Virtual Currency Space

Bitcoin holders have only just begun realizing net losses on a yearly basis, suggesting the market has either avoided the worst of a typical downturn or has much further to fall.

Julio Moreno, head of research at CryptoQuant, an on-chain analytics platform, said in an X post that the rolling one-year total had fallen to a net realized loss of 136,000.

But that is still far below previous cycle lows. According to Moreno, annual realized losses reached 1.3 million BTC during one previous downturn and 3.7 million BTC during another.

CleanSpark is making what may be the biggest strategic bet in its history, expanding into AI data center infrastructure after previously transforming itself from an energy technology company into one of the world’s largest publicly traded bitcoin miners.

The company has secured a 20-year, $6.6 billion lease with an unnamed global technology company to develop a 175 MW AI data center campus in Sandersville, Georgia. The agreement, which includes options that could increase the contract’s value to $11.6 billion, also includes a letter of intent granting the tenant exclusivity over CleanSpark’s planned Texas AI development portfolio, representing up to 885 MW of future capacity.

Strategy, the company formerly known as MicroStrategy, reported a net loss for Q2 2026. The central tension here is this: the headline loss is largely an accounting artifact tied to fair-value movements in its Bitcoin holdings, while the underlying Bitcoin accumulation strategy accelerated.

Whether MSTR holders should be concerned depends entirely on which number they are actually watching.

Bitcoin is heading for its quietest trading month since November 2023 as the price remains stuck in a narrow range and traders largely stay on the sidelines.

Average daily Bitcoin spot trading volume has fallen to about $2.2 billion in July, according to the latest report from K33 Research, a crypto market research firm. Bitcoin also dropped about 3% over the past week to $63,300 but remained inside the broader $60,000-$66,000 range.

Investing is extremely difficult because it's not always a smooth journey to strong returns. The market will occasionally test your conviction to see if you still have the right temperament to stay the course. This is exactly what Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) holders have been experiencing.

The cryptocurrency that spearheaded the industry currently sports a market capitalization of $1.3 trillion. But its price has come crashing down, trading 47% off its peak (as of July 23).

Bitcoin’s annualized 30-day implied volatility index, BVIV, the so-called fear gauge, continues to hover below 40%, well below highs above 60% seen during the early June and early February price sell-offs.

The index is influenced by demand for options, or hedging instruments.

So, the low reading indicates limited demand for protective options and suggests traders see little reason to brace for sharp price swings in the near term.

This stability contradicts the uncertainty surrounding Wednesday’s Fed rate decision. While most observers expect the bank to keep rates unchanged, some, including hedge fund giant Citadel, expect a hike in borrowing costs.

The CME’s FedWatch tool now assigns roughly a 35% probability to a rate hike at the upcoming FOMC meeting, an unusually high level of uncertainty for this late in the decision cycle. Fed moves are normally almost fully priced for a single outcome – hold, hike, or cut – by this stage.

Macro investor Raoul Pal said on Monday that Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) and the Nasdaq Composite are primarily driven by "global liquidity" rather than the usual day-to-day narratives of earnings, news, or sentiment.

In an X post, Pal cited Bitcoin at 87% correlation to global liquidity and the Nasdaq Composite index at 97%.

"These assets are not really trading on earnings, or news, or whatever the story of the week is. They're tracking the amount of money in the system," the Real Vision CEO said.

Cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and ether are exempt from the "wash sale" rules that apply to stocks, bonds and other traditional financial assets.

Some members of Congress are trying to change that.

Wash sale rules prevent investors from selling a security at a loss and immediately buying it back — while still claiming a tax break for the investment loss.

It comes as bitcoin has lost about half its value since October 2025.

The company disclosed Monday that it didn’t buy or sell any Bitcoin between July 20 and July 26, keeping its crypto stash unchanged for the third week in a row. Strategy’s holdings currently stand at 843,775 Bitcoin purchased for an average of $75,476 each.

U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs posted net outflows for a second straight day on Friday, reversing a seven-day inflow streak, according to data from Farside Investors.

The funds bled $240 million on Friday, after $225 million the day before, erasing nearly half of the roughly $1 billion they had taken in during the preceding seven-day streak. Inflows had built to a $227 million peak on July 20, the streak's biggest day, before demand faded. BlackRock's IBIT drove the turn, accounting for just under $415 million of the two-day outflow. Even so, the ETFs still finished last week net positive, up almost $34 million, as the outflows only partly offset three strong inflow sessions.

Federal regulators and policymakers have shepherded cryptocurrency from the fringes of investing into the mainstream, introducing digital assets to exchange-traded funds and retirement accounts.

A new report suggests, however, that crypto investors remain relatively rare.

Roughly 17% of American adults have ever owned crypto, according to a July 9 report from the Urban Institute. But only about 9% of Americans own crypto now. In other words, nearly half of America’s crypto investors have bailed.

Bitcoin's options market has turned notably less defensive over the past month, unwinding the downside protection traders built up in June just as the Federal Reserve prepares to meet.

The put/call ratio on open interest, which measures how much of the market is positioned in puts, contracts that pay off when the price falls, against calls, which pay off when it rises, has dropped to roughly 0.52 from about 0.76 in late June, according to Glassnode.

Calls are gaining share, the pattern of traders stepping back from hedging rather than adding to it. Recently, large traders have been accumulating $70,000 strike calls and bull call spreads, signaling expectations of upside in the spot price.

BancaStato, the cantonal bank of Ticino in southern Switzerland, has launched regulated crypto trading, a service that lets clients buy, hold, and sell bitcoin from the bank’s existing web and mobile apps, the digital asset bank Sygnum said on Thursday.

The bank connected Sygnum’s application programming interface to its Avaloq core banking system and digital channels, a setup that places bitcoin trading inside the same apps clients use for traditional accounts.

At launch, clients can trade bitcoin (BTC) and other crypto with market orders placed by quantity or U.S. dollar value.

Bitcoin sits at the center of the offering, a pattern across the wave of European banks that have added crypto services. BancaStato clients gain exposure to the asset through a regulated channel rather than a standalone exchange, and their holdings rest in Sygnum’s custody rather than on the bank’s own balance sheet.

A group of leading financial institutions and Bitcoin companies today announced the formation of the Bitcoin Security Consortium, an initiative dedicated to supporting the long-term security and resilience of the Bitcoin network, backed by an aggregate $15 million in member pledges over the next three years.

Founding members are Anchorage Digital, ARK Invest, BlackRock, Block, Blockstream, Coinbase, Fidelity Digital Assets®, Galaxy, and Strategy, a cross-section of the institutional Bitcoin ecosystem that includes holders, custodians, exchanges, infrastructure providers, payments providers, and asset managers, united by a shared interest in Bitcoin's continued security.

The Consortium's day-to-day work is coordinated by Mike Schmidt, Executive Director of Brink, a 501c3 non-profit that funds and supports Bitcoin open-source developers, who serves in a volunteer capacity.

In Bitcoin news today, Tesla absorbed a $112M impairment loss on its Bitcoin holdings in Q2 2026 and did not sell a single coin. The company's 11,509 BTC position remained static throughout the quarter as BTC fell roughly 14%, sliding from around $83,000 at the quarter's open to approximately $58,000 by the end of June.

Bitcoin treasury Satsuma is preparing to shut down and liquidate its holdings after shareholders backed a capital return.

Satsuma Technology shareholders approved plans to sell the company’s remaining Bitcoin, return nearly all its capital and delist from the London Stock Exchange, per the company’s Monday filing.

The vote ends Satsuma’s brief attempt to build one of Britain’s largest publicly traded Bitcoin treasuries after a collapse in its share price prompted investors to demand their money back.

Satsuma Technology, a London-listed technology company, said that over 90% of votes cast supported returning all its capital and backed canceling the company’s listing.

Still, the capital return requires approval from the UK High Court, a British civil court. Satsuma expects a final hearing on Sept. 8, followed by the cancellation of its listing on Sept. 14, while payments to shareholders are currently expected by Sept. 28.

Tech entrepreneur Jack Dorsey has announced a new group chat platform aimed at reducing teams’ reliance on platforms like Slack, in the Bitcoin maxi’s latest push for decentralization.

The Block co-founder wrote Tuesday on X that the new app, named Buzz, was “for teams of people and agents of all sizes” and “model-agnostic, decentralized, self-sovereign, and open source.”

Described as “A new native workspace for human and agent teams” on its website, Buzz users can “chat with teammates and specialized agents in one shared space, then move straight into planning, project management, coding, and PRs.”

A statement from parent company Block said that the new app was built on decentralized social networking Nostr protocol.

“The interface will feel familiar to anyone who’s used a modern team communication tool,” Block added.

“Every company is going to need a place where humans and agents work together,” Bradley Axen, head of AI capabilities at Block, said.

“The question is whether that place is proprietary or open. We built Buzz because we believe it should be open.”