The Aussie enters this week with genuine hawkish backing. RBA Assistant Governor Christopher Kent reaffirmed that tighter policy is working as intended, with markets now pricing roughly a 70% chance of one final hike to 4.60% by early next year, even as inflation eased below forecasts last quarter. That combination of commodity strength, gold, iron ore and LNG all running above forecast, and a still-hawkish central bank has kept AUD broadly supported near multi-week highs, with all eyes now on Thursday’s July employment report.

The loonie tells an even stronger story. Canada’s economy expanded at a blistering 3.4% annualised pace in Q2, well above the Bank of Canada’s own 2.5% forecast, while July employment surged by 75,100 jobs against expectations of just 15,000, pulling unemployment down to a two-year low of 6.4%. That combination of surprising growth and labour market strength has fuelled speculation the BoC could hike if elevated energy prices persist, giving CAD real independent momentum of its own.

The result: two resource-linked currencies both riding genuinely hawkish narratives, leaving AUD/CAD’s next move to hinge on which central bank blinks first.

Technical Analysis of AUD/CAD

As the chart shows, AUD/CAD has been compressing into a symmetrical triangle since early August, with a descending trendline from the 0.9926 high converging with an ascending trendline off the 0.9748 low, both meeting right around current price near 0.9847, exactly where the 100-period EMA also sits.

Bullish Scenario

Should buyers break above the descending trendline and the 0.382 retracement near 0.9858, the path would open towards the 0 level at 0.9926, a confirmed breakout that would suggest genuine momentum returning to the pair.

Bearish Scenario

Conversely, a break below the ascending trendline and the 0.5 retracement near 0.9837 would expose the 0.618 level near 0.9816, with a deeper slide risking a retest of the 0.786 retracement around 0.9786, or even the 0.9748 low that anchored this entire structure.With price coiled right at the apex of this triangle, sitting exactly on the 100-period EMA, AUD/CAD looks primed for a decisive break, will the Aussie’s hawkish backing prove enough, or does the loonie’s stronger data ultimately win out?

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As a writer, a university professor, artist, and designer, I worry about the risk that generative AI might destroy the delightful, human experience of carrying out acts of creation, not to mention making careers in the pursuit of that creativity unviable. Whether or not AI will improve work or destroy jobs, it already distances people from some of the moment-to-moment acts that might have felt gratifying just a few years ago. If AI can write your emails, then you don’t need to feel the click of keys under your fingertips or hear the clack they produce when you type with them. If AI can generate a gift list for the holidays or a vacation plan for Spring Break, then you don’t need to swipe through catalogs or thumb through guidebooks. In this way, AI can amplify the same dematerializing effects of technology people have encountered for years.

But that’s not the whole story. As critical of AI as I sometimes am, I have also found that AI can direct people back toward the physical world and the gratifying feelings it offers. LLMs can be quite adept at helping people figure out how to plan and carry out real-world tasks, such as fixing a plumbing leak, repairing a car, or learning a new hobby.

Bitcoin BTC$64,177.56 recently traded around $64,000, pausing after a rally that saw it rise from $62,600 on Monday. The largest cryptocurrency has dropped 0.6% since midnight UTC, trailing after Nasdaq 100 index futures, which lost 1.1% as U.S. Treasury bond yields and oil prices rose.

Ether ETH$1,895.61 lost around 1% since midnight and coins including SUI, XLM and TAO also dropped.

The increase in yields reflects unease ahead of the Federal Reserve minutes release due Wednesday after two consecutive softer inflation prints. Brent crude oil rose back to $94 per barrel after a 60-day US-Iran ceasefire expired Monday without a deal.

Also on Wednesday, U.S. President Donald Trump is expected to attend a meeting with crypto CEOs at the White House, with U.S. policy being a key driver of price action of late, contributing to the stop-start nature of bitcoin’s range-bound performance.

Derivatives positioning

• Taker ratio flips bullish: With BTC outperforming U.S. stocks on Monday, the long-short taker volume ratio in crypto futures flipped decisively from neutral to bullish, with longs accounting for over 51% of flow. Takers are traders who buy or sell at available prices, pulling liquidity from the order book.
• Funding rates confirm the chase for longs: BTC traders are chasing bullish bets, as evidenced by annualized perpetual funding rates surging to a 20-month high, according to data source CryptoQuant. Positive funding rates mean futures are trading at a premium to spot price, reflecting a bullish bias.
• BTC OI holds steady despite the move: Overall open interest (OI) in bitcoin futures remains near 750,000 BTC, a level it’s largely held for weeks.
• SOL sees a pickup in activity: OI in SOL futures rose to 66.88 million tokens, the most since July 10. Funding rates remain near zero.
• XLM shows a clear bearish tilt: The token has dropped nearly 3% to 15 cents since midnight, its lowest since May 27, reversing a pop to 27 cents at the end of May. Traders appear to be shorting the dip: OI in XLM futures rose 3.5% over the past 24 hours, the highest level since June 4. With annualized funding rates at -28%, that indicates a strong bearish bias. A negative 24-hour OI-adjusted cumulative volume delta (CVD) reinforces this picture, suggesting sellers are trading more aggressively via market orders rather than passive limit orders.
• Other notable OI movers: CC, DOGE and SUI are also among the notable OI gainers, though prices of all three are trading little-changed to negative. HBAR and CRO are notable OI losers.
• Bullishness looks selective, not broad-based: BTC is buoyant and showing buyer leadership, with a positive 24-hour CVD. Most of the other major cryptocurrencies, including ETH, SOL, LTC, LINK and DOGE, show negative CVD, suggesting the bullish sentiment is concentrated in BTC.
• Low volatility is inviting fresh positioning: Bitcoin and ether’s 30-day implied volatility indexes remain at the year’s lows. Trading firm TDX Strategies suggested using this low-vol environment to build tactical positioning favoring December optionality across BTC and select altcoins such as SOL and HYPE.
• Options flow leans toward upside bets: On Deribit, calls struck above BTC’s spot price continue to dominate 24-hour volume rankings. The $70,000-strike call expiring Sept. 25 is the most-traded bitcoin option of the past 24 hours. For ether, the $2,080 call expiring Aug. 28 leads.

Token talk

• PUMP rose 1.31%, holding a portion of Monday’s 7.8% surge that came alongside a 55% jump in daily trading volume to $90 million. The token has now stabilized above $0.00277.
• XMR added 0.59% since midnight to $417, taking the seven-day gain to more than 11%. The privacy coin has been one of August’s outperformers.
• SUI is the biggest laggard since midnight, sliding 4.62% to 64.36 cents, reversing a stretch of relative strength that had seen it outperform most layer-1s through late July.
• FET has shed 2.10% since midnight to 12.13 cents, extending a run of underperformance that has seen AI-adjacent tokens give back much of their late-July gains.
• LINK is down 1.45% at $9.39, retracing some of the gains that followed Standard Chartered’s prediction that called for it to rise by 2,000% by 2030. It remains up by 8% since that forecast.

BitBox has released a firmware update fixing two severe vulnerabilities that could have exposed hardware wallet users to malicious firmware or caused Bitcoin to be locked to an unintended address.

BitBox said in a security disclosure on Monday that the first vulnerability involved memory corruption affecting unconfigured Multi editions of the BitBox02 and BitBox02 Nova, while a second flaw affected the wallet maker’s Silent Payments implementation.

The company said it had found no evidence that either vulnerability had been exploited and had received no reports of users losing funds because of the flaws.

BitBox vulnerability could have allowed malicious firmware

For the first vulnerability, BitBox said a malicious host connected to an affected wallet could exploit memory corruption to execute arbitrary code before the device had been configured with a wallet.

Successful exploitation could potentially allow the host to install malicious firmware, creating a route through which funds could later be compromised, according to the company.

The exposure was limited to Multi editions of the BitBox02 and BitBox02 Nova that had not yet been set up. BitBox classified the vulnerability as severe because arbitrary code execution could undermine protections designed to prevent unauthorised software from running on the hardware wallet.

Firmware controls how a hardware wallet handles cryptographic operations, verifies transactions and communicates with a connected computer. BitBox said the vulnerability could therefore put funds at risk if an attacker managed to use the flaw to install malicious firmware on an affected device.

Similar hardware and firmware weaknesses have surfaced at other wallet makers in recent months. In June, crypto.news reported on a flaw in the TROPIC01 Secure Element used by Trezor Safe 7 devices after Ledger Donjon researchers carried out a laser fault injection attack during laboratory testing.

Trezor said its Safe 7 remained protected because the device uses three independent hardware security layers. According to the company, compromising TROPIC01 alone did not provide access to a user’s PIN, wallet or funds.

Tropic Square had provided the chip to Ledger Donjon for independent testing, with researchers notifying the company in January that they had extracted some chip secrets and bypassed firmware signature checks using the laboratory attack.

Another hardware attack disclosed in July allowed Ledger Donjon researchers to reset the password on a Tangem wallet card using a targeted laser pulse against its secure element.

Ledger Donjon said the attack required physical possession of the card, invasive preparation, specialist knowledge and laboratory equipment costing about $250,000. Tangem described the everyday risk to customers as “virtually non-existent,” while advising users to keep their wallet cards physically secure.

Silent Payments flaw could have locked Bitcoin

BitBox’s second severe vulnerability affected Silent Payments, a Bitcoin privacy feature that allows users to receive payments without publishing a new address for each transaction.

According to BitBox, a malicious host could exploit the implementation to cause Bitcoin to be locked to an unintended address.

Direct theft was not possible through the vulnerability, the company said. An attacker could instead leave the victim unable to recover the Bitcoin without cooperation and potentially demand a ransom in exchange for helping unlock the coins.

Such an attack would not automatically transfer control of the affected Bitcoin to the malicious host, but BitBox said the vulnerability could still put funds at risk by making them inaccessible to their owner.

The company addressed the problem through its latest firmware update and said it had received no reports of the Silent Payments flaw being exploited.

BitBox has dealt with other security issues through firmware updates this year. Its Oeschinen update in July included several security fixes, including one for a buffer out-of-bounds write affecting the BitBox02 firmware and bootloader.

According to the company’s disclosure at the time, a USB request accepted a length value without properly checking it against the size of the destination buffer, creating a potential route for a malicious host to trigger an out-of-bounds write.

BitBox said no working exploit had been demonstrated for that vulnerability, although an effect on control flow could not be completely ruled out.

Earlier in January, the company also patched two BitBox02 Nova vulnerabilities reported through its bug bounty programme. BitBox classified the issues as minor and moderate because exploitation required advanced physical access and applied only under specific conditions.

Coldcard firmware flaw has put wallet security under scrutiny

BitBox’s update follows the disclosure of a separate Coldcard firmware flaw linked to more than $112 million in stolen Bitcoin after the vulnerability remained undetected for more than five years.

Galaxy Research said Friday that Coldcard-related losses had exceeded $112 million, with approximately 1,778.6 BTC swept from more than 8,600 addresses.

The vulnerability was traced to a firmware change introduced in March 2021 that affected the randomness used to generate wallet seeds. Attackers could brute-force impacted seeds and derive the corresponding private keys without obtaining physical access to the hardware wallet, according to research into the incident.

A wallet seed is used to derive the private keys controlling its cryptocurrency. Weaknesses that reduce the randomness used during seed generation can therefore reduce the number of possible combinations an attacker needs to test.

For users whose wallets were created with affected Coldcard firmware, updating the device alone would not repair a seed that had already been generated with weak randomness. Moving funds to a wallet created from a newly generated secure seed would be required to remove exposure associated with the compromised seed.

The incident affected a hardware wallet line that received its first major hardware revision in several years earlier in 2026. Coinkite launched the Coldcard MK5 in March, with the device becoming the first hardware update to its flagship MK series since the MK4 arrived in 2022.

The MK5 retained the previous model’s dual secure-element architecture using chips from two different vendors and kept private keys air-gapped. Its main changes included a 1.54-inch Gorilla Glass display, redesigned physical buttons and improved NFC functions.

Coinkite said at the time that the five major MK5 upgrades focused on usability while preserving the security architecture used by the previous model.

Customer data leaks have created separate phishing risks

Hardware wallet owners have also faced security incidents outside the devices themselves, with recent breaches involving Trezor and SafePal exposing customer and order information belonging to more than 53,000 people.

Trezor attributed the exposure of information belonging to 13,689 customers to shipping provider ShipMonk. SafePal separately said an authorisation flaw in an order-tracking plug-in exposed details connected to 39,798 customers.

Neither incident compromised the companies’ hardware wallets, private keys or recovery phrases, according to the respective disclosures. Both companies warned that exposed personal and order information could instead be used for targeted phishing and impersonation attempts.

Such information can give attackers details needed to make wallet-related scams appear more credible. Earlier in February, attackers sent physical letters impersonating Trezor and Ledger and instructed recipients to complete supposed authentication or transaction checks.

The physical phishing campaign used official-looking correspondence containing QR codes that directed recipients to malicious websites. Some letters created urgency by claiming users had to complete an authentication process to avoid problems accessing their wallets.

The websites asked victims to enter 12-, 20- or 24-word recovery phrases under the pretence of verifying ownership. Once submitted, the phrases were transmitted to the attackers, allowing them to recreate the wallets and gain control over the associated funds.

Trezor and Ledger said legitimate hardware wallet providers do not ask customers to enter, scan, upload or share recovery phrases through websites or other external channels. Recovery phrases should only be entered directly on a hardware wallet when restoring a wallet, according to the companies.

Crypto exchange Kraken has launched trading in more than 7,000 U.S.-listed stocks for eligible customers across the European Economic Area, placing traditional shares alongside more than 700 tokenized xStocks and over 600 crypto assets in the same account.

The Block reported on Aug. 18 that the service has become available across the EEA after Kraken quietly began introducing stock trading to customers in Germany, the Netherlands and France in recent days.

The rollout takes Kraken’s traditional equities business outside the United States, where the exchange first entered stock trading in 2025, while giving European customers two ways to gain exposure to U.S.-listed companies through the same platform.

Kraken said eligible EEA customers can buy traditional shares or use xStocks, its blockchain-based products tied to listed equities and exchange-traded funds. Both products can be accessed without transferring funds between separate platforms.

“With U.S.-listed stocks and xStocks available side-by-side in a single regulated account, customers can choose how they access the same underlying exposure — whether through traditional shares or tokenized representation — without moving capital or changing platforms,” Mark Greenberg, chief commercial officer of Kraken parent Payward and head of Payward Services, said in a statement.

Kraken U.S. stock trading reaches eligible EEA customers

Access covers more than 7,000 traditional U.S. stocks through the desktop and mobile versions of Kraken Pro as well as the main Kraken mobile app.

Kraken said stock trades will carry no trading commission, subject to its applicable terms. Eligibility will not be automatic for every existing customer, however, as users must accept additional terms and conditions before the equities feature becomes available.

The service is being provided by Payward Europe Digital Solutions (CY) Limited, a Cyprus investment firm authorised under the European Union’s Markets in Financial Instruments Directive II, or MiFID II.

Alongside the conventional securities offering, customers can access more than 700 xStocks and over 600 crypto assets through their Kraken accounts. The company said xStocks have processed more than $38 billion in total transaction volume since launching in June 2025.

Kraken describes the setup as distinct from European platforms that provide only one form of U.S. equity exposure. Bitpanda offers traditional U.S. stock trading, while platforms including Robinhood and Crypto.com have introduced tokenized U.S. equity products for European users.

Crypto.com, for example, recently launched tokenized stock derivatives tracking about 1,500 U.S. stocks and ETFs for eligible EEA customers and users in other approved markets. Its products provide synthetic price exposure and do not give buyers legal or beneficial ownership of the underlying securities.

xStocks have moved into more parts of Kraken’s trading system

Kraken has continued adding functions to xStocks since the products were introduced in June 2025, taking them beyond instruments used solely to track the price of conventional equities.

In July, crypto.news reported on Kraken allowing eligible users to post selected xStocks as collateral for futures and margin positions on Kraken Pro. Ten assets initially qualified, including tokenized versions of Apple, Nvidia, Tesla, Strategy, Robinhood, the SPDR S&P 500 ETF and the Invesco QQQ ETF.

Futures collateral was made available to qualifying clients outside the United States, including customers in the EEA. Margin collateral was offered outside the U.S. but excluded EEA clients.

Kraken had also developed dedicated onchain infrastructure for the product earlier in 2026. Its xStocks platform introduced xChange in March, an execution layer initially supporting more than 70 tokenized equities across Ethereum and Solana.

At that point, xStocks had generated about $25 billion in total trading volume, including $3.5 billion in onchain transactions, while more than 80,000 onchain holders had interacted with the products. Each token was described as fully collateralised and backed 1:1 by its corresponding underlying security.

Kraken’s current figures put total xStocks transaction volume above $38 billion, showing how quickly activity has increased since the March tally.

Payward is taking xStocks into more international markets

Payward has also been preparing to add equities from markets outside the United States to the xStocks system.

A July partnership with GTN set out plans to begin with Hong Kong-listed shares before adding securities from the United Kingdom, Europe, South Korea and other markets, subject to the necessary licences and regulatory approvals.

Under the agreement, GTN is providing execution, custody, ledgering and record-keeping infrastructure across more than 90 financial markets, while Payward continues to supply the tokenization infrastructure used to create the blockchain-based assets.

At the time of the July announcement, xStocks supported more than 500 tokenized assets and had generated over $37 billion in transaction volume. Payward also said GTN could eventually distribute xStocks to institutional customers once the required approvals are secured in individual markets.

The latest EEA rollout concerns conventional U.S.-listed securities alongside existing xStocks, while Kraken said it plans to take the combined traditional-stock and tokenized-equity service into additional markets over the coming months.

Tokenized equities have taken a larger share of RWA activity

The expansion comes as tokenized equities have become a larger part of the real-world asset market.

According to figures cited by The Block, tokenized equities now account for about 15% of the RWA market, around three times their share at the start of 2026. The segment has reached roughly $2.8 billion in total market capitalisation, with Ondo Finance, Binance’s bStocks and Kraken’s xStocks accounting for a combined 77%.

Kraken has also expanded what holders can do with the securities represented through xStocks. Earlier in August, the platform extended shareholder voting rights to more than 125,000 xStocks holders, allowing eligible investors to instruct the underlying custodian on how votes should be cast at company shareholder meetings.

The feature changed the original structure of xStocks, which did not provide voting rights when the products launched in June 2025. The arrangement relies on the custody structure operated by Backed Assets (JE) Limited, according to the report.

Kraken parent Payward, meanwhile, reported $508 million in adjusted revenue for the second quarter, up 17% from the same period a year earlier. Adjusted EBITDA reached $23 million for the three months ended June 30.

Total platform transaction volume fell 13% year over year to $310 billion during the quarter, while Payward reported that the composition of trading activity moved toward equities and tokenized equities.

Bitcoin BTC$64,076.23 scored a rare achievement on Monday by outperforming the S&P 500.

The largest cryptocurrency rose 2.6% to over $64,000, registering its best daily performance in over a month, according to CoinDesk data. Wall Street’s benchmark equity index, S&P 500, fell by 0.52%.

Bitcoin, therefore, not only outpaced equities but moved in the totally opposite direction. This was once a norm. Bitcoin has spent most of its history being the higher-beta asset relative to stocks, meaning it typically moves more than stocks in both directions.

“BTC outperformed the stock market today. This has become a less common occurrence lately. 1/2 In fact, BTC only outperformed the S&P 500 on around one third of trading days over the last three months,” blockchain analytics firm Glassnode said in a Telegram chat.

Underperforming two-thirds of the time means BTC has been acting less like a higher-beta asset relative to stocks and more like a laggard. Key reasons for that include the AI stock frenzy on Wall Street that has sucked out capital from other corners of the financial market, including cryptocurrencies.

The bear market phase of bitcoin’s self-fulfilling four‑year cycle has also played a role in keeping demand for BTC subdued. BTC peaked above $126,000 in October last year and quickly entered the bear market, which is expected to bottom out by October this year.

Bitcoin (BTC) short liquidations hit their highest in almost one month as it hit $64,500 on Monday, new data reveals.

Key points:

• Bitcoin passed $64,000 thanks to a short squeeze on derivatives markets, CryptoQuant says.
• An ongoing downward funding-rate reset from 0.006% to 0.003% over 24 hours could mean further short squeezes.
• The absence of spot demand raises doubts whether the upside is sustainable after a week of $267.2 million in net ETF outflows.

Bitcoin short liquidations near one-month high 

BTC/USD rallied after Sunday’s weekly close, gaining up to 3% on Monday to top out at one-week highs of $64,550 on Bitstamp. 

BTC/USD one-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

Examining the impetus behind the latest BTC price gains, onchain analytics platform CryptoQuant pointed to illiquid markets and funding-rate imbalances among exchanges.

Before rebounding on Monday, BTC circled near $62,750. Around this level, funding rates between exchanges began to diverge. Shorts were dominant on major platforms such as Binance, Bybit, OKX and Deribit, while the funding rate on HTX briefly spiked to 0.05%.

Funding rates refer to periodic payments exchanged by long and short traders on Bitcoin derivatives markets in order to maintain their positions. Positive aggregate funding rates show that long traders are actively paying shorts, with the reverse true for negative funding rates.

“This crowded short positioning served as the primary catalyst, fueling a short squeeze that drove prices higher,” CryptoQuant continued.

BTC/USD one-hour chart with exchange funding-rate data (screenshot). Source: CryptoQuant

Data puts total Bitcoin short liquidations at 637 BTC for Monday, the largest single-day tally since July 21.

Describing the event as a “low-volume liquidity trap,” CryptoQuant nonetheless suggested that the market could see more short squeezes next, with funding rates already declining again as traders increase short exposure.

Bitcoin short liquidations. Source: CryptoQuant

Crucial spot demand remains absent

Previously, Cointelegraph reported that Bitcoin futures markets accounted for the majority of trading volume in the current range, with spot traders broadly uninterested. 

Related: BTC price loses 200-week trend line as 2022 repeats: Five things to know in Bitcoin this week

In further analysis on Monday, CryptoQuant called the lack of spot demand the primary hurdle to sustained upside, alongside the lack of inflows to the US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

“A break below $60K alongside rising exchange inflows would weaken the structure and increase downside risk toward $50K. Selling pressure is cooling, but demand still needs to return,” it commented.

Recent buyers who remain underwater on their BTC allocation have helped cement the current trading range. Short-term holders — wallets holding a UTXO for less than 155 days — have their cost basis at around $68,700, reinforcing that level as resistance.