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Veteran trader Peter Brandt sees the BTC bear market forming a bottom on Oct. 4 and analyzed that BTC could temporarily fall below $50,000 before entering a recovery, according to Cointelegraph.

Bitcoin mining stocks surged on expectations for AI business expansion after Hut 8 (HUT) and IREN, formerly Iris Energy, announced major AI infrastructure contracts, Cointelegraph reported. Hut 8 disclosed a $9.8 billion AI data center lease agreement, while IREN unveiled a $2.8 billion AI cloud services contract. Shares of related companies including Cipher Digital, CleanSpark and MARA Holdings rose more than 11% in early trading.

Bitcoin mining company LM Funding America announced it will rebrand as PowerCompute on July 22 local time. The company’s stock ticker will also change to PWCM from LMFA. LM Funding America said the move is part of a strategic shift to expand its high-performance computing and AI infrastructure businesses using its existing 26-megawatt power infrastructure. The company added it will continue its strategy of holding Bitcoin on its balance sheet.

NEAR Protocol co-founder Illia Polosukhin said AI-powered hacking began to intensify in earnest in October last year, making it difficult for traditional code reviews alone to keep up, The Block reported. Illia Polosukhin stressed the need to use AI to make formal verification faster and cheaper and to mathematically prove that code works as intended.

Bitmine Chairman Tom Lee said the company spent about $86 million to repurchase 5.5 million shares of Bitmine common stock at an average price of $15.62. As a result, the pace of ETH purchases slowed somewhat, according to Decrypt. Bitmine bought an additional 7,430 ETH last week, worth $14 million, marking one of its smallest weekly purchases since the company began its ETH treasury strategy.

The U.S. SEC said it has charged Florida resident Zan Shaikh and his company, Mining Automatic, with a $22 million cryptocurrency mining investment fraud. The SEC said Mining Automatic raised about $22 million from more than 380 investors from June 2023 to May 2025 while promoting guaranteed monthly returns from cryptocurrency mining. The regulator said only about 13% of the funds raised was used for actual mining operations, with the rest diverted to marketing, recruiting new investors, and personal and other business expenses.

Major crypto venture investors including Coinbase Ventures, Animoca Brands, a16z crypto and Tether have remained active despite the broader downturn in the crypto venture market since last year, according to CryptoRank. CryptoRank data showed Coinbase Ventures participated in about 33 investments, Animoca Brands in about 19, and a16z crypto in about 18. At the same time, investment in the DeFi sector fell for a third straight quarter, with second-quarter funding this year hitting its lowest level since the fourth quarter of 2023. The data suggested investor sentiment toward DeFi projects has become more conservative.

Ansem, the meme-coin trader who inspired the Solana-based meme coin ANSEM, said on X the infrastructure and market sentiment are now in place to bring retail investors into this cycle. Ansem said Bitcoin is down about 50% from its all-time high, but industry infrastructure and user experience have improved significantly since the last cycle. Those improvements include a more mature mobile trading environment, easier cross-chain functions and lower barriers to entry for new users. Ansem added institutional interest in real-world assets, a regulatory framework under the CLARITY Act, and steadily strengthening crypto strategies at traditional technology companies such as Robinhood and Stripe are also supporting the market environment. According to Ansem, those conditions could attract both institutional investors and high-risk retail investors, and further gains in mobile application layout design could bring in more new users who had previously hesitated because of complex interfaces.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said recent controversy over changes to his profile photo should not be interpreted as investment advice or a signal on any specific coin through his personal X account. Armstrong said he only shares content he finds interesting or entertaining, and his posts or profile photos do not imply support for or a commitment to any project. He added that Coinbase and Base cannot list every token because of regulatory and compliance requirements, and will not promote specific coins or try to boost their prices. Instead, Armstrong said the focus will remain on supporting projects that create long-term customer value through grants for promising development teams, investments, and DeFi protocol integrations. Earlier, Armstrong changed his X profile image to one resembling the logo of BRAIN, a Base-based memecoin also known as Coinbase Man. BRAIN later surged, but fell sharply after the profile photo was changed again.

The BTC market remains structurally fragile amid weak spot demand, according to a CryptoQuant analysis by contributor ScenarioX. ScenarioX said technically driven gains could continue for a while on momentum led by the derivatives market, but any rally not backed by meaningful spot buying is likely to end in large-scale long liquidations.

Benchmark, a U.S. investment bank, has nearly halved its price target for cryptocurrency wallet service provider Exodus (EXOD), The Block reported. The move followed Exodus' 25% workforce reduction last week. Analysts said the restructuring should help fund Exodus' shift toward a full-stack stablecoin payments infrastructure business, while maintaining a buy rating on EXOD.

Crypto-friendly U.S. Sen. Cynthia Lummis said on X the core of the Clarity Act is that customers would retain ownership of their cryptocurrencies even if an exchange goes bankrupt. Lummis explained that when Celsius and Voyager went bankrupt, cryptocurrencies deposited by customers were not protected as customer assets and were instead included in the bankruptcy estate. Those assets were then treated as property available for repayment among creditors unrelated to the customers, Lummis said. Under the Clarity Act, that structure would change so ownership of customer-deposited crypto would remain with customers even if the company enters bankruptcy.

The three major U.S. stock indices opened higher today. - S&P 500: +0.59% - Nasdaq: +0.37% - Dow Jones: +0.87%

Investment bank Bernstein raised its price target for Robinhood (HOOD) to $160 from $130 and maintained its outperform rating. Bernstein said new markets worth more than $70 billion would emerge across prediction markets, perpetual futures and tokenized stocks, with Robinhood likely to be one of the biggest beneficiaries. It also projected Robinhood’s prediction-market revenue in the second quarter of this year would exceed its crypto trading revenue. Bernstein added that weak conditions in the crypto market were likely cyclical rather than structural and said its outlook did not factor in a potential rebound in Bitcoin prices.

Bitmine (BMNR) announced it purchased an additional 7,430 ETH last week. The company now holds 5,777,468 ETH, equal to 4.78% of supply. Lookonchain said this was Bitmine’s smallest weekly purchase volume and added that the company is also staking 4,917,189 ETH.

Vietnamese authorities have set administrative penalty standards that will allow fines of up to 50 million dong ($1,900) for parties trading on unlicensed cryptocurrency platforms starting Sept. 1, Cointelegraph reported. Fines of up to 200 million dong ($7,700) will also apply to unlicensed crypto issuance or violations of anti-money laundering rules. Vietnam began accepting applications for crypto exchange licenses in January and had signaled broader regulation in May.

Tether announced Tether Gold (XAUT) has been recognized as an Accepted Spot Commodity by Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM), allowing locally compliant firms to offer XAUT-related services. Tether also described XAUT as tokenized gold backed by physical gold reserves.

The HYPE spot ETF, listed in May, posted its first weekly net outflow since launch, BeInCrypto reported. As of July 17, $7.26 million was withdrawn from the HYPE ETF over the past week, ending a nine-week streak of net inflows. By contrast, Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) ETFs logged fresh inflows for a second straight week, showing a divergent trend. The outflow came as the HYPE token price plunged.

Yemen's Houthi rebels declared a maritime navigation ban on Saudi Arabia in an official statement on July 20. The statement, issued in the name of the Yemeni armed group, said the measure took effect immediately and was a response to what it described as Saudi Arabia's "unjust and brutal blockade and aggression." The statement criticized Saudi Arabia for fully blockading Yemen's ports, airports and land borders over the past 12 years, saying the restrictions had caused severe suffering for the Yemeni people. It also characterized Saudi airstrikes on Sanaa International Airport as "a clear act of treacherous aggression."

Strive said it bought 21 more BTC, worth about $1.3 million. The company now holds a total of 19,921 BTC.

Strategy announced it did not buy additional Bitcoin last week and added $225 million to its dollar reserves. The company also sold $263.5 million worth of common stock last week. It now holds $3.225 billion and 843,775 BTC in total.

According to CoinNess market monitoring, BTC has risen above $65,000. BTC is trading at $65,013.77 on the Binance USDT market.

Decentralized derivatives exchange EdgeX announced the start of its migration from V1 to V2. Once the migration is complete, users will be able to join a newly launched USDC reward vault incentive program. The program was launched jointly with DeFi risk management project Gauntlet and offers up to 7% in annual rewards, combining a base 4% annual yield on USDC with an additional 3% in EDGE rewards. The program will run until the 50 million USDC allocation is exhausted. EdgeX said V2 provides an upgraded USDC settlement system, which should offer a more stable exchange user experience.

A senior Iranian source said mediators had proposed a 10-day halt to military attacks as they seek ways to restore a temporary agreement between Iran and the United States.

Institutional investors are shifting their due diligence standards for crypto projects away from one-off audits and toward operational security measures such as monitoring and incident response, blockchain security auditing firm Hacken said, according to Cointelegraph. In a recent report, Hacken said only 9% of 1,427 crypto projects had adopted third-party monitoring, while just 4% combined monitoring, bug bounties, and security audits. Hacken added 14 projects hacked in the second quarter had already completed audits beforehand, underscoring the urgent need to address vulnerabilities tied to transaction signing, bridge validators, and backend infrastructure that fall outside the scope of conventional smart contract reviews.