Bitcoin (BTC) heads into the end of July juggling volatility catalysts as the Federal Reserve reacts to US inflation.

Key points:

• The Fed will deliver its latest decision on interest rates as US bond yields spike, with markets seeing a September hike as likely. 
• June PCE inflation is due on Thursday after hitting a three-year high of 4.1% last month
• Signs of a shift in the equities uptrend places the focus on Bitcoin’s macro correlation.
• Whales exchange inflows cool by 44% since June

Markets remain split on rate outlook

Attention turns once more to the US Federal Reserve this week, with the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), chaired by Kevin Warsh, set to announce its latest interest rate decision on Wednesday, July 29.

A combination of geopolitical tensions and persistent inflation pressures has reshaped expectations for Fed policy and put the possibility of further rate hikes back on the table as the US 2-year Treasury yield climbed to 4.3% last week. The latest data from the CME Group’s FedWatch Tool currently sees a 31% chance of a hike this week, with a hike at the September meeting having odds as high as 50%.

Fed target rate probabilities (screenshot). Source: CME Group

These rate hike expectations were tempered slightly as oil prices dropped 8% in the early hours of Monday as the US and Iran paused strikes. Rate hike odds therefore shifted from 37.4% to 33.7%. Ongoing developments in the Middle East thus continue to introduce volatility into the macroeconomic outlook, even as PPI inflation data released earlier in the month came in below expectations.

Fed target rate probability comparison for July FOMC meeting (screenshot). Source: CME Group

Commenting, trading resource Mosaic Asset Company also noted a pending upward breakout in 30-year bonds. Although the long end of the bond curve now plays a diminished role in funding the US government, this could notionally add to pressure on Warsh as he shapes his language at the post-FOMC press conference.

“The 30-year Treasury yield is also testing a key breakout level once again. In May, the 30-year yield saw a false break above the 5% level which has served as resistance since late 2023,” it summarized in the latest edition of its regular newsletter, The Market Mosaic.

US 30-year bond-yield data. Source: Mosaic Asset Company

Even before the latest turmoil, new Fed chair Warsh had steered clear of dovish language on the economy and kept his post-FOMC statement and press conference notably brief.

“Inflation remains elevated relative to the Committee’s 2 percent goal, in part reflecting supply shocks that have driven price increases in certain sectors, including energy,” he said at the time.

PCE inflation seen falling from three-year high

Beyond the FOMC, markets will be watching the Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) index on Thursday for fresh signals over the impact of the US-Iran war on inflation trends. The June print of the index, currently sits at three-year highs.

PCE volatility can have a snap impact on risk-asset performance as traders reprice potential Fed reactions. June’s release coincided with Bitcoin dropping to macro lows around $58,000.

Prefacing its latest analysis, the International Monetary Economics Network (IMEN) predicted that PCE would be moderately lower compared to May’s 4.1% year-on-year tally. “U.S. inflation: We currently expect June PCE inflation to be 3.7% year‑over‑year,” it wrote on X. 

US PCE inflation data (screenshot). Source: Bureau of Economic Analysis

Correlation between Bitcoin and equities remains absent

On higher timeframes, correlations between Bitcoin and major equity indices have largely disappeared. Data from TradingView currently puts the daily correlation between BTC/USD and the S&P 500 with a 20-week loopback window as practically absent, at its lowest levels since March. Against the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index, meanwhile, its current correlation coefficient of 0.11 was last observed in mid-February. While correlations on the weekly timeframe move slowly, bearish geopolitical and macro events have the potential to make the two asset classes move in lockstep again.

BTC/USD one-week chart with rolling 20-week stocks correlation. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

For now, corporate earnings in the US have continued to surpass expectations. However, given the historically high valuations, this is unlikely to shield the market from potential pullbacks. Several major US tech stocks saw significant drawdowns last week. The Magnificent 7 falling by an aggregate 5.3% through Friday after $GOOGL and $TSLA had already suffered sell-offs earlier in the week.

In spite of this, “Alphabet, $GOOGL , is the single largest margin contributor after significantly beating earnings estimates,” the Kobeissi Letter commented on the topic at the weekend. 

“Meanwhile, 86% of reporting S&P 500 firms have so far beaten EPS estimates, while 80% have exceeded revenue expectations. AI is driving historic earnings growth.”

S&P 500 net profit-margin data. Source: The Kobeissi Letter on X.com

Mosaic Asset Company highlighted the risks that the rate environment may exert on US equities.  

“Rising rates across the yield curve could keep pressuring stock prices, where indexes like the S&P 500 and Nasdaq peaked in early June and are now losing key support levels. At the same time, market breadth is deteriorating while the backdrop for seasonality is transitioning from a bullish tailwind to bearish headwind. Seasonality during mid-term election years also tends to produce lower average returns and larger drawdowns.”

With these emerging hurdles, the S&P 500 is at risk of losing its bullish setup altogether, Mosaic warns.

“The S&P already lost one key support level with the 50-day moving average (MA – black line). If trendline support in the triangle gives way, that could set up a test of the 200-day MA (green line) that’s currently near the 7,000 level (or 5% downside from current levels),” it added alongside an explanatory chart.

S&P 500 data. Source: Mosaic Asset Company

On shorter time frames, the picture remains fluid, with a pause in hostilities between the US and Iran providing a bullish impulse across risk assets. US WTI crude oil dropped as low as $83 per barrel to start the week, having previously eyed $95.

“The market is beginning to price-in a peace deal again,” Kobeissi responded.

CFDs on US WTI crude oil one-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

“Boring” BTC price range tests 50-month trend line

Bitcoin went on to seal new local highs after Sunday’s weekly close, reaching $65,680 on Bitstamp. Still in a familiar range, BTC/USD battled its 50-month exponential moving average (EMA) trend line, having previously flipped it to resistance in a copycat move from the 2022 bear market.

BTC/USD one-day chart with 50-month EMA. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

Commenting on the current market setup, trader and analyst Rekt Capital flagged resurgent sell-side pressure.

“The more seller-dominant the volume becomes while Bitcoin is at resistance, the greater the chances for a rejection from here,” he warned X followers on Sunday.

Rekt Capital brought the 200-week simple moving average (SMA) into the equation, describing price as “sandwiched” between it and its 50-month counterpart.

“Continued price compression here is unsustainable and will eventually force major volatility,” he forecast. 

“And if the seller volume keeps coming in at this rate, then there’ll likely be a breakout on seller volume to precede a rejection from this local resistance area.”

BTC/USD one-week chart. Source: Rekt Capital on X.com

Binance whale inflows nearly halve since mid-June

Commenting on the FOMC meeting and its impact on crypto markets, onchain analytics platform CryptoQuant sees a potential knock-on effect for sell-side pressure on major exchanges.

Related: BTC supply in profit eyes 60%, but analysis hints recovery may ‘roll back over’

According to their data, BTC inflows from whales to Binance, have dropped by up to 44% since June 12, while retail inflows fell 22%.

“This leaves retail inflows at roughly twice the level of whale inflows, with a gap of $3.9 billion,” contributor Amr Taha wrote in a blog post on Monday. 

“The divergence suggests that the composition of BTC transfers into Binance has shifted: retail participants are currently significantly more active than whales in sending BTC to the exchange.”

Bitcoin whale inflows to Binance (screenshot). Source: CryptoQuant

Taha described the FOMC meeting as a “major macro catalyst” that could reshape the approach of all investor cohorts to the market.

“With retail inflows now running at 2x whale inflows, Wednesday’s Fed decision could provide an important test of whether the current divergence between the two BTC cohorts persists or begins to converge,” he concluded.

As Cointelegraph reported, Binance saw single-day withdrawals of over 9,000 BTC last week.

“Crypto + AI” is the new “blockchain + [anything].” A desperate rebrand for failing business models, and investors aren’t buying it.

The Pattern We’ve Seen Before

2017: Every company added “blockchain” to their name and watched their stock price triple.

Kodak became KodakCoin. Long Island Iced Tea became Long Blockchain Corp. A company that made fruit juice rebranded to blockchain and saw its shares surge 200% overnight.

None of it was real. All of it eventually collapsed.

2026: The same thing is happening with AI. Except this time, it’s crypto companies doing the rebranding—and it’s failing faster.

What’s Actually Happening Right Now

Bloomberg reported it today: the once-hot market for cryptocurrency treasury stocks has imploded. Companies that bet their entire identity on Bitcoin accumulation are now pivoting to artificial intelligence to win back investors.

The numbers are brutal:

K Wave Media, a former Bitcoin accumulator that shifted to data center development, has seen its shares fall 71% since rebooting in May.

Satsuma Technology approved the full liquidation of its 668 BTC. The move was so drastic it triggered the company’s delisting from the London Stock Exchange. A company deleted itself from a major exchange to exit crypto.

Sequans Communications sold 1,025 BTC, along with almost 80% of its remaining holdings, just to repay convertible debt.

MARA Holdings and Bitdeer have been selling Bitcoin to repay debts while simultaneously redirecting resources toward AI data centers.

Even Strategy, formerly MicroStrategy, the loudest evangelist for the corporate Bitcoin treasury model, sold approximately 3,620 BTC and authorized further sales. They still hold over 840,000 BTC, making them the largest corporate holder. But even the true believer is selling.

The corporate Bitcoin treasury model isn’t just struggling. It’s unwinding in real time.

Why The AI Pivot Isn’t Working

Here’s what these companies are betting on: if we say “AI” enough times, investors will forget we said “Bitcoin” and give us another chance.

It’s not working. K Wave Media’s 71% decline happened after the pivot, not before.

Why? Because investors aren’t stupid. They’ve seen this movie before.

When a company pivots its entire identity to chase a hot trend, it signals one thing: the original strategy failed, and management has no real conviction about what comes next.

A Bitcoin treasury company that suddenly loves AI data centers isn’t a tech innovator. It’s a company trying to survive by attaching itself to whatever narrative is currently attracting capital.

The market can tell the difference between a genuine AI company and a crypto company that bought a few Nvidia chips and updated its press release.

Turns out, so can Bloomberg.

Brian Armstrong Saw This Coming

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said it this week, publicly:

Crypto startups that rebrand to AI are missing the point. Blockchain technology isn’t competing with AI; it’s the infrastructure that will underpin future automation.

Armstrong’s argument is precise: these aren’t two separate things you can choose between. AI needs infrastructure. Blockchain provides trustless, verifiable infrastructure for AI agents, AI transactions, AI governance.

Companies pivoting from “crypto” to “AI” as if they’re alternatives are making a category error. And they’re making it because they’re panicking, not because they have a strategy.

The companies that will survive aren’t the ones that abandoned crypto for AI. They’re the ones that understood crypto is the infrastructure for AI and built accordingly.

The Real Problem: Business Models Built On Hype

Let’s be honest about what the corporate Bitcoin treasury model actually was.

Companies like MicroStrategy (now Strategy) made a bet: buy Bitcoin, hold it, watch the price go up, use the appreciation to justify your existence as a company.

That’s not a business. That’s a leveraged Bitcoin position dressed up as corporate strategy.

When Bitcoin price goes up, you look like a genius. When it stagnates, as it has for much of 2026, hovering around $64–65K, you look like a company with no real business model, sitting on an asset that isn’t moving, with investors asking uncomfortable questions about your actual operations.

The crypto treasury model required perpetual Bitcoin appreciation to work. The moment appreciation slowed, the model broke.

And now those same companies are trying to claim they were always AI companies really.

The Difference Between Real AI And AI Panic

There’s a meaningful difference between companies building genuine AI infrastructure and companies slapping “AI” on a failing crypto strategy.

Real AI infrastructure companies:

• Have actual compute resources being used by actual customers
• Generate revenue from AI services, not just from asset appreciation
• Have technical teams building real AI products
• Can explain what their AI actually does

Crypto companies pivoting to AI:

• Announce plans to build AI data centers
• Haven’t yet generated meaningful AI revenue
• Are selling Bitcoin to fund the pivot
• Can’t clearly explain how AI fits their original thesis

K Wave Media’s 71% decline after its pivot tells you which category investors think it falls into.

The Deeper Pattern: What Happens When A Narrative Breaks

Every market cycle has a dominant narrative. The narrative attracts capital. Capital inflates valuations. Valuations attract more capital. Until the narrative breaks.

2021–2022 crypto narrative: Bitcoin is digital gold, crypto is the future of finance, every company should have a Bitcoin treasury.

Companies built entire identities around that narrative. Stock prices reflected narrative premium, not business fundamentals.

2023–2025: Narrative weakens. Institutional adoption happens but stabilizes rather than explodes. Bitcoin sits at $60–65K instead of going to $200K as predicted. The narrative premium evaporates.

2026 desperation move: Attach to the new dominant narrative (AI) before investors fully price in that the old narrative failed.

The problem: AI investors are sophisticated. They know what real AI companies look like. A Bitcoin accumulator with an Nvidia press release isn’t one of them.

Who’s Actually Winning

While crypto treasury stocks implode, two categories of companies are doing well:

1. Companies that built genuine products on blockchain infrastructure

Coinbase, whatever its challenges, built an actual exchange with actual users generating actual revenue. It has a real business that doesn’t depend on Bitcoin price appreciation alone.

2. Companies building AI infrastructure that happens to use blockchain

The companies Armstrong is describing: building the trustless infrastructure layer that AI agents will need to transact, verify, and operate at scale. This is real. It has genuine demand. It’s not a rebrand.

The companies failing are the ones that were never really building anything, just accumulating an asset and hoping appreciation would substitute for operations.

The Uncomfortable Question For Every Crypto Company

If your business model requires the price of Bitcoin to keep going up forever to justify your existence, what do you actually do?

That’s the question the imploding treasury stocks can’t answer.

And “we’re pivoting to AI” isn’t an answer. It’s a postponement.

The companies that survive the current shakeout will be the ones that had actual operations, actual users, actual revenue— that happened to use blockchain or crypto as infrastructure.

The ones that don’t survive will be the ones that confused “holding Bitcoin” with “building a company.”

The AI rebrand just delays the reckoning by a quarter or two.

What Comes Next

Expect more of this: crypto companies announcing AI pivots, investors not being fooled, stock prices continuing to decline, companies eventually running out of runway.

Expect fewer of this: genuine companies built on blockchain infrastructure, serving real users, generating real revenue—that will be fine.

The shakeout was always coming. The Bitcoin treasury model worked during appreciation. It was never a real business. Now that appreciation has slowed, the reality is visible.

The AI pivot is the last gasp. Not a new beginning.

The Lesson That Never Gets Learned

Every market cycle produces the same story:

Narrative attracts capital. Capital inflates valuations beyond fundamentals. Smart money exits. Companies desperately rebrand to the next narrative. Doesn’t work. Collapse.

2017: Blockchain everything. 2021: NFT everything, metaverse everything. 2024–2025: Bitcoin treasury everything. 2026: AI everything.

The companies that survive every cycle are the ones that were never chasing the narrative in the first place. They were building something real that happened to use the technology everyone else was hyping.

Those companies exist in crypto. They’re just not the ones making headlines this week.

If your crypto strategy requires Bitcoin to go up forever, you don’t have a strategy. You have a bet. And bets eventually lose.

Cantor Fitzgerald is advising Swiss digital asset lender AMINA Bank on a possible public listing as the Wall Street firm expands its role in crypto capital markets.

AMINA Bank considers a public listing

According to reports, Cantor Fitzgerald is advising AMINA Bank, formerly known as SEBA Bank, as the Swiss crypto lender assesses a potential entry into public markets.

Discussions remain at an early stage, and neither company has disclosed a target valuation, timetable or possible listing venue. A completed transaction would make AMINA one of the few publicly traded banks focused primarily on digital asset services.

The bank operates under a licence from the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority, or FINMA. Its services include cryptocurrency custody, trading, lending and staking for institutional and private clients.

AMINA reported a 69% increase in revenue during 2024. That performance positioned it as Switzerland’s fastest-growing crypto bank at the time, although updated financial figures for 2025 and 2026 were not provided.

A listing would expose the bank to greater financial disclosure and corporate governance requirements. It could also give public-market investors direct exposure to a regulated crypto banking business rather than a cryptocurrency exchange, miner or treasury company.

Cantor expands its crypto capital markets business

The advisory role builds on Cantor’s wider attempt to connect traditional capital markets with blockchain-based financial infrastructure.

As previously reported by crypto.news, Cantor partnered with tokenization company Securitize on July 15 to support blockchain-based initial public offerings and follow-on share sales.

Cantor will provide equity capital markets and trading services under that agreement. Securitize will supply the technology needed to issue, distribute and service securities onchain, while its SEC-registered broker-dealer, Securitize Markets, will participate in offerings and settlements.

That structure differs from platforms that create blockchain-based versions of shares already trading on public exchanges. The partnership aims to use blockchain infrastructure during the original issuance process while keeping offerings within existing securities rules.

Advising AMINA fits that strategy, although no indication has emerged that the bank would use Securitize’s infrastructure for its potential listing.

AMINA builds its European regulatory reach

AMINA’s regulatory position could form an important part of its case to public investors.

Alongside its Swiss banking licence, the group secured authorization under the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets framework through its Austrian subsidiary. AMINA described itself as the first international crypto banking group to obtain a MiCA licence.

The approval allows the subsidiary to offer regulated crypto services across European Economic Area markets through MiCA’s passporting system, subject to applicable local requirements.

AMINA expanded its asset support in May 2026 by becoming the first regulated bank to provide custody and trading services for Canton Coin. Canton Network focuses on blockchain infrastructure for regulated financial institutions.

For US investors, access to AMINA shares would depend on where the bank lists and whether American brokerages support the security. A US listing would also bring additional Securities and Exchange Commission registration and disclosure requirements, but the parties have not identified the United States as a venue.

Cantor pursues a separate $3 billion Bitcoin deal

Cantor is also reportedly negotiating with Blockstream co-founder Adam Back over a transaction that could place more than $3 billion in Bitcoin into a publicly traded vehicle.

Under the proposed deal, Blockstream would contribute as many as 30,000 BTC to Cantor Equity Partners 1, a special purpose acquisition company that raised $200 million in January. Blockstream would receive shares in return, while the vehicle would be renamed BSTR Holdings.

The agreement could reportedly be signed as early as this week, although its terms remain subject to change.

Cantor has not disclosed when AMINA might decide whether to proceed with its listing. The bank’s chosen exchange, valuation and offering structure will determine whether the plan develops into a conventional IPO, another public-market transaction or an onchain issuance tied to Cantor’s tokenization strategy.