CoinDesk
Crypto's legislative, institutional and security fronts all moved in the same week. The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act missed the Senate's August procedural window but will get another shot after the September return. Strategy sold 1,690 BTC and raised $653M from stock sales, its fifth disposal this year totalling around 7,000 BTC. About 210,000 BTC moved out of long-term holder wallets, the largest wave since December 2024, as an unauthorised attack on Coldcard cold-storage wallets rippled through self-custody. A controversial fork tied to BIP-110 mined just two blocks before stalling, and developer Luke Dashjr was removed as a Bitcoin Improvement Proposal editor amid the fallout.
Why it matters
Wall Street's bid kept narrowing. Fidelity moved to add staking and quarterly payouts to its nearly $900M ether ETF, with 85% of gross staking rewards retained by the fund. Goldman Sachs agreed to buy NEOS for $2.25B, picking up derivatives-based and bitcoin-income ETF exposure. Mastercard completed its $1.8B acquisition of stablecoin infrastructure firm BVNK, a deal CoinDesk reported was fought over by both TradFi payments incumbents and crypto-native companies. Grayscale abandoned plans for Cardano, Polkadot and Hedera ETFs, and Securitize shares fell 20% after a first print as a public company missed expectations, a useful snapshot of an institutional pull-in that is selective rather than blanket.
Market impact
The institutional-vs-project split is the live tension. More than 100 crypto projects have folded in 2026 in what CoinDesk has framed as a dot-com-style shakeout, and BitMEX's attempted sale collapsed after buyers balked at founder ownership and a shrinking business. On the flow side, miners added roughly $1.78B of selling pressure while whales and CME leveraged funds shifted structurally bullish: wallets holding more than 10,000 BTC hit a six-month high and funds moved to a net-long position. U.S. spot BTC ETFs absorbed roughly $754M during the Coldcard-driven transfer window. Bybit sued North Korea's Reconnaissance General Bureau and the Lazarus Group over last year's $1.5B hack and secured a preliminary U.S. court order freezing assets tied to the theft, putting state-actor crypto theft in front of a U.S. judge for the first time.
Frequently asked questions
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What happened to the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act last week?
The bill missed the Senate's August procedural window and will get another shot after lawmakers return in September. The SEC also delayed a planned tokenised-securities innovation exemption amid concerns from the White House and Wall Street that it could complicate the Clarity negotiations.
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How much bitcoin did Strategy sell this week, and why?
Strategy sold 1,690 BTC and raised $653M from sales of its common stock. It was the company's fifth disposal of 2025, bringing the year's total to roughly 7,000 BTC, a sharp reversal for the firm that helped pioneer the bitcoin-treasury trade.
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How big was the Coldcard wallet attack in BTC terms?
Roughly 210,000 BTC moved out of long-term-holder wallets during the attack, the largest such wave since December 2024. Some users shifted to freshly generated wallets, others appeared to move into regulated custodians or ETFs, which absorbed about $754M during the period.
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Which Wall Street crypto moves defined the week?
Fidelity filed to add staking and quarterly payouts to its nearly $900M ether ETF. Goldman Sachs agreed to buy NEOS for $2.25B, adding derivatives-based and bitcoin-income ETF exposure. Mastercard completed its $1.8B acquisition of stablecoin-rail firm BVNK.
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What was the outcome of the Bybit v. North Korea lawsuit?
Bybit sued North Korea's Reconnaissance General Bureau and the Lazarus Group over last year's $1.5B hack. It secured a preliminary U.S. court order freezing identified assets tied to the theft, putting state-actor crypto theft in front of a U.S. judge for the first time.
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