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Bitcoin infrastructure company Blockstream has announced a new feature allowing users to make trustless swaps. Dubbed Blockstream Swaps, the idea is that Bitcoiners will be able to quickly move between the main chain and Lightning network. It comes after non-custodial Bitcoin swap provider Boltz suspended its service after it said attackers were finding vulnerabilities faster than its team could fix using AI. “In support of the broader Bitcoin and Liquid ecosystem, Blockstream is launching Blockstream Swaps,” Blockstream said. “This initiative was already under development to ensure a resilient suite of utility for the ecosystem, and it complements the providers already…
In brief Security company PromptArmor says the Rovo AI assistant can be steered to exfiltrate data with no human approval, via hidden instructions in an uploaded file, like PDFs. The trick works even when an org disables Rovo’s web search, because the URL-opening tool stays live. Atlassian, the maker of Rovo, got the report on May 23 and went quiet; two months on, Rovo “remains vulnerable,” the security firm says. Remember when black-hat SEOs stuffed web pages with white-on-white keywords—invisible to readers, readable to Google—to game the search rankings? Hackers are doing the same thing with AI models now. The…
American Bitcoin exchange-traded funds have had their biggest weekly inflow since April, taking in $850 million last week, according to Bloomberg figures. The major U.S. funds managed by BlackRock, Fidelity, Grayscale, Morgan Stanley and others have received the cash the week after hackers targeted Coinkite’s popular Coldcard product. Hackers started stealing millions in Bitcoin from Coldcard wallets after discovering a vulnerability in the product’s software. Some estimates put the amount of Bitcoin lost now at over $130 million. JUST IN: BlackRock tells Bloomberg they’ve “seen consistently” that Bitcoin ETF investors are buying and holding BTC “long term” on this dip…
The Bitcoin treasury firm Strategy (MSTR) sold 1,690 BTC worth $109 million in the past week, its second consecutive week of sales. Strategy sold 1,638 BTC worth $105 million the week before, and that sale was preceded by a three-week stretch when the firm didn’t buy or sell any Bitcoin. The recent sales materialized under the Strategy’s newly introduced BTC monetization program, designed to bolster the firm’s cash reserve and support dividend payments. Strategy chairman Michael Saylor noted Monday that the firm increased its US dollar reserve by $650 million in the past week. It also repurchased $109 million worth…
Investment bank TD Securities has said that the long-awaited crypto Clarity Act has a slim chance of getting passed in a Monday note, citing last week’s delay and potential stalling from the Democrats. The bank said that now the bill won’t be passed before the summer, it only has a 25% of getting passed in September. Lawmakers were hoping a crucial vote on the long-awaited crypto market structure bill was to go ahead before a five-week recess but news dropped last week that there was a delay and now the Senate will vote on the bill in September. “The bill…
In brief Bitcoin price bounced to $65,000 today, but the rally was short-lived. The price of Bitcoin is up on the seven-day chart, but bearish technical indicators persist. Prediction market traders are split: odds on Myriad point to more short-term pain, but not yet in “worst case” scenario territory, Bitcoin got the macro excuse to run. It didn’t take it.Employers cut 23,000 jobs in July—the first net loss since the pandemic-era recovery and a sharp miss against the 95,000 gain economists expected, Decrypt reported Friday. Markets read it as a reason for the Federal Reserve to keep its hands off…
Bitcoin treasury company Strategy on Monday announced that it again sold Bitcoin last week, and used the cash to buy back its preferred stock. In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Nasdaq-listed company said it sold 1,690 coins for $108.6 million, bringing its holdings to 840,447 coins, down from 842,138 it had the week before. The cash, Strategy said, went to buying 1,152,020 STRC shares worth $109 million as part of a buyback program. STRC in June fell far below the $100 stated amount. Strategy increased its USD Reserve by $650M and repurchased $109M of $STRC. This…
The Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP)-110 appeared to stall at the weekend, when the nodes that support the proposal broke away from the main network and produced the chain split people had been warning about — a tiny, stalled one. The split came Saturday at block 961,632, when the proposal entered its mandatory signaling window. Nodes running BIP-110 software began rejecting any block that failed to signal support through version bit 4. When the first block at that height arrived without the signal, those nodes rejected it and peeled away onto a separate chain. And it has gone almost nowhere since. …
In brief Bitmine bought 7,391 ETH over the past week, down from 10,399 the week before, taking holdings to 5,805,238 ETH. Total crypto, cash and “moonshot” holdings reached $11.6 billion, up from $11.3 billion. Cash and marketable securities fell to $104 million, from $482 million a month ago. Ethereum treasury company Bitmine Immersion Technologies said Monday it bought 7,391 ETH over the past week, worth about $14 million, taking its holdings to 5,805,238 ETH as of Friday evening. The company bought 10,399 ETH the week before.Total crypto, cash and what the firm calls “moonshot” investments came to $11.6 billion, up…
In brief Standard Chartered initiated coverage of Chainlink on Monday with a price target of $200 by end-2030, up from around $8 today. The bank expects tokenized assets on-chain to reach $4 trillion by end-2028 and assets deployed in DeFi to grow 37-fold to $2.7 trillion by 2030. LINK was trading at around $8.25 Monday, down 0.8% on the day, according to CoinGecko. Standard Chartered has initiated coverage of Chainlink with a price target of $200 by the end of 2030, implying a roughly 25-fold gain from around $8 today and outperformance of both Bitcoin and Ethereum over the period.Geoff…
In brief Bybit has sued North Korea, its Reconnaissance General Bureau and the Lazarus Group in U.S. federal court over the $1.5 billion theft from the exchange in February 2025. A judge granted a preliminary injunction freezing identified stolen assets and found Bybit likely to succeed on the merits, according to the exchange. Some $48 million has been recovered and $31 million frozen across more than 28 exchanges and custodians. Crypto exchange Bybit has filed a civil lawsuit against North Korea over the theft of $1.5 billion from the exchange in February 2025, and secured a court order freezing stolen…
Americans are reportedly flocking to European destinations in record numbers. The U.S. Department of State issued over 27 million passports in fiscal 2025, marking the highest annual total ever recorded, reports The Wall Street Journal. This expansion is partly due to domestic wealth and broader passport access. Portugal hosted nearly five times more American visitors than a decade prior and Greece welcomed four times as many. Travelers from the U.S. spend heavily, with daily averages near $350 in Spain compared to lower figures from other nationalities, and they often extend stays in destinations like Greece. Although the influx is good…
A crypto analytics firm says large investors are boosting their stakes in Bitcoin, Ethereum and XRP, hinting that the prolonged market downturn could soon be over. CryptoQuant’s new report, “Buying the Bear: A Signal of the Bear Market’s Final Stage” examines the recent accumulation by the largest wallets. The firm says whales have stepped up positions across the key crypto assets, displaying buying activity that often marks the final phase of a bear market. “Smart money is positioning across the majors. Bitcoin whales are accumulating. Bitcoin whale holdings (excluding exchanges and mining pools) have risen through 2026 to roughly 3.06M…
In brief Circle and SpaceX are now among the 10 largest holdings in ARKK. SpaceX accounts for 4.73% of the portfolio, while Circle represents 3.90%. Recent purchases extended Ark’s buying streak in both companies. SpaceX and Circle are among Cathie Wood’s largest investments, according to an Ark Innovation ETF (ARKK) holdings report published Thursday.SpaceX is ARKK’s fifth-largest holding, with a market value of nearly $282 million and a 4.73% portfolio weighting. Circle ranks eighth at about $233 million, accounting for 3.90% of the fund.The two companies join Tesla, Coinbase, Robinhood, OpenAI, Bitmine, and Palantir among ARKK’s largest positions, reflecting Ark’s…
In brief CryptoQuant says the largest XRP cohorts are adding supply as price holds the $1.00–$1.20 range, with neutral order flow pointing to quiet absorption. XRP’s realized price sits near $0.75 versus a market price around $1.10, a gap the firm calls a late-bear-market zone. The daily chart tells the same story: a death cross, price below both moving averages, and weak trend strength. Across some of the crypto market’s biggest assets, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, and XRP, whales are adding to their bags, according to research from CryptoQuant.Julio Moreno, the company’s head of research, said in a report that these…
In brief OpenAI disclosed its first detailed timeline of the AI-driven Hugging Face breach. The company’s models repeatedly reestablished covert communication channels after they were shut down. OpenAI’s presentation comes as Anthropic and Meta also report models breaching other companies. Weeks after its AI models hacked Hugging Face, OpenAI has shared its first detailed account of how they coordinated with one another, warning that autonomous AI-powered cyberattacks are no longer a future risk.During a presentation Wednesday at the Black Hat cybersecurity conference, OpenAI researchers Eric Wallace and Michael Dalton said the incident began in May during an internal cybersecurity evaluation.…