Block introduced the Proto Rig (air-cooled efficiency as low as 14.1 J/TH; rack density up to 9.4 kW/ft²) with swappable hashboards and on-rack service. Abu Dhabi's sovereign wealth fund grew their Bitcoin exposure, as Brevan Howard almost doubled its $2.3B IBIT position at Q2 end. On the public markets front, Bullish listed on the NYSE, over $1B while Coinbase completed their $2.9B acquisition of Deribit, and Nakamoto completed their merger with KindlyMD. On the policy front, Treasury kept the door open to acquiring Bitcoin, while the Federal Reserve limited ended its review of digital asset related banking activities.
Bitcoin Update
Despite briefly breaking new all time highs at over $124k, Bitcoin ended flat due to hotter than anticipated inflation data in the back half of the week.
Early Riders Media
Michael, Brian, and Liam discuss the latest in capital formation, market structure, and bitcoin adoption on this week's podcast.
You can find all our episodes on our podcast website as well as listen on YouTube, Apple, and Spotify.
Industry & Institutional Updates
Block unveiled Proto Rig, targeting as low as 14.1 J/TH (air-cooled) and up to 9.4 kW/ft rack density, with swappable hashboards and on-rack service. Proto Fleet is free to use; with plans to open source the code.
Luxor announced a strategic $131.4 million agreement with MicroBT ensures U.S.-based production of next-gen WhatsMiner ASICs, enhancing procurement flexibility and mitigating tariff impacts for North American miners.
Mubadala, the Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund, disclosed in an SEC filing that it owns 8,726,972 shares of IBIT and Al Warda, with the Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund behind the entity, owns 2,411,034 shares of IBIT as of June 30.
Brevan Howard held roughly $2.3B worth of IBIT at the end of Q2, almost double its position the prior quarter, as of June 30.
TeraWulf, a mining and high performance compute (HPC) infrastructure company, signed a 10-year, 200+ MW AI-hosting agreements with Fluidstack, with Google taking an 8% stake in the company.
Coinbase has completed its $2.9 billion acquisition of Deribit, the world's leading crypto options exchange, combining $700 million in cash with 11 million shares of Coinbase Class A common stock to enhance its position as the global leader in crypto derivatives by open interest and options volume.
KindlyMD has completed its merger with Nakamoto Holdings to form a publicly traded Bitcoin treasury company led by David Bailey.
Bullish, the institutional cryptocurrency exchange and owner of CoinDesk, more than doubled its IPO price on its NYSE debut, raising $1.11 billion at a valuation of over $10B, showing the continued strength for digital assets in the public markets.
Regulatory Updates
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent caused a market stir by suggesting the government wouldn't be acquiring more Bitcoin for its reserve, leading to a significant price drop; he later clarified his statement, reaffirming the Treasury's commitment to exploring budget-neutral pathways to expand its Bitcoin holdings.
Federal Reserve to sunset its Novel Activities Supervision Program and fold oversight of banks’ digital asset activities back into the normal supervisory process.
U.S. banking groups, including the Bank Policy Institute, have urged Congress to close a perceived loophole in the GENIUS Act that allows stablecoin issuers to offer yields through affiliate firms, arguing this undermines the banking system by potentially diverting up to $6.6 trillion in deposits from traditional banks.
Chart of the Week
Bitcoin's 60 day volatility has dropped to levels not seen since 2016 amid further institutional adoption, deeper options markets.
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