Cryptoccino — Saturday 25 July 2026

Strategy overhauls its bitcoin accounting with a ‘net bitcoin per share’ metric. The firm is reframing itself as a ‘digital credit’ business and introducing new KPIs designed to strip out debt and preferred-share claims so that common stockholders can see their actual BTC exposure. The change arrives as a wave of copycat bitcoin treasury companies sell holdings, repay debt, and quietly pivot to AI after their share prices collapsed. Saylor’s team is essentially trying to differentiate the original model from the wreckage of its imitators. decrypt coindesk coindesk

RWA trading overtakes crypto on Hyperliquid for the first time. Tokenised real-world assets, including stocks, commodities, and indices, accounted for more than half of Hyperliquid’s weekly trading volume, making it the platform’s largest category. ARK Invest flagged the milestone as a structural signal that onchain venues are broadening well beyond native crypto speculation. The shift is also the clearest live data point yet for how MiCA-adjacent RWA frameworks may redirect flows. cointelegraph_defi decrypt

MARA CEO says AI data centres now beat bitcoin mining on revenue per kilowatt. Fred Thiel disclosed that MARA is partnering with Starwood Capital to redirect compute capacity toward AI inference, citing materially higher margins per unit of electricity versus mining at current BTC prices. The pivot mirrors what smaller treasury operators are doing under duress, but MARA is doing it from a position of relative scale. It adds pressure on pure-play miners whose investment case rests on a BTC price recovery rather than operational diversification. cryptobriefing

ARK Invest’s Q2 report pegs bitcoin’s one-year realised volatility at 42%, near multi-year lows. The figure held even as BTC dropped 14% to a quarterly low of $58,544, suggesting the asset is maturing into a lower-volatility regime. For options desks and risk managers, a structurally calmer BTC changes how they size positions and hedge. Lower vol also undermines the case for wide bid-ask spreads on ETF options, which could compress market-maker revenue. cryptobriefing

Poolin files Chapter 11 with $173M in claims and a $52M stalking-horse bid for its Texas rigs. The Singapore-based pool, once the largest by hashrate, never recovered after freezing withdrawals in 2022 and now has around 11,700 users still holding IOUs. The Texas mining assets will go to auction with the stalking-horse as a floor, giving creditors at least a partial recovery path. The case is a clean post-mortem on the 2022 mining-debt cycle: overcapitalised at peak prices, caught with fixed costs when BTC halved. theblock coindesk decrypt

World Foundation raises $52.5M in a locked WLD token sale to scale its proof-of-human network. Pantera Capital led the round, with Bain Capital Crypto, Susquehanna, and Selini among the participants; tokens carry a one-year lockup. The proceeds are earmarked for expanding the iris-scanning ID infrastructure and developing tools that let AI agents verify human counterparties. The funding framing has shifted from ‘anti-bot identity’ to a direct play on the AI-agent economy, which is a more defensible pitch in the current climate. theblock coindesk decrypt

BitMEX and its co-founders face a proposed class action over an alleged insider trading desk and deliberate server outages. The suit names Arthur Hayes, Samuel Reed, and Benjamin Delo, alleging they ran a covert desk that traded against users and deliberately froze the platform during volatile periods to avoid losses on proprietary positions. It lands as the exchange itself winds down operations, leaving claimants chasing assets through a shuttered entity. Hayes has previously settled criminal charges with US authorities but the civil exposure here is structurally different. theblock coindesk

Odos Protocol announces it will shut down on 30 July, giving users one week to withdraw. The DEX aggregator offered no public explanation for the closure, which leaves roughly a week for users to retrieve assets before the interface goes dark. No indication of an exploit or regulatory action was given, making it an unusually opaque wind-down for a DeFi product. Users with positions on the protocol should treat this as urgent. cointelegraph_defi

India orders GitHub to pull three Bitchat repositories, citing use during protest-related internet shutdowns. The government gave GitHub a three-hour window to take down Jack Dorsey’s Bitcoin-linked mesh messaging app, which had been used to circumvent communications blackouts during domestic protests. The Internet Freedom Foundation called the order unconstitutional, arguing it exceeds the government’s statutory authority and threatens open-source code as protected speech. The repositories remain a live legal battleground. decrypt coindesk cointelegraph_regulation

Thailand’s SEC files a criminal complaint against Bitkub over alleged false disclosures tied to a 2021 hack. The regulator is targeting the exchange and two former directors over claims they misrepresented the scope of a cyberattack that put $50M in customer assets at risk. The complaint follows a multi-year investigation and marks a significant escalation in Southeast Asian exchange accountability. Criminal charges for disclosure failures, not just the hack itself, set a notable precedent. cointelegraph_regulation

The EU’s 21st Russia sanctions package names 14 crypto platforms, including HTX, for sanctions evasion. The package introduces a transaction ban on platforms across six jurisdictions and specifically accuses HTX, Justin Sun’s exchange, of ‘significantly frustrating’ the EU’s Russia measures, two months after the UK acted first. Chainalysis notes the package also creates a new third-country ban mechanism that could be applied prospectively to non-EU entities. The action is the most structurally significant crypto-sanctions escalation from Brussels since MiCA passed. coindesk cointelegraph_regulation decrypt chainalysis

Galaxy cuts Clarity Act passage odds to 30% as ethics language stalls negotiations before the August recess. Seven Democratic negotiators rejected the latest draft over what they called insufficient ethics guardrails and consumer protections, and Senate Majority Leader Thune has signalled the bill is unlikely to clear the chamber before the break. Crypto advocacy groups are pushing for a ‘last-ditch effort’ to salvage the market-structure legislation before the 2026 election calendar closes the window further. The White House separately told Senate Democrats to treat existing Trump crypto-limits concessions as a win and move on. theblock decrypt cointelegraph_regulation coindesk

EU bans Belarusian nationals from owning or controlling MiCA-regulated crypto firms from 25 August. The new rule bars Belarusian residents and nationals from holding ownership, control, or management positions at any exchange or crypto service provider regulated under MiCA. Affected entities will need to audit their cap tables and governance structures before the deadline. It is a quieter but operationally direct companion measure to the Russia sanctions package. cointelegraph_regulation

Wise plans to resubmit its national trust bank application using the GENIUS Act framework. The payments firm wants to join a small group of stablecoin-focused entities that have received conditional OCC approval since December, positioning itself to issue stablecoins under US federal oversight. The GENIUS Act framework gives applicants a clearer regulatory pathway than the patchwork of state licences most fintechs currently rely on. Wise’s move signals that non-crypto-native payment firms see the stablecoin rails as worth the compliance overhead. theblock

What else is grinding?

• A Polymarket account in the name of a Nigel Farage backer placed $9M in crypto on Trump’s election win and cashed out the profit, with the FT unable to confirm who funded or collected the account. decrypt
• Samsung confirmed it will add USDC and stablecoin support to Samsung Wallet, showing the mockup at Galaxy Unpacked without providing a launch timeline. decrypt
• Mirae Asset is repositioning its Korbit acquisition in South Korea as an ‘intelligent platform’, a rebranding that signals ambitions well beyond a conventional exchange licence. coindesk
• The Bitcoin Policy Institute has joined the US State Department’s Freedom Tech Excellence Program alongside Palantir and Anduril. theblock
• Bitwise’s onchain strategy team launched a non-custodial DeFi yield vault, the firm’s latest step in building out a retail-facing onchain product suite. cryptobriefing
• Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin secured two new distribution partnerships but saw on-chain transfer volume fall 25% over the same period, a tension the project has not yet addressed publicly. coindesk

Last sip. The Clarity Act has a 30% chance of passing and a shrinking calendar. Nobody is saying what happens to market structure legislation if it misses this window entirely.