👋 Hi Legends,
₿ BITCOIN ISN’T BREAKING. IT’S BUILDING.
Bitcoin has spent six months around US$64K. Institutions are quietly turning bullish, ETF flows are back, Fear remains elevated, and September could be the month the market finally makes its move.
First things first…
I’m on holiday this week. 🏖️
But apparently I can’t switch off completely.
So while everyone else is enjoying the sunshine, I’m still carving out time to keep the weekly newsletter coming.
Because the market doesn’t take holidays.
And there is actually quite a lot happening beneath the surface right now.
₿ WHERE BITCOIN STANDS
Bitcoin finished the week almost exactly where it started.
₿ BTC: ~63,927 USDT
Ethereum also finished almost flat at around:
Ξ ETH: ~1,873 USDT
Meanwhile:
🔻 XRP: -5.3%
🟢 Solana: +3.8%
🟢 Hyperliquid: +2.2%
🔻 Dogecoin: slightly lower
At first glance, that looks boring.
I don’t think it is.
Bitcoin has now spent roughly six months trading around the US$64K level.
Six months.
The market has repeatedly tried to break higher, been rejected, sold off, recovered and returned to roughly the same area.
That kind of prolonged consolidation can be frustrating.
But historically, long periods of compression don’t tend to last forever.
Eventually…
Something gives.
📊 THE BET IS STARTING TO CHANGE
Crypto Banter founder Ran Neuner pointed out that Bitcoin has now spent six months trading in this range.
His view?
“When this resolves after such a long accumulation, expect a MASSIVE move.”
That’s obviously a prediction, not a guarantee.
But there are other signals starting to point in the same direction.
CryptoQuant’s Ki Young Ju noted that hedge funds on CME have “flipped net long BTC futures.”
That’s unusual.
The basis trade normally keeps these funds structurally short.
This time…
They’re betting on upside.
As Young Ju put it:
“The suits are betting on upside.”
🧠 AND THEN THERE’S THE BAD NEWS
Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan highlighted another interesting development.
Bad news has stopped moving the market.
That’s important.
Markets don’t need every headline to be bullish.
They need negative headlines to stop producing increasingly negative price reactions.
Hougan believes Bitcoin could finish the year significantly higher.
The market isn’t confirming that thesis yet.
But it is starting to behave differently.
😨 FEAR IS STILL HERE
The Crypto Fear & Greed Index currently sits at:
30 — FEAR
That’s hardly euphoric.
And that’s exactly what makes the current setup interesting.
We’re seeing:
📉 Low sentiment
📊 Extended consolidation
🏦 Institutional positioning turning more bullish
💰 ETF inflows returning
Yet retail isn’t exactly celebrating.
That’s worth watching.
💰 ETF FLOWS JUST FLIPPED
This is one of the biggest developments from the week.
Bitcoin ETFs pulled in approximately:
853.5M USDT
That was their strongest weekly showing since April and the third-best week since the October 10 crash.
That’s a serious amount of capital moving back into Bitcoin exposure.
Ethereum was even more interesting.
ETH ETFs attracted:
243.7M USDT
And this comes as Ethereum continues attracting institutional attention despite ETH itself finishing the week almost flat.
BlackRock also reduced the minimum threshold for in-kind Bitcoin ETF transfers from 25M USDT to 1M USDT.
That potentially makes it easier for larger Bitcoin holders to move from self-custody into institutional custody without triggering a taxable sale, according to the source material.
And given what happened with hardware wallets this week…
The timing is interesting.
🔐 THE $100M HARDWARE WALLET WARNING
This is the part I really want you paying attention to.
More than:
100M USDT
worth of Bitcoin held in Coldcard hardware wallets was stolen.
And the attack wasn’t some Hollywood-style hack.
No malware.
No phishing link.
No complicated exploit.
The problem was apparently with how affected wallets generated seed phrases.
Attackers were able to reverse-engineer the pattern, derive private keys and move the Bitcoin.
That is a nightmare scenario.
Hardware wallets are supposed to be the gold standard for self-custody.
When something like this happens, confidence takes a hit across the entire market.
And there is already evidence of that.
Santiment data showed just:
0.58 bullish comments for every 1 negative comment.
The lowest positive-to-negative ratio since they began tracking it.
🚨 IF YOU USE COLD STORAGE
Don’t assume you’re safe simply because your Bitcoin is sitting on a hardware wallet.
Check how your seed phrase was generated.
Check your device.
If there is any doubt, move your funds to a newly generated wallet using a properly random seed.
Don’t wait until the weekend.
Security comes before convenience.
📊 EARNINGS WEEK: WHO IS WINNING AND WHO IS GETTING HURT?
The quarterly numbers are starting to tell a pretty clear story about where crypto actually stands.
And the answer isn’t as simple as bull market or bear market.
🏢 STRATEGY
Strategy reported an 8.22B USDT net loss for Q2.
That headline looks horrific.
But almost all of it came from unrealised losses on its Bitcoin holdings.
The company also sold 1,637 BTC over the past week.
So yes, the number is ugly.
But underneath the headline, most of the loss is an accounting entry rather than cash walking out the door.
Still…
Not a number anyone wanted to see.
🪙 COINBASE
Coinbase reported its third consecutive quarterly loss.
🔴 359M USDT in the red
More than 200M USDT of that was a write-down on its own crypto reserves.
Transaction revenue fell 21%.
But here’s the part I care about:
Market share actually grew to 10.3%.
Smaller industry.
Bigger slice.
That matters when volume eventually returns.
💵 TETHER
Tether posted a net operating profit of:
1.5B USDT
Analysts flagged that its reserves halved in value to 4.11B USDT.
🟢 THE CLEAR WINNER: ROBINHOOD
Robinhood delivered earnings per share of $0.62 against analyst expectations of $0.44.
Revenue came in at:
1.31B USDT
Up 32% year on year.
The pattern is becoming clearer.
Infrastructure plays are holding.
Pure crypto bets are struggling.
📉 ETF FLOWS ARE TELLING ANOTHER STORY
This is where things get interesting.
Bitcoin ETFs recorded:
🔴
61.5M USDT of outflows
last week.
But Ethereum ETFs posted their:
FOURTH CONSECUTIVE WEEK OF INFLOWS
bringing in:
🟢
27.4M USDT
ETH continues attracting institutional money even while Bitcoin leaks.
And this week Morgan Stanley launched Ethereum and Solana ETFs with an expense ratio of 0.14%.
A portion of the holdings will be staked, allowing yield to be passed through to investors.
Think about what that means.
Institutional investors can now get:
Crypto exposure + regulated ETF structure + staking yield.
That’s a product the traditional financial world can actually work with.
⚖️ CLARITY ACT: THE CLOCK RAN OUT
The Senate went into its August recess without passing the CLARITY Act.
The next major window is now September, with the bill still facing the 60-vote hurdle required to overcome a filibuster.
And the politics have become just as important as the legislation itself.
Trump’s reported 1.4B USDT in crypto profits last year and his decision to sell early access to market-moving Truth Social posts are giving Democrats a concrete reason to hold firm.
Some reportedly fear that passing a crypto bill gives Trump a win at the same time they are building a corruption narrative against him.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer introduced a new Anti-Corruption Bureau bill targeting the president directly.
That is the environment Clarity is trying to pass through.
SEC Chair Paul Atkins was direct:
“We are ready, willing and able to come out with rules that address the same issues in Clarity and in other aspects of the crypto market.”
If Clarity fails, the SEC writes its own rules.
That is not the outcome the industry wants.
It may be where this ends up.
Bernstein analysts flagged that a Clarity failure could trigger a crypto selloff before a rebound later in the year.
Stay watching.
🌏 ASIA ISN’T WAITING FOR WASHINGTON
While the US continues arguing over crypto regulation, other countries are moving.
And that matters.
🇹🇭 THAILAND SCRAPS CGT
Thailand has introduced 0% capital gains tax on Bitcoin and crypto sales made through Thai SEC-licensed exchanges.
The exemption will be in place for five years.
That is a pretty significant incentive for capital to stay within the country’s regulated crypto ecosystem.
🇷🇺 RUSSIA PASSES CRYPTO LAWS
Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a comprehensive legal framework governing:
• Digital currencies
• Exchanges
• Custody providers
• Mining
• Investors
The framework comes into effect on September 1.
It legalises crypto for international trade through approved exchanges.
Crypto payments inside Russia remain prohibited, while ordinary people are limited to buying less than approximately 4,000 USDT through an approved intermediary each year.
Different approach.
Same direction.
Regulation instead of prohibition.
🔐 THOUSANDS OF CRITICAL VULNERABILITIES IDENTIFIED
After the Coldcard wallet thefts, the volunteer Bitcoin Red Team has been scanning the code of hundreds of Bitcoin projects using AI.
The goal is simple:
Find the vulnerabilities before hackers do.
So far they’ve identified:
🚨 7,958 issues
🔴 168 critical bugs
🟠 1,120 high-severity issues
And the threats aren’t slowing down.
Bitcoin wallets connected to BTCPay Server on the Lightning Network were drained this week.
Then Coldcard users attempting to move their funds to Trezor reportedly found the top Google ad result was a phishing site.
This is exactly why I’m hammering home security this week.
The technology can be incredibly powerful.
But you are still responsible for protecting your keys.
Don’t blindly trust a wallet because it has a good reputation.
Verify.
Double-check.
And never click a sponsored search result when you’re trying to access your wallet provider.
₿ BIP-110 FAILED.
LONG LIVE BIP-110?
The controversial BIP-110 Bitcoin soft fork failed over the weekend.
It split into a new chain that produced just two blocks before stalling.
The proposal aimed to prohibit non-financial data such as Ordinals inscriptions from being placed on the Bitcoin blockchain.
Opponents saw that as censorship.
Major proponent Luke Dashjr was subsequently removed as a BIP editor.
He has now announced plans for a Bitcoin hard fork using a new proof-of-work algorithm and potentially smaller blocks.
Bitcoin holders usually receive equivalent coins in a fork.
This is exactly why Bitcoin governance remains fascinating.
You can change the code.
You can propose a fork.
You can build an alternative chain.
But ultimately…
The network decides what it actually accepts.
Ξ ETHEREUM IS HAVING ITS OWN INTERNAL DEBATE
The percentage of Ethereum supply being staked has skyrocketed past:
34%
But there is a point where more staking stops providing meaningful additional security.
Researchers are increasingly concerned that excessive staking removes real ETH from circulation and increases the role of liquid staking tokens.
A proposed EIP-8363 staking overhaul would progressively reduce issuance toward 0% if 50% of the total supply becomes staked.
That has triggered a fierce backlash.
Critics argue it could hurt:
❌ DeFi
❌ Decentralisation
❌ Institutional adoption
Meanwhile, Vitalik Buterin has once again updated the Ethereum roadmap.
The latest proposals include:
🔐 Quantum-secure signatures
🔗 Signature aggregation
🕵️ Increased privacy protections
⚡ Native rollups
And effectively bring sharding back as a way to scale Ethereum while keeping the network decentralised.
🧠 MY TAKE
This is what I see when I step back from the daily price.
Bitcoin is stuck around 64K USDT.
Fear remains elevated.
Yet institutional ETF flows are returning.
Hedge funds are flipping net long.
ETH continues attracting capital.
Regulation is slowly becoming clearer globally.
And governments that once talked about banning crypto are increasingly working out how to regulate it.
The price isn’t telling the whole story.
The infrastructure is still being built.
And that’s the part I care about most.
🌏 ASIA ISN’T WAITING FOR WASHINGTON
The US Senate’s delay on the CLARITY Act could end up being a bigger opportunity for Asia than people realise.
While Washington continues fighting over crypto regulation, jurisdictions like Singapore and Hong Kong are already positioning themselves as regulated digital-asset hubs. The delay gives them more time to attract capital and talent while US institutions are still waiting for clarity.
First Digital founder and CEO Vincent Chok summed up the opportunity:
“For Asia, this delay gives regional financial hubs like Hong Kong and Singapore additional time to demonstrate that clear regulation can coexist with innovation.”
And I think that’s the important point.
Capital doesn’t wait forever.
If one jurisdiction makes it difficult to deploy capital, another jurisdiction will eventually offer a clearer path.
🇸🇬 SINGAPORE & 🇭🇰 HONG KONG
Singapore has spent years building a regulated digital-asset framework.
Hong Kong has taken a similar approach, combining regulated crypto markets with institutional products and stablecoin infrastructure.
The result?
Asia isn’t sitting around waiting for the US to decide what crypto should look like.
It’s building regardless.
🌏 APAC ON-CHAIN VOLUME IS EXPLODING
According to the report provided in this week’s market material, on-chain transaction volume across the Asia-Pacific region grew roughly:
68% YEAR ON YEAR
to approximately:
2.36T USDT
That’s not a niche market anymore.
That’s financial infrastructure scaling in real time.
The report splits the region’s major crypto economies into two broad groups.
🟢 THE OFFENSIVE PLAYERS
🇸🇬 Singapore
🇹🇭 Thailand
🇲🇾 Malaysia
These markets are building local stablecoins and tokenised deposit markets.
They’re not simply allowing people to trade Bitcoin.
They’re experimenting with the infrastructure underneath the financial system.
🔵 THE DEFENSIVE PLAYERS
🇻🇳 Vietnam
🇮🇩 Indonesia
🇵🇭 Philippines
These markets are taking a different approach.
They’re working to bring existing informal USDT and USD stablecoin usage into regulated frameworks.
And that distinction matters.
Different countries.
Different strategies.
Same direction.
More financial activity moving on-chain.
🧠 THE BIGGER PICTURE
This is the part I think gets missed when everyone is staring at Bitcoin’s price.
The US might be moving slowly.
But the rest of the world isn’t standing still.
Singapore is building.
Hong Kong is building.
Thailand is cutting crypto taxes.
Russia has established a legal framework.
Institutional ETFs are expanding.
Stablecoin infrastructure is growing.
And APAC on-chain volume is accelerating.
The market can spend six months going nowhere.
Bitcoin can trade around 64K USDT until everyone gets bored.
Fear can sit at 30.
Retail can lose interest.
And meanwhile…
The infrastructure keeps getting built.
That’s what I want to see.
🐂 MY FINAL TAKE THIS WEEK
I’m on holiday this week.
🏖️ Actually on holiday.
But I’m still here putting this together because the market doesn’t care where I am.
And neither should your strategy.
Bitcoin sitting around 64K USDT isn’t exciting.
The Fear & Greed Index at 30 isn’t exciting.
The CLARITY Act being delayed isn’t exciting.
And the security issues we’ve seen this week certainly aren’t exciting.
But underneath all of that…
Something is happening.
ETF money is returning.
Hedge funds are turning net long.
ETH continues attracting institutional capital.
Asia is building regulated crypto infrastructure.
Stablecoins are becoming financial plumbing.
And governments are increasingly moving from:
“Should crypto exist?”
to:
“How do we regulate it?”
That’s a very different conversation.
And it is exactly the conversation you want happening if you’re thinking in 5, 10 or 20-year timeframes.
🧠 DON’T CONFUSE BORING WITH BROKEN
This market is boring right now.
Good.
Boring markets give you time to think.
They give you time to build positions.
They give you time to learn.
They give you time to fix your security.
They give you time to prepare before the crowd gets interested again.
The next major move won’t announce itself beforehand.
It will look obvious after it happens.
That’s why we stay structured.
One decision at a time.
🐂 THE WELSH BULL
🎁 KEEP BUILDING
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