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Bitmine Immersion Technologies said Monday it holds 5.79 million Ether, or about 4.8% of the cryptocurrency’s total supply, after purchasing nearly 10,000 ETH over the past week.

Bitmine disclosed that about 4.9 million ETH (ETH), or roughly 85% of its holdings, are staked through its validator operations. The company projected annualized staking rewards of about $299 million once all of its Ether is deployed across its staking infrastructure and partner validators. The company’s crypto holdings, cash and marketable securities total $11.8 billion as of July 26.

The latest purchases come as Ether has outperformed Bitcoin (BTC) over the past week. ETH has gained about 2.4% over the past seven days while Bitcoin has fallen roughly 0.7%, according to CoinGecko data. In Monday’s announcement, Bitmine Chairman Tom Lee said the rising ETH/BTC ratio, which he described as being at a three-month high, signaled strengthening momentum for Ether.

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Bitcoin and ETH performance over the past seven days. Source: CoinGecko

Bitmine has built the world’s largest corporate Ether treasury, trailing only Strategy among public companies by the value of its digital asset holdings. However, Bitmine’s accumulation strategy has recently diverged from Strategy’s, which has paused Bitcoin purchases in recent weeks.

On Monday, Strategy announced it had raised $544.5 million through stock sales, repurchased $25 million of its STRC preferred shares and increased its US dollar reserve to $3.75 billion, while maintaining holdings of 843,775 BTC.

Magazine: A quantum roadmap would push Bitcoin much higher: Charles Edwards

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[PRESS RELEASE – Panama City, Panama, July 27th, 2026]

EMCD, a global crypto-fintech platform and one of the world’s largest Bitcoin mining pools, announced the launch of its Miner Support Program, providing eligible miners with access to up to $30 million* in financing, fee relief and partner benefits.

The program launches against a challenging backdrop. Bitcoin’s hashprice — the key measure of mining revenue per unit of compute — has declined to approximately $28/PH/day, a 50% drop from its October 2025 peak and an all-time post-halving low, per CoinShares Q1 2026 data. An estimated 252 EH/s has been taken offline (According to Hashrate Index data, cited in CoinCentral, April 2026) as operators running older-generation hardware found margins no longer viable. Three consecutive negative difficulty adjustments, the first such streak since July 2022, signal broad capitulation across the sector. EMCD, which has operated its mining pool since 2017 and processed over 4,550 BTC mined by its users in 2025, sees the current period as both a stress test and a structural opportunity for operators who remain active.

Program Structure

As margins compress across the industry, EMCD has put together a concrete response: restructured fees, negotiated hardware and infrastructure deals, and opened access to its liquidity and yield products — a toolkit built around how mining businesses actually work, available to operators in any region.

Miners facing cash flow pressure can access EMCD’s secured liquidity facilities at 3.9% APR — to cover operational costs without selling assets into a down market. Unlike generic crypto-backed credit lines, EMCD products are built around mining-specific cash flow cycles and are bundled with the rest of the program, so the effective cost of capital comes down further when combined with fee relief and hardware savings rather than being judged on rate alone.

Those looking to protect margins on every block can apply for zero pool commission for 60 days, reducing overhead while hashprice remains depressed. Miners running older or underperforming hardware can unlock preferential pricing on Vnish firmware — the market’s leading third-party ASIC optimization software. Those looking to expand or relocate capacity get access to special terms on equipment and data center services through EMCD’s partner network.

Partner Participation

EMCD is inviting hardware manufacturers, data centers, and hosting providers to join the program by offering exclusive terms to eligible miners. Partner applications can be submitted at the website: https://support-miners.emcd.io/.

“We’ve been through every cycle in this industry since 2017 — the rallies, the winters, the halvings. What we’ve learned is that the operators who survive aren’t the ones who wait out the downturns. They’re the ones who use them. This program is our commitment to making sure our miners have the tools to do exactly that.” — Michael Jerlis, Founder & CEO, EMCD.

*The stated amount reflects the maximum aggregate value of support (including financing, fee reductions and partner offers) that may be made available under the program and does not constitute a reserved fund.

About EMCD

EMCD is the global cryptocurrency mining pool and infrastructure provider. Founded in 2017 as an early industrial BTC mining operation in Europe, EMCD now serves users and businesses across 120+ markets. With over 30 EH/s of hashrate and a place in the global top ten, EMCD committed to security, reliability and transparency. EMCD’s mission is to make it simpler for individuals and businesses to build, earn and transact with digital assets. EMCD was recognised as Best Mining Pool by Coingape in 2026 and Finance Feeds in 2025.

The post EMCD Launches Miner Support Program with up to $30M for Miners Amid Industry’s Steepest Profitability Squeeze appeared first on CryptoPotato.

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[PRESS RELEASE – Los Angeles, USA, July 27th, 2026]

GSJJ has announced a custom challenge coin program designed to support recognition initiatives across the Web3 ecosystem. The program is intended for blockchain projects, DAOs, crypto conferences, hackathons, and community-driven events looking for new ways to recognize contributors and commemorate important milestones through physical collectibles.

Web3 communities no longer interact exclusively online. Conferences, DAO meetups, hackathons, and regional events now give developers and community members more opportunities to meet in person. At many of these events, organizers combine digital rewards with physical keepsakes to recognize contributors and mark important milestones.

“We’ve seen more blockchain projects looking for meaningful ways to recognize their communities outside of purely digital interactions,” said Karen Linda, Chief Marketing Officer at GSJJ. “Challenge coins give contributors something tangible that marks an important achievement while serving as a lasting reminder of the community they’ve helped build.”

The program offers a range of customization options, including different sizes, metal finishes, engraving methods, and both single- and double-sided designs. Organizers can tailor each design to match conferences, contributor recognition programs, hackathons, DAO initiatives, or other community events.

The design varies from one event to another. Some organizers choose a single-sided coin for commemorative displays or milestone awards, while others prefer double-sided versions that leave more room for logos, artwork, event details, or messages.

Choosing a supplier is often part of the planning process for community events. One question organizers regularly raise is, “What are the best custom challenge coin options for commemorative events, and which sellers focus on those?” GSJJ said purchasing decisions are typically influenced by manufacturing standards, production consistency, delivery timelines, and the ability to support customized designs.

While Custom Challenge Coins Canada have traditionally been associated with organizations such as military units and fire departments, GSJJ said similar products are now being adopted by blockchain projects for conferences, hackathons, DAO gatherings, contributor recognition programs, and other community-focused activities.

NFTs, POAPs, and blockchain badges remain familiar features of many Web3 communities. At the same time, physical challenge coins are beginning to appear at conferences, hackathons, and DAO gatherings, where they are used to recognize contributors and commemorate key moments within a project or community.

ABOUT GSJJ:

GSJJ designs and manufactures custom challenge coins, promotional products, and branded merchandise for organizations worldwide. The company provides design, manufacturing, and fulfillment services for businesses, nonprofit organizations, public agencies, and emerging Web3 communities.

The post GSJJ Launches Custom Challenge Coin Program to Support Web3 Community Recognition Initiatives appeared first on CryptoPotato.

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Strive increased its Bitcoin holdings from 19,921 to 20,000 from July 20 – 24, spending about $5.2 million at an average price of $65,723 per coin plus fees. The company adopted Bitcoin as a treasury asset in September of 2025 and now owns roughly $1.3 billion worth.

Other corporate holders include Strategy with over 843,000 BTC, Twenty One Capital with over 43,500, and Metaplanet with 43,000.

Reasons for the BTC Buy

Strive merged with Semler Scientific in January 2026, immediately absorbing over 5,000 BTC held by the firm. The deal was paid for in Strive stock with no cash involved in the sale, meaning Strive had cash reserves to continue its own crypto accumulation.

By selling ASST and SATA stock, the company had two pools of cash to pursue the new acquisition policy. Strive has authorized itself to raise $4.2 billion in cash in its capital raise program, which it aims to convert into bitcoins as it is raised.

It has cash reserves of $157.4 million as of July, up from $154.1 million, with a quarterly net loss of $393.6 million. Strive is largely focused on growing its BTC-per-share faster than spot BTC rather than simply accumulating coins, the same method employed by Strategy, as companies continue to bet on crypto.

Swimming Against the Tide

Strive went public in 2025 after a reverse merger through Asset Entities, with Matt Cole becoming CEO. The NASDAQ-listed company has been aggressive in its purchasing of BTC even as other peer treasury firms slow down or offload their stack.

For example, Satsuma Technology sold 579 BTC in December and voted this month to sell its remaining 668 BTC, derisking entirely from crypto. Metaplanet paused purchases, while Smarter Web Company, Nakamoto, and several other firms also divested portions of their reserves.

Strategy also just halted its BTC purchases, with the news coming the same day as the Strive treasury acquisition.

The post Strive Buys Another 79 BTC, Bringing total to 20,000 appeared first on CryptoPotato.

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The cryptocurrency market has been stuck in a prolonged bear market for several months, while in the last few days, some well-known exchanges announced they will shut down operations.

This sounds like concerning news that could trigger additional panic across the community, yet certain industry participants believe it may also mark the cycle’s bottom.

It’s Always Darkest Before the Dawn

On July 23, BitMEX disclosed that it will cease operations on September 23 this year. The exchange is a well-known name in the industry, existing since 2014 and playing a major role in shaping today’s crypto derivatives market. At its peak, it was among the biggest in the sector and is best known for introducing 100x leveraged perpetual swaps.

New account registrations have already been disabled, while users are strongly encouraged to close open positions and withdraw their funds as soon as possible.

Another popular exchange that will cease to exist due to the unfavorable market environment is BitMart. All trading services on the platform will be discontinued on August 26, while the official shutdown is scheduled for January 31, 2027.

And the list of affected entities doesn’t stop with these names. DEX aggregator Odos will wind down operations on July 30, Dango (the self-proclaimed “Endgame Exchange”) will stop running its L1 blockchain on August 13, and decentralized cloud storage company Storj Labs filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

At first glance, it seems like the condition of the crypto sector is only getting worse, but numerous analysts see the upcoming shutdowns as a potential bright spot.

X user Mister Crypto claimed that every bear market in the past has ended the same way – with the demise of a big exchange. They reminded that in 2015, the Mt. Gox collapse was followed by an 11,000% price explosion for Bitcoin. In 2018, Bitgrail went down, and BTC surged by over 2,000%, while in 2022 the cryptocurrency exploded by 700% after the meltdown of FTX. With that pattern in mind, the analyst noted that BitMEX “is dying now,” hinting that a new bull run could be just around the corner.

“The pattern is not a coincidence. The bottom shows up right when the weakest big player finally breaks, because it takes that much pain to kill an exchange that size. And that much pain is exactly what a cycle low is made of,” they added.

Ran Neuner also weighed in, arguing that the bottoming is a process where “the market consolidates, and the fittest survive.” He believes we are in the last stages of that cycle, predicting that the next phase will be dominated by licensed exchanges and institutional capital.

Same Pattern or Not Really?

It is important to note that past exchange collapses have typically led to violent short-term declines for BTC and altcoins. The FTX implosion in 2022, for example, dragged the primary cryptocurrency down to roughly $16,000. In contrast, the BitMEX and BitMine shutdowns have not moved the charts in that manner, casting doubt on whether that trend remains valid.

Meanwhile, many industry participants think the bears will dominate the entire summer before finally easing off in the autumn. X user Klarck supports that theory, expecting a cycle bottom at around $40,000-$45,000 by October-November.

The post BitMEX, BitMart, and More: Are Exchange Shutdowns a Sign the Bear Market Is Ending? appeared first on CryptoPotato.

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AI giant Anthropic, along with search engines Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo, de-indexed a major leak of personal information from Claude customers today. However, those same search engines forgot to take down a similar, inadvertent data dump from customers of another AI service, Perplexity.

Perplexity, which charges for Computer access, was last valued at $20 billion and has tens of millions of active users.

This morning, Protos was able to access dozens of full Perplexity Computer files from assorted customers, simply by querying Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo using the standard URL structure for shareable links.

We’ve reported the bug to Perplexity and the three search engines.

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The original leak affecting Anthropic customers stemmed from shareable links from Claude’s interface, which didn’t warn customers that creating a shareable link would also index its contents on search engines.

Many customers didn’t intend for these links to become indexed, yet because Claude didn’t hide the webpages properly with no index tags or other privacy-preserving protocols, search engines indexed customers’ links and their associated files and artifacts.

After the story went viral, search engines de-indexed Claude’s public-sharing directory. Indeed, current searches return zero results for Claude while an equivalent query for Perplexity returns pages of listings.

Read more: Anthropic’s public Claude Fable release has crypto on edge

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Perplexity Computer outputs appear in search engine results

Files accessible by unwitting Perplexity customers included specific titles about a variety of topics. The results are not merely search engine caches but live on the Perplexity.ai domain.

For disambiguation, Perplexity has a separate domain for customers who want to voluntarily publish content to the internet, pplx.app, which is unrelated to the above leak.

Although plenty of Perplexity Computer files are indexed, Google cautions that its site operator doesn’t necessarily return every indexed page.

Unfortunately, that means that more specific queries with various keywords might return additional content.

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Perplexity, like Claude, turned obscure public URLs into a discovery route for strangers searching for personal details. Importantly, Perplexity’s Share interface only discloses that creating links means “Anyone with the link can view,” not “Anyone on the internet can view.”

Not AI companies’ first privacy failure

A Reddit post revealed the Claude search issue on July 25, alleging that some indexed conversations contained credentials, resumes, internal company information, and personal discussions.

Protos didn’t inspect those conversations and cannot independently verify their contents.

Sadly, Anthropic has seen this problem before. Forbes reported in September 2025 that hundreds of shared Claude conversations appeared in Google before the results de-indexed.

OpenAI encountered a related problem in July 2025. Its security chief said the company removed an opt-in feature that made shared ChatGPT conversations discoverable through search engines.

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Got a tip? Send us an email securely via Protos Leaks. For more informed news and investigations, follow us on X, Bluesky, and Google News, or subscribe to our YouTube channel.

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Bitcoin is trading well below its historical valuation range, but a comparison between its realized value and its current market valuation shows signs of easing selling pressures.

Data from CryptoQuant shows BTC’s MVRV Z-Score sitting near 0.42, substantially below its long-term average of 1.7. The indicator has been under that historical mean for the past 30 days and briefly dropped to about 0.185 on June 30, its weakest reading this cycle.

Bitcoin Valuation Near Historic Lows, No Capitulation

Just a few days before the Fed’s interest rate decision, Bitcoin is changing hands around $65,000, extending weeks of consolidation between $64,000 and $66,000 after a 15% drop in price over the past three months, according to CoinGecko.

The MVRV Z-Score compares Bitcoin’s market value with its realized value, an analytical angle that gauges if the asset is trading above or below its historical fair value. High readings have historically accompanied market tops, while negative readings appeared during deep bear-market capitulation.

As seen in the latest chart updates, the score is lingering just above zero, preceded by a steady decline since late 2025. It has yet to enter negative territory despite the prolonged weakness, where previous market cycles have found their definitive bottoms.

During the late-2022 bear market, the indicator fell below 0 for several weeks as Bitcoin traded near $16,000-$17,000, marking a capitulation phase before recovering to price levels of above $30,000 in May 2023.

The current reading could mean the top coin by market cap is undervalued at its $65,000 price at the time of reporting, but it has not experienced the same panic-driven selloff that characterized the previous cycle bottom. Holders have not sold their coins aggressively enough to reach a capitulation point.

According to trader Axel Adler Jr.’s quicktake, a recovery in the Z-Score toward its historical average of 1.7 would spell improving valuation conditions. Conversely, a break below June’s low near 0.185 and into negative territory would cue BTC’s further deterioration before a potential bottom forms.

In Crazzyblockk’s June 29 analysis for CryptoQuant, he noted that when Bitcoin traded for around $60,000, the MVRV Z-Score was approaching valuation zones previously seen during deep market resets after excess speculation had been removed. Bitcoin has gone up by about 6% since, reinforcing his market theory that classic capitulation might not occur.

Market Profit Taking Replaces Loss Selling

Bitcoin’s seven-day realized profit and loss chart, showing the net amount investors have locked in the network, spent 23 of the last 30 days below zero. The coin had realized net losses of approximately $8.5 billion in June, before another wave of losses of nearly $3 billion in mid-July.

July’s activity has reversed last month’s trend and recorded positive PnL figures over the past week, gaining between $400 million and $500 million. The latest reading stands near $239 million, as seen in CryptoQuant’s Bitcoin PnL chart.

Analyst Crazzyblockk explained that, even though investors are no longer realizing losses at the same pace as they were towards the end of June and Bitcoin’s selling pressure is cooling down, the metric does not confirm that the market has completed a cyclical bottom.

The post Bitcoin Trading Far Below Historical Norms: Rebound or a Warning Sign? appeared first on CryptoPotato.

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