Bitcoin Magazine

Benchmark Raises Hut 8 Price Target After Bitcoin Miner Signs $9.8 Billion AI Data Center Deal

Investment bank Benchmark has raised its price target on Bitcoin miner Hut 8 following news that the company had signed a second 15-year lease ​worth $9.8 billion for its AI data center.

Equity research analyst Mark Palmer reiterated his “buy” rating on the Toronto- and Nasdaq-listed miner in a note Wednesday, raising its price target to $195, up from $165 — an 80% upside from Hut 8’s current share price of nearly $110 a pop. 

Palmer argued that the deal validates Hut 8’s “power-first” approach to building out AI infrastructure. 

Hut 8 announced Monday that it had signed a second 15-year lease for 352 megawatts of IT capacity at its Beacon Point campus in Nueces County, Texas — doubling the site’s tenant to 704 MW of contracted capacity and fully commercializing the campus against its 1,000 MW of utility capacity. Hut 8 shares climbed over 10% on the news, closing near $101 after peaking above $106.

Palmer estimates the new Beacon Point lease alone could contribute roughly $655 million a year in net operating income once stabilized, pushing the campus’s total contract value as high as $50.2 billion if renewal options are exercised.

Hut 8 is among a growing list of publicly traded Bitcoin miners pivoting toward AI and high-performance computing as mining margins get squeezed by a falling Bitcoin price and rising difficulty. 

The company struck a Google-backed deal in December with Anthropic and Fluidstack to build out as much as 2.3 gigawatts of AI data center capacity in the U.S.

Hut 8’s mining ventures

Rivals including Terawulf, IREN, and Cipher Mining have signed similar multi-year HPC contracts with Google and Microsoft, while Bitfarms said last year it would wind down its mining operations entirely to focus on high-performance computing. 

Hut 8, by contrast, has kept its mining business running through its majority stake in American Bitcoin, the mining venture backed by Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr.

Hut 8 is scheduled to report second-quarter earnings on August 4.

This post Benchmark Raises Hut 8 Price Target After Bitcoin Miner Signs $9.8 Billion AI Data Center Deal first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

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VanEck: Bitcoin’s Summer Lull Masks a Tightening Supply Base

Bitcoin spent the past month in a holding pattern around $63,700, and VanEck’s latest Bitcoin ChainCheck reads the setup as a cautious pause rather than a bottom, with derivatives flashing fear, miner economics near multi-year lows, and long-term holders tightening their grip.

The mid-July report frames the moment as consolidation, not recovery. Bitcoin closed July 12 at $63,742, flat against a month earlier yet 33% off its six-month high and 14% below its 200-day moving average near a bitcoin price of $74,000. 

The pause caps two monthly declines, a 3.6% dip in May and a 20.5% drop in June. 

Trading thinned into the summer. Spot volume averaged about $5.1 billion a day over the 30-day window, down near 29% from the post-2019 norm, a softness the firm notes has marked June through August in each of the past six years. 

Realized volatility fell to 30.4% on an annualized basis, under the trailing-year 43% level and well beneath the long-run average near 81%.

Derivatives flash fear, not panic

VanEck reads the derivatives complex as defensive. The one-month put/call implied volatility skew widened to +11.4 percentage points, an 83rd-percentile mark since 2021, and traders appear content to fund put purchases with the sale of calls. 

The firm reads that as fear rather than capitulation. Total options premium eased 23% to $613.6 million, and the put/call premium ratio climbed to 1.49, against an average near 0.71.

Perpetual-futures funding tells a similar story. The rate sits near +4.5% on a 30-day average, about half the long-run +8.4%, a sign that positioning stays far from bullish after a spring stretch in which traders were paid to hold shorts. 

VanEck maps both signals to below-average forward returns across the 30-to-180-day window. It flags two markers of a true bottom that have not arrived: a skew past +15 points, or funding that flips negative. Until one appears, the firm sees near-term downside pressure over a quick rebound. 

VanEck has pointed to negative funding as a bullish tell in past notes.

Bitcoin ETP outflows and shaken treasury confidence

Demand ran negative on the month, a drop the report ties to exchange-traded product outflows. U.S. spot ETPs shed 40,010 BTC, worth about $2.40 billion, while corporate treasuries added 2,343 BTC and miners kept 1,204 BTC. Exchange balances rose to fill the gap. 

The report also charts shaken confidence among digital asset treasuries after Strategy used $1.38 billion to retire convertible notes, a move that left the company with a $900 million reserve and pushed it to its first bitcoin sales since 2022. Those sales, VanEck writes, fed the negative flows across the treasury cohort.

The on-chain picture cuts the other way. The share of bitcoin held longer than a year reached 60.8% of supply, a figure that has climbed through the price drop from 59.1% six months earlier. Another 17.7% of supply sits in the six-to-twelve-month band, coins that graduate into the long-term bucket if they stay put. 

VanEck projects the long-term share reaches about 62% in three months and nears 63% in six. Regimes with a long-term share above 60% and rising have lined up with above-average returns across horizons in the firm’s tests, an echo of its prior finding that whales kept holding through the selloff. 

Selling, the report finds, concentrates in the middle of the age curve, while the youngest and oldest coins stay still. Profitability metrics run cold, with net unrealized profit at the 17th percentile and 53% of supply in profit against a four-year average of 76%.

Miner economics near multi-year lows

Miner economics form the report’s grimmest section. Network hash rate held near record highs around 930 EH/s as price fell, a mix that pushed implied hashprice to about $30.6 per petahash per second per day, near multi-year lows. 

Daily miner revenue averaged $28.5 million, down 39.5% year over year, a level that puts lower-efficiency rigs at or below breakeven. Miner-held bitcoin stayed near 1.785 million, a sign of steady sales of new coins over capitulation.

The pivot to artificial-intelligence hosting runs through the section. VanEck highlights TeraWulf’s 20-year, $19 billion lease with Anthropic and CleanSpark’s $6.6 billion deal as top unlevered yields, part of a build-out the firm has tied to a $50 billion near-term funding gap. 

Miner equities have dropped about 42% from 52-week highs on higher rates, a New York pause on data-center construction, and doubt over AI returns. 

The firm keeps its conviction, and points to richer contract terms, new AI deals, and hyperscaler spending as reasons the de-rating overstates the risk. 

It also notes bitcoin correlation across the group has stepped down, a sign the market prices the names on their own merits. That optimism is not universal across the market; some analysts have argued an AI pivot alone will not rescue struggling miners.

VanEck sees a market that leans toward soft returns over the near term, held back by cautious derivatives and weak miner cash flow, yet supported by a supply base that keeps tightening. For patient holders, the firm writes, the structural picture stays constructive.

This post VanEck: Bitcoin’s Summer Lull Masks a Tightening Supply Base first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

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Coinbase Wants To Be Canada’s ‘Everything Exchange’ — With Crypto, Stocks, and Prediction Markets

Crypto giant Coinbase is making its “everything exchange” push in Canada. 

Eric Richmond, country director and CEO of Coinbase Canada, told BNN Bloomberg in a Tuesday interview that the move would allow Canadians to not only buy crypto but also trade tokenized stocks and put money on prediction markets. 

“Coinbase believes we have a new technology here that can really help with that, and that’s blockchain and the technology that underpins crypto today,” Richmond said in the interview. “How do we create that one place for Canadians to have their entire financial experience in one app that’s underpinned by this technology that makes things frictionless, seamless, and 24/7?”

He added: “I think people are starting to realize the fact that banks close at 4 p.m., or the markets close at 4 p.m., or that wires can take days to settle, or that access for high-net-worth individuals to certain products are gated for just those high-net-worth individuals.”

Coinbase in the U.S. allows Americans to place bets and trade stocks. The company started as a place allowing people to buy and sell Bitcoin but has since offered hundreds of digital coins. 

Richmond added that the company was working with Canadian regulators to make the launch. 

Tokenized stocks are versions of equities that trade on the technology underpinning Bitcoin: the blockchain. Proponents like Coinbase argue that by tokenizing everything, traders will be able to make transactions around the clock, 24-7. 

A number of crypto exchanges are also making the push to branch out from crypto: Kraken, for example, has also started allowing users to trade stocks and has announced plans for a prediction market platform. 

Coinbase’s big moves 

Coinbase has made some bigger moves in recent years, other than just working as a crypto exchange. 

America’s biggest bank, JPMorgan Chase, last year signed a deal with the company to allow customers to directly link their bank accounts to the platform. 

Coinbase also provides custody services — including to Wall Street giants like BlackRock — and has a contract with the US government to hold onto seized crypto.

The company also in April received conditional approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency in the U.S. for a national trust banking charter, essentially paving the way for it to serve as a crypto custodian on a federal basis, managing assets for larger entities.

The company has clashed with banking executives recently over stablecoin rewards: the exchange wants its yield-bearing stablecoin products to continue, which in turn could prove to be a bigger boon in the long-run for the business.

This post Coinbase Wants To Be Canada’s ‘Everything Exchange’ — With Crypto, Stocks, and Prediction Markets first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

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Bitcoin Sentiment Is Turning Bullish — But It’s Too Early to Celebrate: Report

The Bitcoin bottom may be in — but don’t get your hopes up: It might struggle to go up anytime soon, according to one investment firm. 

A Friday report from European asset management firm CoinShares said that investors last week threw fresh cash at Bitcoin — and other crypto — exchange-traded products, indicating a change in sentiment. 

But other factors may hold digital asset markets from going higher, James Butterfill, head of research at CoinShares, wrote. 

“We have said for some time that Bitcoin has probably reached, or is close to, its floor,” the report read. “But we see no significant upside potential from here.”

The report added that current macroeconomic headwinds, such as the US bombing Iran and rising oil prices, could see inflation go up again. 

Bitcoin’s price was up earlier this week, hitting a seven-day high of $65,501 on news that inflation in the US was softer than expected. It has since erased those gains and was recently trading for $64,010. 

The price of Bitcoin has typically done well on news that inflation is coming down because investors expect interest rates to come down. But Butterfill said that “a rate cut does not look probable at this stage.”

Bitcoin’s worst run on record

CoinShares’ data showed that investors pulled a total of $8 billion out of funds giving crypto exposure — “the worst run on record.” 

Last week, though, things reversed when $287 million hit crypto funds, CoinShares said, with the data so far showing that this week looks likely to be another positive streak.

The price of Bitcoin has typically done well when US investors — previously excluded from crypto investing — have bought shares in exchange-traded funds approved in 2024. 

The products — handled by the likes of BlackRock, Fidelity, and Grayscale — allow more traditional investors or Wall Street institutions to buy positions in Bitcoin via shares that trade on stock exchanges. 

Since BTC’s October all-time high of $126,080, crypto markets have faced a battering as those investors have fast cashed out of the funds. Bitcoin has struggled to make gains, especially after the US and Israel started bombing Iran, leading to a surge in the price of oil. 

The leading cryptocurrency is now nearly 50% below its record. 

“The dominant picture is that the current setup is prompting interest in adding positions, but caution prevails while sentiment remains broadly negative,” CoinShares added. 

This post Bitcoin Sentiment Is Turning Bullish — But It’s Too Early to Celebrate: Report first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

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Bitcoin Price Falls Under $63,000 on U.S.-Iran Strikes and Trump’s China Charge, but Onchain Data Points to Buyers

Bitcoin price fell below $63,000 on Friday, as a fresh wave of U.S. airstrikes on Iran and a new political dispute between Washington and Beijing pushed investors out of risk assets.

Bitcoin price traded near $62,800, an extension of Thursday’s 1.4% slide from $65,000, according to Bitcoin Magazine Pro data. The token slipped under its 50-day simple moving average, a gauge of near-term momentum that many traders watch.

The bitcoin price retreat tracked a broad decline across global markets. Japan’s Nikkei 225 dropped 4% and entered a correction, a fall of more than 10% from its June 25 peak, as memory-chip maker Kioxia lost 16.1%. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng shed 2%, while the Shanghai Composite fell 3.1% to an 11-month low. 

Futures tied to the Nasdaq pointed to a decline of 1.6%, an echo of Thursday’s drop on Wall Street, where chip shares from Nvidia, Micron, Broadcom and Qualcomm came under pressure on fears that the AI rally has run past its earnings.

Bitcoin price, Iran escalations, and uncertainty in Washington 

Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency, citing the Hormozgan province governorate, said U.S. airstrikes hit five bridges in the southern province. 

A separate missile strike damaged the maritime control tower at Iran’s Chabahar port. WTI crude climbed near $79 a barrel, a rise close to 15% across five sessions, a move that revived concern about inflation and the path of interest rates.

A second front of uncertainty opened in Washington. President Donald Trump declassified intelligence reports that allege Chinese interference in U.S. elections and claimed Beijing obtained 220 million voter records, a threat he cast as a danger to democracy. China’s embassy denied the allegations. 

The dispute itself carries little market weight, though traders fear it could strain ties before Trump’s September meeting with Xi Jinping. The Australian dollar, a proxy for China-linked trade, weakened against the greenback.

Bitcoin price market dynamics

Against that backdrop, some analysts argue the sell-off masks a market whose core drivers have changed little. Nicolai Sondergaard, a research analyst at Nansen, said the bitcoin price tape reflects macro data more than a geopolitical hedge.

“The inflation and liquidity channel is doing more work here than the geopolitical hedge narrative,” Sondergaard said. He pointed to the June CPI report released July 14, which showed headline inflation of 3.5% against a 3.8% forecast and a core reading of 2.6% against 2.9%. The dollar index sank to near 100.77, a multi-month low, and the 10-year Treasury yield eased to 4.57%.

The softer print reset Fed expectations. Odds of a rate hike at the July 28-29 meeting fell from above 40% to the low teens, according to CME FedWatch data. 

“The FOMC meeting on July 28 to 29 is the actual binary,” Sondergaard said. “If the CPI data holds and the Fed signals a credible pivot path, the conditions for sustained ETF inflows are back in place.”

Onchain flows support his read. Spot bitcoin ETFs drew $510 million across three sessions this month, an end to a $2.73 billion outflow streak, with BlackRock’s IBIT in the lead. Nansen’s data shows large wallets held their ground through the strike. 

“Net outflows hit -18.3 BTC in the strike hour, then reverted to a post-shock average of +0.67 BTC per hour, meaning buyers returned within the same session,” Sondergaard said.

Sondergaard framed positioning as constructive rather than fragile. Funding rates sat near zero, a sign that leveraged longs are not crowded, and smart-money long/short ratios ran at 1.58 with no rotation into stablecoins. Retail traders held a ratio of 1.79, a step ahead of the pros but in the same direction. Seven-day inflows concentrated in liquid staking, DeFi lending and decentralized exchanges, a risk-on allocation.

 Sondergaard said the sequence rhymes with past shocks. “Prior Middle East escalations produced the same pattern: short-duration flush, accumulation resumes,” he said.

“MVRV sits at 1.205 with realized price at roughly $53,000 and the long-term holder cost basis around $49,900, which defines the structural floor,” Sondergaard said. “That is not the profile of a market running on geopolitical sentiment.”

At the time of writing, the bitcoin price is $62, 836.

This post Bitcoin Price Falls Under $63,000 on U.S.-Iran Strikes and Trump’s China Charge, but Onchain Data Points to Buyers first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

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Bitcoin to $40,000? If History’s Anything to Go By, It’s Possible, Says Report

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. 

This post Bitcoin to $40,000? If History’s Anything to Go By, It’s Possible, Says Report first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

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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 intensify the bombing until Tehran stops attacking ships in the Strait of Hormuz and agrees to open the waterway. 

“We’re going to hit [Iran] very hard the night after,” President Trump told Fox News on Tuesday. “And then next week it gets really bad for them because next week comes the power plants.”

“The only way you can negotiate with these people is through strength,” he added. 

Bitcoin’s price has faced increased volatility since the US and Israel attacked Iran on February 28, with the leading cryptocurrency dropping hard on initial reports of war.

Since the start of the year, the leading cryptocurrency has shed nearly 30% of its value, and is now close to 50% below the $126,080 record it notched in October. 

Downwards pressure has been added to the Bitcoin price as US investors fast cashed out of spot exchange-traded funds throughout the month of June as inflation uncertainties and a boom in artificial intelligence-related stocks has led speculators to put their cash elsewhere.

JUST IN: Bitcoin rips to $65,374 pic.twitter.com/j0mRcD6SMY

— Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) July 15, 2026

Bitcoin price jumps on cooler inflation numbers

Figures released on Tuesday from June’s Consumer Price Index also showed that inflation appeared to be easing in the US, also leading to a jump in the Bitcoin price. 

Over a seven-day period, Bitcoin’s price has traded from $61,507 to as high as $65,501. 

Traders are now keeping an eye on what new Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh — who’s typically been an inflation hawk in the past — will do while leading the central bank. 

The new Chair told congress this week that the Federal Reserve has “no tolerance for persistently elevated inflation,” and that policy makers at the bank share “a resolute commitment to restoring price stability.”

Kevin Warsh was sworn in as the new central bank chief in May. The former Federal Reserve governor has said he wanted to lower the cost of borrowing but markets initially priced him in as a hawk — someone who would raise interest rates to tackle inflation. 

At the time of writing, the bitcoin price is near $65,000.

This post Bitcoin Price Jumps Over $65,500 on Soft Inflation Data  first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

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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 equities pushed into the green. Gold added to its recent advance.

Core CPI, which strips out food and energy, held at about 2.9% year over year, above the Fed’s 2% target and a sign that underlying price pressure has not broken. That stickiness keeps a July hike on the table. 

Ahead of the release, futures markets priced a two-in-three chance the Fed holds its 3.5% to 3.75% range at the July 28-29 meeting, with the remainder betting on a quarter-point increase.

BREAKING: CPI inflation falls to 3.5%, far below expectations

— Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) July 14, 2026

Fed Chair Kevin Warsh added to the uncertainty. Minutes from the June meeting flagged AI-driven energy demand as a new source of inflation, a factor that complicates any read on where prices head next. Warsh is due to testify this week, and traders will parse his tone for signals on the September path.

The gasoline drop that flattered the June number could reverse fast. President Trump reinstated a naval blockade on Iranian shipping and moved to assert control over the Strait of Hormuz, and crude has pushed back above $80. A sustained oil rebound would feed straight into the inflation the Fed has fought to contain.

Bitcoin price setup

For Bitcoin price, the setup is a balancing act between hope for looser policy and caution over what a renewed energy shock would mean.  Spot ETF flows, which anchored much of the past year’s demand, have shown signs of fatigue, leaving price more exposed to macro swings.

Bitfinex analysts wrote to Bitcoin Magazine that Bitcoin ETF demand still isn’t price- or sentiment-agnostic, with the bid appearing on calm days and pulling back on volatile ones. The analysts think this signals that Bitcoin remains a macro-dependent asset.

They note the 30-day average of ETF net flows has been in an outflow regime since mid-May 2026, though daily redemptions have eased from $193 million in early June to $88.9 million now, a slowing decline that still hasn’t found a floor for institutional demand.

Over the past 7 days Bitcoin price traded in a roughly $61,600–$64,700 range, peaking near $64,400 around July 10–12 before sliding to its low near $61,600 on July 13. It has since rebounded to $63,748 (up ~1% on the day), landing back in the middle of the week’s range.

The next broader market markers arrive fast: Q2 earnings from JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America land this week, and the July FOMC decision follows in two weeks. 

At the time of writing, the bitcoin price is near $63,780.

This post Bitcoin Price Jumps Above $64,000 as Cooler-Than-Expected Inflation Strengthens the Case for Rate Cuts first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

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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 crypto are among the worst I’ve seen in my eight years in this industry.”

Even so, bitcoin held up far better than most of its peers. Its 32.9% year-to-date decline was the shallowest drawdown among major large-cap tokens, easily beating Ethereum’s 46.9% slide, Solana’s 40.6% and Cardano’s 56.5%. 

Bitcoin now commands a 64.2% share of the roughly $1.88 trillion total crypto market and carries a 77.4% weight inside the Bitwise 10 index, cementing its status as the sector’s relative safe haven even in a broad selloff.

Bitcoin ETF outflows hit a record

The quarter’s most jarring statistic came from the exchange-traded product complex that has anchored bitcoin’s institutional era. U.S. spot bitcoin ETPs bled $4.9 billion in Q2, their worst quarter since launching in January 2024, according to Bitwise. 

Assets under management still stand at $72.4 billion, with $53.4 billion in cumulative net flows since inception, but the reversal underscored how quickly professional sentiment can sour. 

Filings show investment advisors hold about 43% of professionally owned ETP shares and hedge fund managers another 28%, with Jane Street ($1.8 billion) and Millennium ($1.0 billion) the largest reported holders.

Structural demand nonetheless continued to outstrip new issuance. Bitwise noted in their report that spot ETPs and public companies have together bought roughly 3.6 times the bitcoin mined since the ETFs debuted — about 1.55 million BTC of demand against just 455,416 BTC of new supply.

Treasury companies keep buying, but Strategy blinks

Public-company bitcoin treasuries grew to 1.28 million BTC, up 11.3% quarter over quarter and equal to 6.11% of the 21 million cap, even as the number of firms holding bitcoin slipped by three to 184. Companies added 130,467 BTC in Q2. Strategy remains the runaway leader at 846,842 BTC, trailed by XXI (43,514), Metaplanet (40,177), MARA Holdings (35,303) and Bitcoin Standard Treasury Company (30,021).

The most symbolically loaded move belonged to Strategy, which sold bitcoin for the first time since 2022 — offloading $218 million late in the quarter to fund dividend obligations while keeping holdings valued at $52.3 billion and a $2.55 billion cash reserve. Falling prices punished the equity harshly: Strategy’s stock (MSTR) dropped 30.3% in Q2 and 42.8% year to date, making it one of the worst performers among crypto equities.

The report also touched on several developments that are reshaping bitcoin’s market plumbing. The CFTC approved the first bitcoin perpetual futures at a U.S.-regulated exchange, Kalshi, pulling crypto’s dominant derivative onshore. 

Charles Schwab launched retail spot BTC trading, and E*Trade extended access to its 8.6 million users. On the regulatory front, the market-structure CLARITY Act stalled in the Senate over ethics provisions, with prediction markets pricing its 2026 passage odds at just around 20%, down from 75% in May. 

Bitwise argues that if CLARITY passes it would likely mark the bottom, and if it fails the industry keeps building under friendly regulators.

Hougan’s core argument is one of cycle-over-cycle progress. Bitcoin’s seasonality data offers modest near-term hope, with July historically averaging a 10.7% gain. 

And the firm’s portfolio work still shows a 5% bitcoin allocation adding to a traditional 60/40 mix in 100% of three-year rolling windows since 2014.

“The market is quoting bear-market prices on an industry that is twice the size it was at the last cycle’s bottom,” Hougan writes — a foundation, he says, that “determines what grows in the spring.”

Bitcoin is trading below $62,000 today.

This post Bitwise Sees a Bottom in Bitcoin’s Worst Vibes Yet: ‘Darkest Before the Dawn’  first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Preferred shares to fuel bitcoin

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

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

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

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

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

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

Strategy’s bitcoin holdings

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Bitcoin Slips to $62,000, Paring Rebound as CryptoQuant Sees Room Higher

Bitcoin traded near $62,000 today, surrendering part of a rebound that had carried it to $64,000 from last week’s bear-market low of $57,700. The pullback holds the price above the $60,000 level that CryptoQuant treats as support, though it trims a recovery of some 11% off the bottom.

The dip came as CryptoQuant’s Weekly Crypto Report, published today and shared with Bitcoin Magazine, argued the backdrop skews toward further gains. Head of Research Julio Moreno framed the bounce as a bear-market recovery rather than a trend reversal, with one central caution: the firm’s Bull Score Index, an aggregate of on-chain, market, and valuation conditions on a 0-to-100 scale, sits at 20, inside the bearish zone at or below 40 and short of the 60 reading tied to a sustainable bull market.

The report’s bullish case rests on seasonality. Across the past decade, July has ranked among Bitcoin’s stronger months, closing higher in most years shown. 

The pattern held in the down-cycles of 2018 and 2022, when Bitcoin gained some 20% and 17% during the month as the broader trend stayed weak. Entering July 2026 off a bear-market low, the report said, that pattern skews near-term risk toward gains.

Bitcoin demand is turning

Demand has turned. The 30-day change in total demand — spot plus perpetual futures — collapsed to some -650,000 BTC in early June, the deepest negative reading since 2022, as Bitcoin fell toward $58,000. 

It has since recovered toward neutral, with speculative futures demand crossing into positive territory and spot selling easing to its slowest pace since mid-May. A return to positive territory, the report said, would confirm a re-igniting demand engine.

U.S. buyers show signs of stabilizing. The Coinbase Premium Index, a proxy for U.S. spot demand, sank below zero in early June as Bitcoin bottomed near $57,000, one of its weakest readings of the year.

The premium remains under zero, though its path has tracked Bitcoin’s climb off the low and points to steadier institutional appetite.

Valuation added a floor. The on-chain trader unrealized profit/loss margin, for coins held one to three months, dropped below -24% in early June, under the -12% threshold the firm treats as undervalued. Readings at such extremes tend to mark local bottoms as short-term holders capitulate, the report said, and the margin has recovered as price bounced off $57,700.

Today’s slip to $62,000 underscores the report’s own hedge. CryptoQuant reads the market as off its lows, with improving internals but a bearish regime intact. 

A durable rally, it concluded, would require the Bull Score Index to climb above 60. Until then, the firm treats the move as a recovery within a bear market, not a reversal — a framing this week’s give-back does little to challenge.

This post Bitcoin Slips to $62,000, Paring Rebound as CryptoQuant Sees Room Higher first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bitcoin price action

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

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

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

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Bitcoin Price Reclaims $60,000 As Strategy (MSTR) and Strive (ASST) Jump More Than 10%

Bitcoin price climbed above $60,000 on Wednesday, a level the asset had ceded during the last couple weeks of turbulence, after Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh told a central bank forum that the threat of persistent inflation had moderated.

The cryptocurrency traded near $60,171 this afternoon, a gain of about 2.7% on the day, with a 24-hour high of $60,474 and a low of $57,718. Trading volume for the session reached $26.68 billion.

Warsh, in remarks at the European Central Bank forum in Sintra, Portugal, said inflation expectations in surveys and bond prices had eased. He paired the observation with a warning that price growth remains too elevated and that the Fed will not accept inflation above its 2 percent target. 

“We’re going to deliver price stability,” Warsh said.

Markets read the balance as a tilt toward relief. Bitcoin advanced as U.S. stocks rose and the dollar retreated from a weekly high. A softer dollar tends to lift demand for Bitcoin and other risk assets.

The move offered a reprieve in a hard year. Bitcoin sits about 30% below where it started 2026 and more than $66,000 under its record of $126,277, a slide that has kept the bear-market label in view. Its market value stands near $1.2 trillion.

Strategy (MSTR) and Strive (ASST) jump over 10% at times in intraday trading

Bitcoin treasury companies posted sharper gains. Strategy, the software firm turned Bitcoin holder under Michael Saylor, rose close to 7.5% on the day — with highs of 13% during the day. Strive jumped more than 10% at times to $12.02. 

Both trade as leveraged proxies for Bitcoin, and their swings tend to exceed those of the coin. Strive has spent 2026 building a treasury that now tops 16,000 BTC, and the stock has climbed more than 100% across three months.

Earlier this week, Strategy released a new Digital Credit Capital Framework that raised the dividend on its STRC preferred shares to 12%, authorized up to $2 billion in share buybacks, and created a bitcoin monetization program allowing limited BTC sales for specific corporate purposes. 

The company also established a $2.55 billion U.S. dollar reserve to cover preferred dividends and debt interest, with board rules requiring at least 12 months of coverage at all times. Strategy said any bitcoin sales would be limited to replenishing reserves, funding dividends and interest when preferable to issuing equity, or financing stock buybacks, while reaffirming bitcoin as its primary treasury asset.

This post Bitcoin Price Reclaims $60,000 As Strategy (MSTR) and Strive (ASST) Jump More Than 10% first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

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Strategy (MSTR) Surges Over 12% As Bitcoin-Linked Stocks Have Green Day

Shares of Strategy Inc. climbed 14% at times on Monday to roughly $94, their best single-day gain in weeks, after the bitcoin treasury company unveiled a sweeping capital overhaul.

The move marks a significant shift for the company once synonymous with an unrelenting bitcoin accumulation strategy. Strategy’s board approved a new Digital Credit Capital Framework that authorizes up to $1.25 billion in bitcoin sales to fund a newly created U.S. dollar reserve, cover preferred dividend obligations, and service debt. 

The company also authorized $1 billion in common stock buybacks and $1 billion in repurchases of its preferred securities.

The company raised the dividend rate on its Variable Rate Series A Perpetual Stretch Preferred Stock, known as STRC, to 12% annually — a 50 basis point increase effective July 1.

Strategy held 847,363 BTC as of June 28, purchased for an aggregate $64.10 billion at an average price of $75,651 per coin. With bitcoin trading near $60,000 Monday afternoon, the company sits on an unrealized loss on its entire stack — context that makes the new monetization framework more than just financial engineering. 

The company said it has approximately $2.55 billion in U.S. dollar reserves, covering roughly 17 months of annual preferred dividend and interest obligations of about $1.76 billion.

The stock had been grinding lower since hitting a high near $200 earlier this year in May, pulled down by bitcoin weakness and broader risk-off pressure. Monday’s bounce, driven largely by the capital plan announcement, brought shares back above $92 intraday, with a session peak near $94.

Other crypto and bitcoin-linked stocks also started the week out strong. 

Nakamoto (NAKA) shares surged more than 10% at points during Monday’s session, among the day’s strongest movers in the crypto equity space. Strive (ASST) climbed over 3.5% at its intraday peak. Coinbase (COIN), by contrast, saw a more muted session — shares up around 2% at their high.

Strategy and bitcoin price action

Bitcoin price shed roughly 6% over the past week, pulling back from a high near $64,400 earlier in the period to trade around lows of $58,800 today — a grind lower that has tracked weakness across broader risk assets.

Bitcoin price has now dropped more than 18% on the month, with the June candle opening near $76,690 and finding no sustained bid on the way down. 

Six straight weeks of ETF outflows, totaling tens of millions in institutional selling, have weighed on the price throughout the stretch. Bitcoin remains below its key 50-month exponential moving average near $65,600, a level that technicians watch as a line between short-term recovery and deeper correction territory.

Bitcoin Magazine is published by BTC Inc, a subsidiary of Nakamoto Inc. (NASDAQ: NAKA)

This post Strategy (MSTR) Surges Over 12% As Bitcoin-Linked Stocks Have Green Day first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.