Cryptonews

Bitcoin Magazine Bitcoin Price Jumps Over $65,500 on Soft Inflation Data  The Bitcoin price jumped over $65,500 on Wednesday after US inflation data showed that producer prices fell in June.  Data from the Labor Department showed that the Producer Price Index posted its biggest decline in 14 months. The PPI, excluding food and energy, fell 0.3% in June, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers.  Bitcoin’s price was recently trading at $64,943, a 2% 24-hour jump.  The Bitcoin price has typically surged when signs inflation is cooling emerge as investors then expect a bigger chance of lower interest rates. Crypto, stocks and other “risk-on” assets have in the past done well in a low-interest rate environment.  Still, the cooling inflation does not take into account the latest escalation in the US-Iran war: President Trump this week said the US would take control over the Strait of Hormuz.  On Wednesday, the US leader vowed to inten...

Bitcoin Magazine VerifiedX and BitGo Sign MOU to Deliver Qualified Custody for vBTC, Expanding Institutional Access to Native Bitcoin Utility, and with Immediate Support for Non-Synthetic Canonical on Base VerifiedX today announced the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with BitGo to provide qualified custody support for vBTC, with immediate support for vBTC.b , the non-synthetic canonical Bitcoin asset issued through the VerifiedX Network and deployed on Base. The partnership represents a significant milestone in bringing institutional-grade custody, compliance, and security standards to programmable Bitcoin while preserving direct redemption to native Bitcoin. Under the agreement, institutions, asset managers, family offices, corporations, and professional allocators will be able to custody vBTC upon final integration and can now immediately custody vBTC.b through BitGo’s qualified custody infrastructure while accessing the utility of Bitcoin across decentralized...

Bitcoin Magazine Keel Infrastructure to Consolidate Three Bitcoin Sites Into One AI Campus Keel Infrastructure Corp. has secured a set of approvals that push its data center project in Sherbrooke, Québec, toward construction.  The City of Sherbrooke cleared the North American digital infrastructure and energy company to enter into an agreement with Hydro-Sherbrooke for the transfer and operation of 96 megawatts of existing capacity, along with a purchase agreement for the land where the campus will rise. The power agreement lets Keel consolidate three of its current Bitcoin mining sites in the province into a single 96 MW campus. The company did not request additional power, a choice that preserves the use of current electrical infrastructure and keeps the project in step with Québec’s energy priorities.  Keel won approval to recategorize the 96 MW from Bitcoin mining to high-performance computing and artificial intelligence, the workload class that draws ca...

Bitcoin Magazine CleanSpark Signs $6.6 Billion Data Center Lease as Bitcoin Miner Pivots to Compute CleanSpark, the Nasdaq-listed bitcoin miner, said on July 14 that it has signed a 20-year infrastructure lease with an unnamed high-investment-grade global technology company at its campus in Sandersville, Georgia.  The deal marks the firm’s largest step from pure bitcoin mining toward high-performance computing for hyperscale clients. The lease covers data center infrastructure that will support 175 megawatts of critical IT load. CleanSpark expects the initial term to generate $6.6 billion in contracted revenue, a figure that would climb to $11.6 billion if the tenant exercises both extension options.  The company has recently announced that it would repurpose part of its electricity capacity and mining infrastructure to power AI data centers, aiming to diversify beyond bitcoin mining.  CleanSparks’ average annual net operating income from the a...

Bitcoin Magazine Bitcoin Price Jumps Above $64,000 as Cooler-Than-Expected Inflation Strengthens the Case for Rate Cuts Bitcoin price briefly climbed above $64,000 on Tuesday after the June Consumer Price Index came in softer than forecast, giving traders fresh reason to bet the Federal Reserve will step back from further tightening. The Labor Department reported that headline CPI fell 0.1% in June from the prior month, pulling the annual rate down to about 3.9% from 4.2% in May. A near 10% drop in gasoline prices drove much of the decline. Bitcoin price, which had spent the past week under pressure from leverage flushes and geopolitical risk, turned higher on the print and traded near $63,800, a gain of about 2% on the day. Softer inflation data eases the path toward rate cuts, and lower rates reduce the opportunity cost of holding an asset that pays no yield. As the reading crossed the wire, Treasury yields eased, the dollar gave back ground against major currencies, and...

Bitcoin Magazine White House Crypto Chief Patrick Witt to Begin Military Leave as Clarity Act Nears Senate Deadline Patrick Witt, the White House’s top crypto adviser, will begin a months-long leave of absence this month to report for training with the Georgia Army National Guard, according to a report from Crypto in America .  His departure arrives as the Senate works to advance the Clarity Act before its August recess. Witt, 37, is expected to conclude his White House work next Friday before reporting on July 27 to the Guard’s Judge Advocate General (JAG) program. Completion of the training qualifies him to serve as a JAG officer, a military attorney who advises on military justice and operational and administrative law. Witt and the White House did not respond to Crypto in America’s requests for comment. Witt took over as executive director of the White House crypto council last August, after Bo Hines left the post for a role at stablecoin iss...

Bitcoin Magazine Bitwise Sees a Bottom in Bitcoin’s Worst Vibes Yet: ‘Darkest Before the Dawn’  Bitcoin closed the second quarter of 2026 mired in its deepest and longest downturn since the last bear market, according to Bitwise Asset Management’s newly released Q3 2026 Crypto Market Review.  Yet the $9 billion crypto asset manager frames the pain as a setup rather than a collapse, arguing the industry has never been sturdier beneath the surface. Bitcoin fell 13.4% in Q2 and is down 32.9% for the year, dropping below $60,000 in June for the first time since 2024 and landing roughly 52% under its October peak of $126,080. That extends what Bitwise calls “crypto winter” to nine months and marks the third straight quarter of negative returns for the broader Bitwise 10 Large Cap Crypto Index, its longest losing streak since 2022.  Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan does not sugarcoat it, writing that “the vibes in crypt...

Bitcoin Magazine ‘Don’t Let China Win’: President Trump Presses Senate on Clarity Act in Final Stretch The Senate returns to Washington on July 13, with the clock running down on the most consequential piece of crypto legislation in years. Lawmakers now have roughly four weeks to schedule, debate, and pass the CLARITY Act before the August recess.  President Trump weighed in directly on Monday, posting on Truth Social that “in honor of Senator Lindsey Graham, a big supporter, the U.S. Senate should pass the Clarity Act” and warning that China and other countries “would like to take complete and total control of this major financial ‘happening,'” as well as A.I.  White House crypto adviser Patrick Witt amplified the urgency, noting the critical week coincides with the one-year anniversary of the GENIUS Act and cautioning, “We cannot afford to delay any longer.” This is a window many policy watchers see as the ...

Bitcoin Magazine Strategy (MSTR) Raises $467 Million in Cash, Leaves Stash of 843,775 Bitcoin Untouched Strategy (MSTR) sold about $466.7 million worth of its stock last week and put the proceeds toward cash rather than bitcoin, according to an 8-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday. The move lifted the company’s U.S. dollar reserve to $3 billion and marked another week without a purchase from the largest corporate holder of bitcoin. Between July 6 and July 12, the Michael Saylor–led firm sold 4,818,781 Class A common shares through its at-the-market equity program. It issued no preferred stock under its other ATM facilities during the period.  The company said the fresh cash pushed its dollar reserve up by some $450 million, and that it holds the reserve to cover dividend payments on its preferred stock and interest payments on its outstanding debt. Strategy neither bought nor sold bitcoin over the week. Its holdings stand at 843,7...

Bitcoin Magazine U.S. Representatives Urge Senate to Vote on CLARITY Act in July, Address Ethics Concerns Rep. French Hill wants a deadline.  One year after the House passed the Digital Asset Market CLARITY Act, the Arkansas Republican who chairs the House Financial Services Committee used a Fox Business interview with anchor Maria Bartiromo to press Senate leaders for a floor vote before the August recess. “I’ve encouraged Senate leadership to put it on the floor,” Hill said. “I think if you schedule a floor date here in the month of July, that will cause these final meetings, these final discussions to take place. You’ve got to have a deadline in Congress to get people to move and find consensus.”  Hill thanked Senators Kirsten Gillibrand, Cynthia Lummis, John Boozman and Tim Scott for working toward a deal, and pointed to the 78 Democrats who backed the House measure a year ago. Hill’s central argument is that ...

Bitcoin Magazine Circle (CRCL) Wins Final OCC Approval for National Trust Bank Circle Internet Group secured final approval from the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency today, to establish a national trust bank, a milestone that sent the stablecoin issuer’s shares higher and deepened its ties to the federal banking system. The regulator cleared Circle to charter First National Digital Currency Bank, N.A., which will operate under the name Circle National Trust.  The company, which trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker CRCL, said the charter places the new entity under direct federal oversight by the OCC, the primary supervisor for national banks and national trust banks. Circle National Trust will provide fiduciary custody services for digital assets held by Circle and its affiliates. Under the business plan the OCC approved, the bank could extend custody services to a limited set of institutional customers, with a focus on banks a...

Bitcoin Magazine Metaplanet Announces Joint Study to Bring Bitcoin-Backed Digital Credit to Japan Metaplanet wants to turn its bitcoin pile into a credit market. On Friday, Japan’s largest corporate bitcoin holder said it has opened a joint study with three partners to build tokenized credit products backed by bitcoin, a step that pushes the company past simple treasury accumulation and toward the role of a financial platform. The study group brings together Metaplanet, the yen stablecoin issuer JPYC, the regulated security token platform Progmat, and Siiibo Securities, the licensed brokerage Metaplanet bought last month for 2.1 billion yen, or about $13 million. Siiibo becomes Metaplanet Securities on July 13. The four firms will examine whether bitcoin can serve as collateral for credit instruments that pay interest each day. Metaplanet frames this as a product that exists in the United States but not in Japan.  Digitization, the company said, would allow ...

Bitcoin Magazine Bitcoin is “A Screaming Buy”: Standard Chartered Backs $100,000 Target, Shrugs Off Strategy (MSTR) Sell-Off Standard Chartered maintained its end-2026 Bitcoin price forecast of $100,000 in a note to investors on Friday, arguing that the recent weakness reflects a failure by Strategy to explain a strategic shift rather than any deterioration in the company’s balance sheet. Geoffrey Kendrick, the bank’s global head of digital assets research, wrote that Strategy — the largest corporate holder of Bitcoin, with 843,775 coins, more than 4% of the 21 million that will ever exist — “appears to be pivoting from its ‘never sell Bitcoin’ mantra to a more complex approach.”  Clear communication of that pivot, he wrote, will determine how fast the pressure on BTC lifts. Between 2020 and mid-2025, Strategy’s mNAV — enterprise value divided by the value of its Bitcoin — traded above 1.0. That premium lets t...

Bitcoin Magazine Bitcoin’s New Debt Machine is Facing Its First Major Test Public companies kept stacking Bitcoin in June, but the month’s real story played out in a corner of the market that did not exist a couple of years ago: the preferred shares that treasury firms now use to fund their coin purchases.  A new report from BitcoinTreasuries.net calls June the first true stress test for this “digital credit” market, and the results offer a mixed but telling verdict on where corporate Bitcoin adoption goes next. First, the buying. Public treasuries added close to 9,000 BTC before sales in June, or about 7,300 BTC on a net basis, worth some $427 million at the month-end price of $58,398. That counts as moderate growth, and two names did most of the work.  Michael Saylor’s Strategy added 3,625 BTC net, and Strive added 3,364, with each company spending in the neighborhood of $200 million.  Strip out those two and the rest ...

Bitcoin Magazine BitGo Adds Quantum-Risk Controls to Bitcoin Custody BitGo Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: BTGO) introduced a set of tools to help institutions measure and reduce the quantum-computing risk tied to their Bitcoin holdings. The digital asset infrastructure company said the features apply to UTXO-based wallets and its multi-signature custody service. The release builds on BitGo’s multi-signature architecture , which the firm pioneered for Bitcoin to reduce single points of failure. The new controls give clients more visibility into wallet-key exposure, better handling of unspent transaction outputs, and workflows for institutional wallet operations. At the center of the launch is a Quantum Risk Score, an in-platform system that rates potential quantum exposure across supported Bitcoin wallets. A Fix Exposed Addresses Workflow guides clients through moving funds from addresses with elevated exposure into new addresses with stronger key hygiene.  A new UTXO ...

Bitcoin Magazine Russia’s Largest Private Bank Alfa-Bank To Test Bitcoin and Crypto Trading Alfa-Bank, Russia’s largest private lender, is preparing to launch its own digital depository and a full slate of crypto services once national regulation takes effect, joining a widening race among Russian banks to capture a market that does not yet legally exist. Dmitry Vitman, chief operating officer of Alfa-Bank’s corporate and investment business, told RBC Investments that the bank intends to offer “all possible services related to digital currencies” once the relevant legislation comes into force.  “First and foremost, we plan to create our own digital depository and offer its services to other companies,” he said. Under the framework expected to govern the market, a digital depository would record and store cryptocurrency and digital financial assets, monitor client transactions, and block transfers to addresses not sanctioned...