Alex Kuptsikevich of FxPro said in an email that bitcoin has gained momentum since Monday, when buyers stepped in during the dip toward $62,500 and pushed price back above the 50-day moving average. Optimism is centred more on bitcoin than on the wider market, he said, which is typical of the early stages of a long-term shift.

The equity backdrop turned less helpful. The MSCI All Country World Index snapped a five-day run to fall 0.2% as chipmakers retreated on both sides of the Pacific. Korea’s Kospi, a bellwether for the AI trade, dropped 4.4% with SK Hynix and Samsung leading losses.

S&P 500 and European futures edged higher.

Meanwhile, Gold rose 0.4% to its strongest since June as traders trimmed rate-hike expectations, with Brent under $80 a barrel after Iran said it had reached an agreement with Oman on a shipping route through the Strait of Hormuz.

SoftBank reports later Thursday. It has put $34.6 billion into OpenAI through Vision Fund 2 since September 2024 and owns chip designer Arm, so its numbers are read as a gauge of whether the private side of the AI trade is holding up.

US-listed spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) are attracting fresh capital as a high-profile cryptocurrency custody incident puts renewed focus on digital asset security.

Spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded $211.5 million in net inflows on Tuesday, adding to Monday’s $170 million, according to data from SoSoValue.

The inflows came as the ongoing Coldcard hack drew attention from analysts, with Galaxy Research estimating that the attack may have affected as many as 7,300 addresses and resulted in about $130 million in suspected Bitcoin (BTC) losses from users of the hardware wallet.

The developments have renewed a long-running debate in crypto over whether institutional custody solutions offered through regulated financial products could become more attractive as investors weigh the risks and responsibilities of self-custody.

Galaxy ETF returns to inflows as Bitcoin funds rebound

BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) led the ETF recovery, recording $111 million in inflows on Monday and $170 million on Tuesday, according to Farside Investors data. Fidelity’s Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund (FBTC) followed, adding about $33 million and roughly $20 million on the respective days.

Invesco Galaxy Bitcoin ETF (BTCO) recorded $6.7 million in inflows on Monday, marking its first positive daily flow since July 1. The inflow represented about 3.9% of BTCO’s cumulative net inflows of $172 million, according to Farside.

Source: Galaxy Research

Galaxy Research, the research arm of crypto investment company Galaxy Digital, has emerged as one of the most prominent sources tracking the Coldcard incident. Alex Thorn, Galaxy Digital’s head of firmwide research, and his team have regularly published estimates on affected addresses and potential losses linked to the incident.

Coldcard hack gives new weight to Bitcoin ETF custody argument

Eric Balchunas, senior ETF analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, said the Coldcard hack could encourage greater migration toward Bitcoin ETFs, as investors reconsider the role of institutional custody.

In a post on Tuesday, Balchunas said ETFs’ reliance on traditional financial institutions to safeguard assets could increasingly be seen as an advantage. He wrote that what was once considered a “bug” by some crypto users may “all the sudden seem like a feature” as investors compare institutional custodians with smaller crypto companies.

Related: Boltz pauses service after wave of AI-assisted hacking attempts

Separately, Balchunas also pointed to broader changes in the ETF market, including the closure of Hashdex’s spot Bitcoin ETF and BlackRock’s planned reverse split for its Ethereum ETF.

BTC steady as traders weigh custody concerns

Bitcoin remained relatively stable as traders assessed the Coldcard incident and other sources of selling pressure, including the latest 1,638 BTC sale by Michael Saylor’s Strategy.

At publishing time, BTC traded at $64,113, down around 0.8% over the past seven days, according to CoinGecko. The asset’s lowest price during that period fell below $62,500.

Source: Bitcoin Munger

Some observers argued that those behind the Coldcard incident may face challenges moving or converting the affected funds because Bitcoin transactions can be publicly tracked. Crypto commentator Shagun wrote in an X post on Sunday that large fund movements would likely attract scrutiny from blockchain researchers, exchanges and other market participants.

Magazine: Sorry everyone, Bitcoin is headed down to $43,500: Michael Terpin

Token deployments across the chain’s launchpads have fallen from roughly 35,000 per day in mid-July to about 10,000, according to data. Noxa still holds around $137,000 of CASHCAT and has not sold; its balance has been flat over the past week while the value has risen 75%.

CASHCAT’s own distribution has broadened. DEXTools data shows the token has about 41,200 holders, the full 989 million supply is circulating with no locked allocation, and the largest single holder is the Uniswap pool providing its liquidity, at 2.47%.

The biggest wallets below that hold between 1.3% and 1.5% each. That pool holds $5 million, down from the $6.6 million backing a $105 million valuation in July, but still deeper than any other memecoin pool on the chain.

Deposits kept climbing through it all. Total value locked stands at $774 million, up 20% over seven days, with lending at 43% and asset management 41.5%. Two protocols hold nearly three-quarters of it: Morpho, at $332 million, is the lending market behind Robinhood’s own onchain earn product. Ethena, with $236 million in assets, issues a dollar-pegged token that pays holders a yield. Stablecoins on the chain total $575 million, up 14% from the week prior.

Meta has become the latest major AI company to disclose that one of its models hacked another company’s systems during testing, following similar incidents involving Anthropic and OpenAI. 

The model involved Meta’s Muse Spark 1.1, which launched in July, according to The Information, citing sources. The issue reportedly stemmed from a misconfiguration by Irregular, an artificial intelligence security testing and red-teaming firm, which inadvertently gave the model internet access during an evaluation.  

The model “exploited a security vulnerability in a third-party service, in a manner similar to previously reported instances with other companies,” Meta told Reuters in a statement. 

The incident is the latest case of an advanced AI agent becoming a cybersecurity risk in its own right, and also has raised questions about where the liability lies — the companies that develop the agents, or the ones that design the sandboxes meant to contain them. 

Related: Mysten Labs tech chief joins Anthropic to work on AI security

Meta’s AI breach comes just a week after Anthropic said its models got access to the internet to hack an external company, due to a configuration error relating to the Irregular’s testing environment.

In a blog post on July 30, Anthropic said it found three incidents (out of 141,006 evaluation runs) in which a Claude model reached the internet during an evaluation, before gaining unauthorized access to the systems within three different organizations. 

All three incidents happened within or while interacting with the evaluation environment of Irregular, and involved a misconfiguration that left machines that Claude accessed with live internet access.

Cointelegraph reached out to Meta and Irregular for comment.

In July, AI agents developed by OpenAI broke out of their offline sandbox to hack Hugging Face in order to cheat on a security benchmark test in July. 

Charles Guillemet, chief technology officer of Ledger, said the latest incident was “marketing theatre.”

“Having a model ‘go rogue’ has become the latest AI PR stunt,” he said on Wednesday.

“If your model isn’t escaping sandboxes, ‘hacking’ companies, or pulling off some headline-grabbing exploit, apparently you’re falling behind… The industry doesn’t need bigger stunts, it needs more trust.”

Magazine: Do the Coldcard attacks mean all hardware wallets are now insecure?

Say the four things that matter most

Western Union is making a significant push into blockchain-enabled payments with the launch of Stablecard, a Visa-branded wallet that lets customers hold, receive, transfer, and spend a US dollar-backed stablecoin. The company says the product is designed to bring dollar-denominated balances into everyday spending for people using remittance flows.

In an announcement on Wednesday, Western Union said Stablecard will support USDPT—an American dollar-pegged stablecoin issued by Anchorage Digital Bank on the Solana blockchain. The wallet-based system is positioned for remittance recipients and consumers in markets where local currency volatility makes it harder to confidently hold savings.

Key takeaways

• Stablecard brings USDPT stablecoin support into a Visa-branded spending flow for users in the 37 markets where it launched.
• Western Union is using stablecoin rails to support on-ramps from remittances, wallet transfers, and payment spending where Visa is accepted.
• USDPT is issued by Anchorage Digital Bank and runs on Solana, tying the wallet to existing cryptocurrency infrastructure.
• Western Union plans to expand Stablecard availability to more than 60 markets by the end of the year.
• The rollout aligns with Western Union’s broader digital asset strategy and its earlier decision to introduce USDPT.

Stablecard: turning USDPT into spendable value

Stablecard is presented as both a digital wallet and a payment method. According to Western Union, users can receive funds directly into a USDPT wallet—built around the stablecoin—then transfer those balances to compatible crypto wallets and exchanges. From there, the same USDPT balance can be spent anywhere Visa is accepted.

Western Union also highlighted that spending can occur through existing digital payment channels connected to Visa, including Apple Pay and Google Pay. For investors and users watching stablecoin adoption beyond trading, this is one of the clearer examples of stablecoins being integrated into a mainstream payments brand rather than remaining confined to crypto-native apps.

The product is intended to address a common challenge in cross-border payments: recipients often receive funds in local currencies that may be volatile, while traditional remittance providers typically deliver payments that are quickly spent or converted. By letting users hold a US dollar-backed asset and use it through familiar payment networks, Stablecard aims to give users more flexibility in how they manage funds.

Market rollout and what it signals for remittance competition

Western Union stated that Stablecard launched in 37 markets, with plans to expand to more than 60 markets by the end of the year. That expansion goal matters because it suggests the company views the product as more than a pilot—aiming to scale stablecoin-backed payments in meaningful geographies.

The move also reflects intensifying competition in money transfers. Stablecoins have increasingly been explored as rails for cross-border transfers, with the industry betting that dollar-pegged tokens can improve speed and reduce certain costs compared with older systems. For established remittance companies, stablecoin integration becomes a strategic attempt to modernize their infrastructure while keeping customer-facing touchpoints familiar.

Western Union’s rival MoneyGram has made a similar bet. Earlier coverage from Cointelegraph noted that MoneyGram launched MGUSD, a US dollar-pegged stablecoin on the Stellar network. In that setup, users can use a self-custodial wallet to hold dollar-denominated balances, send funds globally, and convert to local currencies when needed. Stablecard’s Visa-centered design is different in execution, but it points to the same competitive direction: remittance providers increasingly want stablecoins to help move value, not just settle transactions.

USDPT, Solana, and the regulatory framing

Stablecard’s stablecoin is USDPT, issued by Anchorage Digital Bank on the Solana blockchain. Western Union previously unveiled USDPT in May as part of a broader digital asset strategy, describing it as aligned with the framework established under the GENIUS Act—a recently enacted US law that sets federal rules for the issuance and oversight of payment stablecoins. That regulatory framing is important for long-term adoption, because it signals an effort to fit stablecoin issuance and distribution into clearer compliance expectations.

Western Union has also described ecosystem expansion around USDPT through exchange integrations. Cointelegraph reported earlier that Bybit added support for USDPT trading and transfers in June. These types of partnerships can be particularly relevant to usability: stablecoin wallets and payment systems become more valuable when users can also move balances between consumer apps, self-custody tools, and exchanges.

Why stablecoins still face friction in practice

Despite the momentum, stablecoin remittances are not automatically cheaper or faster in all cases. A recent Bank of Italy study, covered by Cointelegraph, found that stablecoin-based remittances did not consistently outperform traditional payment channels in cost or speed. Researchers pointed to a key bottleneck: friction often remains in fiat on- and off-ramps—converting between bank deposits, cash, and digital assets—where a large portion of settlement delays and transaction costs can still occur.

That observation matters for how to interpret Stablecard’s launch. A wallet that enables receiving and spending can reduce certain steps for users who can transact within the same payment ecosystem, but it doesn’t eliminate conversion challenges across borders. What will likely determine whether stablecoin remittances scale smoothly is how effectively providers integrate stablecoin rails with fiat access points, including local compliance, bank transfers, and cash-out routes.

In that context, Stablecard’s decision to connect stablecoin balances to Visa acceptance could be a practical lever. Rather than requiring a near-immediate conversion to local currency before spending, the product offers a way to use dollar-pegged value directly through established payment acceptance—potentially reducing the number of conversions some users need to make.

As stablecoins continue to expand their role in global payments, the next question for users and market participants is not only how many markets launch, but how well the on-ramps and off-ramps work in practice—especially under real-world load, local banking constraints, and changing compliance requirements.

In other words, no news on cloture on Wednesday night might just be no news.

In one scenario, Majority Leader John Thune files cloture on Wednesday night, gets through all of the Senate’s other priorities by Friday, holds the first procedural vote on Friday night and then everyone goes back to their districts to meet their constituents and campaign for reelection.

In another, the Senate can break on Friday, Aug. 7, without taking any further steps on the Clarity Act.

In that scenario, the Senate could still return in September and take up the Clarity Act once more. The Senate will also have to deal with funding the government and other issues at that time, and there are just 14 working days when the Senate is in session in September and October. This means it would likely be difficult to get the Clarity Act through, short of Senators agreeing to push it through. It’s certainly possible it can get through Clarity in that time period, however.

The legislative staffer told CoinDesk that if the outstanding issues are sorted through, the bill would easily have a chance at passage in September.

Alternatively, the Senate could extend its working session through the weekend or into next week to address outstanding issues, which may give it enough time to at least get a first procedural vote on Clarity.

The race between El-Sayed, 41, and Stevens, 43, had become a proxy fight over the Democratic Party’s future. El-Sayed, a non-practicing doctor who previously ran for governor, built his campaign around a sweeping progressive agenda, calling for Medicare for All, a 7% annual tax on the wealth of billionaires, and a broader effort to challenge what he described as an economic system tilted toward the wealthy and powerful. “Democrats really should be afraid of what I mean for their system of politics,” El-Sayed told TIME in a wide-ranging interview in late May. “When I say I’m coming for it, I’m coming for all of it.”

For progressives, El-Sayed’s victory amounts to a rejection of an establishment seen as overly cautious, too closely aligned with corporate interests and unwilling to challenge traditional power centers. Stevens represented a different path: a candidate with deep party ties, more traditional experience in government, and a message focused on growing American manufacturing.