Good morning everybody.
Bitcoin is still going sideways.
We’re sitting around $63,700, the total crypto market cap is around $2.18 trillion, and the Fear & Greed Index remains at 38, firmly in fear.
July CPI also landed pretty close to expectations, so we didn’t get the major macro catalyst Bitcoin has been waiting for. Inflation came in around 3.4% year over year, while Trueflation is currently estimating inflation closer to 3.6%.
Meanwhile, I paid $30 for five and a half gallons of premium yesterday.
So that’s my personal inflation index.
Let’s get into the news.
Metaplanet Says It Didn’t Sell $320 Million in Bitcoin
Metaplanet denied reports that it had sold approximately $320 million worth of Bitcoin.
CEO Simon Gerovich says the company still holds roughly 43,000 Bitcoin.
The company also announced BitBonds, involving approximately $1.3 million in private debt.
For now, Metaplanet is saying the Bitcoin hasn’t moved.
Given everything we’ve been discussing recently with Strategy and other Bitcoin treasury companies, these sales matter. The entire investment case surrounding these companies depends heavily on how they manage their Bitcoin reserves when markets turn against them.
BitGo Revenue Hits $4.3 Billion
BitGo reported approximately $4.3 billion in second-quarter revenue, up nearly 80% year over year.
The company attributed the increase largely to higher digital-asset sales and growth in its stablecoin-as-a-service business.
Normalized assets on the platform reached approximately $65.2 billion, up 31%, while client growth increased roughly 26%.
The less impressive number was profitability.
BitGo reported a $19 million net loss, compared with approximately $38.3 million in net income a year earlier.
That headline number doesn’t tell us everything.
A growing company can intentionally spend heavily on infrastructure, employees, acquisitions, and expansion while reporting an accounting loss.
You have to dig deeper into where the money is actually going before deciding whether a $19 million loss is a serious problem.
Franklin Templeton Gets SEC Clearance for On-Chain Cash Management
The SEC issued a no-action letter allowing Franklin Templeton’s traditional registered funds to invest in its blockchain-based OnChain U.S. Government Money Fund, operated through its Benji system.
That gives traditional funds another way to use tokenized assets for cash management.
The SEC also said those funds could hold the shares without satisfying certain physical custody requirements that would normally apply.
This is one of those stories where the details matter.
The headline is straightforward: tokenized financial products are moving further into traditional asset management.
Exactly how the custody requirements work is something worth digging into further.
Custodia Takes Its Fed Fight to the Supreme Court
The Blockchain Association filed an amicus brief supporting Custodia Bank’s petition to the U.S. Supreme Court over the Federal Reserve’s denial of access to a master account.
Custodia originally applied for a master account in October 2020 and was denied by the Kansas City Fed in January 2023. After losing in district court and at the Tenth Circuit, the company is asking the Supreme Court to review the case.
This is basically the debanking fight in legal form.
A Federal Reserve master account provides direct access to central-bank payment infrastructure.
The question is whether a lawful, state-chartered crypto-focused financial institution should have access to the same settlement infrastructure available to traditional banks.
I don’t understand why it shouldn’t.
If a company satisfies the legal and financial requirements necessary to operate as a bank, then the fact that it works with digital assets shouldn’t automatically exclude it from the financial infrastructure everybody else uses.
CFTC Warns Prediction Markets About Trading Incentives
The CFTC issued guidance warning prediction-market platforms about poorly structured trader incentives and market-maker programs.
The regulator specifically raised concerns about high-volume reward programs potentially encouraging wash trading, prearranged trading, manipulation, and disruptive trading.
That makes sense.
If you pay people primarily based on how much volume they generate, some traders are going to figure out ways to manufacture volume.
Prediction markets can continue growing, but the trading incentives still need to produce legitimate markets rather than fake activity designed to collect rewards.
South Korean Crypto CEO Gets 15 Years
A Seoul court sentenced Delio CEO Jung Sang-ho to 15 years in prison over crypto fraud charges connected to approximately 70 billion won, or roughly $49.2 million, in customer losses.
Prosecutors had requested a 20-year sentence.
So he got 25% off.
Not exactly the discount you want.
AI Is Going to Change Everything We Do With Data
Here’s my unrelated thought of the day.
Baseball.
I watch baseball, and I keep wondering why we aren’t hearing more about how AI is changing the way teams analyze players.
Think about the amount of statistical information available.
Pitch locations.
Spin rates.
Exit velocity.
Bat speed.
Count situations.
Pitch sequencing.
Historical matchups.
You could dump enormous amounts of that data into an AI system and ask it to identify tiny weaknesses that traditional analysis might miss.
Maybe it tells you that a particular hitter’s performance drops dramatically against one specific pitch in one particular location after seeing another pitch beforehand.
That information already exists.
AI just makes finding the pattern easier.
And this isn’t really about baseball.
We’re seeing the same thing in trading, prediction markets, business, white-collar work, content production, and practically anything else involving large amounts of information.
Everybody talks about AI data centers.
The more interesting question is what happens when AI starts extracting patterns from data that humans simply weren’t capable of finding efficiently before.
Ethereum May Cut Staking Rewards
Approximately 34% of Ethereum’s supply is now staked, up from around 29% at the beginning of the year.
Ethereum researchers, including Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake, have proposed EIP-8361, which would reduce validator rewards as the percentage of ETH being staked increases.
At today’s staking ratio, the proposal’s modeling suggests annual consensus yield could decline from approximately 2.6% to 1.2%, phased in over 18 months.
That would have consequences beyond individual validators.
Ethereum treasury companies such as BitMine and SharpLink partially justify their strategies through the ability to earn staking yield on their ETH holdings.
Reduce that yield substantially and part of the financial argument changes.
And I’ll say it again.
Ethereum never should have moved away from proof of work.
Everybody complained about throughput and gas fees.
I still think changing the fundamental consensus model was the wrong solution.
Dogecoin Traders Are Betting on a Comeback
Dogecoin futures positioning has reportedly returned to levels not seen since October 2025, despite DOGE remaining approximately 70% below its price from that period.
More than three accounts are reportedly positioned for a rebound for every account betting against one.
What’s the catalyst?
For me, it’s still Elon Musk.
If Musk integrates Dogecoin into something meaningful, then there is a story.
Without that, I’m not sure what fundamentally changes the equation.
Bitcoin Still Needs a Major Catalyst
The same question exists for Bitcoin.
What creates the next truly large move?
One possibility would be a major corporation finally moving from zero Bitcoin to Bitcoin.
The bigger catalyst would be a sovereign government actively purchasing Bitcoin.
The United States currently holds Bitcoin, but much of that comes from confiscated assets.
That’s different from the government saying:
“We intentionally want Bitcoin in our reserves, and we’re going into the market to buy it.”
If the United States, China, or another major economy actually moves from zero to active accumulation, that changes the conversation considerably.
Securitize Drops Despite Record Tokenization
Securitize shares fell approximately 20% after missing earnings expectations, even as tokenized assets reached record levels and trading activity increased.
Welcome to a bear market.
A company can operate in one of the fastest-growing areas of finance and still get punished if the numbers don’t meet expectations.
Crypto Prices
Bitcoin: $63,758, down approximately 0.3%
Ethereum: $1,890, down approximately 0.6%
Tether: #3
BNB: $610, down approximately 0.3%
USDC: #5
XRP: $1.00, down approximately 0.8%
Solana: $76.18, roughly even
TRON: $0.334, down approximately 0.6%
Hyperliquid: $56.76, up approximately 3%
Dogecoin: $0.07, down approximately 0.8%
Total Crypto Market Cap: $2.18 trillion
Fear & Greed Index: 38, Fear
My Take
Bitcoin remains boring, but the infrastructure around crypto keeps getting more interesting.
Custodia is asking the Supreme Court whether crypto-native banks deserve access to the same Federal Reserve payment infrastructure as traditional banks.
Franklin Templeton is moving tokenized money-market infrastructure deeper into conventional asset management.
Ethereum is debating whether too much staking means staking rewards need to come down.
And prediction markets are becoming large enough that regulators are starting to worry about whether their incentive structures are creating legitimate trading activity.
Meanwhile, AI is quietly changing how almost every industry can analyze information.
Bitcoin may still be sitting around $64,000.
The technology surrounding it isn’t sitting still.