BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes said the debt-fueled artificial intelligence infrastructure boom could end in a 2008-style credit crisis and predicted the resulting government liquidity response could drive Bitcoin (BTC) to $1 million or higher. 

In a Tuesday blog post, Hayes said investors have mistakenly treated spending on data centers and power infrastructure as high-growth technology investment rather than leveraged real estate. He said he expects lenders to finance excessive construction before a slowdown in AI capital expenditure exposes weaker borrowers. 

The thesis connects the trillion-dollar expansion of AI infrastructure to a potential new source of crypto-market liquidity. However, Hayes’ predicted crisis, government bailout and subsequent BTC rally remain speculative. 

Hayes described the AI boom as a “credit story like 2008 and not an earnings story like 2000.” He said BTC could remain between $60,000 and $70,000, with possible downside to $50,000, before the credit cycle and resulting liquidity response drive a recovery. Hayes also forecast that Ether (ETH) would reach $5,000 by year-end and said Maelstrom intends to build a significant position while selling out-of-the-money ETH put options.

Hayes’ latest outlook builds on his earlier views on AI’s competing effects on crypto liquidity. On May 13, he said US-China competition in AI would encourage bank lending and fiat creation, benefiting Bitcoin. On June 4, Hayes sold HYPE and NEAR after warning that major AI listings could divert capital from crypto.

Big Tech locks in $1 trillion of future leases

The scale of commitments underpinning the AI boom is already visible. On Tuesday, Reuters reported that Microsoft, Meta, Oracle, Amazon and Alphabet have committed about $1.09 trillion to leases that have not yet commenced, primarily for data centers. 

The commitments are nearly four times the roughly $285 billion in lease liabilities already recognized by the companies. However, Reuters noted that the $1.09 trillion cannot simply be treated as debt because it represents undiscounted payments spread across several years. 

Related: Iran war, AI spending could push Bitcoin back to $126K this year: Hayes

Still, the financial strain is uneven. Oracle’s debt was about 4.3 times its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, while Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft and Meta had ratios below one, according to a separate Reuters analysis. 

S&P Global analyst Andrew Chang said Oracle’s data-center leases, which run for 15 to 19 years, pose a key risk because its customer contracts last no more than five years. 

Magazine: Why Meta is choosing partners over power in its 2026 stablecoin push

A wallet identified by onchain analytics platform Lookonchain as being associated with Strategy transferred 1,030 Bitcoin worth about $66.14 million on Aug. 5. 

The movement came two days after Strategy officially disclosed another Bitcoin sale, increasing scrutiny of the company’s changing treasury policy. Lookonchain’s post described the addresses as wallets linked to Strategy.

However, Strategy has not confirmed that the latest transfer represented a sale. Its most recent Securities and Exchange Commission filing reported holdings of 842,138 BTC as of Aug. 2. No later filing had reduced that figure when this report was prepared.

Strategy transfer is not yet a confirmed Bitcoin sale

Lookonchain asked, “Is Michael Saylor’s Strategy dumping BTC again?” The wording reflects uncertainty. Wallet attribution can indicate that an address is likely connected to an organization, but an onchain transfer alone does not establish its purpose or legal ownership.

Bitcoin can move between custodians, internal wallets, trading accounts and settlement addresses without being sold. Confirmation would require a company disclosure, an identified exchange deposit followed by trading activity, or other evidence showing that ownership changed.

Strategy’s public Bitcoin ledger still lists 842,138 BTC following the company’s Aug. 3 update. The ledger records transactions reported by Strategy rather than every transfer attributed to the company by external analytics firms.

Advertisement

The latest movement occurred after the Aug. 2 reporting cutoff in Strategy’s filing. It could therefore appear in a later update if it represents a sale under the company’s Bitcoin monetization program.

Strategy officially sold 1,638 BTC for $104.73 million

Strategy confirmed that it sold 1,638 BTC between July 27 and Aug. 2. The company received $104.73 million after fees, equal to an average sale price of $63,957 per Bitcoin. The official figure is higher than the roughly $102.4 million cited in some early reports.

Strategy used $52.4 million of the proceeds to fund preferred stock dividends. It directed the remaining $52.3 million toward repurchases of its STRC preferred shares. The company separately bought back 912,143 STRC shares for $81.2 million during the period.

Its remaining 842,138 BTC had an aggregate purchase price of $63.51 billion and an average cost of $75,419 per coin. The company also reported a $4 billion U.S. dollar reserve, including unsettled proceeds from common stock sales.

Advertisement

The transaction was permitted under Strategy’s Bitcoin monetization framework, which its board approved in June. The framework allows Bitcoin sales to support the cash reserve, pay dividends or interest, and finance approved security repurchases. It does not require Strategy to sell any specific amount.

As crypto.news reported, the Aug. 3 disposal followed earlier sales that marked a departure from Strategy’s previous focus on continuous accumulation. Its ledger shows four reported 2026 sales totaling 5,258 BTC.

MARA’s Two Prime transfer may involve asset management

Separately, Lookonchain reported that MARA transferred 6,000 BTC, worth approximately $384.6 million at the time, to addresses identified as belonging to Two Prime. The analytics firm cautioned that the movement “doesn’t necessarily mean a sale” and could relate to asset management.

MARA has an established financial relationship with Two Prime. In July 2025, the miner led a $20 million investment in the firm and expanded its managed Bitcoin allocation from 500 BTC to 2,000 BTC. Two Prime manages institutional trading, lending and Bitcoin yield strategies.

Advertisement

An SEC filing showed that MARA transferred 2,000 BTC into a separately managed account during 2025. The account held 1,903 BTC by Sept. 30 after recording a net trading loss of roughly 97 BTC.

The new 6,000 BTC transfer could expand the arrangement, move assets between custody accounts or support another financial transaction. Those possibilities remain unconfirmed. MARA’s 2025 annual report says it may buy or sell Bitcoin depending on market conditions and capital allocation priorities.

In related coverage, crypto.news reported that MARA increased its holdings to 36,303 BTC in June after selling 15,133 BTC during March to support a $1 billion convertible debt repurchase.

Official filings will determine whether more Bitcoin was sold

Bitcoin traded near $64,387 at the time of reporting, up about 0.95%. Strategy shares rose approximately 2.9% to $97.65 during the latest U.S. session, while MARA shares were nearly unchanged at $11.75. The market data showed no immediate broad selloff tied to the reported transfers.

Advertisement

Strategy says it will disclose material Bitcoin monetization through its customary Form 8-K filings and its public dashboard. Its next update should show whether the 1,030 BTC movement changed the company’s reported holdings.

MARA investors will similarly need an SEC filing or company statement to determine whether its 6,000 BTC remains under company ownership. Until those disclosures arrive, both movements should be treated as transfers rather than confirmed sales.

Cloudflare began the first stage of its programmable wallet rollout on Aug. 4, allowing customers to claim unique wallet handles for future stablecoin payments by artificial intelligence agents.

The official Cloudflare announcement said users can reserve a handle tied to their Cloudflare account through cloudflare.pay. However, the company said the ability to fund wallets and use them to purchase APIs, data and online content will arrive “soon.” It did not provide a launch date.

The distinction means Cloudflare has opened the identity layer of the product rather than a fully functioning payment service. Customers cannot yet assume that the stablecoin storage, withdrawal or automated spending features described by the company are broadly available.

Cloudflare Wallets begin with handles, not payments

Cloudflare plans to offer two wallet types. Account Wallets will be controlled by individual or organizational customers. Users will be able to add funds, withdraw balances and delegate spending authority to wallets operated by their AI agents.

Virtual Wallets will operate through API keys. An agent will use the wallet to purchase services within permissions established by the Account Wallet owner. Cloudflare listed APIs, Model Context Protocol tools, data, AI inference and online content as potential purchases.

The company is also building a human readable identity system around the wallets. A business could assign an agent an address such as research.example.cloudflare.pay, allowing merchants to associate the software with a particular organization. Declaring that identity will remain optional. Merchants will decide whether to serve unidentified agents or give priority to known ones.

Cloudflare compared the system with the way the Domain Name System links readable website names to less readable internet addresses. The wallet handle will be connected to an agent’s cryptographic key rather than replace the underlying verification process.

Spending controls aim to limit autonomous agent risks

Cloudflare said Account Wallet owners will be able to set allowances, approved merchant lists and maximum transaction sizes. These controls are intended to let agents test low cost services without requesting human approval for every purchase.

A company could, for example, give each employee’s agent a weekly budget for AI inference. When a wallet reaches its limit, the agent could request a manual override from an authorized administrator. Unexpectedly fast spending could also trigger a review before the owner increases the budget or adds more funds.

Cloudflare presented these limits as protection against overspending. However, it has not published technical documentation explaining how lost API keys, compromised agents, disputed payments or unauthorized purchases will be handled.

The company has previously worked with Visa and Mastercard on systems that help merchants distinguish approved shopping agents from malicious bots. Visa’s Trusted Agent Protocol and Mastercard’s Agent Pay use Cloudflare’s Web Bot Auth system to verify cryptographic signatures and confirm whether an agent intends to browse or complete a payment.

x402 connects agent wallets with paid online resources

The wallets form the buyer side of Cloudflare’s planned agent commerce system. Its Monetization Gateway will provide the seller side by allowing website owners and developers to charge for pages, datasets, APIs and MCP tools.

As crypto.news previously reported, Cloudflare opened the Monetization Gateway waitlist in July. Customers will be able to set fixed or variable prices and require payment before Cloudflare passes a request to their server.

Payments will use x402, an open protocol that attaches payment instructions to standard HTTP requests. When an agent requests a paid resource, the server returns an HTTP 402 “Payment Required” response containing the price and settlement instructions. The agent pays and resubmits the request with payment proof.

Coinbase introduced x402 in 2025 and later formed the x402 Foundation with Cloudflare. The foundation aims to maintain the system as a neutral standard rather than a protocol controlled by one company or blockchain.

The x402 website reported 75.41 million transactions, $24.24 million in volume, 94,060 buyers and 22,000 sellers over the latest 30 day period at the time of reporting. Those figures are live protocol metrics and may change as new activity is recorded.

In related coverage, crypto.news reported that Amazon Bedrock AgentCore integrated x402 payments, allowing agents to purchase services using USDC. That rollout shows Cloudflare is entering a growing market that already includes cloud providers, payment companies and blockchain developers.

Full wallet access depends on compliance and funding support

Cloudflare said it will initially offer conventional funding and withdrawal methods in supported locations. Eligible customers will also be able to fund their wallets directly with stablecoins. The company has not identified the first countries or regions included in that rollout.

It also has not disclosed which stablecoins or blockchains the wallets will support. The announcement did not name a custodian, banking partner, onramp provider or entity responsible for identity and compliance checks. Pricing, transaction fees and withdrawal limits also remain unknown.

These details will determine how widely companies can deploy the product. Wallet services involving stablecoin custody and fiat conversion can face different regulatory requirements across U.S. states and international markets.

The next verified update should clarify when Cloudflare customers can fund Account Wallets, create Virtual Wallets and complete live x402 purchases. Until then, users can claim wallet handles, but the core stablecoin payment features remain a planned service rather than a completed general release.

A failure to pass the CLARITY Act this week will put the bill in a “walking dead” state, but won’t stop the crypto industry’s march forward, according to Bitwise chief investment officer Matt Hougan. 

In a blog post on Wednesday, Hougan said while many, including himself, have called it the “make or break” week for the CLARITY Act, the reality is that the crypto industry has made too much progress to “go back in the bottle.” 

“The reality is that Washington is always late to major technology shifts, and it has rarely mattered as much as people feared,” said Hougan. 

His comments come as the Senate faces an Aug. 5 deadline to advance the landmark crypto market structure bill before its summer recess, with many concerned that failure to pass this week could see the bill pushed into the next year as lawmakers focus on the midterm elections in November. 

Prospects for CLARITY this year fade

Market observers are increasingly pessimistic about the CLARITY Act’s passage this year. In July, Galaxy Research lowered its probability of the CLARITY Act passing in 2026 to 30%, while Polymarket currently shows a 23% chance of it being signed into law this year, down from 82% in February. 

On July 24, NYDIG global head of research Greg Cipolaro said the latest draft was more complete but still lacked sufficient bipartisan support.

“The central investor takeaway is that Republicans have produced a substantially more complete bill, but not yet one with a credible path to 60 votes,” Cipolaro said.

According to sources speaking to Punchbowl News, without signs of progress from the White House on a bipartisan ethics deal, and movement on illicit finance and stablecoin yield, Senate Democrats will deny cloture for the crypto bill. 

Polymarket odds for the CLARITY Act passing in 2026 are at 23%. Source: Polymarket

Hougan said failure to pass the bill will put it in a “walking dead” state, stalled, but not permanently defeated. He said there is some hope that the bill could pass in September, or even in December, when Congress returns for a lame duck session.

“Congress often bundles multiple bills into a year-end “omnibus” package, forcing legislators to vote on a single bill that includes things they like and things they hate. Maybe the Clarity Act can pass that way.”

“Crypto will be fine,” Bitwise’s Hougan says

If the CLARITY Act fails to pass this year, Hougan said that the industry will fall back to the SEC-CFTC’s joint interpretation issued in March, which classifies Bitcoin and other assets as digital commodities and replaces the SEC’s 2019 staff guidance. 

SEC Chair Paul Atkins reinforced this last week, saying his agency is “ready, willing, and able to come out with rules that address the same issues as CLARITY and other aspects of the crypto market.” 

Related: CLARITY Act failure could send crypto valuations lower: Bernstein

However, the rules issued by the two regulators aren’t as durable as legislation, and could be challenged in court or reversed by a future administration. Atkins even acknowledged this in March when the two agencies released the interpretation. 

Source: Cynthia Lummis

“Only Congress can ensure that regulation in this area is future-proofed through comprehensive market structure legislation,” Atkins said.

WisdomTree chief legal officer Ryan Louvar has argued that the absence of legislation would continue to impede the market, despite the regulators’ efforts.

“A market cannot function well when its participants cannot tell in advance which agency’s rules apply to them,” Louvar said at a July congressional hearing.

Hougan said “crypto will be fine” despite this, as it would still give the industry two and a half years to accelerate before a new administration could potentially install a new SEC.

“Washington is dysfunctional. It seems crazy to me that we can’t get our act together to pass legislation that would improve investor protections and spark new innovation,” said Hougan.

“But it’s not a referendum on crypto’s validity as a pillar of the global financial infrastructure. That ship has long since sailed. At this point, crypto has enough momentum that it will reshape finance for decades, regardless of what happens in the next few days.” 

Magazine: CLARITY hopes fade, BitMEX shuts as lawsuit looms: Hodler’s Digest, July 26 

Validators would still be paid the same way for doing the same work, and they keep all the transaction fees and tips they earn from building blocks. Only the newly created ETH gets burned. The deduction from validator rewards arrives slowly, phasing in over 18 months, with about six months before that while the upgrade ships, so roughly two years to adjust.

Six researchers signed the proposal, including Justin Drake of the Ethereum Foundation. It landed days before the deadline for smaller changes to be considered for Hegotá, Ethereum’s next network upgrade.

The problem, as the authors see it, is that staking never stops paying. Even if every ETH were staked, the yield would still sit near 1.5%, so there is always a reason to add more.

Jérôme de Tychey, one of the proposal’s authors, projects more than 70 million ETH staked by January 2028 if nothing changes. Past a certain level, the proposal states, extra stake makes Ethereum less secure rather than more, because the ETH ends up held by exchanges and staking providers instead of its owners, while small individual stakers get squeezed out.

About 41 million ETH is staked today, or close to 34% of supply. Another 2.5 million sits in the queue waiting to be activated, trackers show, a wait of six weeks or more, and nobody is queuing to leave.

Ethereum limits how fast validators can join or leave, so both directions form a line. The cap exists so a large bloc can’t enter or exit fast enough to destabilize the network. Entry queue is ETH waiting to start staking, exit queue is ETH waiting to stop. Currently about 57,600 ETH a day can activate.