Bitwise Asset Management has cut about 14% of its workforce, reducing headcount to roughly 155 from around 180 as the crypto-focused manager contends with a sharp retreat in assets. Bloomberg reported that Bitwise confirmed the reduction in an emailed statement. The reported totals amount to… Read the full story at The Defiant

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Riot Platforms just demonstrated that a Bitcoin mining company’s most valuable line item isn’t its hash rate; it’s the megawatts sitting behind it.

The company’s new 20-year, $9.1Bn compute lease with Anthropic converts a Texas mining campus into contracted AI infrastructure revenue that has nothing to do with block rewards, difficulty adjustments, or the price of BTC.

This huge mining deal was struck as BTC/USD traded pretty much flat over the past 24 hours, with a modest -0.2% decrease, and the price at $64,000. Daily trading volume for Bitcoin is at $22Bn.

Bitcoin Mining’s AI Pivot Gets Its Biggest Number Yet

Riot disclosed Monday that it had signed a 20-year agreement to supply 191 megawatts of capacity from its Rockdale, Texas campus to a company it described only as a “leading frontier AI” lab. Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter, that the customer is Anthropic.

The commercial terms are the real story regardless of who confirms what. The agreement runs through June 2048, is expected to generate $9.1Bn in revenue over that base term, and carries two five-year extension options that could push total contract value to as much as $16.1Bn if both are exercised, according to Riot’s disclosure.

Riot shares jumped 25% to $24.40 in after-hours trading on the news, per Bloomberg. CNBC subsequently reported the stock had initially soared more than 20% in regular trading before giving back almost the entire move, a reminder that even a landmark contracted-revenue deal doesn’t automatically produce a clean, durable re-rating in a single session.

From Hash Rate to Megawatts: The Valuation Shift

Riot, formerly Bioptix, has transitioned from a biotech firm to Bitcoin mining and is now evolving into an AI landlord, indicating a strategic pivot towards power and land utilization. Its Rockdale campus is home to two tenants, including a partnership with Advanced Micro Devices, contributing to its revenue success.

The broader market is increasingly valuing publicly traded Bitcoin miners for their power capacity and data-center assets rather than solely for Bitcoin production. This change reduces dependency on Bitcoin price fluctuations and mining variables, which have historically made miner stocks volatile.

Companies like Cipher Mining, Hut 8, and TeraWulf are noted as hybrid miners, while Riot, historically seen as a pure-play operator, is now being evaluated based on its power capacity from its Anthropic deal, signaling a shift in how AI demand is influencing Bitcoin-related markets.

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How the Lease Actually Differs From Bitcoin Mining Revenue

The mechanism here is closer to commercial real estate than mining economics. Riot isn’t operating GPUs or selling AI compute directly; it’s leasing power access, land, and data-center shell capacity to a tenant that brings its own hardware and workloads.

That structure is what makes the $9.1Bn figure fundamentally different from mining revenue. Bitcoin mining income fluctuates with BTC price, network difficulty, and the fixed schedule of halving-driven reward reductions.

A 20-year lease with fixed or contracted pricing insulates that portion of Riot’s revenue from all three variables, trading mining’s volatility for a bond-like, long-duration cash flow stream.

Anthropic’s appetite for that kind of arrangement isn’t limited to Riot. The company has also struck a roughly $10Bn agreement with the months-old infrastructure startup Volta Infra Holdings and agreed in May to buy close to $45Bn in computing from Elon Musk’s xAI.

This is, according to Bloomberg’s reporting, a pattern of diversified, multi-vendor sourcing from a lab whose Claude models sit at the center of the growing overlap between frontier AI and crypto-adjacent infrastructure.

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What the Contract Doesn’t Prove

The $16.1Bn headline number requires both five-year extensions to be exercised; it’s a ceiling, not a floor, and Riot’s base-case disclosure of $9.1Bn is the figure that should anchor any valuation work.

Deployment also isn’t instant: Data Center Dynamics reported that initial capacity isn’t expected to go live until late 2027, with full deployment targeted for mid-2028, meaning the revenue ramp is gradual rather than immediate.

There’s also a regulatory variable specific to Texas. CNBC’s report cited Compass Point analyst Michael Donovan noting that ERCOT’s tightened scrutiny of new power projects could slow speculative build-outs across the state.

This is even as it makes already-approved, grid-connected capacity like Riot’s more strategically valuable to tenants racing for scarce power. That’s a two-sided dynamic worth watching rather than a settled tailwind.

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The post Bitcoin Mining News: Riot Platforms Anthropic AI Lease Explained appeared first on Cryptonews.

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The SpaceX logo is displayed at a SpaceX facility on Aug. 4, 2026 in Hawthorne, California.

Justin Sullivan | Getty Images

Short sellers betting against SpaceX are rapidly retreating from the trade, just as the newly public stock rebounds from its post-IPO slump.

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Short interest in SpaceX fell to about 11% of the company’s publicly traded shares Wednesday, down sharply from a peak of 34% last week, according to S3 Partners. The decline reflects a combination of bearish investors closing out positions and a significant expansion of the stock’s tradable float following the first major lockup expiration.

“Shorts that wanted to short are out of bullets,” said Ihor Dusaniwsky, managing director of predictive analytics at S3 Partners. “Only so much money you can put into a trade.”

The exodus came as SpaceX shares staged a sharp rebound from their post-earnings sell-off, with short covering potentially adding fuel to the advance. Investors closing bearish positions must buy back shares, which can amplify upward moves when a stock is already rallying.

Shares jumped 8% Wednesday to around $144, lifting the stock about 7% above its $135 IPO price and roughly 38% above its Aug. 3 low.

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SpaceX since IPO

SpaceX has endured a roller-coaster ride since going public. The stock initially tumbled after the rocket and satellite company disclosed in its first earnings report last week that capital expenditures were more than twice its revenue, fueling concerns about the enormous spending required to fund its ambitions.

The sell-off attracted a wave of short sellers, pushing short interest to unusually elevated levels relative to the stock’s limited public float. Short selling involves borrowing shares and selling them in hopes of buying them back later at a lower price.

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That dynamic changed substantially last Thursday, when just over 911 million SpaceX shares became eligible for trading following the expiration of an initial lockup period. The newly unlocked tranche represented roughly 7% of the company’s shares outstanding and exceeded the 639 million shares sold in the IPO.

The larger float mechanically reduced short interest as a percentage of tradable shares. But short covering has also contributed to the decline, according to S3, as investors who had wagered against SpaceX bought back stock to exit their positions.

More supply is coming. On Aug. 20, another 319 million shares could unlock, followed by roughly 700 million in September and close to that number in October, according to the prospectus.

The additional shares could create fresh volatility by giving employees and early investors more opportunities to sell. At the same time, the larger float would make it easier for investors to establish new short positions if bearish sentiment returns.

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The SEC issued joint guidance with the CFTC last week, classifying digital assets into five categories: digital commodities, digital collectibles, digital tools, stablecoins, and digital securities, signaling that the agency will build its own crypto regulatory framework rather than wait indefinitely for the Senate’s stalled CLARITY Act.

The move gives exchanges, token issuers and traders a working jurisdictional map, but it’s an interpretation, not statute, and that distinction matters for anyone pricing regulatory risk into crypto positions.

This latest CLARITY Act news comes as the crypto market braces for today’s CPI data, which could shake Bitcoin out of its current consolidation around $64,000. The direction, though, is yet to be determined.

CLARITY Act Alternative: A Taxonomy Built for Speed, Not Statute

Under the new SEC-CFTC breakdown, the first four asset categories generally fall outside securities law, leaving digital securities as the only bucket firmly under SEC jurisdiction – though the agency notes it can still assert authority over specific nonsecurity assets in particular cases. That’s the ambiguity market structure legislation was supposed to erase, and it’s why the guidance reads as a stopgap rather than a settlement.

Ian Katz, managing partner at Capital Alpha, framed the calculation regulators are making given how slow formal rulemaking moves. “They’re not completely putting the brakes on, waiting for legislation,” he told The Hill.

SEC Chair Paul Atkins made the same point more bluntly at the DC Blockchain Summit, framing the guidance as overdue rather than optional.

“For over a decade, market participants have operated without clear guidance on the fundamental question – does a crypto asset implicate federal securities laws? So today, I’m pleased to announce that the SEC’s persistent failure to provide clarity on this question is over,” Atkins said.

Atkins also previewed a broader framework built around a startup exemption, a fundraising exemption and a safe harbor for crypto assets that have outgrown securities treatment, pieces that would normally live in statute, not agency interpretation.

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The Senate’s Stablecoin Standoff

The House passed the CLARITY Act last July, but the Senate is divided, with the Agriculture committee advancing its section without Democratic votes and the Banking committee facing setbacks, including losing Coinbase’s support.

A key issue is stablecoin rewards, with banks seeking tighter restrictions, while the crypto industry argues this hinders their competitiveness. President Trump criticized the banks for undermining the GENIUS Act and urged swift action on market structure.

Senators Angela Alsobrooks and Thom Tillis have reportedly reached a bipartisan agreement on rewards, though details are vague. David Carlisle from Elliptic noted that the SEC and CFTC’s joint interpretation provides needed assurance amid the ongoing legislative uncertainty.

What Happens Next

Even if the Senate Banking Committee marks up its bill in April as targeted, lawmakers would still need to merge it with the Agriculture Committee’s version, clear a 60-vote floor threshold, and reconcile the result with the House’s CLARITY Act, all before midterm politics freeze legislative activity.

Sen. Bernie Moreno put a hard number on the risk: “If we don’t get the CLARITY Act passed by May, digital asset legislation will not pass for the foreseeable future.”

For traders, that timeline is the variable worth tracking over policy headlines about the guidance itself. An SEC interpretation can be revised or withdrawn by a future commission without a congressional vote, while a passed statute can’t.

This is a gap that has already shown up in how institutional flows have responded to the delay, and one that will continue to matter for how much durable pricing power crypto regulation actually carries this year.

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The post SEC-CFTC Crypto Map Advances as Clarity Act Stalls appeared first on Cryptonews.

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Just a day after real-time flight tracking website FlightAware filed a lawsuit against prediction markets platform Kalshi over use of its name and data, the flight data company gave notice of voluntary dismissal of the case. 

In a Tuesday filing in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, attorneys for FlightAware said that they had voluntarily dismissed the case against Kalshi. The flight tracking company had filed the lawsuit a day earlier, claiming that Kalshi had used its “data and name to run gambling markets on flight cancellations.”

While the immediate turnaround could suggest a closed-door settlement, neither company had publicly commented on the case as of Wednesday. On Tuesday, a judge ordered Kalshi to show cause why the court should not issue a temporary restraining order over FlightAware’s trademark and data. 

Notably, at least one event contract showed that Kalshi had changed its language from “FlightAware“ to “Primary Source Agency” as the entity responsible for verifying data related to the outcome of flight cancellations, including that the trade did not “indicate an endorsement of this product or any affiliation” between FlightAware and Kalshi. Primary Source Agency linked to FlightAware’s website. Cointelegraph reached out to the companies for comment but did not receive an immediate response.

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Side-by-side comparison of event contract citing FlightAware data before the lawsuit was dropped (left) and after (right). Source: Kalshi

Related: Kalshi launches sports and crypto perps data feed on DoubleZero

FlightAware’s suit had alleged trademark infringement, breach of contract, injury to its reputation and unfair competition in the latest legal action involving prediction market companies. Kalshi, Polymarket and other prediction market companies face legal action brought by many US state gaming authorities and regulators over alleged illicit sports betting offered to residents.

CFTC still at odds with state authorities over prediction markets

On Tuesday, the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), whose chair Michael Selig has repeatedly claimed the agency has “exclusive jurisdiction“ over prediction markets, said it had invoked “emergency authority“ to block New York state officials’ attempts to seek a temporary restraining order prohibiting the company from offering event contracts nationwide. The action followed New York authorities filing a lawsuit against Kalshi in July, alleging that the company was operating an unlicensed gambling platform through its contracts on sports and other events.

The CFTC decision echoed the agency’s actions in a Michigan case over Kalshi. In June, a Michigan judge ordered the company to stop offering sports betting contracts to residents until the civil case reached a conclusion. However, the CFTC under Selig ordered Kalshi not to comply with the state order — something the company’s head of enforcement and legal counsel said put it in an “impossible position“ between US state and federal orders.

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Bitcoin remains trapped in a broad consolidation phase, with the price struggling to break above the descending resistance that has governed the market for several months. At around $63.5K, BTC is showing some short-term recovery, but the broader structure remains cautious until the key resistance zones are decisively broken.

Bitcoin Price Analysis: The Daily Chart

The daily chart shows Bitcoin trading below a descending trendline that connects the major highs since the beginning of the year. The trendline currently sits around the $66K area, making this the first major hurdle for the buyers. A daily breakout above this resistance would represent an important structural improvement and could open the door toward the $74K resistance zone.

The broader trend remains bearish-to-neutral; however, BTC is still trading below the major moving averages displayed on the chart. The longer-term moving averages are sloping downward, reinforcing the significance of the descending trendline.

On the downside, the $60K area represents an important support zone, while the broader $54K region is the next major demand area visible on the chart. Holding above these levels keeps the current consolidation structure intact, whereas a sustained breakdown could signal another leg lower.

BTC/USDT 4-Hour Chart

The 4-hour chart provides a more constructive picture in the short term. Bitcoin has been forming a tightening structure, with an ascending support trendline converging toward a descending resistance trendline. The price is currently around $64K, leaving the market relatively close to the upper boundary.

The key resistance is concentrated around $66K-$67K. A clean breakout above this zone, particularly if accompanied by a sustained move beyond the descending trendline, could trigger a continuation toward the $66K-$67K area and potentially higher.

Conversely, the rising support line and the $62K zone are the most important levels to watch on the downside. A break below this area would weaken the short-term bullish structure and could expose BTC to the $60K support zone again.

The 4-hour RSI has also rebounded from near-oversold conditions and is now recovering toward the middle of its range. This points to improving momentum, although it is not yet strong enough to confirm a sustained upside breakout. For now, the market appears to be waiting for a decisive break from the tightening range.

Sentiment Analysis

The funding-rate chart provides an interesting contrast to Bitcoin’s price action. Funding rates were deeply negative during the sharp sell-off earlier in the year, with several significant spikes below zero as BTC traded around the $70K-$80K region. This indicated that bearish positioning had become particularly aggressive.

Since then, funding has gradually normalized and has turned predominantly positive. The latest reading is around 0.006%, while Bitcoin is trading near $64K. This suggests that leveraged long positioning has returned, but the funding rate is not yet at an extreme level comparable to the highly crowded periods over the past few years.

That is broadly constructive, although it also introduces some short-term downside risk. If BTC fails to break the $65K-$67K resistance area while funding remains positive, long positions could become vulnerable to a liquidation-driven pullback. Conversely, a breakout accompanied by only moderately positive funding would provide a healthier setup, as it would suggest that the move is not being driven by excessive leverage.

The post Bitcoin Price Analysis: What Does BTC’s Bearish Market Structure Signal Next? appeared first on CryptoPotato.

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Flash.Trade founder Anas Khader gave three reasons for shutting down his Solana perps exchange on Aug. 7, and the second one named the Solana Foundation. Four days later the Foundation's president was publicly rejecting the word "kingmaking." The underlying discussion is how an organization with a… Read the full story at The Defiant

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