News Brief
Published Jul 29, 2026 12:58
News Brief

Bitcoin News - July 29, 2026 at 11:00 AM

Bitcoin News Jul 29, 2026 11:00 Scheduled 11 outlets
114Articles 114Extracted 0Failed 27.6mRuntime

Top of Mind

The week's dominant story is the Clarity Act's near-collapse before August recess. Senate Majority Leader Thune said the bill lacks votes; Galaxy's Alex Thorn cut passage odds to 30% from 50%; Polymarket sits at 38%. The sticking point is ethics language — Democrats want state AGs to enforce restrictions on Trump-family crypto activity; Republicans won't accept that. Without legislation, the next administration retains full discretion to reverse friendly SEC/CFTC posture. Markets already priced the deterioration: Coinbase shares fell after Citi cut its target on Clarity Act concerns. This is the single most important policy overhang for Bitcoin and crypto equities into year-end.

Market Structure

  • BTC touched $63,018 intraday (11-day low) before recovering to ~$64,400, driven by Asia chip-stock contagion — South Korea's KOSPI fell 10.8%, triggering circuit breakers — and ~$510M in crypto long liquidations over 24 hours. The 200-week moving average continues to act as resistance.
  • Spot Bitcoin ETFs posted four straight outflow sessions totaling $526M, erasing roughly half of the preceding 7-day $1B inflow streak. BlackRock's IBIT drove most of the two-day, $465M leg. Morgan Stanley's Bitcoin Trust was the lone holdout with continued inflows; AUM now ~$391M since April. Cumulative net inflows remain $51.3B; total AUM $77.2B.
  • VanEck's ChainCheck flags no true bottom signal yet: 1-month put/call IV skew at +11.4pp (83rd percentile); perp funding at +4.5% annualized vs. +8.4% long-run norm. Both signals map to below-average forward returns. VanEck says a skew past +15pp or negative funding would be the tell.
  • On-chain: BTC supply in profit recovering to ~57.5% from a 2026 low of 46.2%, but CryptoQuant warns a prior false recovery (April-June) already failed once. LTH-SOPR 30-day SMA has been below 1.0 for 50+ days. Dormant BTC movement hit a 4-year low in Q2 per Galaxy — OG distribution appears to have slowed.

Policy and Institutions

  • Clarity Act timeline effectively dead before August recess per Thune; Democrats oppose Republican ethics enforcement structure (see Top of Mind). SEC Chair Atkins publicly backed the bill; Goldman, Fidelity, and Charles Schwab also supportive. Democrats' counter — state AG enforcement — is a non-starter for the White House.
  • Trump financial disclosure: $1.16B+ in 2025 crypto income — $526.8M from World Liberty Financial token sales, $635M in "Celebration Coins" royalties, $33M+ received in Bitcoin. Still holds ~15.75B WLF tokens worth ~$900M. White House denies conflicts of interest. Directly fueling Democratic opposition to the Clarity Act's ethics carve-outs.
  • Russia moving fast on crypto infrastructure: Bank of Russia published draft "organized trading" rules for crypto exchanges and digital depositories. Sberbank targeting crypto wallet, custody, and depository build-out by December. State Duma crypto market bill expected to take effect September.
  • Circle won a U.S. banking license (scope unspecified, single-sourced FT, paywalled) and acquired IBM's ~1,000 blockchain patent portfolio, making it the largest U.S. blockchain patent holder. A defensive IP moat as USDC faces competition from Open USD (IBM is a backer), Visa, and Stripe.

Network and Industry

  • Bitcoin Security Consortium launched: Strategy, BlackRock, Coinbase, Fidelity, ARK, Anchorage, Block, Blockstream, and Galaxy pledged $15M over three years for quantum-hardening R&D. Galaxy separately committed $5M in grants. Capriole's Charles Edwards argues a credible quantum roadmap could push price "double digits" quickly. Sources disagree on timeline: Adam Back says 20-40 years; Bernstein says 3-5 years.
  • Miner AI pivot accelerating: Hut 8 signed a second 15-year lease at Beacon Point (704 MW contracted, FT reports Nvidia leasing the campus for up to $50B); IREN disclosed $2.8B in cloud contracts; Core Scientific added AMD for 500 MW scaling to 2.5 GW; MARA acquired a 2 GW Texas site. Bernstein registers one new miner-AI deal per week in July, totaling 7.5+ GW / ~$150B contracted. Bitcoin-focused miners (Riot, MARA, CleanSpark) sold off alongside AI-exposed names on AI capex concerns.
  • Poolin filed Chapter 11 in New Jersey; estimated liabilities $100M-$500M; seeking court approval for $52M stalking-horse sale of two West Texas sites to Thor CALAP. Once the world's largest pool, now 0.2% hashrate share. BitMEX announced September shutdown; BitMart following. Industry consolidating around top-5 platforms (~80% of spot volume).
  • BIP459 (DahLIAS full Schnorr signature aggregation) posted to Bitcoin-Dev by Fabian Jahr. 64-byte aggregate signature regardless of signer count; interactive, requires coordinator. Potential CISA application but consensus change is out of scope of this BIP.

Macro Linkages

  • Fed rate decision (July 29) is the binary: CME FedWatch shows ~31-34% chance of a 25bp hike; Citadel Securities expects a hike. US 2-year yield at 4.31%, 30-year testing 5% resistance. Grayscale's Pandl argues Bitcoin may have already bottomed if the Fed holds — a rate hike would pressure that thesis directly.
  • US-Iran conflict drove the week's volatility: Brent briefly topped $100; WTI near $82 after a pause in strikes allowed a partial recovery. Bitcoin tracked risk assets — spiking toward $66K on Iran pause news Monday, falling to $63K when chip-stock contagion hit Tuesday. The Strait of Hormuz remains a live oil/inflation tail risk.
  • Asia chip-stock crash was the proximate trigger for Tuesday's flush: KOSPI -10.8%, SK Hynix -14.8%, Kioxia -18.3%. AI hyperscaler capex sustainability ($725-730B combined 2026 guidance for Alphabet/Microsoft/Amazon/Meta) is the underlying concern, compounded by Chinese open-source AI (Kimi K3) benchmarking competitively against proprietary Western models.

Standouts

  • Anthropic's unreleased Claude Mythos broke HAWK post-quantum signature scheme, dropping key-recovery cost from 2^64 to 2^38 ops — directly relevant to any chain evaluating quantum-resistant signature migration.
  • Morgan Stanley launched spot ETH (MSSE) and SOL (MSOL) ETFs at 0.14% — lowest fee in market — with staking passthrough, extending its crypto ETP suite beyond Bitcoin.
  • Ionic Digital surged 25% on Nasdaq debut (ticker IOND), formed from Celsius Mining's assets, now holding 2,861 BTC while pivoting to AI leases; $2.75B implied valuation.
  • Apple sued in California federal court after fake Sparrow Wallet app drained $1.8M in Bitcoin from three users; plaintiff reported the fraud, Apple took no action, a second user lost $840K nine days later.
  • H1 2026 set a record for crypto exploit incidents — over $1B lost, DPRK actors responsible for ~$600M; Blockaid flags AI-agent exploits as the emerging H2 vector.