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American Bitcoin, a mining company founded by the Trump family, disclosed it reached a $2.5 million settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice to resolve allegations of improperly receiving pandemic relief funds. The matter stemmed from the past record of Gryphon Digital Mining, which American Bitcoin merged with last year. The U.S. Small Business Administration determined Gryphon, then a cannabis-related software company, was not eligible for a Paycheck Protection Program loan and reversed its loan-forgiveness decision in 2024. American Bitcoin mentioned the settlement only in the notes to its quarterly report, limiting the negative impact, and the stock closed up about 5% after the company reported its strongest-ever quarterly Bitcoin mining results.

U.S. Senate reviews adding sports-betting jurisdiction language to Clarity Act As the U.S. Senate moves this week to accelerate progress on the Clarity Act, regional gaming regulators and some lawmakers are considering adding language to preserve state and tribal government jurisdiction over sports betting, The Block reported. During a Senate roundtable, Sen. Tina Smith proposed including the language in the Clarity Act or the Farm Bill, while Sen. John Boozman opposed linking prediction markets to cryptocurrency-related legislation.

South Korea’s planned taxation of virtual assets from next year is expected to have a significant impact on wealthy middle-aged and older investors, EBN reported. The outlet said the tax is likely to hit affluent investors in their 50s and older especially hard, as South Korean financial authorities’ data showed about 59% of high-value virtual asset holders with more than 1 billion won ($722,000) in holdings were age 50 or older, including 3,994 people in their 50s and 2,426 people age 60 and above. EBN said the figures suggest virtual assets have spread beyond being a speculative tool for younger people and have become a key asset-management tool for people in their 50s and 60s. As the government’s tax revision proposal did not include a delay to virtual asset taxation, the likelihood has increased that a 22% tax, including local taxes, will be imposed from next year on annual virtual asset income exceeding 2.5 million won ($1,806).

BlackRock’s spot Ethereum ETF ETHA will carry out a one-for-three reverse stock split on Oct. 6, a move aimed at improving trading convenience. The split will reduce the number of shares outstanding and raise net asset value per share, while leaving investors’ total holdings unchanged, along with the fund’s total net assets of more than $5 billion. The measure is intended to lift the share price from around $14 and narrow the bid-ask spread to about 2 basis points from roughly 7 basis points. The change is a structural adjustment and does not directly affect Ethereum’s market price.

U.S. Sen. Cynthia Lummis, a prominent pro-crypto lawmaker, urged Senate Democrats not to block a vote on the bipartisan CLARITY Act, Cointelegraph reported. Lummis said the bill is essential legislation to protect consumers while preserving the U.S. cryptocurrency industry and fostering domestic innovation.

Former SEC Chairman Jay Clayton, who is known for approving the SEC’s lawsuit against Ripple over unregistered securities sales on the final day of his tenure, has officially been sworn in as director of national intelligence, U.Today reported. The U.S. SEC filed the lawsuit against Ripple in late December 2020, and Clayton’s successor, Gary Gensler, continued to lead the case.

SpaceX did not sell any Bitcoin in the second quarter following its first earnings report as a public company, and its holdings remained at 18,700 BTC as of March 31, according to the report.

U.S. FBI Director Kash Patel said Operation Blackout had seized more than $15 billion worth of cryptocurrency and dismantled a global fraud network, Cointelegraph reported.

The three major U.S. stock indices closed higher today. - S&P 500: +1.79% - Nasdaq: +2.59% - Dow Jones: +1.71%

Cloudflare has launched a stablecoin wallet designed to let AI agents pay for APIs and online content, The Block reported. Only the first phase is now available, with users able to apply for a wallet handle linked to their account. Core wallet features, including stablecoin top-ups and payments, will be added later. The x402 protocol, developed and backed by Coinbase, supports micropayments, allowing agents to make payments and gain access without traditional accounts, subscriptions or API keys.

The Nasdaq’s intraday gain on U.S. markets widened to 2.73%. The S&P 500 was up 1.92%, while the Dow Jones was higher by 1.87%.

Coinbase, Visa, Mastercard and other major investors in OpenStandard said OpenUSD is designed to complement, not replace, USDC, and they plan to support multiple stablecoins rather than back a single token, according to CoinDesk. The remarks came after Circle’s market capitalization fell by billions of dollars following the launch of OpenUSD, or OUSD, by OpenStandard, a group involving more than 140 payments and crypto companies including Visa and BlackRock. During last week’s second-quarter earnings call, Coinbase highlighted its close relationship with Circle. Coinbase CFO Alesia Haas said the company had already met the terms required to renew its business agreement with Circle and would continue expanding the USDC ecosystem. Visa CEO Ryan McInerney said the company’s role is not to pick winners. Mastercard CEO Michael Miebach said Mastercard already supports USDC and USDG, and described OpenUSD as another coin the company plans to support for use across its network.

Robinhood weathered the crypto market slowdown by successfully diversifying into prediction markets, while Coinbase posted weaker second-quarter results, The Block reported. Robinhood’s cryptocurrency trading revenue fell 37.5% from a year earlier to $100 million in the second quarter, but growth in options, equities and prediction markets helped keep total transaction-based revenue at a record-high $776 million. Its prediction-markets business in particular generated $156 million in revenue on the back of 13.6 billion contracts traded, surpassing its crypto segment for the first time. By contrast, Coinbase’s total second-quarter revenue came to $1.22 billion, its lowest since the third quarter of 2024. Total trading volume fell 24% from the previous quarter to its lowest level since the third quarter of 2023, with institutional and retail volumes both declining by the same rate. The divergence was seen as reflecting Robinhood’s success in reducing its reliance on crypto and broadening revenue sources through products tied to sports and political events.

Telegram was temporarily removed from Apple’s App Store after a user distributed illegal pornographic material in a public group chat, Telegram CEO Pavel Durov said on his personal channel. Durov said Apple temporarily took Telegram off the App Store after what he described as an organized reporting attack. He said the attacker edited existing posts to secretly insert AI-altered illegal pornographic material into a public group, then reported it directly to Apple. He added that the tactic was a typical extortion scheme in which operators of public groups are asked for money and, if they refuse, illegal content is planted and then reported to platform operators.

A proposal in the Ethereum community to cap staking rewards at 0% if half of ETH’s total supply is staked could backfire on the ecosystem, Aave founder Stani Kulechov said. He said the proposal could end up hurting the Ethereum ecosystem rather than delivering its intended effect. Under the proposal, staking rewards would be capped at 0% if more than 50% of the total ETH supply is staked. Kulechov said that would make staking yields harder to predict, which could push institutional investors that value stable cash flow toward other blockchain networks instead of ETH. He added the DeFi ecosystem would also face significant effects, as most strategies using ETH as loan collateral would lose profitability if staking rewards fall to 0%, while ETH-based lending and interest income models would also shrink sharply. In his view, the proposal could reduce Ethereum’s appeal as an investment and limit its growth potential.

A U.S. federal appeals court in New York upheld the fraud and conspiracy conviction of Sam Bankman-Fried, tied to the collapse of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX he ran. Bankman-Fried was previously sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2024 in the same case.

U.S. SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce expressed optimism that the Clarity Act will pass, while saying the SEC will do its best regardless of the outcome and still has plenty it can do even if the bill does not pass. Peirce added that the agency will continue pushing for cryptocurrency regulatory reform and said clearer rules for crypto are needed, with a well-defined market structure helping the U.S. remain competitive in the sector and reduce long-term uncertainty for the industry.

On-chain investor demand for tokenized U.S. Treasuries is rising სწრაფly, pushing the market capitalization of on-chain U.S. Treasury funds to a record $16.2 billion, up 77% from the start of the year, The Kobeissi Letter said. A key driver of the growth was an increase in investors seeking to generate on-chain yield by using short-term U.S. Treasury bills as collateral. Investors are actively depositing tokenized U.S. Treasuries, borrowing stablecoins against them, and deploying those funds into DeFi protocols.

Questions have emerged over whether Coinkite co-founder and CTO Peter Gray wrote the LibNgU code blamed for a Coldcard hardware wallet vulnerability tied to losses estimated at more than 1,800 BTC, Bitcoin News reported. LibNgU was known to have been written by an anonymous developer using the handle "switck," according to the report. However, Gray’s GPG key was found to have signed dozens of code commits under the switck account, raising the possibility that the two are the same person. Bitcoin developer James O’Beirne claimed he urged Coinkite in May last year to remove the LibNgU code, saying its random number generator implementation looked questionable. The company was said to have replied at the time that any issue would likely already have been discovered if one existed. If accurate, the account suggests the author of code linked to the theft of more than 1,800 BTC had received a direct warning more than a year before the vulnerability was disclosed that the random number generation method could be flawed, but did not act on it.

The S&P 500 index rose above 7,700 for the first time on record.

Bitcoin’s low volatility is not a bearish signal but part of a setup for the next major trend, on-chain analyst Sykodelic said. Sykodelic said the market is currently building a base and that low volatility should not be mistaken for a sign that Bitcoin has lost momentum. Instead, Sykodelic said strength has been building over the past 60 days for the next major move. Whether an inverse head-and-shoulders pattern is completed or BTC sees a pullback to the $60,500 support level, Sykodelic said it would not materially affect the longer-term trend. Sykodelic added the next major trend is likely to be upward and may begin this month.

Coldcard users are moving Bitcoin at a pace close to the level seen during the FTX collapse, according to CryptoQuant. CryptoQuant said transfers of under 1 BTC by users of the Coldcard crypto hardware wallet reached 39,600 BTC on July 31, days after the hack was disclosed, citing local time. That was close to the 39,900 BTC moved during the FTX collapse in November 2022. CryptoQuant added that small holders had not moved funds on this scale in nearly four years. Coldcard has so far reported hack-related losses of about 1,816 BTC, worth $114 million, due to a code flaw.

Average daily trading volume on decentralized perpetual futures exchanges fell 34% over the past six months, while open interest declined 10%, according to Unfolded. Data cited by Unfolded showed average daily volume on perp DEXs dropped to $21.4 billion from $32.4 billion, even as open interest edged down to $14.8 billion from $16.4 billion. Over the past year, volume on decentralized perpetual futures exchanges fell sharply while open interest saw little change.

Dinari, a securities token platform, is partnering with Circle (CRCL), the issuer of the USDC stablecoin, to support blockchain-based stock token trading for U.S. investors, Fortune reported. The offering will initially support 724 stock tokens, including all S&P 500 constituents.

Nasdaq-listed Bitcoin mining rig maker Canaan said on Aug. 4 it plans to sell part of its cryptocurrency holdings to fund share buybacks. Canaan said the proceeds will be used for an American depositary share, or ADS, repurchase program approved by its board in December 2025. The company added it may sell additional cryptocurrency later depending on its share price, market conditions and operating cash needs. Based on Aug. 3 market prices, Canaan’s cryptocurrency holdings were valued at about $130 million. The company said its current market capitalization is below the combined value of its cryptocurrency holdings and cash-equivalent assets.