Bitcoin news

Soluna Holdings and Bitdeer Technologies announced on August 25, 2026 a co-mining agreement covering 28 megawatts at Project Kati 1, an 83 megawatt wind powered data center in Willacy County, Texas. Bitdeer supplies and keeps ownership of its SEALMINER A2 Pro Air machines, whose installation starts in phases in September 2026 and will add about 1.93 exahashes per second to the Bitcoin network. Soluna provides the site, the power and the operations, and both companies share the revenue produced. Kati 1 posted its first gross profit in the second quarter of 2026.

Mining secures Bitcoin: specialised machines run computations to validate blocks of transactions and receive the block reward and the fees in exchange. That computing power is measured in hashes per second, one exahash being a billion billion hashes per second. The whole network runs at roughly 900 to 1,000 EH/s this summer, which places the announced addition below 0.25 percent of the total. Two models coexist in the sector: hosting, where the site operator bills power and a service, and co-mining, where it shares the mining proceeds.

For Soluna, this choice turns a stable contractual revenue into a variable one, higher if the price rises, lower if it falls or if difficulty increases. For Bitdeer, the deal allows machines to be installed without building a site. For the network, the addition stays marginal in proportion, but it illustrates how United States mining is anchored on sites connected to intermittent renewable power, a setup that puts to use energy that is otherwise hard to sell.

Deployment is due to start in September 2026 and to proceed in stages: the markers to follow will be the pace of machine installation, the additional 14 megawatts under construction at Kati 1, and Soluna's quarterly reports, which will show the actual share of co-mining revenue. The next difficulty adjustments of the network, which occur every 2,016 blocks or roughly two weeks, will show whether the capacity coming online this autumn weighs on miner profitability.

Bitcoin briefly rose above 80,000 dollars on August 25, 2026, a level it had not reached in more than three months. According to Bloomberg, the price climbed as high as 81,257 dollars during the session before returning to around 78,800 dollars in New York. Over seven days the rise exceeds 22 percent, with more than 7 billion dollars of short positions liquidated. United States spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded more than 2.2 billion dollars of net inflows since August 17. The price remains far below its record high of 126,198 dollars, set on October 6, 2025.

A rise this fast is rarely explained by spot buying alone. On derivatives markets, some participants bet on a decline by selling short, often with leverage. When the price rises, platforms close those positions automatically to avoid uncovered losses. These forced buybacks, known as liquidations, add demand and amplify the initial move. In parallel, spot ETFs, approved in the United States since January 2024, buy actual bitcoins for their investors and publish their flows every day.

For a long term holder, such a session changes nothing about how Bitcoin works: the issuance schedule and the cap of 21 million units remain unchanged. It does illustrate the scale of the volatility, with the price still about 28 percent below its level of a year ago despite a gain of more than 23 percent over one month. Moves driven by liquidations are abrupt and can reverse just as fast. This text is not investment advice.

Three things will set the tone in the coming weeks: whether net inflows into spot ETFs continue or stop, as published every trading day; the next communications from the United States Federal Reserve on interest rates; and the schedule of the United States Senate on digital asset market structure, expected in September 2026.

Spot Bitcoin ETFs listed in the United States recorded four consecutive days of net inflows from 17 to 20 August 2026. On Wednesday 19 August they took in 517.19 million dollars, their strongest day since 4 May 2026, including 284.7 million for BlackRock's IBIT, 77.7 million for the ARKB from Ark and 21Shares and 62.4 million for Fidelity's FBTC. The next day the total reached about 606 million dollars, with close to 503 million going to IBIT alone. Between 10 and 14 August, the same funds had posted roughly 390 million dollars of net outflows.

A spot ETF is an exchange listed fund that actually holds bitcoin and whose share price tracks the market price. Net inflows and outflows measure the difference between subscriptions and redemptions over one day: a net inflow means the fund had to buy additional bitcoin to meet demand. Published on every trading day, these figures serve as a rough gauge of institutional demand, while saying nothing about buyers' motives: part of the flow comes from arbitrage between spot and futures.

This data describes past demand and does not predict what comes next: inflow streaks stop as quickly as they start, as the preceding week of outflows showed. The most notable structural point remains concentration, with IBIT capturing most of the amounts. Finally, holding an ETF is not holding bitcoin: the investor does not own the keys and depends on the fund's custodian as well as on market opening hours.

What to watch: the daily flow releases, which will show whether the streak continues or reverses; the total for August 2026 once the month closes, more meaningful than any single session; the split between issuers, which shows whether inflows are broadening beyond BlackRock; and the coming United States monetary policy events, to which these flows have proved sensitive.

On 19 August 2026, Donald Trump gathered the main United States financial regulators and part of the digital asset industry at the White House: SEC Chair Paul Atkins, CFTC Chair Michael Selig, White House adviser Patrick Witt, and representatives of Coinbase, Ripple, Gemini, Nasdaq, NYSE, CME Group and DTCC. The president asked Congress to move forward with the CLARITY Act, the bill meant to set the market structure for digital assets, framing the sector as a matter of economic competition with China.

In the United States, market oversight is split between two authorities: the SEC supervises securities, while the CFTC covers commodities and derivatives. With no explicit rule on which category digital assets belong to, the question has long been settled case by case in court. The CLARITY Act aims to write that division of powers into law. The text still has to clear the Senate, where the timetable has already been pushed back to September 2026.

For a bitcoin holder, a meeting of this kind changes no rule currently in force: it signals a political direction, not an applicable text. Bitcoin is in fact the least disputed case in the American debate, as the CFTC has long treated it as a commodity. A market structure framework would mostly affect exchanges, market makers and listed products: registration rules, segregation of client assets and disclosure duties.

What to watch: the CLARITY Act's passage through the Senate, expected in September 2026, and how many votes it can gather; the follow-up the SEC gives to its Regulation Crypto framework, since each proposal opens a public consultation before final adoption; and any joint SEC and CFTC announcements on how they divide their responsibilities.

On 18 August 2026 the Tokyo-listed Japanese company Metaplanet announced that it would put 2,100 bitcoin and 2.5 million dollars in cash into Super League Enterprise, a Nasdaq-listed company, in exchange for a stake of about 95.7 percent. The investment is valued at around 134 million dollars. The company is to be renamed Superplanet and to serve as a bitcoin treasury platform in the United States, under the proposed ticker SUPA. The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2026, subject to customary conditions including approval by Super League shareholders. The 2,100 bitcoin contributed represent just under 5 percent of the roughly 43,000 bitcoin held by Metaplanet.

A bitcoin treasury company is a listed business whose main activity is holding bitcoin on its balance sheet and raising capital on the markets to buy more. The model was popularised in the United States by Strategy, and Metaplanet has become its main Japanese counterpart since 2024. The exposure offered to shareholders is indirect: they buy a share, not bitcoin, and that share can trade above or below the value of the bitcoin held, depending on how much the market trusts the strategy and the way it is financed.

The transaction gives Metaplanet a US listing without a conventional flotation, by taking control of a company that is already listed. It also moves part of its reserve into a separate vehicle, in which other shareholders will hold about 4 percent. For the market, these 2,100 bitcoin change hands without being bought or sold, so the direct effect on available supply is nil. Super League shares jumped more than 85 percent after the announcement and Metaplanet shares closed more than 5 percent higher.

Closing still depends on the vote of Super League shareholders and on the usual approvals, on a timetable announced for the fourth quarter of 2026. Also worth following: the effective date of the name and ticker change, Metaplanet's next reserve disclosures, and how Superplanet will fund any further purchases. The backdrop remains a sector in which several treasury companies have sold part of their bitcoin since the start of 2026.

On 19 August 2026 bitcoin gained close to 8 percent during the session, rising from a low near 64,100 dollars to about 69,700 dollars, then it moved past 70,000 dollars on 20 August, reaching roughly 71,500 dollars, its highest level since the start of June. According to CoinDesk, bearish bets lost almost 2.7 billion dollars in twenty-four hours, the largest wave of forced short closures in records going back to 2021. Short positions accounted for about 92 percent of that total, against 257 million dollars on the long side. Two triggers are cited: the doubling, from 2 to 4 billion dollars per operation, of the US Treasury's long-dated bond buyback programme, which pushed the thirty-year yield down from 5.34 to 5.187 percent, and a White House meeting between the US president, the chairs of the SEC and the CFTC and industry executives.

A short position is a bet on a falling price: the trader borrows an asset and sells it, intending to buy it back cheaper. On derivatives venues these bets are taken with leverage and limited collateral. When the price rises instead of falling, the venue closes the position on its own to avoid an uncovered loss, which is called a liquidation. Those forced buy-backs are themselves buy orders, so they push the price higher still and trigger further liquidations. This mechanical chain reaction, known as a short squeeze, explains the speed and the size of the move.

A rally fuelled by liquidations mainly says how traders were positioned, not that underlying demand has changed. Bitcoin was still trading around 63,000 dollars the previous week, and the price remains well below its 2025 high. For a long-term holder, this kind of move changes neither the amount of bitcoin held nor the way the network works. It is, however, a reminder that derivatives amplify moves in both directions, upward as well as downward.

The US Senate is due to return in September 2026 to its procedural vote on the CLARITY Act, which would set out how responsibilities are split between the SEC and the CFTC. The SEC has also put its Regulation Crypto Assets proposal out for consultation. The next release of weekly spot ETF flows will show whether institutional investors are following this rebound. In the market, the analysts quoted by Forbes remain divided: some still expect a sharp pullback before any lasting uptrend.

On 7 August 2026, the BTCPay Server team published a security advisory about a critical flaw affecting every version before 2.4.2, including the release candidates. The vulnerability let an unauthenticated attacker, with no credentials and no prior access, retrieve the .macaroon files of LND, the most widely deployed Lightning implementation. The advisory, updated on 10 August 2026, states that attackers exploited the flaw, that users were affected and that funds were stolen. Deployments running other Lightning implementations are not exposed to this credential theft.

BTCPay Server is open source payment software that merchants install on their own server to accept bitcoin without an intermediary. When it is connected to a Lightning node, it talks to that node through a macaroon, the bearer authentication token used by LND. Anyone holding an admin macaroon controls the node outright: they can open and close payment channels and move the funds held there. A publicly reachable file of that kind is therefore a key handed to the attacker, with no additional password required.

Updating to 2.4.2 closes the access path, but it does not invalidate credentials that were already stolen. The team therefore recommends updating immediately, reviewing node activity (unauthorised payments, unexpected channel closures), regenerating macaroons and moving funds out of the hot wallets created by the installation. For merchants, the episode is a reminder that a Lightning node wired to a web service remains a hot wallet, exposed by design, and is not meant to hold reserves.

Operators who cannot update right away are asked to take their server offline in the meantime. It remains to be seen how many nodes will still run a vulnerable version in the coming weeks, and whether the team will publish a figure for the funds lost. The next BTCPay Server releases and the project's posts on its official blog are the main place to follow this.

On 13 August 2026, hardware wallet maker Trezor announced that a data breach at ShipMonk, its external logistics partner, had exposed order data for 13,689 customers. For 11,742 of them, names, email addresses, phone numbers and shipping addresses were affected; for 1,947 others, only names, cities and email addresses. Those concerned received an order in the 90 days before 8 August 2026, in the United States, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Colombia, Brazil, Italy and Portugal. Trezor states that its own systems and its devices were not compromised, and warns against fake emails, fraudulent calls and people impersonating banks or exchanges.

A hardware wallet is a small device that keeps private keys away from any connected computer. The recovery phrase, the 12 or 24 words that restore a wallet, never leaves the device and is known only to its owner. A leak of shipping data therefore gives no access to funds. What it does reveal is sensitive in another way: who owns a hardware wallet, along with their name, phone number and address. That is exactly the raw material of phishing campaigns. In 2020, a comparable leak at rival Ledger exposed customer contact details and fed years of fake emails and threatening messages.

For those affected, the risk is not technical but human. The most common attempts take the form of an email announcing a security problem and inviting the recipient to enter their recovery phrase on a site imitating the manufacturer's, a call pretending to be support, or an unsolicited replacement device in the post. Two rules hold without exception: no manufacturer, no support desk and no exchange ever asks for a recovery phrase, and that phrase is only ever entered on the device itself. A wallet received without having been ordered must never be used.

What to watch: official statements from Trezor and ShipMonk on the exact scope of the breach, the individual notification of affected customers, and the shelf life of such lists, which often circulate for years after an incident. Anyone can check whether they fall inside the window, namely an order received in the 90 days before 8 August 2026, and stay particularly wary of any message mentioning their wallet in the coming months.

Crypto spot trading volume fell to about 429.0 billion dollars in July 2026, against 547.9 billion in June, a drop of 21.7 percent month on month, according to a survey of fourteen exchanges relayed on 12 August 2026. All fourteen tracked venues posted a decline. Binance remains first with 196.5 billion dollars, or 45.8 percent of the total, ahead of OKX at 41.6 billion and Bybit at 36.3 billion, the three together accounting for 64.0 percent of volume. The steepest falls came from Bitfinex, down 59.7 percent, Coinbase, down 26.4 percent, and Bybit, down 24.5 percent. The mildest decline was Uniswap, at 9.8 percent.

Spot volume measures purchases and sales settled immediately, as opposed to derivatives, futures and perpetual contracts, where traders exchange exposure to the price without holding the asset. It is the most direct gauge of real buying and selling activity. High volume generally means deep order books, tight spreads between bid and ask, and large orders absorbed without jolts. A quiet July or August is not unusual, as summer seasonality traditionally weighs on markets.

For a holder, thinner liquidity mainly translates into sharper price moves: with fewer orders on the other side, the same amount of money shifts the price further, up or down. The concentration on display, with close to half of all volume on a single venue, extends a longer trend in which activity clusters around a few players, raising a question about the ecosystem depending on a small number of intermediaries. These figures say nothing about where the price goes next.

What to watch: the August volume readings, which will show whether the July trough is seasonal or a more lasting withdrawal, and the gap between this falling spot activity and the flows recorded by US spot exchange traded funds, which follow a separate dynamic.

Police in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, said on 11 August 2026 that they had visited all 30 businesses that previously hosted a crypto kiosk in the city and found every one of them compliant with the ban that took effect on 1 July 2026. Detectives called on each site with a letter from Police Chief Michael Bowen and a copy of the law. Some machines are still physically in place but disconnected, while operators arrange removal. According to Detective Sergeant Tommy Massey, reports of crypto related scams have dropped sharply since the law came into force. Residents of the city had lost around 4.1 million dollars to such scams in the preceding six months.

A crypto kiosk, usually called a Bitcoin ATM, is a terminal placed in a shop that lets people buy bitcoin with cash, and sometimes sell it, at fees far above those of an exchange. These terminals became a standard tool for fraudsters: the victim, pressured over the phone, is sent to feed banknotes into the machine towards an address controlled by the scammer. Because a confirmed Bitcoin transaction is irreversible, the money cannot be clawed back, unlike a bank transfer that can sometimes be stopped in time.

For Tennessee residents, buying bitcoin with cash around the corner is no longer possible in the state, and the remaining routes are a regulated exchange, a broker or an over the counter trade. For the wider ecosystem, the measure shows a pattern: rather than targeting Bitcoin itself, several jurisdictions target the cash entry point, seen as hard to supervise. Tennessee is described as the second US state to ban these kiosks outright, after withdrawal caps and refund duties adopted elsewhere.

What to watch: the actual removal of the machines still sitting disconnected, any legal follow up for operators who failed to comply, and the trend in scam reports over the coming months. The open question is whether other states will choose an outright ban rather than the withdrawal caps already in place elsewhere.

The Securities and Exchange Commission called an open meeting for Friday 14 August 2026 at 10:00 a.m. New York time, with a single item on the agenda: proposing a tailored offering regime for certain investment contracts involving crypto assets, named Regulation Crypto. The draft sets out an exemption for small raises, in the region of 5 million dollars, a wider tier up to 75 million dollars with lighter disclosure duties, and an exit from securities law once a project is no longer driven by essential managerial efforts. The commission has only three members, all Republicans, since its last Democratic commissioner left in January 2026.

In the United States, an asset is treated as a security under the Howey test, drawn from a 1946 Supreme Court ruling: a security exists when an investor puts money into a common enterprise expecting profit from the efforts of others. Bitcoin falls outside that definition, having no issuer and no fundraising, and the CFTC treats it as a commodity. Until now the SEC has decided case by case, through enforcement actions and non binding staff guidance. A proposed rule is not a rule in force: it is published, opened to public comment, then rewritten before a second adoption vote.

For a bitcoin holder, nothing changes immediately: holding, taxation and the working of the network do not depend on this text. What is at stake concerns the companies around Bitcoin, custody, payments, mining and software tools, for which a written framework would replace today's uncertainty. A framework adopted by an agency rather than by Congress can still be revoked by a future commission without any act of law.

What to watch: publication of the text, which opens a comment period of 60 to 90 days, then the final adoption vote, which analysts do not expect before 2027. In parallel, the Senate is due to take up the CLARITY Act in September 2026, the bill on crypto market structure, whose progress will shape the real reach of the SEC's work.

United States Senate Majority Leader John Thune confirmed on 6 August 2026, through a spokesperson, that there would be no vote on the Digital Asset Market CLARITY Act before the summer break. Senators return to work on 14 September 2026. Democrats declined the procedural agreement that would have put the bill on the floor schedule, and several Republican senators also voiced their opposition.

The CLARITY Act aims to draw a clear line between the two United States financial regulators: the SEC for assets treated as securities and the CFTC for those treated as digital commodities. The bill passed the House of Representatives in July 2025 and was advanced by the Senate Banking Committee in May 2026 by 15 votes to 9. Since bitcoin is already placed on the digital commodity side, the law mostly concerns the status of other assets and the rules applying to trading platforms.

For someone holding bitcoin, nothing changes immediately: tax rules and platform obligations remain those in force. The delay mainly lengthens the uncertainty for companies in the sector, which are waiting for this framework before committing investment in the United States. The calendar works against the bill, because the closer the vote gets to the November 2026 midterm elections, the harder it becomes to gather the 60 votes out of 100 needed on the floor.

What to watch: the Senate returning on 14 September 2026 and the possible filing of a cloture motion, which would set the start of voting around 15 and 16 September. It will also be worth watching the fate of the ethics provision covering the crypto interests of public officials, one of the sticking points cited.