Circle (CRCL) shares rose about 10% in premarket trading Wednesday after the stablecoin issuer reported second-quarter earnings that topped profit expectations, even as revenue came in slightly below Wall Street forecasts.
The company posted adjusted earnings of 18 cents a share, beating analysts’ consensus estimate of 16 cents, while revenue and reserve income rose 7% from a year earlier to $701 million, missing expectations of $712 million. Net income from continuing operations reached $48 million, topping analysts’ estimates of $43 million, while adjusted EBITDA climbed 8% to $143 million.
$USDC, Circle’s dollar-backed stablecoin, continued to expand. Circulation reached $73.3 billion at the end of June, up 19% from a year earlier, but down from its 2026 peak of nearly $80 billion. Onchain transaction volume surged 151% to $14.8 trillion during the quarter.
“Our quarterly financial results reflect the current rate environment and a crypto market that has slowed,” CEO Jeremy Allaire said in a statement. “But the institutions using $USDC today, like BlackRock, BNY and Standard Chartered aren’t piloting, they are expanding.”
The earnings also offered the clearest update yet on Arc, Circle’s blockchain network scheduled to launch its public mainnet on Sept. 16.
There’s an old saying that “every coin has two sides.” It applies perfectly to the multimillion-dollar hack of the hardware wallet Coldcard that began on July 30 and is still in progress.
On one hand, the hack raised questions about the safety of taking direct custody of coins in hardware wallets as a long-term holding strategy, a technique that became popular following the collapse of the FTX exchange in 2022.
On the other hand — and this is the bright side — it spurred the shuffling and reshuffling of coins to exchanges and multiple wallets alike by holders.
This bright side is evident from key data, starting with the number of transactions sitting in Bitcoin’s memory pool awaiting confirmation from miners. That count has spiked since late July, reaching 89,031 on Tuesday, the most since February 2025, according to data from Blockchain.com (check the Daily Signal).
Other metrics reveal the same picture. According to>
Increasing network activity is often said to support valuations for the network’s native coin, bitcoin BTC$64,032.44. So far, the token has neither rallied nor dropped significantly and remains boxed in the recent range of $62,000–$65,000.
Analysts continue to point to the fate of the Clarity Act as the immediate catalyst while citing longer-duration government bond yields as a more macro and longer-lasting one.
“CLARITY is still the immediate policy binary. The Senate has a three-day window before its August 10 recess, while the implied probability of passage by year end has fallen to 23% from around 75% in mid-May. A push to attach prediction-market restrictions adds another process risk,” analysts at Marex said.
Meanwhile, Bitfinex said the bullish macro case for bitcoin could collapse if the real or inflation-adjusted yield on the U.S. 10-year Treasury note tops 2.5%.
“The 10-year real yield has not stayed above 2.5% since before Bitcoin existed, so there is no price history above that line. It is now at 2.41%, nine basis points below,” the exchange said.
Stay alert!
Read more: For analysis of today’s activity in altcoins and derivatives, see Crypto Markets Today . For a comprehensive list of events this week, see CoinDesk’s “Crypto Week Ahead.”
EIP-8361 would deduct a rising share of validator rewards and destroy the ETH, cancelling issuance entirely at half the supply staked.
Its authors say the validator entry queue is adding 1.75 million ETH a month and that every month of delay costs 1.5 points of staking ratio.
Isidoros Passadis of Lido called the proposal too complicated to rush and warned it could price expert node operators out of the market.
Ethereum developers have submitted a proposal that would charge every validator a deduction on each duty it is assigned and burn the ETH, with the deduction rising as more of the supply is staked until it cancels staking rewards outright.
EIP-8361, a tapered issuance burn, sets a fixed saturation balance of 60.25 million ETH, roughly half the supply at the time of the fork. The burn fraction scales with the staking ratio raised to the power of 1.5, hitting 100% at that balance, at which point a validator performing its duties perfectly earns zero net consensus yield. The change touches only the consensus layer, and Prysm has a draft implementation running to about 300 lines.
Under the current curve, yield falls only with the square root of the staking ratio and keeps a floor near 1.5% however much ETH is staked, so stake flows in for as long as that floor clears the risk premium stakers demand. Removing it lets the market settle where yield meets that premium, which the authors argue is strictly below 50%.
Why now
Ethereum’s staking ratio passed a third of supply in April, and the validator entry queue is saturated at maximum churn, according to the proposal’s co-author Jérôme de Tychey. He argued that a worst case built on conservative assumptions puts more than 70 million ETH at stake by January 2028, north of 55% of supply, with every month of delay worth around 1.5 points of staking ratio. “The window is closing,” he wrote.
Around 33% of ETH is staked now, paying roughly 2.6%. Imposed at once the burn would cut that to 1.2%, so it phases in over an 18-month transition that temporarily doubles the base reward factor before decaying it back, which with fork lead time gives about two years to adjust. The taper’s shape applies from the first epoch after activation. Issuance would peak near a 20% ratio at about 0.5% of supply a year, then fall to zero at 50%.
The draft argues that stake beyond a certain level reduces security, concentrating supply with custodians and staking providers, weakening the credibility of social slashing and forcing out solo stakers, who pay income tax on nominal yield. It also holds that dilution taxes unstaked holders and lets liquid staking tokens displace raw ETH as the ecosystem’s working money.
Large operators are hit directly. Because issuance would fall past its peak, an operator that keeps growing claims a bigger share of a shrinking pot, and one holding half the stake would find growth stops paying once about 31% of supply is staked.
Lido pushes back
Isidoros Passadis, Chief of Staking at Lido, argued the proposal attempts too much at once, that its supporting research is “too theoretical,” and that it “lays Ethereum’s hard-fought uniqueness at the sacrificial altar of ETH as money.” He objected to the timing, saying issuance changes had been slated for a later fork.
I think that EIP 8361 tries to do too many things (increasing the moneyness of ETH, pre-empting remotely possible future decreases security due to overstake, protecting solo stakers, etc) at once and in my estimation will mostly do the opposite. I honestly believe that issuance… https://t.co/4qZPrPJy8s
Passadis warned the curve could produce a sustained equilibrium near 50% staked with zero nominal yield, which he called “a death-knell for the security of the network,” as operators prioritising expertise and decentralization are priced out by large, minimal-cost parties able to run at break-even. Capping staking only displaces the too-big-to-fail problem, he said, since yield-seeking ETH moves to riskier custodial venues.
De Tychey addressed that line of attack pre-emptively. “Nobody needs to protect solo stakers from this EIP,” he wrote, arguing they need protecting from a curve that raises dilution indefinitely with no off-switch.
Consensus issuance accounts for at least 93% of staking yield today, according to the proposal, which remains subject to the EIP inclusion process.
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Bitcoin bridge Boltz has suspended its Bitcoin swap service indefinitely.
The company says AI-assisted attacks are outpacing its ability to patch vulnerabilities.
Boltz says no user funds were at risk because the platform is non-custodial.
Boltz has suspended its Bitcoin swap service indefinitely, saying a surge in AI-assisted attacks has left it unable to continue operating safely.
In a series of posts on X on Monday, the company said swaps are disabled “until further notice” and that it cannot provide an estimate for when the service will return.
“We can’t give an ETA as of this time, but will provide an update once we know more,” Boltz wrote.
Boltz is a non-custodial Bitcoin swap service that lets users move Bitcoin between the Lightning Network and the blockchain’s base layer without giving the company custody of their funds. Boltz has not published transaction volume figures. Boltz currently holds around $262,000 in total value locked, according to DeFiLlama.
Because users retain control of their assets throughout the process, Boltz said “no user funds were ever at risk.”
Boltz Swap Services are currently unavailable until further notice. We can’t give an ETA as of this time, but will provide an update once we know more 🙏
— Boltz – Non-Custodial Bitcoin Bridge (@Boltzhq) August 3, 2026
“To be clear: this is not a response to a single incident,” the company wrote. “Over the past months we have seen a steady rise in automated, AI-assisted probing of our infrastructure, and we have dealt with several exploits. Each was contained, but the pattern is clear: attackers now iterate faster than a team our size can find and patch.”
Boltz said the pace of attacks accelerated over the past few days, leading it to conclude it could no longer safely operate its swap service.
“After reviewing the results of our own recent security scans, we cannot responsibly re-enable Boltz swaps, especially as we are being actively targeted by what appear to be multiple resourceful groups while we race to deploy fixes,” the company wrote.
The company said its API remains available to process cooperative refunds, unilateral refunds continue to work because they do not depend on Boltz’s infrastructure, and customer support remains available.
Boltz argued the attacks reflect a broader change facing Bitcoin infrastructure operators.
“What we are seeing is a major paradigm shift for Bitcoin services operating on an open source stack, and it needs careful analysis,” the company wrote. “Do not expect swap services to resume shortly.”
The announcement comes as the cryptocurrency industry grapples with how AI is changing cyberattacks.
On Tuesday, Ledger CTO Charles Guillemet warned that AI allows attackers to scan code and uncover vulnerabilities “at machine speed,” while defenders are increasingly relying on AI to find the same flaws first. The comments came as fallout from the Coldcard exploit continued to grow, with losses nearing $130 million.
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$NEAR Protocol is building momentum after a governance proposal introduced a new long-term vision for the network’s token economy.
According to the $NEAR founder Illia Polosukhin, there are plans to establish the Sovereign Fund, which will be financed using 30 million $NEAR tokens.
The proposal arrives as $NEAR records its fourth consecutive day of gains, with buyers returning to both the spot and derivatives markets.
$NEAR whales are adding exposure
According to the recent Average Order Size data, Near Protocol’s large holders have become increasingly active during the latest rally.
The data indicates that a significant surge in the number of whale orders at the current trading prices, suggesting that institutional-sized investors are positioning alongside the improving market sentiment rather than locking in profits.
Source: CryptoQuant
The derivatives market sparks the same signals. $NEAR’s Funding Rates have remained above 0% for several weeks, indicating long traders continue paying a premium to keep bullish positions open.
The persistent positive funding generally reflects an increased market confidence that higher prices are still expected, particularly when accompanied by steady spot accumulation.
All in all, both metrics point to strengthening conviction behind the current move.
Source: CoinGlass
Is a breakout on the cards?
The long-term technical setup continues to favor buyers.
$NEAR has spent months consolidating inside a bullish pennant, a pattern that has repeatedly produced rebounds from support before another attempt at the upper boundary.
The latest rejection came near $1.60, where buyers successfully defended the pennant support. Since then, the token has posted a week of steady gains, preserving its higher-low structure and reinforcing bullish momentum.
If the current trend continues, attention shifts to the next major liquidity zone. A liquidity cluster exceeding $1 million sits around $1.85, making it the next significant area where sellers could emerge.
Source: TradingView
As it stands, the combination of whale accumulation, persistently positive Funding Rates, and the proposed Sovereign Fund has improved market sentiment.
If buyers defend the pennant support, they could drive $NEAR toward $1.85 before it faces its next major resistance.
Source: CoinGlass
Final Summary
$NEAR extends its rally as a proposed 30 million token Sovereign Fund boosts sentiment.
Whale orders surge, and positive Funding Rates put the $1.85 liquidity zone on buyer radar.
BitMEX cofounder Arthur Hayes published a new essay, “Situationship,” on Aug. 4, 2026, arguing that the artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure boom could end as a credit crisis rather than a dot com style equity collapse.
Hayes framed data centers as leveraged real estate containing computing equipment that can lose economic value as newer chips become more efficient.
Hayes said an eventual slowdown in data center construction could expose weak borrowers and financiers, prompting government intervention and broader monetary easing. He believes the resulting liquidity could support a renewed Bitcoin bull market. However, the scenario remains his personal forecast, not a confirmed crisis or an official policy outlook.
Bitcoin traded around $64,150 early on Aug. 5. No evidence reviewed for this report linked the immediate price move to Hayes’s essay. Hayes also acknowledged that he cannot identify the borrower that might trigger a crisis or determine Bitcoin’s precise bottom.
Bitcoin ($BTC) price chart, source: crypto.news
Arthur Hayes says AI spending is a real estate credit trade
Hayes’s central argument is that investors are treating AI capital expenditure as if every dollar supports a high margin technology business. He views much of the spending differently. Data center land, buildings, power connections and cooling systems resemble property development, while processors can become less valuable when newer equipment delivers more computing power at a lower cost.
“Situationship” is my $BTC bull porn essay on how the AI bubble will burst, and why the money printer will go hyper brrrr and take us back to a rip roaring bull market.
“The question of internal framing is the key variable that determines whether AI is a bubble. But before we… pic.twitter.com/ix5SGiAcuv
— Arthur Hayes (@CryptoHayes) August 5, 2026
This distinction leads to his comparison with the global financial crisis. Hayes described the AI boom as a “credit story like 2008 and not an earnings story like 2000.” In his scenario, banks, insurers, private credit funds and infrastructure investors continue financing construction after profitable demand begins slowing.
Losses would then emerge when weaker projects cannot generate enough cash to meet debt, lease or interest obligations. Financial stress could spread to lenders and investors holding AI infrastructure exposure, even if leading technology companies remain profitable.
Hayes expects announced AI capital spending growth to begin slowing during the second half of 2027 and become clearer in 2028. He also expects markets to eventually reward companies that reduce construction plans. Those dates are forecasts. No company filing reviewed for this report confirms that an industrywide contraction has begun.
His Bitcoin case follows from the expected policy response. Hayes argues that U.S. authorities would protect strategically important AI companies and their lenders because computing capacity has become part of the country’s economic competition with China.
He discussed a possible Bitcoin trading range between $60,000 and $70,000, with downside near $50,000, before an eventual rise toward $1 million. Those levels are not guaranteed targets and depend on monetary policy, credit creation and investor demand developing as Hayes expects.
The essay extends an earlier argument. As crypto.news previously reported, Hayes warned that major technology listings, including possible OpenAI, Anthropic and SpaceX offerings, could absorb liquidity that might otherwise enter crypto markets.
In related coverage, crypto.news examined the expanding bond and credit exposure behind AI infrastructure. That analysis noted that financial risks could spread beyond technology shares if data center construction relies more heavily on debt and private financing.
Official filings show AI spending is still accelerating
The latest company results do not show an AI capital spending collapse. Alphabet reported $44.9 billion of capital expenditure during the second quarter. About 60% of its technical infrastructure investment went toward servers, while 40% went toward data centers and networking equipment.
Alphabet raised its 2026 capital spending guidance to between $195 billion and $205 billion, up from its previous range of $180 billion to $190 billion. The company attributed the increase to faster capacity delivery required to meet demand.
Google Cloud revenue rose 82% from the previous year to $24.8 billion. Cloud operating income reached $8.8 billion, while backlog increased to $514 billion. Alphabet said it expects capital expenditure to increase again in 2027.
Microsoft also reported continued expansion. Its quarterly capital expenditure reached $41 billion, with roughly two thirds directed to CPUs and GPUs. Microsoft Cloud revenue increased 27% to $59.3 billion, while commercial remaining performance obligations reached $678 billion.
The company said it expects capital expenditure to grow during fiscal 2027. Microsoft also expects more than $50 billion of spending in its next quarter, although part of that figure reflects a change in how some data center leases will be classified.
Amazon reported a similar mix of rising investment and stronger cloud income. AWS revenue increased 37% to $42.2 billion in the second quarter, its fastest growth in 18 quarters. AWS operating income reached $16.6 billion.
However, Amazon’s trailing twelve month free cash flow moved to an outflow of $7.6 billion. The company attributed the change mainly to a $66.1 billion increase in property and equipment purchases, largely connected to AI investment.
These results cut both ways for Hayes’s thesis. Strong cloud growth and large customer backlogs weaken the argument that demand is already failing. At the same time, lower free cash flow, rising depreciation and growing contractual obligations show how the buildout can pressure finances even while revenue expands.
Heavy spending alone does not create a credit crisis. Such a crisis would require weaker cash generation, refinancing problems, defaults or impaired infrastructure assets across several companies and lenders.
U.S. financing exposure is growing, but 2008 is unproven
Regulatory filings support Hayes’s narrower claim that AI infrastructure increasingly involves leases, guarantees, joint ventures and outside capital.
Alphabet disclosed $85.2 billion of future payments for leases, mainly connected to data centers, that had not started as of June 30. These leases are scheduled to begin between 2026 and 2031, with contract terms reaching as long as 26 years.
Alphabet also reported $811 billion of purchase commitments and other contractual obligations. Most relate to technical infrastructure, inventory, energy agreements and other long term contracts. The company had $98.2 billion of long term debt and issued more than $51 billion of fixed rate notes during the first half of 2026.
Microsoft disclosed $62.9 billion of finance lease liabilities as of March 31. It also reported another $196.6 billion of leases, mainly for data centers, that had not yet commenced.
Meta reported approximately $182.88 billion of uncommenced lease obligations and $237.67 billion of noncancelable contractual commitments as of March 31. The company entered another $24 billion of infrastructure contracts during April.
Private financing is also becoming more visible in U.S. data center projects. Meta and BlackRock announced a venture for a one gigawatt campus in El Paso, Texas. Meta described the project as representing more than $10 billion of investment.
An earlier Meta venture with Blue Owl Capital covered an estimated $27 billion data center campus in Louisiana. Blue Owl funds received an 80% interest, while Meta retained 20%. Part of the outside funding came through debt sold privately to PIMCO and other bond investors.
Meta agreed to lease the Louisiana facilities and provided a capped residual value guarantee under certain conditions. Such arrangements show how data center exposure can be distributed among technology companies, insfrastructure funds, landlords and debt investors.
They do not prove that a 2008 style chain of insolvencies has started. Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon and Meta remain profitable businesses with large operating cash flows and growing customer commitments. The reviewed filings did not report widespread defaults on AI infrastructure debt or an official government rescue program.
The 2008 comparison therefore remains a stress scenario rather than a present diagnosis. Mortgage losses became systemic because weak lending, securitization, leverage and opaque counterparty exposure spread through major financial institutions.
An AI infrastructure downturn could follow a different route involving unused capacity, falling rental values, obsolete equipment, tenant concentration and long power commitments. Whether those risks become systemic will depend on utilization, refinancing conditions and where losses ultimately settle.
Bitcoin’s outcome depends on policy, liquidity and timing
The Federal Reserve held its federal funds target range at 3.5% to 3.75% on July 29. The decision passed by a 9 to 3 vote. The central bank did not announce an AI rescue facility, emergency lending program or new asset purchase plan.
The Fed has conducted reserve management purchases of Treasury bills to maintain ample banking system reserves. Its July monetary policy report said Treasury bill purchases since early January totaled nearly $250 billion, including about $160 billion of reserve management purchases.
Those operations are not officially described as quantitative easing or an AI bailout. The Fed says they are intended to maintain an adequate level of reserves and support control over short term interest rates.
Hayes interprets balance sheet growth and stable policy rates as supportive for bank credit and future market liquidity. That interpretation remains open to debate because reserve management can expand the Fed’s assets without representing the broad crisis response assumed in his forecast.
Bitcoin could benefit if a future downturn produces rate cuts, emergency lending or larger asset purchases. However, the first stage of a credit shock could hurt Bitcoin as investors sell liquid assets, meet margin calls and reduce leverage.
As crypto.news reported in its examination of Bitcoin’s changing market cycle, Federal Reserve policy and global liquidity now compete with the halving cycle as major drivers of crypto prices.
The next evidence will come from company guidance and credit markets rather than from Hayes’s essay. Investors can watch 2027 spending plans, cloud backlog conversion, data center occupancy, lease commitments, private credit spreads and any defaults tied to AI infrastructure.
The Fed’s next scheduled meeting will take place on Sept. 15 and Sept. 16. Unless company demand weakens or financing stress begins appearing, Hayes’s argument remains a forward looking Bitcoin thesis built around a credit crisis that has not occurred.
FAQs
Is the AI bubble already bursting?
The latest filings do not show an industrywide contraction. Alphabet raised its spending guidance, Microsoft expects continued capital expenditure growth and AWS reported accelerating revenue. Financial pressure is visible in free cash flow and contractual commitments, but those conditions do not constitute a credit bust.
Why does Hayes compare AI with 2008 instead of 2000?
Hayes believes the main vulnerability lies in debt, leases and infrastructure financing rather than technology companies earning little or no revenue. The comparison depends on credit losses spreading through financial intermediaries, which has not been established.
Would an AI crash automatically raise Bitcoin’s price?
No. Bitcoin could decline during an initial liquidation period. A later recovery would depend on the scale, speed and form of monetary support, along with continuing demand for Bitcoin. Central bank easing would not guarantee any particular price.
What would weaken Hayes’s thesis?
Sustained cloud revenue, strong data center utilization, profitable AI services and stable credit performance would weaken the argument. The thesis would also lose force if companies fund construction without creating stressed borrowers or concentrated lender losses.
Ripple Expands Its Institutional Tokenization Infrastructure
Ripple President Monica Long outlined the company’s broader strategy on Aug. 4 after Ripple announced strategic investments in Zilo and Licuido to expand institutional capital markets infrastructure connected to the $XRP Ledger. She described a rapid transition from bank pilots toward production-grade activity and positioned Ripple’s digital asset stack across the full tokenized asset lifecycle.
“In the last year, we’ve seen the veritable light switch flip – from bank pilots to production, from issuing tokenized assets like money market funds and liquidity funds to using them! Institutional capital markets are moving in one direction — onchain 24/7,” Long stated on X, adding:
“At Ripple, our goal remains to provide the full stack of digital asset infrastructure – allowing institutional participants to take advantage of the entire lifecycle of a tokenized asset on the $XRP Ledger.”
Those investments in ZILO and Licuido add fund tokenization and institutional liquidity infrastructure to Ripple’s broader capital markets strategy, supporting fund issuance, trading, and settlement on the $XRP Ledger.
Ripple’s Mint platform complements that strategy. Launched on July 23, it provides financial institutions with a unified interface to access, mint, redeem, and manage Ripple USD, or $RLUSD, while issuing and transferring the stablecoin across fiat and blockchain settlement systems.
Institutional issuers can also use Ripple’s tokenization platform to create securities, stablecoins, fund units, bonds, commodities, and other real-world asset (RWA) tokens. Its infrastructure combines issuance, redemption, compliance screening, transfer restrictions, audit trails, freeze controls, clawbacks, and multichain distribution.
Tokenized Funds Move Into Trading, Lending, and Yield
A partnership among DBS, Franklin Templeton, and Ripple shows how tokenized assets can support continuous portfolio management after issuance. The arrangement allows eligible DBS clients to trade $RLUSD for Franklin Templeton’s tokenized money market fund within minutes while retaining access to yield.
DBS also plans to explore accepting these tokenized fund units as collateral through bank repurchase agreements or third-party lending platforms. That structure would let institutional investors move between a stable settlement asset and an income-producing instrument throughout the day.
Real-world asset tokens can represent bonds, funds, commodities, and property on blockchain networks, opening those assets to faster transfers and around-the-clock settlement.
Credit Infrastructure Could Extend the XRPL Stack
The proposed XRPL Lending Protocol would add standardized institutional lending to the network’s tokenization infrastructure. The design keeps underwriting and compliance decisions offchain while managing servicing, repayments, interest, and defaults onchain for treasuries, stablecoins, commodities, money market funds, and private credit.
Separate XRPL infrastructure is connecting $XRP and $RLUSD liquidity with tokenized U.S. Treasury products offering regulated, reserve-backed yield. A Doppler Finance and Openeden partnership plans to integrate Openeden’s TBILL token and yield-bearing USDO stablecoin into an XRPL-native protocol using audited reserves, regulated custody, and compliance controls.
The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) identified tokenization as a potential source of faster, programmable payments and more efficient financial intermediation. The organization’s 2026 assessment also called for trusted settlement instruments, coordinated oversight, and stronger safeguards, while warning that current stablecoin structures present financial-integrity and monetary risks.
Ripple’s next expansion point rests with validator decisions on the proposed lending standards, which would determine whether tokenized XRPL assets can support protocol-level institutional borrowing.
Jim Cramer says he is selling his Bitcoin after IBM CEO Arvind Krishna told him to get “paranoid” about crypto’s cryptography within three or four years.
The warning follows a July 30 IBM and University of Chicago demonstration of verified quantum advantage.
Traders invoked the “Inverse Cramer” trade, a pattern so established that a fund once existed purely to bet against his picks.
CNBC host and long-time crypto critic Jim Cramer is out on Bitcoin—again. This time it’s over fears of the coming quantum computing threat, and it sounds like he might be out for good. Which is music to the ears of Bitcoin investors everywhere who prefer to be on the opposite side of the “Cramer trade.”
“Should I be more careful?” Cramer asked late last week while interviewing IBM CEO Arvind Krishna, worried about whether quantum computers would be able to steal his coins.
“I think that you should give yourself three or four years,” Krishna replied, “and at that point, I would get rather paranoid about it.”
Cramer did not wait three or four years. “I realize I’m waiting. Ethereum, really, maybe even worse. So I think that people have to take this man seriously because they’re doing commercial quantum,” he said while commenting on his interview. “Arvind Krishna knows quantum incredibly. He knows Bitcoin and quantum. And I’m going to sell mine.”
“He’s the man,” Cramer continued. “Three, four years. David, you know when three, four years is going to happen? Like tomorrow.”
The clip went around fast, pulling 89,000 views on X, and over 9,000 views on YouTube.
“Thank you Jim!” read one of the top replies. “Letssss goooooooooooo,” went another. One user simply asked: “I thought he already did.”
That gratitude isn’t sarcasm so much as strategy. Traders have spent years tracking the “inverse Cramer” pattern—the running joke that the reliable move is whatever he didn’t say.
Somebody built a fund on it. Tuttle Capital launched the Inverse Cramer Tracker ETF in 2023, betting against his picks, alongside a Long Cramer fund betting with them. Both closed. The long version died first, the short version followed in February 2024 with $2 million in assets.
“We started it in order to point out the danger of following TV stockpickers, Jim Cramer specifically, and the total lack of accountability,” portfolio manager Matthew Tuttle said. “We feel like we have accomplished that mission.”
The Bitcoin record is why the meme stuck. Cramer said he’d sold everything and wouldn’t touch crypto “in a million years” in December 2022, with Bitcoin at $16,796. It gained more than 400% over the next three years.
Bitcoin rose about 1.6% on the day he announced the sale.
It’s worth noting, though, that no one we’re aware of has confirmed the size of his position, or that it even exists. Cramer hasn’t publicly shared any Bitcoin wallet addresses, so there’s no way to check.
The part that isn’t a joke
The underlying research behind quantum is real, even if the timeline is arguable.
On July 30, IBM and University of Chicago researchers demonstrated quantum advantage with something previous milestones lacked—verification. Using 70 logical qubits and a new error-correction method, they ran a computation in about 15 minutes that classical methods can’t feasibly reproduce, and proved the answer was right. That’s the “Chicago study” Cramer kept referencing, and Decrypt covered what it means for Bitcoin.
Sampling circuits is not breaking elliptic curve cryptography. Those are different problems, and the second one needs machines far beyond anything demonstrated.
But the exposure is genuine. Coinbase’s quantum advisory council estimates roughly 7 million Bitcoin could eventually be vulnerable through exposed public keys and address reuse. Ark Invest and Unchained call the threat real but not imminent. Post-quantum standards exist, and Bitcoin developers have been arguing about how to adopt them for years.
So Cramer picked a legitimate risk and doubled down on a timeline that remains debatable.
The market’s response was to buy his exit. We’ll see who’s right.
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SpaceX (SPCX), Elon Musk’s space technology company, reported its first quarterly results as a public company on Tuesday, announcing second-quarter revenue of $7.8 billion.
That figure topped Wall Street expectations of $6.9 billion, while narrowing its quarterly loss to to $541 million as growth accelerated across its launch, Starlink and AI businesses.
The company reported a net loss of $541 million, an improvement from a $1.0 billion loss a year earlier, while adjusted EBITDA nearly tripled to $3.5 billion.
Crypto investors were also watching for changes to SpaceX’s bitcoin BTC$64,089.16 holdings.
The company reported $1.10 billion in digital assets at the end of the second quarter, down from $1.64 billion at the end of 2025.
SpaceX’s IPO filing disclosed that it held 18,712 bitcoin as of March 31, acquired for about $661 million and valued at $1.29 billion at the time. Tuesday’s earnings release reported only the value of its digital asset holdings and did not disclose the number of bitcoin held or explain the decline.
SPCX was down 6% immediately following the report after closing the session nearly 10% higher on the day’s trading, while the Nasdaq 100 gained 3.3%.
Researchers have tied the faulty randomness code at the center of the Coldcard wallet breach to Coinkite co-founder and CTO Peter Gray, who Bitcoin developer James O’Beirne says brushed off a warning about the defect in May 2025.
The exploit has now drained roughly $114 million across more than 5,200 Bitcoin addresses, and Coinkite says it is still live.
The GPG signatures that point at one person
The buggy library, called libngu, was published on GitHub under a pseudonymous account named Switch. An analysis posted on August 4 by Bitcoin developer James O’Beirne laid out cryptographic evidence that the account belongs to Gray.
O’Beirne’s write-up rests on GPG commit signatures. According to the analysis, there are 58 commits that are authored as “Switck” that carry valid signatures from Gray’s personal key, the same key that signs his commits under the name Peter D. Gray in the same repository.
The Switch account, by contrast, has uploaded no key of its own. The analysis states that it has been cryptographically proven that the two identities are one person.
The connection matters because Coldcard’s production firmware pulls libngu in as a dependency, according to O’Beirne’s analysis, which also cites security firm Wizardsardine’s finding that the library is one of three repositories involved in the vulnerability.
A report from May 2025 that went nowhere
O’Beirne flagged the risk more than a year ago while auditing Coldcard’s firmware in May 2025.
He said that he wanted to pin down where the wallet sourced its randomness and traced it back to libngu, after which he informed Coinkite about the possible defect at the time.
“This is the same guy that shrugged off my report of the possibility of the defect in May 2025,” O’Beirne wrote, referring to Gray. He added that he had not yet told the full story of that exchange.
Coinkite has yet to respond to the identity claim of the report.
One commit in 2021, unnoticed for five years
Block’s Bitcoin engineering and security teams traced it to a commit dated March 1, 2021, that changed how Coldcard built a wallet’s seed. The change swapped a call that pulled from the device’s hardware random number generator for one that fell through to MicroPython’s software randomizer.
The mistake hid in a single preprocessor check. Firmware version 4.0.0 shipped with the flaw on March 17, 2021.
The seeds were built with too little entropy, so attackers could regenerate them offline and drain funds without ever touching a device. None of the thefts involved stolen hardware, phishing, or malware.
Coinkite tells owners to move funds now
Coinkite has told users to act with urgency. “Please treat this as urgent. Migrate your funds,” the company posted, while confirming that the exploit is still in progress and asking holders to alert others who are “less online.”
Not every wallet is exposed. Reports say that Mk3 devices set up on firmware 4.0.1 or later are at risk, while Mk4, Mk5, and Q owners running firmware below 5.6.0 or 1.5.0Q should update, create a new seed, and move their coins.
Wallets built with the device’s dice-roll option, where a user enters at least 50 physical rolls, never ran the broken path and are considered safe. A strong BIP-39 passphrase and multisig setups where the Coldcard key is only one of several signers also held up.
Losses near $114 million across four waves
The theft has come in bursts. The first wave on July 30 moved about 1,083 $BTC out of 1,196 addresses inside 41 minutes, worth roughly $70 million. Three more waves followed over five days, with Galaxy Research counting a fourth sweep early on August 3 that pushed the running total to about 1,816 $BTC.
Some reports put the value near $116 million, while others cite $114 million at prevailing prices.
Bitcoin itself has barely moved, trading near $63,800 during U.S. hours on August 4. Vincent Bouzon, a cybersecurity expert at rival wallet maker Ledger, stated that the episode was “a failure of one implementation rather than a verdict on self-custody,” adding that entropy “must be anchored in secure hardware.”
