Crypto news

Strategy Inc., formerly MicroStrategy, has paused Bitcoin purchases for five consecutive weeks, the longest gap since 2024, and sold 1,690 BTC in early August. The company now holds 840,447 BTC alongside a $4.8 billion cash reserve, breaking its prior pledge to never sell Bitcoin. In June 2026, it adopted the Digital Credit Capital Framework, permitting strategic BTC monetization. The firm launched a $42 billion at-the-market equity program and repurchased $132 million of its preferred stock (STRC), which has become a focus of Michael Saylor's messaging. Despite the sales, Strategy remains the largest corporate Bitcoin holder by a wide margin. The pause and cash buildup signal a deliberate shift toward balance-sheet flexibility and liquidity management.

Israel's largest bank, Bank Leumi, has partnered with Galaxy Digital to offer Bitcoin, Ether, and Solana trading to its customers, marking the first such service by an Israeli bank. The service, launching in early 2027, will be available through the Leumi Trade app for clients of both Leumi and its mobile banking arm, Pepper, allowing them to buy, hold, and sell the three cryptocurrencies. Leumi will utilize GalaxyOne Institutional for trading and Galaxy's custody platform for infrastructure. This announcement follows Galaxy Digital's recent $85 million net loss in the second quarter, which it attributed to falling digital asset prices, despite its digital assets business generating a 34% increase in adjusted gross profit. Galaxy, led by Mike Novogratz, trades on the Nasdaq under GLXY, with shares up about 2% on the day but down roughly 25% over the past year.

Tether, the issuer of the USDT stablecoin, announced that Big Four accounting firm KPMG has issued a clean, unqualified opinion on its 2025 financial statements, marking the first full audit in the company's history. KPMG's review included physically counting and inspecting every gold bar held by Tether, addressing long-standing skepticism about whether USDT is fully backed, which had previously led to regulatory settlements with New York and the CFTC in 2021. The audit comes as Tether expands into the U.S. market under the GENIUS Act framework, potentially challenging Circle's positioning as the transparent, regulated alternative. Other market news included the SEC postponing a crypto rulemaking meeting, a Trezor customer data breach, and prediction market Kalshi in talks for a $750 million raise at a $40 billion valuation.

Bitcoin industry leaders and open-source developers say Chinese AI models are outperforming restricted American systems like OpenAI and Anthropic in cybersecurity work, forcing reliance on them to secure Bitcoin infrastructure. Executives like Rob Hamilton of AnchorWatch and Francis Pouliot of Bull Bitcoin report being blocked or refused by US models, while Chinese open-source models like Kimi K3 successfully identify exploits, prompting calls for trusted access programs. The Bitcoin Policy Institute, with over 70 signatories, has urged frontier labs to provide secure access for defenders. This follows a Coldcard firmware exploit that stole over $100 million in bitcoin, leading to a volunteer Bitcoin Red Team that scanned 501 projects and found 1,280 high or critical issues using primarily Chinese AI. Developers now advocate for permanent AI audit pipelines, warning that human-only review is obsolete and that security-critical code should avoid C due to AI-exploitable memory vulnerabilities.

Coinkite is addressing the largest hardware wallet breach on record, where a Coldcard firmware vulnerability led to the theft of over 1,778 Bitcoin (about $112 million) from more than 5,000 addresses. The attack began on July 30, 2026, and drained over 1,000 BTC in 41 minutes, with about 1,531 BTC still held by attackers. The root cause was a flaw introduced in firmware version 4.0.1 (March 2021) that replaced hardware RNG with a predictable software-based PRNG during seed generation. Despite a related issue flagged in May 2025, the vulnerability went unpatched and was exploited across multiple Coldcard models, involving at least a dozen attackers. Coinkite issued a security advisory and patched firmware, but warns that a firmware update alone is insufficient. Users must generate new seed phrases on patched firmware and transfer funds, as any seed created on vulnerable firmware remains compromised. This incident raises questions about self-custody security and hardware wallet RNG verification.

Bank Leumi, Israel's largest bank, will allow customers to trade bitcoin, ether, and solana via its digital banking arm, starting in early 2027, in partnership with Galaxy Digital, which will provide institutional trading and custody infrastructure. This marks the bank's second attempt to offer crypto trading, following a 2022 partnership with Paxos that was never launched. Bank Leumi's head of strategy highlighted the initiative as part of the bank's innovation strategy, noting digital assets are becoming integral to global finance. The move comes as Israel received an estimated $22 billion in onchain crypto value over the year ending June 2025, with regional activity in the Middle East and North Africa rising 33% to over $500 billion.

Jane Street added $630 million in Bitcoin ETFs during Q2 2026, boosting its total holdings to about $1.06 billion, according to SEC 13F filings. This marks a sharp reversal after the firm cut its Bitcoin ETF exposure by roughly 71% in the prior quarter. The firm's IBIT stake rebounded to 24.9 million shares valued at $828 million by June 30, while its FBTC holdings also increased. As an authorized participant for several Bitcoin ETFs, Jane Street's quarter-end positions often reflect inventory management and hedging activities rather than directional bets on Bitcoin's price. The $1 billion milestone underscores the firm's deep involvement in the Bitcoin ETF market and strong client demand, even as large swings in market maker holdings differ from conviction trades by long-only funds.

Swiss banking giant UBS significantly increased its Bitcoin exposure in the second quarter, reporting a more than 24-fold surge in call options tied to BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT). According to a regulatory filing, the bank held calls representing 1.95 million underlying IBIT shares as of June 30, up from 80,000 in the previous quarter, while its direct IBIT holdings rose 12% to 407,890 shares. In contrast, UBS reduced its put option exposure by about 53% to 143,300 underlying shares. The filing does not specify whether the increase stems from client initiatives, dealer hedging, market-making, or proprietary exposure, and lacks details on strike prices or expirations. The move aligns with UBS's broader efforts to expand client access to digital assets, including plans to offer bitcoin and ether trading to select private banking clients in Switzerland.

Strategy, formerly MicroStrategy, successfully opposed MSCI's proposal to exclude Bitcoin treasury companies from its global indexes. The proposal, which targeted firms with over 50% of assets in digital assets, would have affected about 39 companies, including Strategy, which holds roughly 840,447 BTC. MSCI backed down on January 6, 2026, preserving the indexes' treatment of such firms, and Strategy's stock rose up to 7%. The decision has broader implications for the corporate Bitcoin treasury strategy, as index inclusion ensures institutional demand and liquidity. By shelving the exclusion, MSCI maintained the viability of holding Bitcoin on corporate balance sheets, avoiding a powerful disincentive for other companies.

Fireblocks has integrated TRON into its Flow payment infrastructure, allowing over 2,400 institutions to accept stablecoin payments from TRON wallets. The integration, live since August 12, adds TRON to Flow's supported networks, which already include EVM chains, Solana, Sui, and Bitcoin. Fireblocks Flow, launched on June 2, 2026, offers a unified stack for wallet connectivity, compliance, settlement, and reconciliation. This update enables payment providers to accept TRON-based stablecoin deposits and settle in any configured stablecoin. Fireblocks has secured over $14 trillion in transactions across 100+ chains, with the move aiming to bring TRON's payment infrastructure to a professional institutional environment.