserves have increased to approximately $3 billion thanks to a recent share sale.
Le stated that this step was taken specifically to respond to the higher liquidity demands of preferred shareholders, and that the company’s priority was to bring the nominal value of the preferred stock, STRC, back to the $100 level.
He then added that new preferred shares would be issued and a significant portion of the funds raised would be used again to purchase Bitcoin.
We Don’t Control the Bitcoin Market! Addressing criticisms that Strategy has excessive influence over the Bitcoin market, Le emphasized that the Bitcoin it holds represents only 4% of the total supply.
Le, noting that the daily Bitcoin trading volume exceeds $30 billion, pointed out that the price rose despite Strategy recently selling approximately $200 million worth of Bitcoin, indicating that the company is not driving the market alone.
We Haven’t Given Up, We Will Continue Buying Bitcoin! The renowned CEO emphasized that despite the company’s recent sales, it has no plans to abandon its Bitcoin accumulation strategy and aims to remain the largest buyer of BTC.
“We’re not going anywhere. Our goal is to become the biggest buyer of Bitcoin for the foreseeable future.”
*This is not investment advice.
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In This Article Crypto News Today: JPMorgan Highlights Risk for Circle and Coinbase Due to Hyperliquid's Rapid GrowthThe European Central Bank Selects 36 Participants for its 2027 Digital Euro Pilot In crypto news today (July 15), Bitcoin has surged back to $65,000, with an impressive +3.5% move over the past 24 hours. At this time of writing, BTC USD is sitting just under $65K, but if it can close above on a 4-hour candle, a push toward $70,000 could be on the cards.
This move from Bitcoin comes as $181M in inflows were recorded across various BTC ETFs yesterday. This trend of the Bitcoin price action correlating to the direction of ETF flows continues. It is worth keeping an eye on ETF performance for clues as to where BTC is heading.
With the majority of the market spiking higher alongside Bitcoin, a few notable projects are in the red today. Bittensor (TAO) and World Liberty Fi (WLFI) are both down about -1%, while Ethereum (ETH) and Hyperliquid (HYPE) are each up about +5%.
The Fear & Greed Index hasn’t reacted yet to the market-wide spike, jumping just 3 points from yesterday to 25/100, still in ‘Extreme Fear’ territory. If Bitcoin can hold at around or above $65,000 throughout the rest of the week, there is a good chance the index moves toward the ‘Fear’ territory.
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On-chain analytics platform Glassnode said in a report that top traders on the Hyperliquid exchange are aggressively going long on BTC. Their long positions are currently at a high level in Glassnode’s historical records, exceeding the level hit when Bitcoin previously rallied to roughly $83,000, signaling that speculative long demand remains robust in the market at current price levels.
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Hassett: The Federal Reserve has no reason to raise interest rates, and he believes Walsh will guide the Fed to reach the correct outcome on interest rate issues.
White House National Economic Council Director Hassett: Data shows the Federal Reserve has no reason to raise interest rates. He believes Walsh will guide the Federal Reserve to reach the right conclusion on interest rate issues, and Iran’s ability to threaten the global economy has declined.
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Bank of America: Fund managers’ bullishness on US stocks hits highest level since December 2024.
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SK Hynix's US-listed ADR premium over its Korean shares narrowed to 30.7%.
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Warren Buffett: Not investing in Google back then was a mistake, and it is "more likely to be a winner" now.
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Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have seen massive outflows, with net losses reaching over $8.2 billion. Despite this trend, enthusiasm for the decentralized derivatives exchange Hyperliquid, established in 2024, is on the rise. Hyperliquid’s native token, HYPE, has maintained its value near $67–$68, reflecting market participants’ interest. Observers suggest this dynamic could indicate a capital shift from traditional Bitcoin exposure to newer options such as HYPE spot ETFs, which have attracted around $172 million in net inflows since mid-May 2026.
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Institutional interest in Hyperliquid is further supported by its protocol tokenomics, which allocate nearly all revenue towards token buybacks and burns. The inclusion of HYPE in the Bitwise 10 Crypto Index ETF has also contributed to its appeal. This escalating interest in Hyperliquid appears to align with market participants’ expectations for its future performance, as evidenced by the pricing in prediction markets.
Key Takeaways Markets suggest a capital rotation from Bitcoin ETFs to Hyperliquid, evidenced by significant inflows into HYPE spot ETFs. Hyperliquid’s tokenomics and inclusion in the Bitwise 10 Crypto Index ETF appear to enhance its attractiveness to institutional investors. The prediction market for Hyperliquid reaching $100 by the end of 2026 has seen adjustments, with the current probability at 30.5% YES. What to Watch Market participants will be monitoring whether the trend of inflows into Hyperliquid continues, especially as Bitcoin ETFs face ongoing outflows. Key developments such as the announcement of partnerships or technological innovations by Hyperliquid could influence market sentiment and pricing. Additionally, any regulatory changes or security issues impacting Hyperliquid might shift market dynamics, potentially affecting its probability of reaching the $100 price target by December 31, 2026.
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Term Structure
Contract Odds Δ since publish Volume 24h December 31 30.5% — — View market → January 1 2027 5.7% — — View market → January 1 2027 4% — — View market → January 1 2027 69.5% — — View market → January 1 2027 9.1% — — View market → January 1 2027 4.5% — — View market →
Bitcoin spent a full week locked between $60,000 and $64,000, absorbing a war scare, a wave of liquidations and a hawkish Federal Reserve. On July 15 it left the box upward at $64,740, and unlike most headline-driven pops, this one brought expanding volume with it. What follows is the structure of the move and the two conditions that decide whether it becomes a trend.
The Structure: a box, a catalyst, a break BTC trades at $64,740 as of July 15, 2026, per CoinGecko, up 3.3% in 24 hours and 4.4% across the week. Market cap: $1.299 trillion.
The week-long range was clean: repeated defenses of the $60,000 area on the downside, repeated stalls near $64,000 on top. Ranges that tight, held through news that violent, usually resolve with force in one direction, and the direction chose up. The trigger was macro, not crypto-native: June consumer prices fell 0.4% on the month, the largest one-month decline since April 2020, with annual inflation at 3.5% versus expectations near 3.8% and core inflation flat, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Markets moved from pricing rate pressure toward pricing a Fed on hold, and risk assets repriced accordingly.
A breakout born from a data print carries a specific vulnerability: it inherits the data’s fragility. The June inflation relief came overwhelmingly from falling energy prices, and the geopolitical backdrop that crushed oil in June has already begun reversing. If oil keeps climbing, the market will start fading the very number that fueled this move. That is not a prediction. It is the identified risk.
The Confirmation Test Two conditions separate a real range break from a headline pop, and both are measurable within days.
Condition one: acceptance above $64,000. The old range top has to become the new floor. A daily close back inside the box would mark this as a failed breakout, and failed breakouts from week-long ranges typically travel to the opposite side of the range, which puts $60,000 back on the table. Above $64,000, the next reference is the round $65,000, and beyond it the zone where June’s breakdown began, in the mid $60,000s, where trapped buyers from the last leg down are waiting to exit at break-even. That overhead supply is the honest reason not to expect a straight line.
Condition two: volume persistence. The breakout day printed $32.7 billion of volume against $27.3 billion the prior day, an expansion of roughly 20%. That is what genuine participation looks like at the moment of a break. The tell over the next sessions: if volume holds elevated while price consolidates above $64,000, positioning is building. If volume collapses back while price hovers, the move was a one-day event reaction and the box walls start pulling again.
The Data Behind the Move The single most important number in this report is not on the Bitcoin chart. It is minus 0.4%, the monthly CPI change, because it flipped the macro assumption underneath every risk asset. A market that spent June bracing for a hawkish Fed under its new chairman suddenly has room to breathe, and rate-sensitive assets, crypto first among them, repriced within hours.
The counterweight belongs in the same paragraph. One cool print does not end an inflation fight, the Fed’s own June projections leaned hawkish, and the ceasefire whose oil-price collapse produced this CPI number is publicly fraying. The bullish read and the bearish read currently share a single variable: the price of oil. Watch it alongside the chart.
Bottom Line The breakout is real on today’s evidence: a clean range break, a verified catalyst, and volume expanding into the move. It is unconfirmed by the only test that matters, time above $64,000. Acceptance above the old box top with sustained volume opens the path toward $65,000 and the mid $60,000s supply zone. A close back inside the box cancels everything and re-opens $60,000. The chart has stated its terms. Now it is the market’s turn.
FAQ Why did Bitcoin break out today? June CPI fell 0.4% on the month, the largest decline since April 2020, easing fears of further rate pressure. BTC broke its week-long $60,000 to $64,000 range at $64,740 on volume roughly 20% higher than the prior day.
Is the Bitcoin breakout confirmed? Not yet. Confirmation requires daily closes above $64,000 with volume staying elevated. A close back inside the old range would mark a failed breakout and re-expose $60,000.
What are the next resistance levels for Bitcoin? The round $65,000 first, then the mid $60,000s zone where June’s breakdown began and prior buyers remain trapped. Overhead supply there makes a straight-line rally unlikely.
What is the biggest risk to the rally? Oil. June’s inflation relief came mostly from falling energy prices, and renewed Middle East tensions are pushing oil back up, which could reverse the macro story behind this move.
What was the June 2026 CPI report? Consumer prices fell 0.4% in June, the biggest monthly drop since April 2020, with annual inflation at 3.5% and core inflation flat on the month, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
This article is for information only and is not investment advice. Crypto assets are extremely volatile and you can lose your entire stake. Always do your own research.
AUTHOR
Farhan Karim is a technology writer and content strategist with 15+ years of experience writing thousands of articles, blogs, whitepapers, and ebooks on Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, and other tech niches. His expertise in content strategy, SEO, and a keen eye on the ever-evolving tech space have led him to work with companies like Pepsi, Huawei, Arab News, and now Blockchain Reporter.
Bitcoin (BTC) may hit up to $80,000 by August, a new prediction says as data lays out key nearby BTC price levels.
Key points:
Bitcoin can continue to $70,000 and higher next month if it clears nearby resistance, says new analysis.Market participants identify the most significant support and resistance levels now circling spot price.A macro tide could be the spark to ignite the next move higher this week.BTC price roadmap sees $68,000 within two weeksIn an X update on Wednesday, crypto trader and analyst Michaël van de Poppe said that BTC/USD was successfully defending “crucial” support.
“It’s holding the crucial level at $61,000 and flipping important MAs for support, indicating that there’s more momentum on the horizon,” he wrote, referring to moving average trend lines.
“I’m expecting to see a rally to $68,000 in the next 1-2 weeks, followed by a continuation towards $75,000-80,000 in August.”BTC/USDT one-day chart. Source: Michaël van de Poppe/X
Van de Poppe’s first target coincides with exchange order-book liquidity hurdles that price would encounter if it were to break out of its local range.
Updating X followers on whale orders, monitoring resource CoinGlass showed the area at $67,000 and above as key for the cohort. Support, meanwhile, sat principally between $63,500 and $63,800.
BTC/USDT 15-minute chart with whale orders. Source: CoinGlass
Others remained cautious, with declining spot-market volume causing suspicion about the strength of the latest gains.
“Wouldn’t get excited about this pump, this can easily end up being a failed auction above value area,” commentator Exitpump warned on Tuesday.
Previously, trader and analyst Rekt Capital warned that July strength should reverse by August as Bitcoin repeats standard bear-market behavior.
QCP Capital: Crypto market still needs “conviction”In market research issued on Monday, trading company QCP Capital suggested that a macro “catalyst” could be all that was needed to propel crypto higher.
As Cointelegraph reported, the coming days will see the release of key US inflation data prior to the Federal Reserve’s decision on interest-rate changes at the end of the month. Tuesday’s data came in below expectations, helping to send Bitcoin back toward $65,000.
“Should this week’s macro data and earnings continue to validate the bullish narrative, improving risk sentiment could spill over into digital assets as investors rotate into markets that have lagged the broader equity rally,” QCP wrote.
“Until then, crypto appears caught between supportive long-term fundamentals and a market still waiting for conviction.”This article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph's Editorial Policy and is intended for informational purposes only. It does not constitute investment advice or recommendations. All investments and trades carry risk; readers are encouraged to conduct independent research.
Jeff Walton, Chief Risk Officer of Strive, a Nasdaq-listed Bitcoin treasury company, recently projected that Bitcoin could reach a valuation of $10 to $15 trillion. Walton emphasized Strive’s commitment to leveraging this potential opportunity to enhance shareholder value. His comments come as Strive continues to employ a strategy focused on accumulating Bitcoin, reflecting a view of Bitcoin as a core balance-sheet asset. Strive currently holds between 19,000 and 19,864 BTC, making it one of the largest public corporate Bitcoin holders globally.
Walton’s ambitious valuation target is part of Strive’s broader strategy to maximize Bitcoin-per-share for its equity investors. This strategy includes recent acquisitions of substantial Bitcoin holdings and the introduction of a daily-dividend preferred stock product aimed at funding further Bitcoin purchases. Walton’s remarks underscore the firm’s belief in Bitcoin’s long-term potential, a belief that may influence sentiment within prediction markets focused on Bitcoin’s price movements.
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Currently, Bitcoin price markets are reacting to a range of factors, with Walton’s comments potentially serving as a catalyst. The market pricing suggests participants are evaluating Bitcoin’s prospects, although recent odds reflect a decline in the likelihood of Bitcoin reaching specific price bands by mid-July 2026.
Key Takeaways Walton’s comments suggest confidence in Bitcoin’s potential to reach a $10–15 trillion valuation, aligning with Strive’s accumulation strategy. Market activity reflects mixed sentiment, as indicated by fluctuations in odds for Bitcoin price ranges leading up to July 15, 2026. The current valuation of Strive’s Bitcoin holdings positions the company as a significant player in the corporate Bitcoin landscape. What to Watch Watch for any further strategic moves by Strive that could impact Bitcoin’s valuation. Walton’s statement may influence sentiment, but other market drivers, such as regulatory developments or macroeconomic trends, could also play a significant role. Watch for any shifts in prediction market odds that could suggest changes in sentiment regarding Bitcoin’s price trajectory as the July 15, 2026, resolution date approaches.
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Term Structure
Contract Odds Δ since publish Volume 24h July 15 2026 0.5% — — View market → July 15 2026 12.5% — — View market → July 15 2026 0.2% — — View market →
Bitcoin surged past $65,000 on Tuesday following new US inflation data that indicated consumer prices cooled significantly in June. The move eased market concerns about another interest rate increase from the Federal Reserve this month. During the day, bitcoin traded as high as $65,100, marking a daily gain of more than 4%.
Inflation drops more than forecastThe US Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the Consumer Price Index fell by 0.4% in June, the sharpest monthly decline since April 2020. This result exceeded economist expectations, who had anticipated only a 0.2% fall. On a yearly basis, inflation eased to 3.5%, down from 4.2% in May. The latest figures mark the first drop after inflation reached a three-year high in the previous month.
Declining energy costs were the biggest driver of the slowdown, with gasoline prices dropping more than 9% in June. These decreases countered modest increases in food and shelter expenses.
Market reaction and crypto performanceEther, the native cryptocurrency of the Ethereum network, outpaced bitcoin’s rally, rising nearly 7% to approximately $1,895. Both assets appeared to benefit from the prospect of a less aggressive stance by the Federal Reserve on monetary tightening.
Recent surges in energy prices, fueled by tensions between the US and Iran, had contributed to inflation throughout the spring. This previously prompted market participants to anticipate further rate hikes, a scenario that tends to weigh on riskier assets like cryptocurrencies. The fresh inflation data, however, relieved some of those pressures.
AssetPrice Change (Daily)Current PriceBitcoin (BTC)+4%$65,100Ether (ETH)+7%$1,895Fed outlook and ongoing risksTraders now assign higher odds that the Federal Reserve will keep its policy rate steady, maintaining it between 3.5% and 3.75% at this month’s meeting, according to data from CME FedWatch. However, many in the market still expect the central bank to consider a 25-basis-point increase at its September meeting.
Last month, statements from the Warsh Federal Reserve indicated a more hawkish policy path despite recent data. US military officials announced Tuesday that preparations were underway to reinstate a blockade on Iranian ports, following a series of strikes near the strategic Strait of Hormuz.
Ongoing geopolitical tensions and the potential for resurgent energy prices continue to weigh on investor sentiment, especially for risk-sensitive assets such as cryptocurrencies.
Bitcoin broke above $65,000 as softer-than-expected US inflation data reassured markets and eased speculation over an imminent Fed rate hike.
Mini dictionary: CME FedWatch, a real-time tool used by traders to gauge market expectations for future Federal Reserve interest rate moves based on Fed funds futures pricing.
The next policy decisions and geopolitical developments remain in focus, as traders continue to assess the outlook for inflation, interest rates, and digital asset performance in coming months.
Disclaimer: The information contained in this article does not constitute investment advice. Investors should be aware that cryptocurrencies carry high volatility and therefore risk, and should conduct their own research.
Bitcoin (BTC) price is up by 3.32% today, July 15, to trade at $64,690 at the time of writing. The gains follow a surge in buying pressure after US inflation dropped to 3.5%. Still, President Trump’s order to close Iranian ports poses a risk to BTC price if the escalating geopolitical tensions fuel sell-side pressure.
Bitcoin Defies Escalating US-Iran Tensions as Oil Prices Rise The price of Brent Crude oil has risen to $85 today, July 15, after the US reimposed a blockade on Iranian ports near the Strait of Hormuz.
President Trump has also said the US will strike power plants and bridges in Iran if the country does not resume negotiation talks to end the war.
Trump’s threat comes shortly after the US closed the Strait of Hormuz and reintroduced a 20% fee for cargo ships passing through the Strait.
Iran is also pushing back, with the IRGC launching strikes on Middle East countries like Kuwait, Bahrain, and Jordan.
Still, Bitcoin price remains unmoved by these tensions, and on July 14, it created its biggest green candle since June 7. BTC also moved above $65,000 on July 14 for the first time since June 22.
The gains occurred after the US inflation rate dropped to 3.5%, and the odds of the Fed raising interest rates on July 28 dropped to 14%.
Bitcoin Price Hits 3-Week High Amid Shifting Momentum The price of Bitcoin reached $65,000 for the first time since June 22 after buyers returned due to cooling US inflation.
The RSI reading of 54 also supports a bullish long-term Bitcoin price forecast because it suggests that the momentum has shifted to favor bulls.
If this RSI keeps making higher highs, the price of BTC could close above the psychological resistance of $65,000.
Bitcoin closing above the psychological price of $65,000 for three straight days could lead to another upward move to the 100-day EMA of $68,500.
But if the buying pressure that was caused by cooling inflation eases and short-traders sell to book profits, BTC could drop to the support at the 20-day EMA of $63,200.
BTC/USDT: 1-day Chart (Source: TradingView) Analyst Daan Crypto also warns that BTC could move below $60,000 if it breaks the support at $61,300. However, if Bitcoin moves above $64,644, the analyst notes that the price could reclaim $67,000.
BTC ETFs Post $181M Inflows Amid Rising Demand For Longs Bitcoin’s recent gain to $65,000 attracted demand from institutions because inflows to BTC ETFs reached $181 million on July 14.
BlackRock’s IBIT ETF had the highest inflows of $138 million, followed by Fidelity with $21 million in inflows.
The ETF inflows coincide with a rising demand for Bitcoin long positions. The top traders on Hyperliquid now hold the highest number of long positions since September 2025, per Glassnode data.
Bitcoin Long/Short Positions (Source: Glassnode) Glassnode also notes that these traders are more bullish on Bitcoin at the current price of $64,000 than they were when the price reached $83,000 in May 2026.
This long positioning suggests that these traders expect the price of bitcoin to keep rising despite the conflict between the US and Iran.
Galaxy Digital Head of Research Alex Thorn stated that between 2024 and 2025, a significant volume of long-dormant Bitcoin (BTC) was reactivated and transferred on-chain, with the activity’s scale second only to 2017. He noted that the "Great Distribution" phase driven by this wave of old BTC reactivation has now largely concluded, and it is projected that the number of BTC reactivated in 2026 will be less than half of the 2025 figure.
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Bitcoin may have the potential to surge to $80,000 by August, according to new projections from leading cryptocurrency analysts. Current market data highlights key price levels that traders are watching closely in the coming weeks.
Analysts focus on key resistance and supportProminent trader and analyst Michaël van de Poppe stated on X that BTC/USD has managed to defend an important support level. He reported that Bitcoin remains above $61,000, a threshold considered crucial for further upside.
“It’s holding the crucial level at $61,000 and flipping important MAs for support, indicating that there’s more momentum on the horizon,” van de Poppe stated, referencing moving average trend lines.
Van de Poppe identified $70,000 as the next major target if Bitcoin can overcome nearby resistance. This target matches areas of high liquidity, where significant order-book activity could influence price movement.
Orders from large holders, often referred to as “whales,” are clustered around $67,000 and above, according to data compiled by analytics platform CoinGlass. The strongest support now sits between $63,500 and $63,800, creating defined boundaries for Bitcoin’s current trading range.
Mini dictionary: CoinGlass, a crypto analytics platform that tracks derivatives data, order books, and on-chain activity for various digital assets.
Despite recent gains, some market watchers remain cautious. Exitpump, another analyst, warned that declining spot-market volume may not support sustained upward momentum, describing the latest surge as a potential “failed auction above value area.”
Exitpump remarked that sudden upward moves, when not backed by strong trading volume, can reverse quickly and may not signal a confirmed trend reversal.
Earlier, analyst Rekt Capital cautioned that historical patterns suggest July’s strength in Bitcoin could fade by August, noting typical bear-market behavior in this timeframe.
LevelSupportResistancePrimary Support$63,500 – $63,800–Immediate Resistance–$67,000Major Target–$70,000August Projection–$80,000Macroeconomic factors could drive next moveTrading firm QCP Capital suggested in its latest market research that a major macroeconomic catalyst could propel cryptocurrencies higher. QCP Capital, known for providing research and liquidity services in digital asset markets, outlined that both market sentiment and capital rotation play key roles at this point in the cycle.
Recent US inflation figures released on Tuesday came in below expectations, contributing to a rebound in Bitcoin’s price toward $65,000. This data arrives ahead of an upcoming decision by the Federal Reserve regarding interest rates, which many traders believe could influence short-term direction for digital assets.
QCP Capital stated that if upcoming macroeconomic data and corporate earnings continue to foster a positive risk environment, digital assets might benefit as investors look for opportunities outside of equities, especially in markets that have not kept pace with the recent stock market rally.
Disclaimer: The information contained in this article does not constitute investment advice. Investors should be aware that cryptocurrencies carry high volatility and therefore risk, and should conduct their own research.
Bitcoin held near a three-week high and ether steadied around its highest since June 3 as U.S.-Iran hostilities capped gains from a softer-than-expected U.S. inflation report on Tuesday.HYPE rose 4% and is targeting a new record above $78, supported by a trend of higher highs and higher lows since May. Rival LIT stalled as profit-taking set in near its all-time high of $2.76.CoinMarketCap's Altcoin Season indicator slipped to 46/100 as strength concentrated in the majors rather than spreading across the broader market.Bitcoin BTC$64,532.45 and ether (ETH) consolidated during Asian and European hours after rallying on Tuesday following a weaker-than-forecast U.S. inflation figure.
Bitcoin, while more than 3% higher over 24 hours, fell 0.6% since midnight UTC as tensions between Iran and the U.S. over tanker movements in the Strait of Hormuz ramped up. The largest cryptocurrency earlier touched a three-week high of $65,200.
Ether marked a similar trajectory, remaining 5% higher over 24 hours even after dropping 0.8% since midnight. It touched $1,895, the highest level since June 3, on Tuesday.
U.S. equities also rose in the period, with Nasdaq 100 futures and S&P 500 futures posting respective gains of 0.53% and 0.22%.
The altcoin market also showed pockets of strength; PUMP rose by 8.5% since midnight after a team and investor unlock was mopped up by investors, suggesting robust demand.
Derivatives positioningBTC derivatives positioning remains largely unchanged. Open interest ticked up to $17.3 billion, though the move is not meaningful, the three-month annualized basis held at 3.8% and funding rates remained broadly in the 0%-8% annualized range across multiple venues. In essence, the market continues to consolidateOptions positioning tilted more bullish as the 24-hour call/put ratio moved to 66/34 following yesterday's softer 58/42 read and the one-week delta skew held steady at ~15%. The ATM term structure remains in contango, with the front end around 32%–33% and the long end at ~42.5% out to mid-2027 - indicating a calm, non-stressed volatility environment with a renewed lean toward upside positioning.Coinglass data shows $357 million in 24-hour liquidations, with a 19-81 split between longs and shorts. ETH ($132 million) and BTC ($118 million) were the leaders in terms of notional liquidations. The Binance liquidation heatmap indicates $63,500 as a core liquidation level to monitor in the event of a price drop.Token talkCoinMarketCap’s “Altcoin Season” indicator fell to 46/100 on Wednesday, likely due to the strength shown by the largest cryptocurrencies, bitcoin and ether.The indicator was also dragged down by WLFI$0.05694, which lost around 1% since midnight UTC despite buoyancy in the broader market.Hyperliquid (HYPE) demonstrated its strength, adding 4% since midnight as it looks to extend May’s rally, which has been characterized by a series of higher highs and higher lows. The next target would be a record high above $78.00.HYPE’s rival token, LIT, stalled after a strong month, rising by just 0.5% as it started experiencing profit-taking and supply distribution as it neared its record high of $2.76.There was also a strong gain for zcash (ZEC), which surged by more than 10% over the past 24 hours before consolidating around $557.Related Assets
Bitcoin’s price rose above $65,000 following a notable decrease in inflation, as reported in today’s Unchained Daily newsletter. The U.S. Consumer Price Index (CPI) saw a 0.4% decline in June, bringing annual inflation down to 2.9%. This development has contributed to a significant reduction in the likelihood of a Federal Reserve interest rate hike, now at 15.5%, while increasing the possibility of a rate cut in September. Concurrently, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) intervened to prevent the prediction-market platform Kalshi from canceling sports-wagering contracts for Michigan residents, citing federal law supremacy over state directives.
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Key Takeaways Bitcoin’s price increase above $65,000 appears consistent with improved macroeconomic conditions, as indicated by a sharp drop in inflation figures. The CFTC’s action against Kalshi suggests a reinforcement of federal authority over state gambling regulations in prediction markets. Market pricing aligns with scenarios supportive of Bitcoin maintaining levels above key thresholds, reflecting confidence in reduced near-term rate hikes. What to Watch Watch for upcoming statements from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, particularly any hints of interest rate adjustments during the July 28–29 meeting. Additionally, developments regarding potential regulatory changes and their implications for platforms like Kalshi could influence market behavior. The likelihood of Bitcoin sustaining its current price levels or advancing further hinges on macroeconomic indicators and regulatory actions.
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Term Structure
Contract Odds Δ since publish Volume 24h July 15 2026 99.9% — — View market → July 15 2026 99.9% — — View market → July 15 2026 99.9% — — View market → July 15 2026 99.9% — — View market → July 15 2026 99.4% — — View market → July 15 2026 83.5% — — View market → July 15 2026 0.1% — — View market → July 15 2026 0.1% — — View market → July 15 2026 3.9% — — View market → July 15 2026 99.9% — — View market → July 15 2026 0.1% — — View market →
Here are the leaked details of the latest meeting in the Situation Room regarding the recently restarted war in the Middle East.
Bitcoin’s price charted impressive gains on Tuesday and Wednesday after the lower-than-expected US CPI numbers for June, spiking to a multi-week peak of $65,000.
However, this progress is in danger again due to the quickly escalating tension in the Middle East, especially since many reports outlined US President Donald Trump’s new attack strategy against Iran.
New Attack Strategy Revealed The two sides sat in a fragile ceasefire for weeks but failed to reach a decisive deal to permanently end the conflict. Instead, the attacks resumed last week; Trump said the memorandum of understanding is over, and they have launched strikes against each other almost daily since then.
According to multiple reports, the POTUS held a meeting in the Situation Room on Tuesday to discuss a “massive offense” against the Middle Eastern country. Some of the details that went public include:
The meeting was attended by Vice President JD Vance, Marco Rubio, Pete Hegseth, John Ratcliffe, Steve Witkoff, and other senior officials The new attack strategy will involve strikes with a wider scope than the current ones, which are mostly focused on the region around the Strait of Hormuz. Axios reported that one of the major conclusions of the meeting focused on new plans for “devastating strikes on strategic targets in Iran.” Moreover, the report claimed that Trump claimed Iran should “better make a deal” or they are “not going to have anything left.” The good news in all of this could come from this particular sentence, as the POTUS has made similar threats in the past, which actually preceded major de-escalations.
Is BTC in Danger Again? The timing of these new reported plans for mass attacks couldn’t come at a worse time for bitcoin. The primary cryptocurrency has finally shown some strength following a major macro reversal. The CPI data for June showed much lower inflation than expected, which could mean less chance for the US Fed to increase interest rates.
Bitcoin reacted with an immediate price pump that drove it to a multi-month peak at $65,000 after it slumped below $58,000 for the first time in almost two years on July 1. New negative developments on the war front have long harmed its trend reversal, as attacks typically lead to a BTC crash and a surge in oil prices.
You may also like: Is Wrapped Bitcoin Flashing a Bullish Signal? Exchange Outflows Hit Six-Week High Why Strategy’s Tiny 32 BTC Sale Changed How Investors View Corporate Bitcoin Buying Bitcoin Nears Final Stage of Bear Market Window – Is a Broader Recovery in Sight? Consequently, there’s a real threat that bitcoin can erase the recent gains if the US follows through on its plan and Iran starts to retaliate against many nations in the region as it did in the past.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy has stopped at least two ships and kept the Strait of Hormuz sealed shut over the past 24 hours, escalating a standoff that has been simmering since late February. The closure of the narrow waterway that handles roughly 20% of the world’s oil trade isn’t just an energy market story. It’s a crypto story too.
Bitcoin dipped into the $61,688 to $64,000 range during the latest round of tensions before stabilizing around $64,000.
What’s actually happening in the strait The current crisis traces back to February 28, 2026, when the US-Israel-Iran conflict pushed the region into a new phase of hostility. Since then, Iran has been running an increasingly aggressive enforcement operation in the strait, including mine-laying, boarding vessels, and now outright closures.
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The latest flashpoint came on July 11, when the IRGC stopped the Cypriot container ship GFS Galaxy for allegedly taking an unauthorized route through the waterway. Iran’s response was blunt: the strait would remain closed “until further notice,” or until the United States stops what Tehran calls acts of aggression.
That declaration has been reiterated through July 14 and 15. Here’s the thing about the Strait of Hormuz: it’s roughly 21 miles wide at its narrowest point, and there is no realistic alternative for the massive volume of oil and liquefied natural gas that flows through it daily.
Iran’s Bitcoin gambit During a prior ceasefire period, Iran proposed charging a toll of $1 per barrel of oil for any vessel transiting the strait, with payments accepted in Bitcoin or stablecoins. Then in May 2026, Iran launched something called “Hormuz Safe,” a Bitcoin-settled maritime insurance platform designed for vessels operating in the region.
Both moves signal that Iran views crypto not as a speculative asset but as a functional workaround for sanctions. That has implications for how regulators in Washington and Brussels view the entire asset class.
What this means for crypto markets The initial price reaction, that dip to the low $60,000s, follows a familiar pattern. Geopolitical shocks trigger a risk-off move, traders sell anything liquid, and Bitcoin gets caught in the downdraft.
Traders should watch two things closely. First, any signs that the strait reopens or that diplomatic channels produce a de-escalation. Second, any US government response that specifically targets crypto’s role in Iran’s sanctions evasion, which could introduce new compliance requirements for exchanges and stablecoin issuers.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
The crypto market has absorbed weeks of geopolitical jolts, ETF flow whipsaws, and choppy Bitcoin price action. Against that backdrop, a single on-chain signal from Wrapped Bitcoin’s Ethereum rails is catching attention. According to the Santiment update, 326 WBTC left exchanges in one day—the largest net outflow since early June.
WBTC outflows matter because coins sitting on trading platforms are effectively available for sale. When Bitcoin’s tokenized version on Ethereum exits exchanges, the immediate selling pressure on those assets declines. More importantly, WBTC is built to move Bitcoin liquidity into DeFi, where it can be deployed as collateral, lent out, or used in liquidity pools. So a 6-week high in outflows isn’t just a simple holder withdrawal—it points to capital rotating back into on-chain yield strategies or serving as a foundation for decentralized borrowing and trading.
What the Outflow Signal Suggests The timing aligns with a market that has been starved for durable risk appetite. Bitcoin has struggled to hold momentum through repeated macro tremors. Exchange flow balance has often been a short-term tell: when outflows spike during consolidation phases, it frequently signals that large market participants are moving coins into longer-term holding or productive DeFi use cases rather than preparing to dump.
At the same time, wrapped Bitcoin is no longer the only way to bring BTC exposure onto Ethereum or other chains. Coinbase’s cbBTC and Circle’s newly live cirBTC are giving institutions and DeFi users alternative rails. Their presence could actually amplify the WBTC outflow story. If more users are migrating BTC into on-chain environments via multiple wrapped versions, the overall pool of idle Bitcoin on centralized exchanges shrinks, and that’s typically supportive for spot prices.
Meanwhile, Ethereum itself remains a developer magnet. Recent data on developer activity, as tracked by services like Top 10 Blockchains by Developer Activity This Week, shows the network maintaining a strong lead, which underpins the smart contract infrastructure that makes wrapped Bitcoin useful. Without a vibrant DeFi ecosystem, WBTC would be less attractive as a yield-generating asset.
The Next Unknowns One large outflow event doesn’t guarantee sustained bullish momentum. Traders will want to see whether this becomes a trend over several days or remains an outlier. Also, some of the outflow could reflect a one-off rebalancing by a single fund or protocol. Without knowing the precise wallet identities, it’s impossible to distinguish between a few whales and broad market behavior.
The broader tokenization trend adds another layer. With real-world assets crossing $20 billion on-chain and major financial players executing live tokenized settlements, as covered in the Weekly Tokenization Roundup, the movement of wrapped assets is increasingly tied to institutional plumbing rather than purely retail speculation. So the WBTC outflows may be part of a deeper structural shift, not just a market-timing signal.
For now, the Santiment data adds another layer of evidence that selling appetite is thinning, even as Bitcoin navigates a difficult macro environment. The next few days will show whether the rotation back into DeFi has real legs.
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Max delves deep into the cryptocurrency realm, with a passion for altcoins and NFTs. Convinced of crypto's transformative potential, he envisions a decentralized financial future. Max's background in the financial sector grants him unique insights into global monetary systems. In his leisure, Max embraces the thrill of adventures and is an avid sports enthusiast, finding balance and rejuvenation away from work.
Iran declared the Strait of Hormuz closed “until further notice” on July 12 after the US launched its third round of airstrikes against Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps targets in a single week. The move threatens to choke one of the world’s most critical maritime trade corridors, and traditional markets reacted about as calmly as you’d expect, which is to say, not at all.
Bitcoin, meanwhile, barely moved. The largest cryptocurrency traded around $63,800 on July 12 and 13, posting a roughly 0.3% daily decline while oil prices spiked and equity markets sold off.
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What happened and why the Strait matters The US strikes targeted IRGC military installations in the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway separating Iran from the Arabian Peninsula. Roughly a fifth of the world’s daily oil supply passes through this corridor. This wasn’t a one-off escalation. The July strikes represent the third round of US military action against Iranian assets in just seven days, building on earlier skirmishes in February and May of 2026.
Bitcoin’s unusual calm Bitcoin’s muted reaction to the July escalation stands in sharp contrast to how it handled previous rounds of the same conflict. During the May 28 strikes, Bitcoin and other major cryptocurrencies dropped 3-4%, and nearly $1 billion in leveraged positions got liquidated across exchanges.
This time, the market absorbed the shock with something approaching indifference. A 0.3% decline on a day when a major global trade route gets shut down is, in crypto terms, a rounding error.
Prediction markets cash in on geopolitical chaos While spot crypto markets stayed relatively flat, prediction markets had a field day. Polymarket recorded record trading volumes on US-Iran conflict-related betting contracts, with some accounts reportedly profiting approximately $1.2 million from accurate predictions tied to the strikes. Some of those winning positions were reportedly established as far back as February 2026, suggesting that a subset of traders saw the escalation trajectory clearly months before the broader market priced it in.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
Japan has given its approval to a new reform of its digital currency laws as lawmakers enacted digital assets into the country’s financial markets regulatory system. The reform will implement stricter requirements for the industry such as a prohibition on insider trading and a tax cut for crypto. Moreover, it increases the possibility for Bitcoin, crypto ETFs to be launched in the future.
Japan Advances Major Crypto Bill Reform The law classifies cryptocurrencies more as an investment product than a payment product and places them under the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act (FIEA). The Japanese crypto bill was passed by the lower house in mid-June following approval of the proposal by the Cabinet on April 10, 2026. It will go through the upper house and be expected to complete the remaining legislative process in 2027.
The new framework will apply securities-like regulations to about 105 digital assets. Periodic disclosures will have to be made by the token issuers and there will be increased compliance requirements throughout the market. Authorities have also tightened up on explicit bans on insider trading in crypto assets.
Penalties for dealing unlawfully with the market have been raised to higher levels. Violations will be punished by an increase in max prison time from three years to 10 years. Fines will also be raised, up to 10 million yen from 3 million yen.
The reforms also include changes to crypto taxation. At this moment, digital asset trading profits are considered miscellaneous income and tax rates can reach as high as 55%. The government has proposed to replace the current tax system with a new flat tax at rate of 20% for individual investors. If approved by law, the tax changes will go into effect in 2028.
Bitcoin ETF Approval Soon? Previously, Finance Minister Satsuki Katayama has stated that the reforms will enhance investor protection and facilitate capital formation, while keeping financial markets fair.
According to the new classification, the regulation of Bitcoin and crypto ETFs in Japan should become easier as well. The revised framework may facilitate the approval of products like Yen denominated Bitcoins ETF in the future. There are already over 12 million verified crypto users in Japan with approximately $34 billion in crypto assets held under domestic custody.
For tokenized stock trading, visit our page on Best Platforms to Trade Tokenized Stocks.
XRP price rose 3.45% to $1.10 during the reported session, following renewed strength across the cryptocurrency market.
The XRP token surged past $1.10 as buyers responded to the increasing stablecoin operations on the XRP Ledger. The supply of RLUSD has gradually migrated to XRPL, which has contributed to higher network usage and transaction demand expectations.
Meanwhile, legislators in the United States are working on another significant effort to promote digital asset market structure law. Senator Cynthia Lummis said revised CLARITY Act text could be introduced within days after nearly ten months of negotiations.
CLARITY Act Faces Crucial Senate Test Lummis said lawmakers are ready to move the proposal forward during four consecutive Senate working weeks. She would like the bill enacted prior to the start of the August 7 recess of the chamber.
Nevertheless, the ultimate floor schedule is determined by Senate Majority Leader John Thune. It is reported that the lawmakers might start discussing the bill next week, July 20.
Lummis says CLARITY text lands in days
Senator Lummis (@SenLummis) says the Senate will introduce CLARITY Act text within days and wants it passed before the August 7 recess. “It’s time to land this plane,” she said on Fox Business, capping nearly 10 months of work. Floor action… pic.twitter.com/57k9UxU1Jc
— BSCN (@BSCNews) July 14, 2026
The measure faces growing resistance from Democratic Senators Chris Murphy, Jeff Merkley, and Chris Van Hollen. According to them, the current proposal is deficient in the form of powerful rules of ethics to deal with the senior government officials and cryptocurrency interests.
Their protests are partly related to the reported crypto income and business ties of President Donald Trump. The senators warned that they might be able to vote against the bill unless significant conflict protections are included.
Democratic support is critical to the eventual passage of the bill as it may require 60 votes in the Senate. Additional contention may paralyze the floor procedure or force additional deliberations prior to a vote of decisiveness.
XRP Price Prediction: Will Bulls Extend To $1.20 Soon? The MACD line has crossed its signal line, and the green histogram bars are still growing. The Chaikin Money Flow is 0.14, which validates positive capital inflows.
A confirmed four-hour close above $1.12 could push the XRP price outlook toward the $1.15 resistance level.
Tradingview A Breaking $1.15 can allow a greater climb into the larger target of $1.20. Nevertheless, the next rejection at around $1.12 might postpone the bullish continuation and prolong the consolidation.
The $1.07 level remains the main support during any pullback. The loss of this area might reveal $1.05 and weaken the existing recovery structure.
XRP ETF Market Stalls Daily While Total Inflows Hit $1.48B According to SoSoValue data, XRP ETF products showed no net inflows in terms of daily net inflows on July 14. But cumulative net inflows were still high at 1.48 billion in the listed funds. The total trading value was the amount of 13.47 million, and combined net assets were 1.01 billion.
Bitwise led cumulative inflows with $493.86 million, followed by Canary Capital at $466.97 million. Franklin Templeton was the second with $413.23 million and Grayscale had 131.46 million.
According to SoSoValue data, spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded $181 million in net inflows yesterday (July 14, ET). Spot Ethereum ETFs saw $58.3385 million in net inflows, with none of the 10 ETFs recording net outflows. pic.twitter.com/AUMWhkHPD6
— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) July 15, 2026
Meanwhile, 21Shares showed cumulative net outflows of $20.06 million. The same session saw higher demands of crypto ETFs. Spot Bitcoin ETFs received inflows of $181 million and Ethereum funds received inflows of $58.34 million. None of the ten Ethereum ETFs reported daily net outflows.
Nonprofit Hire Heroes USA named the 25 recipients of a Ripple-funded grant program for veteran- and military spouse-owned businesses, distributing $250,000 as tensions with Iran escalate.
The announcement arrives while a renewed US naval blockade on Iranian ports pushes military affairs back into the spotlight.
Inside the Ripple-Funded Grant Program for VeteransThe “Ripple Effect: Certified Veteran Employer Grants Program” is a Hire Heroes USA initiative that pairs one-time funding with employer training for veteran- and military spouse-owned businesses. Ripple covered the cost through a donation in RLUSD, the stablecoin it issues.
Hire Heroes USA disclosed the 25 awardees on July 13, after a selection process that ran through the spring. Each business receives $10,000, a combined total of $250,000. The figure is small by corporate standards, though relevant for firms with limited access to credit.
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Proud to announce 25 recipients of the Ripple Effect: Certified Veteran Employer Grants — $250K invested in veteran- and military spouse-owned businesses through our partnership with @HireHeroesUSA.
Each recipient receives $10K + employer training + access to 20,000+… https://t.co/vo9t5ZkYSk
— Ripple (@Ripple) July 14, 2026 To qualify, companies had to be at least 51% owned by a US military veteran or military spouse and operate domestically. They must also plan to hire from the military community within 12 to 18 months, a condition the nonprofit says it will track over time. Recipients also gain access to employer resources and the organization’s pool of military-connected candidates.
The grants belong to Ripple’s philanthropic arm rather than its payments business. The company previously committed $25 million, mostly in RLUSD, to education nonprofits. Independent data on the employment impact of these donations is not yet available.
The launch coincides with a sharp escalation in the Middle East. The United States reimposed its blockade of Iranian ports in response to Iran’s attacks on commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz on July 14.
The measure revives a policy first enforced between April and June. American forces also launched a fourth consecutive night of strikes, while President Donald Trump threatened to hit bridges and power plants unless Iran returns to negotiations.
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🚨🇺🇸 🇮🇷 Trump held a Situation Room meeting on a MASSIVE new offensive, warning: "Next week comes the power plants. Next week comes the bridges."
-Per Axios, Trump convened his full war cabinet, Vance, Rubio, Hegseth, Caine, Ratcliffe, Witkoff, to plan devastating strikes on… pic.twitter.com/19f3eFvx05
— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) July 15, 2026 The conflict keeps veterans and military families at the center of public attention. More than 20 US Navy warships and hundreds of aircraft currently operate across the region, according to Central Command. The blockade had been lifted in mid-June under an interim peace deal that has now effectively unraveled.
Both stories will now develop on separate tracks. Hire Heroes USA plans to track the hiring commitments of the awarded businesses over the coming months, while Washington and Tehran face an increasingly uncertain path back to negotiations. Any future overlap between the two remains, for now, a matter of timing.
According to data from Farside Investors, on July 14, U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded a total net inflow of $181.1 million the previous day. Among them, BlackRock’s IBIT saw a net inflow of $138.9 million, Fidelity’s FBTC $21.1 million, Bitwise’s BITB $3.5 million, ARK’s ARKB $3.6 million, Morgan Stanley’s MSBT $7.4 million, and BTC ETFs $6.6 million; flows for the remaining products were largely flat. U.S. spot Ethereum ETFs posted a total net inflow of $58.3 million, all from BlackRock’s ETHA, with all other ETFs registering zero net inflows that day.
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When the guy who spent 20 years at BlackRock, including a stint running digital assets strategy, tells you he left to bet his career on Ethereum, it’s probably worth hearing him out.
Joe Chalom, now CEO of Sharplink (Nasdaq: SBET), has been making a pointed argument that Ethereum deserves a spot in corporate treasuries, not just as a speculative hold but as a yield-generating, programmable asset that outpaces Bitcoin on several practical dimensions. And he’s putting real capital behind it.
From BlackRock to Ethereum treasury company Chalom joined Sharplink in July 2025, leaving behind two decades at the world’s largest asset manager. In late June 2026, Sharplink raised $75 million through a registered direct offering specifically aimed at expanding its ETH holdings. The company stakes nearly all of its Ethereum, with roughly $200 million allocated toward liquid restaking strategies in early 2026.
The strategy is built around a deceptively simple metric: increasing ETH per share. Rather than chasing flashy DeFi plays or speculative token launches, Chalom has described a disciplined capital allocation approach. Buy ETH, stake it, earn yield, repeat.
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Sharplink’s institutional ownership surged from 6% to 47% between mid-2024 and March 31, 2026. That’s not retail hype. That’s Fidelity-level capital walking through the door. The company also counts Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin as its board chairman.
The bull case against Bitcoin Chalom’s core argument centers on utility. Bitcoin’s value proposition has crystallized around being digital gold, a store of value, a hedge against monetary debasement. Chalom contends that Ethereum does everything Bitcoin does while also powering a massive ecosystem of actual economic activity.
The numbers he cites are striking. Ethereum constitutes over 50% of all stablecoins in circulation. It accounts for more than half of real-world asset tokenization activity. And it dominates DeFi, the sector of crypto where protocols actually generate revenue by facilitating lending, trading, and other financial services.
Staking, restaking, and the yield advantage Bitcoin holders earn nothing for holding Bitcoin. Ethereum stakers earn rewards for helping validate transactions on the network. Sharplink has taken this a step further with liquid restaking, a more sophisticated strategy where staked ETH is simultaneously used to secure additional protocols. This creates layered yield without selling the underlying asset.
That said, Ethereum’s yield is not risk-free. Smart contract vulnerabilities, slashing penalties for misbehaving validators, and protocol-level changes can all impact returns. Liquid restaking adds another layer of complexity and smart contract risk on top of that.
What this means for investors Ethereum’s quantum resistance roadmap adds another layer to the long-term bull case. The network has a dedicated post-quantum security team working on migration processes projected around 2029, part of what’s been called the “Lean Ethereum” strategy.
Investors watching this space should track Sharplink’s ETH per share metric closely. If Chalom can consistently grow that number while the underlying asset appreciates, the Ethereum treasury model will speak for itself.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
Ahmed Barakat is a journalist and copywriter based in Georgia with a growing focus on blockchain technology, DeFi, AI, privacy, digital assets, and fintech innovation.
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Bitcoin and Ethereum price climbed after cooler-than-expected U.S. inflation data improved market sentiment. Just hours after, a Japan Bitcoin ETF bill cleared a major committee in the country’s Upper House, raising expectations that spot Bitcoin exchange traded funds could eventually reach Japanese investors. The combination of easing inflation and friendlier regulation gave crypto traders another reason to stay bullish.
Japan’s proposal would classify cryptocurrencies as financial instruments under the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act while lowering crypto taxes to a flat 20%. If passed into law, the framework could allow spot Bitcoin ETFs to launch on the Tokyo Stock Exchange by 2027.
Elsewhere, South Korea advanced plans recognizing virtual assets within national asset rules, while policymakers in India, Europe, and the United States continued debating crypto regulation.
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Japan Bitcoin ETF Sparks Fresh Price OptimismThe Japan Bitcoin ETF proposal has quickly become the day’s biggest story. After years of cautious regulation, lawmakers are now considering a framework that brings digital assets closer to traditional financial markets. Lower taxes and the prospect of regulated investment products could attract both institutional and retail capital once the legislation clears the remaining stages.
🇯🇵BREAKING: Japan advances landmark bill to legalize Bitcoin ETFs.
Japan’s Upper House committee has approved legislation to reclassify bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as financial instruments, paving the way for spot crypto ETFs as early as 2027.
The proposal would also… pic.twitter.com/VzTbAUcBBm
— Coin Bureau (@coinbureau) July 15, 2026 Outside Japan, governments are moving at different speeds. India’s Finance Ministry is pushing regulators to strengthen oversight without appearing to endorse cryptocurrencies.
Meanwhile, a joint U.S.-U.K. task force called for greater stablecoin innovation, and banks continue to discuss amendments to the CLARITY Act before lawmakers meet later this week. Europe is also pressing ahead with its Digital Euro pilot.
Markets welcomed the shifting backdrop as Bitcoin price briefly touched above $65,000 before easing back toward the mid $64,000 range. Even so, the move marked a clear breakout from nearly two weeks of muted trading. Softer inflation figures encouraged investors to rotate back into risk assets after fears of additional Federal Reserve tightening faded.
Bitcoin ETF Flow, CoinglassInstitutional demand also improved. U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded $181 million in net inflows after heavy outflows, with BlackRock accounting for the largest share. On-chain data also points to continued accumulation by large holders, suggesting long-term investors remain confident despite recent volatility. Together, stronger ETF demand and the Japan Bitcoin ETF narrative helped keep the Bitcoin price supported.
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Ethereum Price Outpaces BTC as ETF Flows ImproveWhile Bitcoin grabbed the headlines, Ethereum quietly outperformed Bitcoin price. Ethereum recovered faster than Bitcoin and strengthened against BTC, signaling improving momentum after several weeks of weakness. Traders pointed to a healthier ETH/BTC ratio as evidence that buyers are becoming more confident.
ETH BTC Ratio, TradingViewFresh institutional flows reinforced that view. U.S. spot Ethereum ETFs posted about $58 million in net inflows, reversing the mixed trend seen earlier this month. Morgan Stanley also updated filings tied to proposed Ethereum and Solana ETFs, naming Coinbase as custodian and staking provider. Those developments added to growing confidence around regulated crypto investment products.
The Ethereum price continued pushing toward the $1,900 level after reclaiming important technical support. Analysts say maintaining momentum above recent breakout levels could open the door to another test of psychological resistance near $2,000. At the same time, steady ETF demand remains an important tailwind.
Looking ahead, traders will closely watch incoming U.S. economic data alongside political developments in Japan and Washington. The Japan Bitcoin ETF proposal still faces additional legislative steps, yet it already marks one of the strongest pro-crypto signals from a major economy this year. If institutional inflows continue and macro conditions remain favorable, both Bitcoin and Ethereum price could have room to extend their gains.
Don’t Miss Out on Our $1,000 USDT Airdrop on ByBit
Yesterday this column said the $60,000 to $64,000 box was the whole map and the CPI print had a timestamp. The data landed cool, and the box broke upward. Bitcoin trades at $64,740, every major is green, and XRP just walked back to the exact level it lost a week ago.
The Box Broke, and the Data Says Why Bitcoin trades at $64,740 as of July 15, 2026, per CoinGecko, up 3.3% in 24 hours and 4.4% on the week. Market cap: $1.299 trillion. Volume: $32.7 billion, expanding roughly 20% from yesterday’s $27.3 billion. Breakouts on rising volume are the kind you take seriously.
The catalyst was exactly the one this column timestamped. June consumer prices fell 0.4% on the month, the largest single-month decline since April 2020, bringing annual inflation down to 3.5% against expectations near 3.8%, with core flat on the month, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics. A market braced for a hot print got the opposite, rate-pressure fears eased, and risk assets exhaled all at once.
The caveat travels with the celebration: the June relief came mostly from falling energy prices, and renewed US-Iran tensions have already started pushing oil back up. One cool print is a reprieve, not a regime change. Yesterday’s box top at $64,000 is now the line that matters: hold above it and the breakout stands, slip back inside and this was a one-day headline pop.
Every Hook From Yesterday, Resolved Ethereum kept the crown. Up 5.2% on the day and 8.2% on the week at $1,879.49, ETH remains the strongest major, exactly the relative-strength signal this column flagged before the print.
XRP reclaimed $1.11. Up 3.8% to precisely the level our coverage mapped on July 7, lost on July 8, and watched compress toward $1.00 all week. The round trip is complete; the full story runs in today’s XRP report.
Solana bounced 3.3% to $77.59, though its week is still barely positive at 0.4%, the laggard among recovering majors.
And Hyperliquid retired the red flag. Yesterday’s spotlight said a move back above $67 would end the concern; HYPE gained 5.4% to $67.51 and did exactly that, though its week remains slightly red at minus 1.0%.
The Numbers That Matter Today BTC: $64,000, the old box top, is the new support; the breakout is valid above it. ETH: strongest major at $1,879, up 8.2% weekly. XRP: back at $1.11, the retest verdict pending. HYPE: concern retired above $67. The risk to all of it: oil and the ceasefire headlines, which can reprice the inflation story faster than any chart.
FAQ What is the Bitcoin price today? Bitcoin trades at $64,740 as of July 15, 2026, up 3.3% in 24 hours after June inflation data came in well below expectations.
Why is crypto up today? June CPI fell 0.4% on the month, the biggest decline since April 2020, easing rate-pressure fears. Bitcoin broke above its week-long $60,000 to $64,000 range on volume that expanded about 20% day over day.
Is the Bitcoin breakout confirmed? The move came on rising volume, which supports it, but confirmation needs price to hold above the old range top at $64,000. Renewed energy-price pressure from Middle East tensions is the main risk to the move.
This article is for information only and is not investment advice. Crypto assets are extremely volatile and you can lose your entire stake. Always do your own research.
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Simeon is a detail-driven editor who sharpens every piece with clarity and precision, ensuring clean, consistent, and professional content throughout.
Japan’s House of Councillors passed an amendment to the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act, which officially recognizes cryptocurrencies as financial products rather than payment tools.
With this, the country is now planning to cut crypto taxes from 55% to 20% and open the door to Bitcoin ETFs.
Japan Moves Crypto Under Financial Product RulesJapan’s parliament has officially passed a landmark law amendment reclassifying cryptocurrencies as “financial assets.” Until now, cryptocurrencies have been mainly regulated under the Payment Services Act as a payment method.
Under the new law, Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, and other cryptocurrencies will be classified as financial products under the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act (FIEA), bringing them closer to stocks and other investment assets.
The new law also clears the way for spot crypto ETFs in Japan.
Regulators are aiming to launch them on the Tokyo Stock Exchange by 2027 or 2028, while major firms like Nomura Holdings and SBI Holdings are already preparing crypto ETF products.
List of Changes Under the New LawThe new framework introduces several rules that already apply to traditional financial markets. These include,
Insider trading ban: Trading using non-public information will be strictly prohibited.Annual disclosures: Token issuers must publish annual operational and financial disclosures.Strict penalties: Violators face up to 10 years in prison or 10 million Japanese yen fines.Retail investment cap: High-risk tokens will have a 2 million Japanese yen retail investment limitBigger Fines and Lower Crypto TaxesThe new law also brings stricter rules for the crypto industry. However, the maximum jail term for running an illegal crypto business will increase from three years to 10 years.
And the maximum fine will also increase from 3 million yen to 10 million yen, approximately $18,500 to $61,600. The government says these changes will help make the crypto market safer and protect investors.
Along with the bill, lawmakers are planning to cut the tax on crypto profits from the current maximum of 55% to a flat 20%, the same tax rate used for stock investments.
Another planned change is a three-year loss carryforward. This means investors will be able to use their past trading losses to reduce taxes on future crypto profits. If approved, these tax changes are expected to start in 2028.
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Leading cryptocurrencies rallied alongside stocks on Tuesday following cooler-than-expected inflation numbers, despite elevated geopolitical tensions remaining in place.
Crypto Market RalliesBitcoin hit $65,000 for the first time in over three weeks, while Ethereum came close to reclaiming $1,900, amid a broader market rally.
Over $350 million was liquidated from the cryptocurrency market in the last 24 hours, with bearish short traders bearing the brunt of the losses, according to Coinglass data
Bitcoin’s open interest rose 2.09% over the last 24 hours. Interestingly, Binance derivatives traders, both retail and whale, drastically lowered their long exposure to the leading cryptocurrency.
Top Gainers (24 Hours)
The global cryptocurrency market capitalization stood at $2.15 trillion, contracting 2.06% over the last 24 hours.
Stocks Rally On Soft Inflation PrintStocks bounced back on Monday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 9.63 points, or 0.02%, to end at 52,508.27. The S&P 500 advanced 0.38% to settle at 7,543.59, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite closed up 0.9% at 26,107.01.
The June Consumer Price Index came in cooler than expected, sharply lowering odds that the Federal Reserve would increase rates at its policy meeting later this month, according to the CME FedWatch tool.
In other news, the U.S. military carried out an “additional round of strikes” against Iran in response to alleged attacks on commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz. The U.S. also reimposed the naval blockade against Iranian ports.
Bitcoin To Break Out?Michaël van de Poppe, a widely followed cryptocurrency analyst and trader, identified a “strong bullish divergence on Bitcoin’s daily chart.
Van De Poppe stated that Bitcoin needs a decisive break above $65,000 to enter a key range, with the next upside target shifting toward the range high between $88,000 and $92,000.
On-chain analytics firm Santiment noted cryptocurrency chatter on social media nearing its lowest levels since the summer of 2024.
“The bullish case is simple: quiet crowd, low enthusiasm, and plenty of sidelined disbelief,” Santiment added. “When attention is this washed out, even a modest shift in demand can feel much bigger than the headline mood suggests.”
Photo Courtesy: Sebastian Duda on Shutterstock.com
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The broader cryptocurrency market shows near-term recovery signals with a weaker-than-expected US Consumer Price Index (CPI) report for June, easing inflation risks. Bitcoin (BTC) price hovers above $64,000 on Wednesday, testing the breakout of its 50-day Exponential Moving Average (EMA) at $65,146, which capped its previous day’s 4% rebound.
Among top altcoins, Zcash (ZEC) and Pump.fun (PUMP) are leading the gains over the last 24 hours, emerging as top performers while the broader market risk-off sentiment eases.
Bitcoin tests 50-day EMA breakout rally amid easing inflation risksThe US CPI data for June fell to 3.5%, below expectations of 3.8%, marking its largest monthly drop since May 2020. As a result, the odds of the Federal Reserve (Fed) hiking rates at the next meeting on July 29 dropped to 8%, prompting the quick recovery in the crypto market.
Bitcoin edges below $65,000 on Wednesday as the 50-day EMA at $65,146 capped the 4% gains from the previous day. Still, BTC maintains a recovery tone in the near term, testing a breakout above its 50-day EMA at $65,146, while the overhead 200-day EMA at $75,222 reflects a broader-term bearish trend.
A potential daily close above $65,146 would be needed to ease downside pressure before the more significant barrier at the $70,000 round figure, followed by the 200-day EMA near $75,222.
Momentum shows some stabilization on the daily chart, with the Relative Strength Index (RSI) hovering around 54 with further room to the upside, while the Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD) rises with its signal line.
BTC/USDT daily price chart.On the downside, the key structural floor is the horizontal support zone at $60,000, where a deeper pullback could seek demand if sellers extend control from current levels.
Zcash and Pump.fun gain bullish momentumZcash trades above $550 on Wednesday, extending its advance above the 50-day EMA at $471 and the 200-day EMA at $389, which together reinforce a bullish near-term bias. The privacy coin also holds comfortably above the 78.6% Fibonacci retracement at $520, underscoring a well-supported structure.
Momentum aligns with this constructive backdrop, as the RSI at 62 is in positive territory without yet reaching overbought extremes, while the MACD stays firmly positive with its signal line, hinting at persistent buying pressure.
On the topside, immediate resistance emerges at the previous all-time high of $690, followed by the 127.2% Fibonacci extension level at $987.
ZEC/USDT daily price chart.On the downside, initial support is seen at the 78.6% retracement at $520, followed by the 50-day EMA at $471.
Pump.fun shows a short-term recovery, challenging its capped tone, with gains of around 7% above its 50-day EMA at $0.001547 at press time on Wednesday. Still, PUMP token's broader structure remains capped below a descending resistance trendline near $0.001725 and its 200-day EMA at $0.001919.
Price is testing the 50% retracement near $0.001610, measured from $0.002251 to $0.001151, and a decisive close could target the 200-day EMA at $0.001919, near the 78.6% Fibonacci retracement at $0.001950.
The RSI at 57 remains in constructive territory, signaling renewed buying pressure, while an uptick in the MACD above its signal line suggests a lagging recovery, hinting at modest bullish momentum that has yet to challenge the broader downtrend.
PUMP/USDT daily price chart.Looking down, immediate support is provided by the 50-day EMA at $0.001547, with further protection at the recent swing low zone anchored around $0.001151.
(The technical analysis of this story was written with the help of an AI tool. Know more.)
A sharp drop in WBTC held on exchanges could be a positive sign for Bitcoin.
326 Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) tokens on Ethereum were withdrawn from exchanges in a single day. According to fresh data shared by Santiment, this is the largest net exchange outflow since early June.
This transfer of coins has reduced the amount of WBTC immediately available on trading platforms.
Exchange Outflow The latest outflows come as Bitcoin continues to trade through a “risk-heavy stretch.” Even as the crypto asset briefly climbed to $65,000 on Wednesday, market pressure from geopolitical tensions and ETF flow swings persists, Santiment stated in its findings. The large exchange withdrawals, however, could potentially serve as a positive signal for the broader crypto market recovery. The analytics platform added,
“Wrapped Bitcoin’s 6-week high exchange outflows provide more good news to crypto’s rebound “
Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) was launched in 2019 following a joint initiative by BitGo, Kyber Network, and Ren. It remains the largest tokenized version of Bitcoin, with a market capitalization of about $7.6 billion. Coinbase entered the space with cbBTC in 2024, which has grown to nearly $6 billion in market value. This space has become increasingly competitive in 2026.
Last month, stablecoin issuer Circle expanded the market by launching cirBTC on Ethereum.
Recovery Near? As for Bitcoin’s price, the crypto asset moved higher after the latest US inflation report came in cooler than expected. Consumer prices fell 0.4% in June, bringing annual inflation to 3.5%. Economists had expected a 0.2% monthly decline and a 3.8% annual rate.
Meanwhile, Bitfinex analysts said that the asset is approaching what has historically been the final stage of its typical bear market period. According to the report, the BTC often spends five to six months trading below the Short-Term Holder Realized Price before entering a broader recovery. With July being identified as the fifth month of the current cycle, analysts believe the market could be closing in on a significant rebound.
You may also like: Why Strategy’s Tiny 32 BTC Sale Changed How Investors View Corporate Bitcoin Buying Bitcoin Nears Final Stage of Bear Market Window – Is a Broader Recovery in Sight? Bitcoin Brace for US CPI Report as Fed Rate Fears Grow They still warned that history alone does not guarantee a recovery. While July has traditionally been a favorable month for Bitcoin, broader macroeconomic conditions will also play a crucial role.
Not financial or tax advice. PANews content is strictly educational and informational and is not investment advice, financial advice, tax advice, legal advice, or a solicitation to buy or sell any digital asset, security, or financial product. Do your own research and consult qualified advisers.
Disclosure. PANews may publish sponsored content, partner content, advertisements, affiliate links, event promotions, and market commentary involving Web3 projects, service providers, or financial products. PANews personnel, contributors, or affiliates may hold digital assets or other interests related to covered topics. See our Terms of Service.
You press send on a crypto transaction and nothing happens. The wallet says pending. The block explorer shows your transaction floating in limbo, unconfirmed, with no clear indication of when, or whether, it will land.
Most people meet the mempool for the first time in exactly this moment of mild panic, and most of the advice they find assumes they already know what a mempool is. This guide starts from zero.
The mempool, short for memory pool, is the waiting room where every blockchain transaction sits between the moment you broadcast it and the moment a miner or validator writes it into a block. It is one of the least glamorous components of a public blockchain and one of the most consequential. The mempool decides how much you pay in fees, how long you wait, and, on some networks, whether a trading bot gets to see your order before it executes and profit at your expense. Understanding it turns confirmation delays from a mystery into a readable market signal.
This guide explains what the mempool actually is, why blockchains need a waiting room at all, how transactions move through it step by step, how fee markets decide who gets confirmed first, why there is no single mempool but thousands of slightly different ones, what happens when the queue overflows, how the mempool became the hunting ground for extractive trading bots, why Solana took the radical step of removing the public mempool entirely, and what practical steps you can take when your own transaction gets stuck.
What a mempool actually is A mempool is a database of unconfirmed transactions that every full node on a blockchain network maintains in its working memory. When you sign a transaction in your wallet and hit send, the transaction does not travel to some central server for processing, because no such server exists. Instead, your wallet hands the signed transaction to a node, and that node begins spreading it to its peers, who spread it to their peers, until most of the network has a copy. Each node that receives the transaction runs a series of checks and, if the transaction passes, places it in its local mempool to wait.
The word itself is a contraction of memory and pool, and the memory part matters. Nodes keep the mempool in RAM instead of writing it to disk, because speed is the point. When a miner assembles a candidate block, it needs to sort thousands of pending transactions by fee and select the most profitable set in a fraction of a second. When a new block arrives from elsewhere on the network, a node can validate it faster if most of the block’s transactions are already sitting in its own mempool, checked and ready.
The mempool is a staging area, a buffer between the chaotic, continuous stream of user activity and the rigid, periodic heartbeat of block production.
Why blockchains need a waiting room A traditional payment processor confirms transactions the instant they arrive because a single company controls the ledger and can simply write the entry. A public blockchain has no such authority. Thousands of independent nodes must agree on a single history, and they reach that agreement in discrete steps, one block at a time. Between blocks, the network needs a shared, informal picture of what users want to happen next, and the mempool provides it.
The waiting period also does critical security work. Before a node admits a transaction to its mempool, it verifies that the digital signature is valid, that the sender actually controls the funds being spent, that the transaction is correctly formatted, and that the same coins are not being spent twice. This last check matters more than it sounds. It is entirely possible for two conflicting transactions, both spending the same coins, to enter the network at the same time from different points. Some nodes see one first, some see the other. Each node rejects whichever conflicting transaction arrives second, and the conflict is finally settled when a miner includes one of the two in a block. The mempool is where these races are held and resolved.
The mempool also functions as the network’s early warning system. A rapidly filling mempool signals a surge of demand, a panic, an airdrop claim window, or a fee spike before any of it shows up in confirmed blocks. Traders, miners, and wallet fee estimators all read the mempool the way meteorologists read pressure systems.
The life of a transaction, step by step Following a single transaction through the pipeline makes the mechanics concrete. First comes creation: your wallet constructs the transaction, specifying the amount, the recipient, and the fee you are willing to pay, and signs it with your private key. The signature proves ownership without revealing the key itself.
Second comes broadcast. The wallet sends the signed transaction to one or more nodes, which begin relaying it across the peer to peer network. Propagation to most of the network typically takes a few seconds, and nothing about this step requires trust in the first node, since every subsequent node re-validates the transaction independently before passing it along.
Third comes validation. Every node that receives the transaction independently checks it. Invalid transactions, bad signatures, insufficient funds, malformed data, are dropped on the spot and never reach a mempool.
Fourth comes the wait. The transaction now sits in thousands of mempools across the network, visible to anyone running a node or using a public mempool explorer. How long it waits depends almost entirely on the fee attached relative to everyone else’s fees.
Fifth comes selection. A miner on a proof of work chain, or a validator on a proof of stake chain, assembles a candidate block by picking pending transactions from its mempool, almost always sorting by fee density so the block earns the maximum reward.
Sixth comes confirmation. The block is mined or proposed, propagated, and accepted by the network. Every node removes the block’s transactions from its mempool, and your transaction is now part of the chain. Each additional block built on top adds another confirmation and makes reversal exponentially harder.
How the fee market decides who goes first Block space is scarce and demand fluctuates, so blockchains ration space by auction. On Bitcoin, fees are measured in satoshis per virtual byte, a unit of transaction data size, so a transaction’s fee rate depends on both what you pay and how much space the transaction occupies. On Ethereum, the fee is gas, with a base fee that the protocol burns and a priority tip that goes to the validator. In both systems the logic is identical: block producers are profit maximizers, so they fill blocks with the highest paying transactions first.
This means your position in the queue is not fixed. A transaction that looked competitively priced at noon can be hopelessly underpriced by evening if demand surges. Wallets estimate fees by reading the current mempool, looking at what pending transactions are offering and how full recent blocks have been, then suggesting a rate likely to confirm within your chosen time window. Those estimates are educated guesses, not guarantees, and they go stale quickly during volatile markets. A fee that clears in the next block during a quiet Sunday can leave you waiting hours during a liquidation cascade, because everyone else’s willingness to pay moved while yours stood still. The auction never closes, and it reprices continuously.
When you underpay, most networks offer escape hatches. Bitcoin supports replace by fee, which lets you rebroadcast the same transaction with a higher fee that supersedes the original. A related trick, child pays for parent, attaches a high fee follow up transaction that spends the stuck one’s output, giving miners an incentive to confirm both together. Ethereum wallets let you resubmit a transaction with the same nonce and a higher gas price, which replaces the pending version. Knowing these tools exist converts a stuck transaction from an emergency into an inconvenience.
There is no single mempool People say the mempool as if one canonical queue existed somewhere, but the reality is messier and more interesting. Every node maintains its own mempool, and no two are exactly identical. Transactions reach different nodes at different times, nodes apply slightly different acceptance policies, and each node manages its own memory limits. What we call the mempool is really the loose statistical overlap of thousands of private ones.
In practice the overlap is large, because most node operators run default settings. A typical Bitcoin node caps its mempool around 300 megabytes, keeps transactions for up to two weeks, and refuses anything paying less than a minimum relay fee of roughly one satoshi per virtual byte. When the pool exceeds its size cap, the node evicts the lowest fee transactions first and raises its minimum acceptance rate, which is why very cheap transactions can vanish entirely during congestion instead of merely waiting. Once evicted everywhere, a transaction is effectively cancelled, and the funds simply remain unspent in the sender’s wallet.
The distributed nature of the mempool has a subtle consequence: pending status is not a promise. A transaction shown as pending in an explorer exists only as a claim in some nodes’ memory. It can be evicted, replaced, or double spent until it lands in a block. Merchants who accept zero confirmation payments learn this lesson the hard way, and it is exactly the mechanism a 51% attack exploits at chain level, where an attacker rewrites recent blocks and dumps the reversed transactions back into the mempool as if they had never confirmed. The 2025 reorganization attacks on Monero pushed more than one hundred confirmed transactions back into the pending queue in exactly this way.
Policy, standardness, and why nodes reject valid transactions Consensus rules define what a blockchain will accept in a block. Mempool policy defines what an individual node will hold and relay, and the two are not the same thing. A transaction can be perfectly valid under consensus rules and still be refused by most mempools because it violates what Bitcoin developers call standardness: informal policy rules that filter dust outputs, oversized scripts, absurdly low fees, and exotic transaction shapes that could burden the network. Policy is a node level immune system, a first line of defense that keeps the shared queue usable.
This distinction produces real world confusion. A transaction rejected by public mempools can still be mined if it reaches a miner directly, which is why services exist that accept nonstandard transactions out of band and submit them straight to mining pools. It also means the mempool you observe through an explorer reflects that node’s policy, not some universal truth. Two explorers can disagree about whether your transaction is pending simply because their nodes apply different filters.
Policy also evolves faster than consensus. Nodes have tightened and loosened relay rules around data inscriptions, dust limits, and replacement behavior repeatedly over the years, each change reshaping what the pending queue looks like without touching consensus at all. For users the practical takeaway is simple: if a wallet warns that a transaction is nonstandard, the problem is usually the transaction’s construction, not the funds behind it.
The mempool also has a quieter institutional audience. Exchanges watch pending deposits to credit accounts faster, compliance teams screen incoming transactions before confirmation, and payment processors estimate risk on zero confirmation transfers by checking how well a transaction is propagating and whether any conflicting spend is circulating. A transaction that most of the network’s mempools agree on is far less likely to be double spent than one propagating poorly, and firms price that difference.
Congestion, spam, and what a full mempool feels like Mempool congestion is the network catching its breath. Demand exceeds block space, the queue grows, and the fee needed for timely confirmation climbs. Users experience it as expensive transactions and long waits. Bitcoin’s late 2017 mania, the DeFi summer of 2020, NFT minting waves, and the ordinals inscription craze of 2023 each produced mempool backlogs measured in days, with hundreds of thousands of transactions queued and fee rates multiplying overnight. During the worst stretches, low fee transactions waited more than a week, and node operators watched their mempools hit size limits and begin shedding the cheapest traffic.
Congestion can also be manufactured. Spam attacks flood the network with masses of low value transactions to clog the queue and degrade service for everyone else, a cheap form of denial of service. Networks defend themselves with the minimum relay fee, with eviction policies, and ultimately with economics, since sustained spam costs the attacker real money in fees. The 2017 spam attack on an Ethereum test network showed how effective flooding could be against a chain with weak fee pressure, and it pushed fee market design higher up the research agenda.
Congestion is also information. A swollen mempool alongside rising fees signals urgent demand, often around exchange runs, liquidation cascades, or major market moves. Sophisticated observers watch mempool depth the way bond traders watch yields, and several analytics firms sell exactly that feed.
The dark forest: MEV and the watchers in the pool The mempool’s defining feature, total transparency, is also its greatest vulnerability. Every pending transaction is public before it executes, which means anyone can read your intentions and act on them first. On smart contract chains this gave rise to an entire extractive industry built around maximal extractable value, or MEV, the profit available to whoever controls transaction ordering.
The canonical attack is the sandwich. A bot spots your large pending swap on a decentralized exchange, buys the same token first to push the price up, lets your trade execute at the worse price, then immediately sells for a profit carved directly out of your execution. Front running, back running, and liquidation sniping follow the same principle: see the pending transaction, position around it, capture the difference. One researcher famously described the public mempool as a dark forest, a place where anything visible gets hunted. Researchers estimate that MEV extraction on Ethereum alone has run into the billions of dollars since 2020.
The defense industry that grew in response is now substantial. Private transaction relays, such as Flashbots Protect, let users submit transactions directly to block builders, skipping the public mempool entirely so bots never see the order. Batch auction exchanges settle many trades at a single clearing price, removing the ordering advantage. Wallets increasingly route large trades through protected channels by default. None of this eliminates MEV, but it changes who can be hunted. The economics are straightforward: the value of hiding an order grows with its size, so large traders now treat mempool privacy the way traditional funds treat dark pools, as basic operational hygiene. Retail users moving small amounts face far less risk, but a single large swap through the public queue on a thin trading pair can pay a triple digit toll to a sandwich bot in a matter of seconds.
Solana’s answer: delete the mempool Solana made the most radical design choice of any major network: it has no public mempool at all. Instead of gossiping pending transactions across the whole network, Solana’s Gulf Stream protocol forwards transactions directly to the validator scheduled to produce the next block, called the leader. The leader schedule is known in advance, so wallets and nodes know exactly where to send traffic. Transactions go from user to leader with almost no public waiting period.
The design serves speed above all, and it removes the classic observation window that sandwich bots depend on, since pending transactions are never broadcast for public inspection. It did not eliminate MEV, which instead matured into a private auction economy where searchers pay tips through infrastructure such as Jito to have their transaction bundles placed favorably by leaders. The lesson generalizes: ordering has value on any blockchain, and removing the public queue changes where that value is captured, not whether it exists.
Other networks are converging on middle paths. Encrypted mempools hide transaction contents until ordering is locked. Proposer builder separation on Ethereum splits the job of choosing transactions from the job of proposing blocks, pushing MEV into a more transparent auction. The mempool of 2030 will likely look very different from the open bazaar of 2020. What will not change is the underlying constraint: some component of every blockchain has to hold transactions between creation and confirmation, and whoever can observe or influence that component holds power over everyone who cannot.
Reading the mempool yourself You do not need to run a node to watch the queue. Public mempool explorers visualize pending transactions, fee distributions, and projected confirmation times in real time, and they are the fastest way to answer the two questions every stuck user asks: how busy is the network, and what fee actually clears right now.
When your own transaction is stuck, the diagnosis is almost always the same: your fee is below the going rate. Your options, in rough order of preference, are to wait for congestion to ease, to bump the fee using replace by fee or a nonce replacement, to use child pays for parent where supported, or, on Bitcoin, simply to wait for eviction if the payment no longer matters. What you should not do is panic. The funds are not lost. An unconfirmed transaction either confirms or effectively ceases to exist, and in the latter case the coins never left your wallet.
It also helps to understand what explorers actually display. The fee histogram shows how much pending volume sits at each fee level, which tells you where the clearing price is right now. The projected blocks view shows which transactions would fill the next several blocks if they were produced immediately, which tells you how deep the queue runs ahead of you. And the purge line, on Bitcoin explorers, shows the fee rate below which nodes are actively evicting transactions, the effective floor of the market. Ten minutes spent learning these three readouts pays for itself the first time fees spike.
One final habit worth adopting: check the mempool before you transact, not after. Thirty seconds of looking at current fee rates saves both overpaying during quiet periods and underpaying during storms. The queue is public. Very few people bother to read it, which is exactly why the ones who do have an edge. It is the same reason a network upgrade that splits the chain, covered in our guide to hard forks and soft forks, always produces a flurry of mempool drama, as wallets and nodes on both sides of the split sort out which pending transactions belong where.
Frequently asked questions What is a mempool in simple terms? A mempool is the waiting room for blockchain transactions. After you send a transaction, it sits in the mempool, visible and pending, until a miner or validator includes it in a block. Every full node keeps its own copy of this queue in memory.
Why is my transaction stuck in the mempool? Almost always because the fee attached is lower than what other pending transactions are offering. Block producers pick the highest paying transactions first, so underpriced ones wait until demand falls or until they are evicted from the queue entirely.
Can a transaction in the mempool be cancelled? Sometimes. On Bitcoin, replace by fee lets you supersede a pending transaction with a new version, and a stuck transaction that gets evicted from all mempools is effectively cancelled. On Ethereum, you can replace a pending transaction by sending a new one with the same nonce and a higher fee.
Is there one mempool for the whole network? No. Every node maintains its own mempool, and the contents differ slightly between nodes based on timing, settings, and memory limits. The mempool people refer to is the rough overlap of thousands of independent queues.
How long can a transaction stay in the mempool? On Bitcoin, default node settings keep transactions for up to two weeks before dropping them, though eviction can happen sooner if the pool fills and the fee is low. Other networks have their own retention and eviction rules.
What is the connection between the mempool and MEV? Pending transactions in a public mempool are visible before they execute, so bots can read them and trade around them, extracting value through sandwich attacks and front running. This visibility is the raw material of most MEV on chains like Ethereum.
Does Solana have a mempool? Not a public one. Solana forwards transactions directly to the upcoming block leader instead of broadcasting them across the network, which removes the public waiting room. MEV on Solana instead flows through private bundle auctions run by infrastructure providers.
Are funds lost if a transaction never confirms? No. A transaction that never confirms is eventually dropped from mempools, and the coins simply remain in the sending wallet as if the transaction had never been made. Nothing is deducted until a transaction is included in a block.
This article is for educational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice. Network rules, fee mechanics, and default node policies change over time. Details are accurate as of July 14, 2026.
