Hi! In today’s edition:
🔥 Bitcoin took a hit, then Trump said something that turned the whole market around.
💰 Strategy just made its biggest bitcoin move yet, and it wasn't a purchase.
🏛️ Washington's bitcoin reserve plan just ran into a very Washington problem.
⚡ Vitalik wants to put Ethereum on an extreme diet.
Trump's 'Big Crypto Guy' Line Saves Bitcoin's Monday
Bitcoin dropped toward $60,000 Monday after Strategy disclosed its largest bitcoin sale ever, then reversed course after President Trump affirmed support for crypto.
Asked whether bitcoin could join the newly launched Trump Accounts, Trump didn't commit but called himself “a big crypto guy,” tying it to competition with China: "If we don't have it, China is going to have it."
Bitcoin jumped as high as $64,700 on Trump's remarks before shedding some of its gains to most recently trade around $63,000.
The rebound papered over a rough morning. Strategy sold $216 million of bitcoin last week, its biggest sale since it started buying in 2020, reversing Michael Saylor's "never sell" pledge.
Saylor's Strategy Just Sold Its Most Bitcoin Ever
Strategy sold $216 million of bitcoin last week, its largest sale since the company chaired by bitcoin evangelist Michael Saylor started buying the asset for the company's balance sheet in 2020. The SEC filing shows 3,588 bitcoin sold between June 29 and July 5, at a loss to the company's $75,476 average cost basis.
The sales came in two batches: 1,363 bitcoin for $80.8 million between June 29 and June 30, then 2,225 bitcoin for $135.2 million through July 5. Strategy said proceeds funded preferred stock dividends and topped off its cash reserve, which sits at $2.55 billion.
The sale is the first concrete step in the financing overhaul Strategy announced days earlier, which gave the company new authority to sell up to $1.25 billion in bitcoin and buy back up to $2 billion in stock. Strategy still holds 843,775 bitcoin.
Nobody Can Agree Who Runs the Bitcoin Reserve
The U.S.’s Strategic Bitcoin Reserve is running into a problem: nobody can agree who's in charge. The Treasury and Commerce departments are both vying to run the reserve, more than a year after President Donald Trump's March 2025 executive order establishing it, Bloomberg reported Monday.
The holdup centers on legal authority. Treasury was the order's intended home for the reserve, but questions have surfaced about whether it can legally manage a volatile digital asset. Commerce has emerged as a possible alternative, with the Justice Department weighing in on both options.
Congress hasn't closed the gap either. Legislation such as the BITCOIN Act and ARMA Act, which aim to codify the Bitcoin strategic reserve and give the Treasury powers to hold the asset remain stuck.
Vitalik Wants to Put Ethereum on a Diet
Vitalik Buterin wants to put Ethereum's validator data on an extreme diet. In a research post Monday titled "The Extremely Lean Chain," the Ethereum co-founder proposed shrinking each validator's on-chain footprint from about 114 bytes to about 6, a 95% cut, using zero-knowledge proofs.
The trick: instead of the chain tracking every validator's balance each epoch, validators would submit a single daily ZK-STARK proof of their own participation and balance changes. The proposed change would remove a burden on Ethereum's consensus layer that could let the network scale toward millions of validators, Buterin said.
A second phase adds privacy, re-anonymizing every validator's identity each day so deposits, staking, and withdrawals become much harder to link. Slashing stays outside the ZK system so bad actors can still be caught instantly. Buterin frames the plan as part of Ethereum's "Lean" upgrade path, which he calls the network's third major era after the Merge.
🎧 The DEX in the City Hosts Just Became The Guests 🎧
Ari Redbord, Global Head of Policy at TRM Labs, turns the tables on Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos, Jessi Brooks, and Vy Le for a rare crossover episode.
Inside: why Vy Le calls most of 2025's DeFi hacks a stupid people problem, not a technology one, and why Jessi Brooks wants the industry to stop saying illicit finance and start saying North Korea.
Listen today at 12:00 pm ET
🤖 Coinbase sent a false alert claiming Norway beat Brazil 3-2 in a World Cup match hours before it kicked off, drawing CEO Brian Armstrong's personal review. The company said it made changes to prevent future AI-generated inaccuracies as it pushes deeper into prediction markets.
🔒 BonkDAO lost roughly $20 million after a malicious governance proposal drained its treasury to an attacker's wallet. Law enforcement has been notified, and exchanges including Kraken and Upbit paused BONK deposits and withdrawals.
⚖️ Ripple received full MiCA authorization from Luxembourg's financial regulator, completing its Crypto Asset Service Provider license across all 30 countries in the European Economic Area. The company says it now holds more than 75 regulatory licenses globally.
🔒 Summer.fi confirmed a $6 million exploit of its Lazy Summer vaults after an attacker used a flash loan to manipulate USDC vault accounting. The protocol's SUMR token fell more than 18% following the incident.
📈 Bitmine bought 42,197 ether worth about $74 million, lifting its holdings to 5.74 million ETH, or 4.8% of the token's supply. Chairman Tom Lee tied the buy to rising odds the Clarity Act passes, now near 50% on prediction markets.
💸 Richard Heathcote is seeking to sell part of his 1.26% stake in Tether, Bloomberg reported. Heathcote served as the stablecoin giant's chief investment officer until stepping down in March, and Tether has approved the sale despite blocking other shareholders from selling last year.
⚖️ South Korea's Supreme Court proposed new rules for courts to seize, sell, and cash out crypto assets in civil enforcement cases, including freezing wallets to stop debtors from moving coins during litigation. The rules are open for public comment through August 11 and are set to take effect in October.
🏦 Sberbank plans to launch a crypto wallet and digital depository by December inside its Sberbank Online and SberInvestments apps, pending Russia's new digital asset law. The law is expected to take effect September 1, with rivals VTB, T-Bank, and the Moscow Exchange preparing similar services.
💰 TeraWulf signed a 20-year lease with Anthropic at its Justified Data campus in Kentucky, expected to generate about $19 billion in contracted revenue over the initial term. The company also agreed to sell its majority stake in the Abernathy joint venture to Fluidstack, monetizing its roughly $450 million investment at a premium.
💰 Paradigm led a $5.5 million round in M1X Global, the startup that helped the Marshall Islands issue its tokenized sovereign bond USDM1, according to The Block. The round, which also included Breed VC, brings M1X's total funding to $8.5 million as it pushes USDM1 as institutional collateral.
David Cahn: The Great AI Irony
