Good morning everybody.
The Federal Reserve came out yesterday and said interest rates are staying where they are. The broader markets did not particularly like that decision, but Bitcoin barely reacted.
Bitcoin has been moving sideways for weeks, and apparently it decided one more macroeconomic announcement was not enough to change that.
Let’s get into today’s news.
Prediction Markets Are Outearning Crypto at Robinhood
Robinhood generated approximately $156 million from event contracts during the second quarter.
That was more than the roughly $100 million it earned from cryptocurrency trading and the $129 million generated through equities trading.
Robinhood’s total transaction-based revenue increased 44% year over year to $776 million. Total net revenue rose 32% to $1.31 billion, while net income increased 48% to $573 million.
Crypto trading revenue, however, fell 38% year over year.
That decline does not particularly concern me.
If Bitcoin follows the four-year cycle that has held for the past sixteen years, interest will eventually return. Bitcoin will start moving, the public will begin talking about it again, miners will turn machines back on, and crypto-related stocks such as Coinbase and Robinhood could start moving with the market.
The larger question is whether that four-year cycle will continue indefinitely.
We assume it will because it has been consistent. That does not guarantee it will last forever.
Binance.US Wants Into Prediction Markets
Binance.US CEO Steve Gregory said the exchange plans to apply in August for a Commodity Futures Trading Commission designated contract market license.
A DCM license would allow Binance.US to offer prediction markets in the United States and compete directly with platforms including Kalshi, Polymarket, and Robinhood.
As of Wednesday, the CFTC had not listed a pending Binance.US application.
It is not difficult to understand why companies are rushing into this market. Prediction-market platforms benefit from a business model where users produce much of the activity themselves.
Users create the volume, the content, the conversations, the brand awareness, and ultimately the revenue. The platform mainly has to provide the marketplace and collect its share.
Given what Robinhood just reported, more companies will try to enter.
Core Scientific Is Being Repriced as an AI Infrastructure Company
Bernstein estimates that Core Scientific’s partnership with AMD could generate approximately $14 billion over fifteen years.
The agreement is structured around 530 megawatts of contracted capacity, including a 377-megawatt direct lease to AMD and a 152-megawatt cloud-computing lease supported by AMD’s credit.
AMD also received warrants to purchase 30 million Core Scientific shares at $23.47, with vesting tied to the partnership potentially expanding to its full 2.5-gigawatt capacity.
Bitcoin miners are no longer being valued solely according to hash price and mining output. Investors are beginning to evaluate them according to their electrical-grid access, powered facilities, tenants, capital costs, and lease structures.
They are increasingly being treated as AI power and data-center companies.
Treasury Targets Iran-Linked Bitcoin Payments
The United States Treasury sanctioned Personal Golf Marine Insurance Company and the Harmu Safe Marine Service Authority, alleging that they participated in an Iranian maritime insurance network connected to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control said Harmu Safe accepted Bitcoin and other digital assets to evade sanctions and generate revenue for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Treasury also sanctioned eight companies connected to Iran’s shadow fleet and identified eight vessels as blocked property.
Crypto continues to be used as an alternative settlement method, but blockchain transactions also create records that regulators can follow.
South Korea Moves Toward One Consolidated Crypto Law
South Korea’s Financial Services Commission reportedly plans to draft a consolidated Digital Asset Basic Act with support from the country’s ruling Democratic Party.
The proposed legislation is expected to cover stablecoin issuance and circulation, digital-asset business requirements, exchange-entry standards, disclosures, internal controls, and system-reliability rules.
At least South Korea’s Democratic Party appears interested in establishing a comprehensive framework for the industry.
I wish our Democratic Party would occasionally decide to be clearly in favor of building something instead of approaching every new industry from a position of suspicion.
Crypto needs enforceable rules. It also needs lawmakers who understand that regulation should create a functional market, not simply prevent businesses from operating.
Hungary Reverses a Restrictive Crypto Rule
Hungary’s parliament voted to repeal a requirement that certain cryptocurrency conversions receive third-party approval.
The rule disrupted local services and caused several companies to suspend operations.
The repeal comes as CoinCash prepares to restore services after receiving authorization under the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets framework.
Hungary is another example of Europe working through the practical consequences of implementing MiCA. Regulations can look workable on paper and still create unintended problems once companies attempt to comply with them.
Ostium Explains Its $23.75 Million Exploit
Ostium said its July 15 exploit, which drained approximately $23.75 million in USDC from its liquidity vault, resulted from compromised off-chain infrastructure rather than a smart-contract flaw or multisignature-wallet failure.
According to the company’s postmortem, the attacker submitted fraudulent Bitcoin price reports through a recognized forwarding route.
The attacker reportedly tested the method using a $100 USDC position before executing the larger drain.
That is an important distinction. The smart contracts apparently performed according to their instructions. The problem was that the system accepted fraudulent external pricing data as legitimate.
Aave Wants to Remove Underused Markets
Aave proposed removing dozens of low-adoption reserves and closing six smaller deployments.
The proposal would affect approximately $98.1 million in supplied assets and $15.6 million in outstanding debt.
It covers fifty low-adoption reserves, twenty-one matured Pendle principal tokens, and full wind-downs of deployments on Sonic, Scroll, ZKsync, Metis, Soneium, and Aptos.
This is not a reaction to one specific security incident. It is a broader risk-management cleanup.
Maintaining small markets still requires reliable oracles, liquidation systems, monitoring, and technical support. At some point, the costs and risks are no longer justified by the amount of activity those markets generate.
Scammers Impersonate a Chinese Business Newspaper
The Chinese Business Journal warned that scammers are impersonating the publication and demanding Bitcoin payments from companies.
The scammers allegedly tell businesses that damaging investigative reports are about to be published unless the companies pay to suppress them.
Obviously, extortion is wrong.
But as scams go, this one is at least built around a believable premise. People already suspect that publications sometimes suppress stories or negotiate behind the scenes. The scammers are exploiting that distrust and using it to make the threat sound credible.
It is much more creative than simply targeting elderly people with fake technical-support calls, although the result is still theft.
ARK Invest Sells Crypto Stocks and Buys SpaceX Exposure
ARK Invest sold shares of BitMine, Block, Bullish, and Robinhood as those stocks moved lower.
The firm sold approximately 120,665 BitMine shares, worth roughly $2 million, along with smaller positions in Block, Robinhood, and Bullish.
At the same time, ARK purchased approximately $14.5 million in SpaceX exposure across its exchange-traded funds.
The investment was trading around $112.55, with indications that it could open approximately 3% higher.
I am still looking for a larger pullback before becoming interested. I would be much more comfortable considering it in the double digits, and if it falls into the $70 range, that becomes significantly more attractive to me.
That is not financial advice. It is simply the price level I am watching.
Crypto Prices
Bitcoin: $64,755, up approximately 1%
Ethereum: $1,921, up 1.1%
Tether: Third-largest cryptocurrency
BNB: $585, up 3%
USDC: Fifth-largest cryptocurrency
XRP: $1.08, up 0.6%
Solana: $74.22, up 1.2%
TRON: $0.328, up 0.6%
Hyperliquid: $52.94, down 3.6%
Dogecoin: $0.07, down 0.4%
Total Market Cap: $2.21 trillion
Fear & Greed Index: 38, remaining in Fear
My Take
The clearest business story today is the rise of prediction markets.
Robinhood made more from event contracts than it made from either crypto or equities trading during the quarter. Binance.US now wants to enter the same market, and more competitors will almost certainly follow.
It is an attractive model because the users do most of the work. They create the trading volume, generate the conversations, produce the content, and bring attention to the platform.
At the same time, Bitcoin miners continue transforming themselves into AI infrastructure businesses, governments are rewriting crypto rules, and DeFi protocols are cleaning up markets that no longer generate enough activity to justify their risk.
Bitcoin itself remains around $65,000 and continues moving sideways.
The price may be quiet, but the businesses surrounding it are still changing quickly.