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.”
$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.
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.”
In an interview broadcast on “The Wolf Of All Streets,” a well-known channel in the sector, the institutional transformation that the cryptocurrency market has undergone and the price dynamics of Bitcoin were discussed in detail.
The program, moderated by Andrew Parish, featured Bitwise Chief Investment Officer (CIO) Matt Hougan, Bitwise Research Analyst Ryan Rasmussen, and Arch Public CEO Tillman Holloway. The broadcast discussed the reasons behind Bitcoin’s lack of reaction to the $100 million security breach in the individual cold wallet ecosystem, and how Wall Street dominates the sector.
At the program’s opening, Andrew Parish questioned why the $100 million cold wallet vulnerability didn’t cause any market crash, noting that a similar incident a few years ago could have caused sharp drops of 10% to 20%.
Commenting on the situation, Bitwise Research Analyst Ryan Rasmussen stated that the market has clearly matured from individual Bitcoin holders to institutional investors. Rasmussen said that the vast majority of new investors are entering the market through spot ETFs or licensed and regulated custody services such as Coinbase and Anchorage. Therefore, he added, vulnerabilities focused on individual cold wallets affect only a very small fraction of the total market participants and do not create widespread panic.
Related NewsJim Cramer Announced That He Will Sell All of His Bitcoin
Matt Hougan, Investment Director at Bitwise, stated that the market has become resilient to negative news in the current cycle. Hougan noted that sellers have been exhausted and the remaining investor profile is exhibiting an unwavering stance, adding that the presence of institutional capital is reducing the pressure of bad news on prices.
Arch Public CEO Tillman Holloway stated that a “changing of the guard” is taking place in the cryptocurrency sector. Recalling that in the past, price movements were driven by miners and individual crypto exchanges, Holloway said that today, control has completely passed to Wall Street and institutional capital.
Commenting on market expectations, Matt Hougan argued that there is a huge gap between the pessimistic atmosphere on social media and the approach of Wall Street financial giants. He noted that giant institutions like Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, and UBS operate with long-term, 10-year strategies, and that the traditional financial world views the current price pullbacks not as a collapse, but as a normal buying opportunity within a four-year cycle.
Ryan Rasmussen reported that portfolio managers with decades of experience are beginning to include crypto assets in their portfolios, similar to past technology revolutions. Rasmussen stated that research teams at major banks are recommending Bitcoin allocations of between 1% and 6% to their clients, and that the risk factor has decreased at the career and institutional level as the asset has become integrated into traditional financial indices.
At least 15 different attackers have exploited the Coldcard vulnerability, according to Galaxy Digital’s head of research, Alex Thorn, citing new victim reports received since the incident.
Thorn said Tuesday that the victim reports helped the company label new attackers that would have gone undiscovered, as the nature of the exploit was different from a hack on a centralized exchange.
“Due to one single victim’s report of less than 1 $BTC stolen, we identified a new attack with 12 $BTC siphoned from 126 addresses,” Thorn wrote in a Tuesday X post.
The estimated losses from the Coldcard exploit have grown to $100 million across three confirmed attack waves, according to Galaxy Research. The company also identified a suspected fourth wave that could bring total losses to about $130 million in Bitcoin ($BTC).
The ongoing attack reignited debate about the security of cold storage wallets and whether users are safer by holding their own Bitcoin.
$2 worth of AI hardening could have prevented the exploit: Dragonfly partner
Roughly “$2 of AI hardening” could have prevented the Coldcard exploit, wrote Dragonfly managing partner Haseeb Qureshi, citing social media reports that some AI models rediscovered the vulnerability that led to the attack in less than 20 minutes.
Qureshi’s remarks came in response to multiple social media users claiming that Claude was able to regenerate the vulnerability in just eight minutes. He argued that these results may have been contaminated by web search and added that open-source AI model GLM 5.2 was able to rediscover the attack in 20 minutes with web access turned off.
However, it is unlikely that AI models would have independently discovered this vulnerability before it was made public, crypto analytics platform Tokenomist’s data lead, Tatsapat Saerejittima, told Cointelegraph. He said:
“The claim that AI found it in 2 mins came from a pseudonymous Reddit user who scanned the code after the vulnerability had already become public. There was no blind test, no documented methodology, and no assessment of the model’s false-positive rate.”
Vulnerability seen in private key setup
Crypto research company Castle Labs’ co-founder, Francesco, said that the growing capabilities of AI models are drastically reducing the cost and time it takes to discover new cryptocurrency vulnerabilities, but added that Coldcard’s private key may have played a role in the vulnerability.
Coldcard used a “level of private key entropy (40 bits) much lower than the standard adopted by other wallets (a 12-word seed is 128 bits), a result of a firmware bug, making the job easier,” he told Cointelegraph.
Francesco, who asked that Cointelegraph not use his last name, said he expects the cost of bug discovery to continue decreasing as AI models gain more capabilities and become more prominent in both cybersecurity and exploits.
Magazine: Does Botanix’s failure prove Bitcoiners don’t care about DeFi?
History has a way of repeating itself, and right now, that’s exactly what the market seems to be pricing in. Of course, there’s no guarantee that past events will play out the same way again.
But in trading, investors often look at historical patterns and previous cycles to guide their decisions. This sometimes creates the illusion of “history repeating itself,” when in reality, it could simply be a market coincidence.
Now, with the latest PMI data, a similar setup appears to be forming. As the chart below shows, the U.S. ISM Manufacturing PMI came in at 55.6, above the expected 54. This marked its highest level since June 2022.
A stronger PMI typically points to improving manufacturing activity and a healthier economic backdrop, which could influence risk assets like Bitcoin.
Source: TradingEconomics
Notably, this is where historical patterns start becoming interesting.
Can PMI repeat Bitcoin’s 2017 and 2021 rallies?
According to one analyst, every time the ISM PMI has sustained levels above 55, the crypto market has entered a major upside phase. The analyst highlighted that the same signal behind the 2017 and 2021 crypto bull runs has resurfaced.
During those cycles, the total crypto market cap broke above $500 billion and $2 trillion, respectively, while Bitcoin rallied 1,336% and 59% in those periods.
That said, this signal alone does not guarantee that Bitcoin is about to repeat the same move, especially with $BTC still stuck in a broader bearish phase and down more than 25% in 2026.
However, the timing of the stronger PMI data is notable, arriving as markets are closely watching rate expectations, with the odds of a rate hike at the next FOMC meeting currently sitting at 64%.
Meanwhile, Bitcoin’s ability to hold strong despite rising on-chain selling pressure adds another layer to the setup, suggesting that the improving macro backdrop from the PMI report could be laying the foundation for a potential shift in market momentum.
Calling Bitcoin’s [$BTC] resilience above $60k a potential bull trap is not entirely far-fetched.
From an on-chain perspective, selling pressure is picking up across multiple cohorts.
BlackRock recently moved 1,948.07 $BTC, worth around $122.03 million, into Coinbase Prime, while Bitcoin miners sold roughly 1,774 $BTC, valued at around $112 million, over the past week. Adding to the bearish narrative, Jim Cramer also warned about selling his Bitcoin holdings over quantum computing concerns.
But the bigger takeaway is the sudden reactivation of dormant cohorts after years of inactivity. As the chart below shows, the long-dormant Bitcoin supply is beginning to move again.
Bitcoin aged 2-7 years has started flowing back into exchanges, with the 3-5 year and 5-7 year cohorts surging by 595% and 1,016%, respectively. This suggests that some LTHs are taking action, adding another layer of uncertainty around Bitcoin’s current price resilience.
Source: CryptoQuant
Can PMI offset Bitcoin’s selling pressure?
Against this backdrop, the latest PMI report starts to carry more significance.
The logic is straightforward: Key macro data releases this week could shape expectations heading into the September FOMC meeting. As mentioned earlier, rate hike odds have recently climbed above 64%.
In this environment, the stronger PMI print could be the first bullish signal, suggesting that the macro backdrop may be turning more supportive for Bitcoin and other risk assets.
This is why $BTC’s resilience despite rising selling pressure may not be just another bull trap. Instead, it could signal that improving macro conditions are helping Bitcoin absorb the pressure.
Final Summary
Bitcoin is holding above $60k despite heavy selling pressure.
A strong PMI report could give $BTC a boost by improving market confidence.
Harvey More says ghosts have thrown objects at him and tampered with his car (Picture: Cover Media)
It’s an unusual career for someone who trained as an electrician.
But when Harvey More fell into a ghost-related TikTok hole during lockdown, he realised he was closer to the spirit world than he had originally thought.
Long before he began investigating haunted locations, he says he repeatedly saw a mysterious figure walking across the upstairs landing of his parents’ West Midlands home.
‘When I went upstairs onto the upstairs landing, I would see a man dressed all in black, walking from one bedroom door to another. It happened a few times, and I could hear unexplained footsteps outside my bedroom,’ the 23-year-old said.
It was Harvey’s first spiritual experience. When he told his parents, they told him that vicars used to live at the address, and that it was likely to be their spirits.
‘I thought, there is definitely another world out there that we don’t know about,’ he said.
‘That experience was just crazy. From there I have believed there is something out there, that there’s an afterlife.’
Harvey during a paranormal investigation (Picture: Cover Media)
Harvey started watching paranormal live streams on TikTok during a boring lockdown and became intrigued.
He decided he wanted to find out more and immersed himself in learning about crystals, spiritualism and what he describes as alternative realities.
Today, the content creator spends his time investigating locations believed to be haunted, searching for evidence that spirits are still present.
Harvey believes he has witnessed things that cannot be explained.
‘I have seen apparitions, from white mists to black figures in the corner of the eye. But when you look, they vanish,’ he said.
‘And I’ve experienced random smells and scents coming up out of nowhere.’
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After filming footage, he often notices noises on the edits that he didn’t originally hear.
‘You often hear taps and bangs that you didn’t hear at the time. You might hear a lady humming or a droning sound,’ Harvey added.
‘Once I heard a girl laughing when none of the team heard it. But when I edited I picked it up again. It is amazing the things you pick up.’
Boredom during the Covid lockdowns led Harvey down a ghostly TikTok scroll hole (Picture: Cover Media)
During investigations, Harvey and his team ask what they believe are spirits to make their presence known.
‘When they go on a hunt, they ask the spirit world to affirm their presence with a noise,’ Harvey, who hosts the Unexplained Mysteries Paranormal podcast,’ said.
‘Often we get unexplainable footsteps and knocks. You can tell when it is something paranormal. The majority of what we catch is supernatural.’
One location that continues to draw him back is a former 17th century burial ground near his home which has since become a public park where families picnic and children play.
‘I have always felt that there is an energy there that has called me to investigate. Every time you go there, you pick up new information, evidence of the spiritual world.’
Harvey says one investigation there produced what he considers some of his strongest evidence. Using a paranormal voice box, a handheld electronic device that paranormal investigators believe spirits use to manipulate radio signals, he started picking up words to do with crime, justice, water and pipes.
Harvey originally trained as an electrician before joining the world of paranormal investigation (Picture: Cover Media)
‘When I got back and started researching who I was connecting with. It emerged that Richard Jesson, who is buried there, was a well-known attorney. And he was one of the founders of South Staffs Waters, a water work company,’ Harvey said.
‘I couldn’t believe it. I always go to a location with an empty head with no background. Any information I get I then go back and research it. Nearly every time it links to historical records.’
He also visited the site of Jesson’s grave, where the temperature dropped ‘significantly’ and his team detected ‘a really strong, musky scent, almost like incense, even though nobody was around us’.
Harvey said investigations rarely end when the team decides to leave, as often spirits will try to pull them back.
‘There are some spirits that are reluctant to come forward and communicate, whether they’ve got low energy or they just don’t want to talk to us,’ he says.
‘But when we’re leaving the location, when we’ve turned our backs, things get thrown at us. I’ve had twigs, stones and other debris thrown as I tried to leave. That is the point of an investigation where we have to set up a boundary and say “no more”, because it takes our energy.’
His most frightening experience was at Cannock Chase, a Staffordshire beauty spot known for ghost stories and alleged sightings, where his car was unlocked while he was investigating.
‘I saw a light in the corner of my eye. And I saw my car unlocked itself. That frightened me. I thought, it’s messing with the car. If it wants your attention it can go to your property.
‘Thankfully the battery hadn’t gone flat. It was completely dark and we contemplated abandoning the investigation and going home. That will stay with me for the rest of my life because it was so bizarre.’
Despite the unsettling moments, Harvey says paranormal investigation has brought him comfort rather than fear, particularly after the death of someone close to him.
‘Paranormal investigation brings me so much peace. It’s not all scary and spooky. I have been able to contact spirits who have left a legacy. Being able to connect with roots of where I am from is comforting,’ he said.
