Crypto World
Coinsbuy hit by reported $7.9M Ethereum, TRON drain
Wallets linked to crypto payment processor Coinsbuy were reportedly drained of more than $7.9 million across Ethereum and TRON around 13:00 UTC on Aug. 9, according to blockchain investigator Specter and follow up monitoring from security firms.
Summary
- Wallets linked to Coinsbuy reportedly lost $7.9 million across Ethereum and TRON during Sunday’s drain.
- PeckShield traced stolen funds through ChangeNOW, FixedFloat and BingX after Specter first flagged the drain.
- ChangeNOW reportedly froze a six figure amount while attackers converted part of proceeds into Monero.
- Coinsbuy temporarily paused deposits and withdrawals after the incident before services reportedly resumed hours later.
- GoPlus said activity resembled compromised hot wallet keys or administrator access, though unconfirmed by Coinsbuy.
The attacker then began routing part of the stolen assets through exchanges and toward Monero, a privacy focused cryptocurrency.
PeckShield said the wallets “likely lost” about $7.9 million and traced part of the proceeds through ChangeNOW, FixedFloat and BingX. CertiK’s security feed independently relayed the same estimated loss and exchange routes. The precise attack vector has not been established publicly.
Coinsbuy drain spread across Ethereum and TRON
Specter identified two Ethereum addresses and one TRON address as theft destinations. The cross network movement suggests the attacker obtained access capable of moving assets on more than one chain, but that does not establish whether private keys, administrator credentials or another part of Coinsbuy’s infrastructure was compromised.
GoPlus Security said the activity was “consistent with hot wallet private key or administrator privilege theft.” That remains an assessment, not a confirmed root cause. Coinsbuy has not published a technical postmortem in the public documentation reviewed on Aug. 10. Its latest visible release notes are dated July 31.
Coinsbuy describes itself as a business focused crypto payment service offering payment processing, wallet infrastructure and digital asset management. Its official site also advertises crypto payment processing and wallet services for businesses.
Stolen funds moved through exchanges toward Monero
After the drain, the attacker began sending stolen assets through exchange services. Specter said the funds were being converted toward Monero, while PeckShield identified ChangeNOW, FixedFloat and BingX among platforms receiving portions of the proceeds.
Specter also said ChangeNOW helped freeze a six figure amount before it could move further. ChangeNOW had not issued a separate public statement confirming the exact frozen sum in sources reviewed for this story, so the amount remains attributed to the investigator.
The laundering route resembles patterns seen in other major crypto thefts. In an earlier recovery case, investigators helped freeze about $1.2 million tied to Bo Shen’s stolen assets after funds passed through services including ChangeNOW. Separately, a January wallet theft involved attackers converting stolen Bitcoin and Litecoin into Monero.
Deposits and withdrawals reportedly resumed
Coinsbuy paused deposits and withdrawals after the incident and later restored them, according to Specter’s update and reports citing the investigator. No separate incident notice confirming the timeline was visible in Coinsbuy’s public release notes at the time of review.
It also remains unclear from public disclosures whether the reported $7.9 million consisted entirely of Coinsbuy owned assets, client funds or a combination of both. No customer loss breakdown or reimbursement plan was visible in the company materials reviewed on Aug. 10.
That distinction matters because service restoration does not establish that the investigation is complete or that the full loss has been recovered. The currently verified public picture remains limited to the reported drain, identified theft addresses, laundering activity and a partial freeze.
The case adds to a busy security year. TRM Labs recorded 207 hacks and about $972 million stolen during the first half of 2026, according to data cited in recent industry loss coverage. Infrastructure and operational failures accounted for most of the value lost during that period.
What happens next
The next material update would be a Coinsbuy incident report identifying the attack vector, affected assets, final loss and any customer exposure. Confirmation from ChangeNOW or the other exchanges could also clarify how much was frozen and whether additional funds remain recoverable.
For now, claims about how the attacker obtained access should remain qualified. Security researchers are continuing to trace the listed Ethereum and TRON addresses, but movement into Monero can make later tracing harder once funds leave transparent blockchains.
Standard Chartered has initiated coverage of Chainlink (LINK) with a price forecast of $200 by the end of 2030. With LINK trading near $8.22 on Monday, the target implies a 24x rally.
The call comes from a note titled “Chainlink – Owning the rails” by Geoff Kendrick, the bank’s digital assets research head. It extends his continuing search for winners of the tokenization trade.
A $4 Trillion Tokenization Bet
Kendrick expects tokenized assets on-chain to grow from around $340 billion today to $4 trillion by end-2028. He also sees $2.7 trillion of assets active in decentralized finance (DeFi) by end-2030, a 37-fold jump.
The Chainlink call fits a pattern in the bank’s recent research. Standard Chartered previously published a 50x Aave forecast and a 33x Morpho target built on the same DeFi growth thesis.
According to Kendrick, tokenized assets cannot scale on issuance alone. Once on-chain, they still need trusted data, secure transfers between networks, and compliance tooling to reach institutional use.
In effect, the thesis reads like a toll road argument. If tokenized assets must cross Chainlink’s rails, each crossing generates fees, and those fees feed LINK demand.
Why Standard Chartered Says Chainlink Owns the Rails
The bank calls Chainlink the market leader in bringing data on-chain through decentralized oracles. Oracles feed outside information, such as prices, to blockchains. Per the note, the network secures around 70% of DeFi markets globally and more than 80% on Ethereum.
Standard Chartered also credits Chainlink with enabling over $32 trillion in transaction value across seven years of operation. The bank argues this track record creates network effects that competitors struggle to match.
Meanwhile, the project has expanded beyond data feeds into interoperability, compliance, and privacy services for traditional finance (TradFi). Chainlink already works with Fidelity on a project to tokenize fund data covering $6.9 billion in assets.
“These assets will require trusted data, secure interoperability between networks, privacy-preserving compliance, and integration with existing financial systems; only Chainlink is currently equipped to provide all of these,” Kendrick wrote in the note.
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The Risks Behind the 24x Target
For LINK holders, the thesis converts network usage into fees and, in turn, token demand. However, LINK still trades near $8.22, close to the $8 reference price Kendrick used in the note.
The bank’s coverage can move prices in the short term. For instance, Aave jumped 15% after Standard Chartered’s earlier DeFi call, even as the broader market weakened.
Kendrick also flags clear risks. Slower institutional tokenization, competition from specialist providers, and technical setbacks could each derail the path to $200.
Therefore, the long-term LINK outlook rests on tokenization moving from pilots into production at scale.
The debate this note opens is a sharper one. Does Chainlink become the SWIFT of tokenized finance, collecting a fee on every crossing, or another bold bank call the market never validates?
The post Chainlink Trades at Just $8.22, but Standard Chartered Sees a 24x Rally appeared first on BeInCrypto.
Miners quickly chose the more profitable version, the original Bitcoin. The new chain, which inherited Bitcoin’s massive mining difficulty, attracted only a tiny fraction of hashpower and produced just two blocks before grinding to a halt. Meanwhile, the original Bitcoin network continued uninterrupted, retaining virtually all activity, liquidity and security.
“Bitcoin worked exactly as designed,” Michael Saylor, the founder of BTC-holding company Strategy (MSTR), said on X.
Contrast that with the so-called free-market economies of the world. Falling corporate profitability should trigger cost-cutting and layoffs, but electoral politics often leads governments to block that adjustment, resulting in prolonged industrial sickness. Or, when high inflation hits, governments issue subsidies that artificially prop up demand, fueling even higher inflation. The usual free-market response of reduced consumption and price discipline never gets a chance to play out.
Bitcoin’s takeaway for the real economy is clear. The free market economy works when you let it run its course.
As for the coin’s spot price, it continues to trade near $65,000 alongside a continued demand for downside protection. This week’s U.S. inflation data is expected to influence the price trajectory.
Stay alert!
Read more: For analysis of today’s activity in altcoins and derivatives, see Crypto Markets Today . For a comprehensive list of events this week, see CoinDesk’s “Crypto Week Ahead.”
A.I. Data Center Backlash
Take the open question of data centers. Wisconsin’s cooler climate and hardened infrastructure make it an attractive location for the A.I. hubs. But it’s a clunker with the public, especially among Democrats. Marquette Law School’s polling has been instructive for candidates in the region. Among Wisconsin Democrats, the notion that the costs outweigh the benefits of data centers has grown from 56% in October of last year to 88% last month. Among all voters in Wisconsin, that shift has been from 55% to 76%.
Hong, recognizing the potency of the issue, has called for a statewide moratorium on data centers, branding her policy “Control-Alt-Delete.” That position may be the key to her surprising strength heading into Election Day.
Crowley’s position, meanwhile, is less restrictive but still skeptical.
“All data centers are not all created equal,” Crowley says. “Our job is to make sure that these data centers are paying their way, that they’re paying for the full energy costs, that they’re paying for the infrastructure and grid upgrades. Heck, I think that they should be subsidizing our energy users across the entire state.”
A prediction market now gives the XRP price a 65% chance of falling below $1 before the end of August. The technical picture is leaning the same way.
The call comes from Polymarket, a platform where traders bet real money on outcomes. Its odds line up with a weakening chart, softening demand, and traders who are positioned for more downside.
XRP’s Chart Builds a Bearish Pattern on Fading Volume
The alarm started with a live betting market putting XRP below $1 this month. The daily chart gives that bet a reason to exist.
XRP has traced a head-and-shoulders pattern, a bearish reversal shape with two lower peaks around a higher middle peak. The pattern sits on a descending neckline that slopes down as support.
Volume tells the rest of the story. Sell volume surged between Aug 3 and Aug 7 as sellers pressed the neckline hard. Yet, buyers managed to hold the line on Aug 7. However, the defense was not convincing. The bounce came on weaker buy volume, which leaves the support looking fragile.
A shaky pattern only matters if the money behind it agrees, so positioning comes next.
Whales and Retail Are Both Leaning Short
The people trading XRP are not signaling confidence. A whale-retail divergence gauge reads -6.3 and sits in its aligned zone. It compares how the biggest traders are positioned against retail.
That reading shows top traders are 96% more short than retail. In plain terms, professionals lean bearish, and retail appears to be drifting toward the same stance rather than holding above $1.
Spot demand echoes that caution. XRP spot outflows across all exchanges have shrunk from about $56 million on Aug 3 to $4.3 million for the week ending Aug 10. That’s a 92% drop in retail-specific buying optimism.
The netflow stays negative but the fading size suggests fresh buyers are not stepping in with force. That leaves the support breakdown risk firmly in play.
With sentiment and flows both bearish, the XRP price chart and its levels become the decider.
The XRP Price Levels That Decide the Next Move
The neckline sits near $1.02, and that level is not random. It lines up with the 0.618 Fibonacci level, also at $1.02. That overlap makes $1.02 one of the strongest support zones on the chart. XRP trades near $1.03 at press time, just above that floor after surviving the August 7 test.
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A clean break of $1.02 would confirm the bearish pattern. The measured move points about 9% lower, toward roughly $0.92, a zone that sits below $1 and matches the outcome Polymarket is pricing. A deeper flush opens the 1.618 extension near $0.89.
The bearish read is not automatic. Head-and-shoulders setups can fail when the neckline holds on repeated tests, and a low-volume break often traps early sellers.
For strength to return, XRP needs to reclaim about $1.09. Only a move back above $1.16 would fully cancel the setup and hand control to buyers. This XRP price prediction for the month lays out that case. Until then, the XRP price stays pinned to its floor.
The $1.02 line separates XRP holding the $1 level from the slide toward $0.92 that Polymarket is betting on.
The post The 65% XRP Price Warning on Polymarket Now Has the Charts Agreeing appeared first on BeInCrypto.
North Korea’s Kimsuky hacking group has established and tested local artificial intelligence (AI) tools as it researches ways to integrate the technology into malware development and attack techniques, South Korean cybersecurity firm Genians said Monday.
The group appears to have used generative AI to create decoy documents. Genians said Kimsuky is developing capabilities to incorporate existing AI models into its attack activities.
Inside Kimsuky’s Local AI Tools
Kimsuky is a threat group operating under North Korea’s Reconnaissance General Bureau. The US Treasury sanctioned it in 2023 as a state-controlled espionage unit.
Investigators found evidence that Kimsuky had installed and configured several tools for running AI models locally, including Ollama, GPT4All, and Msty.
Genians said local processing could reduce the risk of sensitive or stolen material being sent to external AI services. The researchers also identified retrieval-augmented generation, or RAG, which allows AI models to retrieve information from selected documents.
Genians also identified AI-agent frameworks, speech-to-text software, and Cursor, an AI-assisted coding tool, on related infrastructure. The company said the collection could support efforts to integrate AI into malware development, data analysis, and attack automation.
“Based on these findings, the threat actor associated with the state-sponsored hacking group Kimsuky is assessed to have continuously researched ways to actively incorporate AI technologies into actual threat activities, including malware development and the advancement of attack techniques, rather than merely experimenting with them,” the report read.
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From Crypto Decoys to Automation
The group reportedly used financial and cryptocurrency decoy documents that appeared to be AI-generated. The files mimicked investment reports.
Other North Korea-linked operations have paired AI with crypto-focused attacks on executives and engineers. Such groups stole a reported $2.02 billion in crypto during 2025, according to one industry estimate on theft.
Genians identified two potential risks. RAG could help retrieve useful information from stolen documents, while speech-to-text tools could convert stolen audio into searchable text.
Nonetheless, Genians assessed that Kimsuky’s local AI efforts remained focused on research and acquiring knowledge about how the technology could support its operations. The researchers found no evidence that the group had trained its own AI models.
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The post North Korean Hackers Test AI to Advance Their Cyberattacks appeared first on BeInCrypto.
Standard Chartered has initiated coverage of Chainlink with a $200 LINK price target for the end of 2030, a roughly 25-fold increase from its current price near $8, as the bank expects tokenization and decentralized finance activity to drive higher demand for Chainlink’s services.
Summary
- Standard Chartered has set a $200 LINK price target for the end of 2030.
- The bank expects Chainlink fees to increase about 25 times as tokenization and DeFi expand.
- Chainlink secures more than $110 billion in value and about 70% of oracle dependent DeFi value globally.
- CCIP volume reached $4.9 billion in Q2, up 353% from a year earlier.
- Standard Chartered expects LINK to reach $13 by the end of 2026.
According to Standard Chartered Global Head of Digital Assets Research Geoff Kendrick, LINK could rise to $13 by the end of 2026 before reaching $41, $82 and $133 in the following years and eventually hitting $200 by the end of 2030.
The forecast would put LINK ahead of the bank’s expected returns for Bitcoin and Ethereum over the same period. Standard Chartered has projected Bitcoin at $500,000 and Ethereum at $40,000 by the end of the decade.
LINK was trading around $8.25 at the time of the report, down 0.8% over the previous 24 hours, according to CoinGecko data.
Standard Chartered sees Chainlink fees rising 25-fold
Kendrick’s Chainlink valuation rests partly on the bank’s expectations for tokenized assets and decentralized finance. Standard Chartered expects the value of tokenized assets held on blockchains to increase from roughly $340 billion currently to $4 trillion by the end of 2028.
For DeFi, the bank expects deployed assets to increase 37-fold to $2.7 trillion by 2030. Chainlink could benefit from both markets because its infrastructure supplies blockchain applications with external data and supports transfers between different networks, according to the report.
Based on those projections, Standard Chartered estimated that fees generated by Chainlink could increase about 25 times by 2030. The bank’s LINK valuation assumes the token price will broadly track that increase in fees.
The forecast also depends on Chainlink retaining its position in the oracle market. Standard Chartered estimated that Chainlink currently secures more than $110 billion in value, representing roughly 70% of oracle-dependent DeFi value globally and more than 80% of such value on Ethereum.
Aave V3 alone accounts for about 44% of the value secured by Chainlink, according to the bank.
Kendrick has used the same 37-fold DeFi growth forecast in several recent digital asset research notes. In June, he set a $100 target for Uniswap’s UNI and a $3,500 target for Aave’s AAVE, followed by a $60 target for Morpho in July.
UNI recorded a double-digit gain after Standard Chartered published its coverage, while LINK’s reaction to the latest report has remained more limited.
Institutional clients support the Chainlink thesis
Standard Chartered also based part of its forecast on Chainlink’s work with traditional financial institutions, where the network can provide data needed to operate tokenized funds, bonds and other financial products.
The bank identified Swift, DTCC, Euroclear, JPMorgan, Mastercard, UBS, Fidelity and S&P Global among institutions using Chainlink services. Kendrick expects customers outside crypto-native markets to account for an increasing portion of Chainlink fees as tokenization projects move into production.
Unlike many crypto assets, tokenized financial products can require recurring access to information such as net asset values, interest rates and reserve attestations. Standard Chartered expects those requirements to increase demand for oracle services if more securities and funds move on-chain.
The institutional argument follows several Chainlink projects involving banks and financial market infrastructure.
In June, Chainlink joined Project Pangea alongside FairSquareLab, UniKA and Qivalis to test stablecoin-based foreign exchange settlement between Europe and South Korea. Chainlink said the initiative involves more than 50 banks representing over $10 trillion in assets under management.
The project combines blockchain infrastructure with ISO 20022 messaging and existing Swift systems to test payment-versus-payment settlement using compliant euro and South Korean won stablecoins.
Chainlink CCIP has gained assets from rival bridges
Cross-chain infrastructure forms another part of Standard Chartered’s valuation case, although the bank said Chainlink continues to trail LayerZero in interoperability.
Kendrick reported that more than $7 billion in token value has migrated from legacy bridge infrastructure to Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol following a $292 million exploit in April. CCIP quarterly volume reached $4.9 billion during the second quarter, an increase of 353% from a year earlier, according to the note.
Some of those migrations have involved major DeFi protocols and token issuers.
On Aug. 4, BitGo selected Chainlink CCIP as the exclusive cross-chain infrastructure for Wrapped Bitcoin, replacing LayerZero for WBTC transfers. WBTC had a market capitalization of roughly $7.4 billion at the time, making the change one of the largest announced migrations involving Chainlink.
BitGo said it would standardize WBTC deployments around Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Token standard and use CCIP as the default interoperability infrastructure for future digital assets it issues. The structure allows BitGo to retain control over token contracts, transfer limits and operational settings.
Including earlier announcements from Mantle, Lombard, Aave and Kraken, publicly announced migrations from LayerZero to Chainlink infrastructure had reached roughly $14.6 billion after BitGo’s decision.
The migration activity followed the $292 million exploit involving KelpDAO’s LayerZero-powered bridge. KelpDAO blamed LayerZero for the incident and said it planned to rebuild using Chainlink, while LayerZero disputed that characterization.
Aave and stablecoins have expanded Chainlink usage
Chainlink has also added usage through existing DeFi relationships rather than relying only on projects switching infrastructure providers.
In July, Aave expanded its use of CCIP by making it the default cross-chain infrastructure for activity across the Aave App and Stable Vaults. The integration extended an existing setup under which CCIP already handled transfers of Aave’s GHO stablecoin and cross-chain governance messages.
Aave said the expanded deployment allows CCIP to process deposits, withdrawals, vault rebalancing, yield optimization and asset transfers. Stable Vaults use the infrastructure to move deposits between Ethereum, Base and Arbitrum without requiring users to manually bridge assets.
GHO and Savings GHO also use Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Token standard. Aave said GHO was available across eight blockchain networks in July, with CCIP responsible for transfers between supported chains.
United Stables adopted Chainlink infrastructure the same month after its U stablecoin surpassed $1 billion in circulating supply and $2.5 billion in daily trading volume.
Chainlink Data Feeds and Proof of Reserve went live for U, while United Stables said it planned to integrate CCIP for future cross-chain transfers. The company said its Data Feeds support pricing information used across more than 20 lending protocols, while Proof of Reserve lets users and applications verify U’s collateral on-chain.
Standard Chartered’s projections assume deployments of this type continue expanding as tokenized assets and DeFi grow. However, the bank identified several conditions that could prevent LINK from reaching its targets.
Kendrick said institutional tokenization could develop more slowly than the bank expects, while pilot projects may fail to become recurring production workflows. Standard Chartered also identified competition from specialist data and interoperability providers as a risk to Chainlink’s market position.
Technical failures could also damage confidence in Chainlink’s infrastructure, according to the report, particularly as more financial assets depend on its oracle and cross-chain services.
Under Kendrick’s staged forecast, LINK would first need to reach $13 by the end of 2026 before advancing to $41, $82 and $133 on the path to Standard Chartered’s $200 target in 2030.
The crypto market opened the week on a positive note, with bitcoin up 0.54% since midnight UTC at $65,209 and ether gaining 0.86% to $1,925 as sentiment stabilized following a turbulent July.
The move was correlated with Nasdaq 100 index futures, which rose by 0.45% since midnight, buoyed by speculation from the Middle East that Iran is ready to strike a deal with Oman to open the Strait of Hormuz.
The altcoin market is delicately poised, waiting to see if bitcoin can drive higher into the $68,000 to $72,000 range before benefiting from capital rotation.
Derivatives positioning
- Long-short ratio flips bullish: The long-short ratio for taker volume in crypto futures has flipped bullish, with longs accounting for 52% of the flow. A taker is an entity that removes liquidity from the order book by trading at available prices.
- BTC OI growth remains elusive: Bitcoin futures market activity remains subdued as BTC attempts to hold above $65,000 amid cooling bets on Federal Reserve rate increases. Open interest (OI) slipped back below 750K BTC. However, annualized funding rates and 24-hour OI-adjusted CVD remain positive, indicating that the limited interest present in the market is leaning bullish.
- ETH OI slides: De-risking continues in ETH futures, with open interest falling to 13.35 million tokens, the lowest level since May 3, and a significant drop from the late-May peak of 15.98 million tokens.
- Activity picks up in SOL futures: Renewed activity is appearing in SOL futures, as open interest rebounds to 64.60 million tokens from a recent low of around 60 million. This points to fresh capital inflows, coinciding with the token’s price recovery from nearly $70 to over $76 and a break above the widely tracked Ichimoku cloud, signaling a potential short-term bullish trend reversal.
- Monero leads OI growth: Privacy-focused coin Monero (XMR) has surged 5% over the past 24 hours, briefly topping $400 for the first time since June 12. The rally appears to have staying power, with futures open interest jumping 6% alongside the price gains. The 24-hour CVD is the most positive among major cryptocurrencies, indicating that buyers are acting more aggressively through market orders rather than passive limit orders. In addition, annualized funding rates stand at the highest level among majors at 28%, underscoring growing demand for upside exposure.
- BVIV hits 2026 lows: Bitcoin’s 30-day implied volatility index, BVIV, fell to a year-to-date low of 35.59% over the weekend. The drop shows expectations for market calm, although some traders warn that put options offering protection from price losses in BTC are still trading at a premium to calls.
- Calls dominate volume: The 24-hour volume ranking in options shows increased investor bias for bitcoin calls at strikes $68,000 and $70,000. Ether options show a similar profile.
Token talk
- Pump.fun led the altcoin market with a 5.39% gain since midnight UTC, extending a 24-hour run that has pushed its market cap above $1.1 billion.
- Ethena (ENA) rose 4.84% to $0.0907, continuing a steady recovery that has seen it gain ground in most sessions over the past two weeks. Still, it remains more than 90% below its all-time high.
- NEAR protocol gained 3.79% as AI tokens broadly recovered, with FET adding 2.10% after weeks of underperformance against the wider market.
- Lighter (LIT) slipped 0.94%, one of the only notable altcoins in the red as its slide following July’s 200%-plus rally continues to grind lower.
- Woldcoin posted a 13% gain over the past 24 hours but remains in a deep downtrend, down 91% from its record high one year ago.
- CoinMarketCap’s “altcoin season” indicator is at 37/100, down significantly from last week’s peak of 51/100 as investors focus on bitcoin’s potential move higher.
Sweden’s H100 more than tripled its Bitcoin holdings to 3,506 BTC after completing an acquisition involving 2,455 BTC.
La is one of more than 30 people who have died in ICE detention since October amid a surge in fatalities that has raised alarm from experts and left rights groups and a growing number of families searching for answers—and, perhaps, a measure of accountability.
The fatality rate in ICE custody reached a 22-year high in the opening months of this fiscal year, according to a report published in the medical journal JAMA earlier this year. Between the beginning of October and Jan. 19, the latest date in the report’s analysis, 18 immigration detainee deaths were reported; since then, at least 17 other people have died while being held by ICE.
By comparison, 3 people died in ICE detention in the full 2022 fiscal year, per the report.
A spokesperson from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which houses ICE, maintained in a statement to TIME that “there has been NO spike in deaths.”
“Consistent with data over the last decade, as of May 29, death rates in custody under the Trump administration are 0.009% of the detained population,” the spokesperson said. “As bed space has rapidly expanded, we have maintained a higher standard of care than most prisons that hold U.S. citizens—including providing access to proper medical care. For many illegal aliens this is the best healthcare they have received their entire lives.”
MARA Holdings has sold about 23,093 Bitcoin for roughly $1.63 billion during the first half of 2026, turning a large part of its BTC treasury into cash as it funded operations, investments and liquidity needs.
Summary
- MARA sold about 23,093 BTC for roughly $1.63 billion during the first half of 2026.
- The company ended June with 35,577 BTC valued at about $2.1 billion.
- Bitcoin sales were used to fund operations, growth investments and liquidity needs.
- MARA later pledged 18,750 BTC to secure $600 million of incremental borrowing from Coinbase and Two Prime.
- The company is using its Bitcoin reserves alongside debt financing to support projects including the planned Long Ridge acquisition.
According to MARA’s Aug. 6 Form 10-Q filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the Bitcoin was sold at an average price of $70,631 during the six months ended June 30. The company said the sales were part of its strategy to fund operations, support growth opportunities and manage liquidity.
The transactions came after MARA changed how it manages its Bitcoin reserves. Having allowed sales of newly mined Bitcoin in 2025, the company expanded the policy in 2026 to permit sales of BTC already held on its balance sheet. MARA can now hold Bitcoin as a long-term investment, sell coins based on market conditions and capital needs, or make opportunistic purchases.
By June 30, MARA still held 35,577 BTC with a fair value of about $2.08 billion, based on a quarter-end Bitcoin price of $58,524. Its holdings had fallen from 53,822 BTC at the end of 2025 and 49,951 BTC a year earlier, though they were slightly higher than the 35,303 BTC reported at the end of March.
MARA Bitcoin sales supplied most of its first-half investing cash
The $1.63 billion raised from Bitcoin became MARA’s largest source of investing cash during the period. Its filing showed net cash provided by investing activities of about $1.47 billion, compared with $337 million of cash used in investing activities during the same period in 2025.
Against the Bitcoin proceeds, MARA spent $94.3 million on property and equipment and $61.1 million, net of cash acquired, on its Exaion and Meerkat acquisitions. The company has been adding infrastructure that can support Bitcoin mining alongside artificial intelligence, high-performance computing and critical IT workloads.
At the same time, operating activities consumed $471.3 million of cash during the first half, up from $378.9 million a year earlier. MARA attributed the increase mainly to lower revenue and higher operating costs.
The Bitcoin sales also took place while MARA reduced debt. Financing activities used about $1.12 billion during the six months, including $912.8 million used for partial repayments of its March 2030 and June 2031 convertible notes and $350 million used to repay a previous credit line. Another $150 million credit facility partly offset those outflows.
MARA said it repurchased approximately $1 billion of its 0% convertible senior notes through privately negotiated transactions during the half, helping reduce total debt from $3.6 billion at Dec. 31 to about $2.4 billion by June 30.
MARA has put more of its remaining Bitcoin to work
Alongside outright sales, MARA has increasingly used its remaining BTC for lending and collateralized borrowing.
At June 30, 4,742 BTC had been loaned to third parties, while another 4,528 BTC were pledged as collateral. That left 26,307 unrestricted BTC with a fair value of about $1.5 billion. MARA reported $10.7 million in interest income from Bitcoin lending during the first six months of the year.
MARA describes Bitcoin as both a treasury asset and a source of liquidity. Under its digital asset management strategy, the company can use portions of its holdings for lending, structured trading and collateralized financing rather than keeping the entire balance inactive.
The strategy became more pronounced after the second quarter. On Aug. 4,MARA pledged 18,750 BTC as initial collateral for new lending arrangements with Coinbase Credit and Two Prime Lending that provided $600 million of incremental borrowing.
Coinbase’s $450 million facility included $300 million of new funding and refinanced MARA’s existing $150 million credit line. The facility carries a floating interest rate equal to the midpoint of the federal funds target range plus 3.875% and matures on Aug. 4, 2028, with an automatic one-year extension unless either side cancels it.
Two Prime separately provided a $300 million term loan carrying a fixed annual rate of 7.65%, with maturity scheduled for Aug. 3, 2028. Both facilities require MARA to maintain collateral ratios, according to the Aug. 9 report, with additional collateral required if the pledged assets fall below contractual margin levels.
Bitcoin treasury fell as MARA absorbed a $1.87 billion first-half loss
The sales occurred during a difficult first half for MARA’s reported earnings. The company generated $349.5 million of revenue during the six months ended June 30, down from $452.4 million in the same period of 2025, while recording a net loss of $1.87 billion compared with net income of $274.8 million a year earlier.
Bitcoin price movements accounted for a large part of the earnings swing. MARA reported that the fair value of its Bitcoin holdings fell by about $1.4 billion during the first six months as the market price declined. For the second quarter alone, the reduction was about $343 million.
MARA nevertheless increased its mining capacity over the year. Energized hashrate reached 70.3 EH/s at June 30 from 57.4 EH/s a year earlier, while miner efficiency improved to 17.3 joules per terahash from 18.3. Total energy capacity increased to 1.9 GW from 1.7 GW.
During the second quarter, MARA produced 2,422 BTC and sold 2,213 BTC at an average price of $73,078, according to its Aug. 7 earnings report. Most of the first-half reduction in its Bitcoin treasury therefore occurred during the first quarter, when the company sold 20,880 BTC for about $1.5 billion.
Long Ridge links MARA’s liquidity strategy to infrastructure expansion
Part of MARA’s latest Bitcoin-backed borrowing may now finance its proposed purchase of Long Ridge Energy & Power in Ohio, connecting its treasury strategy with its expansion into energy and computing infrastructure.
MARA entered an agreement on April 29 to acquire 100% of Long Ridge. The property includes a 485 MW combined-cycle gas power plant in Hannibal, Ohio, which the company expects to increase to 505 MW in the first quarter of 2027, as well as more than 1,600 contiguous acres with water, fiber and rail access. The site sits next to MARA’s existing Hannibal data center operations.
The transaction carries an enterprise value of about $1.5 billion, including up to roughly $900 million of assumed debt, according to MARA’s Aug. 9 financing disclosure. The company has also secured a Barclays commitment for a 364-day senior secured bridge facility of up to $785 million that can serve as backstop financing for part of the acquisition debt.
MARA has pursued another large powered site in Texas as part of the same infrastructure buildout. Under the agreement announced in July, the company is acquiring more than 1,200 acres in Matagorda County, with access to an initial 1 GW of grid capacity expected by October 2027 and up to 2 GW by April 2028.
Working with Starwood Digital Ventures, MARA plans to develop the property for high-performance computing, flexible compute services and Bitcoin mining. Its SEC filing describes the Starwood structure as site-specific joint ventures formed after Starwood secures qualifying tenants, with MARA contributing sites and Starwood supplying capital against the value of those assets before MARA is required to invest additional cash.
On June 30, MARA reported $421.3 million of cash and cash equivalents and about $2.1 billion of Bitcoin, putting the combined value of its cash and digital assets at roughly $2.5 billion. The company also had approximately $1.5 billion of unused capacity under its at-the-market equity program, through which it sold no shares during the first six months of 2026.
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