Bitcoin gained ~1.5% this week to a market capitalization of $1.30T.
Early Riders Media
On this week's Final Settlement, the team unpacked Moonshot's Kimi K3 and the accelerating AI model race, the scramble among PayPal, Stripe, and Tether to own stablecoin rails, and whether Bitcoin treasury companies still pencil out at current prices.
You can find all our episodes on our podcast website as well as listen on YouTube, Apple, and Spotify.
Industry & Institutional Updates
Strategy padded its cash reserve by $225 million through an MSTR share sale, leaving its 843,775 Bitcoin untouched.
Jack Mallers quit Twenty One Capital as CEO after Tether's plan to merge it with Strike and Elektron collapsed.
BitMEX announced it will shut down on September 23, closing the exchange that pioneered 100x Bitcoin leverage.
Mirae Asset completed its acquisition of Korbit, the first Korean financial group to buy a digital asset exchange.
FTX scheduled a $900 million fifth creditor distribution beginning July 31, lifting total repayments near $10 billion.
Augustus raised $180 million led by Tiger Global to build a federally chartered clearing bank for stablecoins.
Natural raised a $30 million Series A led by Forerunner to build payments infrastructure for AI agents.
Stripe entered talks to acquire AI model marketplace OpenRouter for nearly $10 billion.
Jack Dorsey launched Buzz, an open-source group chat platform for teams and their AI agents, focused on competing with Slack and Github.
Zhibao Technology signed a term sheet to take 3,500 Bitcoin, roughly $220 million, in a PIPE that would hand new investors board control.
Regulatory & Sovereign Updates
US regulators missed the GENIUS Act's one-year deadline for final stablecoin rules, leaving every framework still in proposal form.
The US Treasury froze a $130 million digital asset wallet linked to Iran's IRGC, Secretary Bessent said.
The State Department launched a Freedom Tech program with the Bitcoin Policy Institute and Palantir as founding partners.
Russia's parliament advanced its first comprehensive digital asset law to final votes, licensing exchanges under the central bank.
What We're Watching: Trump Signs Off on the CLARITY Act Ethics Language
After months of negotiation with Senators Cynthia Lummis and Bernie Moreno, the White House accepted ethics language for the CLARITY Act, and Republicans released the 600-page text on July 22. Moreno says Trump personally signed off. The provision bars the president, vice president, and members of Congress, along with their spouses and employees, from issuing or sponsoring a digital asset while in office, requires a blind trust or divestment, and sunsets in January 2029. It is the first federal limit on how a sitting president can profit from digital assets.
Trump reported between $1.2 and $2.2 billion in digital asset income in his first year back, including hundreds of millions tied to World Liberty Financial, the venture behind the WLFI token and the USD1 stablecoin. The CLARITY Act, already passed by the House, would hand the SEC and CFTC defined jurisdiction over digital assets, the first comprehensive federal market-structure framework.
Chart of the Week
At the Q1’26 run rate, roughly 80% of this year's venture dollars are going to AI, about $968 billion of a projected $1.2 trillion total, after AI took roughly half of 2025's funding. OpenAI and Anthropic alone accounted for 14% of all global venture funding last year. Capital has concentrated into a single trade at a scale the industry has never seen, and the bid for everything else, digital assets included, has thinned out. We expect real bubble dynamics, and, as in the internet era, durable enterprises to emerge from it.
Early Riders is the first bitcoin-denominated venture firm, raising, holding, investing, and returning capital in bitcoin. Learn more about how to get involved www.earlyriders.com.
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