Bitcoin mining company Bitdeer has signed a 16-year lease agreement valued at as much as $4.7 billion to secure artificial intelligence and high-performance computing data center capacity, underscoring how crypto miners are increasingly expanding into AI infrastructure as demand for computing power grows.

Under the agreement, Bitdeer will provide 121 megawatts of IT capacity at its Tydal, Norway, AI data center to a tenant that the company identified only as a subsidiary of Volta Infra. The facility will be configured to support Nvidia GPU-based AI workloads, though Bitdeer did not disclose the tenant’s identity or specify whether Volta is the end customer or an intermediary.

Bloomberg News reported that the Nvidia-backed Volta’s $10 billion ‌cloud contract is with ⁠Anthropic, citing people familiar with the matter.

The lease remains subject to customary closing conditions and is not yet effective, according to the company. To secure the tenant’s payment obligations, affiliates of JP Morgan and another unnamed global financial institution are expected to issue approximately $1.3 billion in letters of credit, or a bank guarantee that ensures the landlord can recover funds if the tenant fails to meet its contractual payment obligations.

Bitdeer shares jumped about 8% in early Nasdaq trading following the announcement, suggesting investors welcomed the company’s continued expansion into AI infrastructure and data centers.

Shares of Bitdeer Technologies Group (BTDR) rose sharply on Tuesday.
Source: Yahoo Finance

Bitdeer has steadily diversified beyond its core Bitcoin mining business in an effort to broaden its revenue base. Alongside its push into AI and high-performance computing infrastructure, the company has expanded its mining hardware manufacturing operations to reduce its reliance on third-party suppliers. Last month, Bitdeer announced a $36 million investment in a manufacturing facility in Nevada to support that strategy.

Related: Galaxy, MARA Holdings deepen Texas expansion with land acquisitions

Bitdeer bucks industry trend by selling all BTC holdings

Bitdeer has taken a different approach from many of its publicly traded mining peers by fully liquidating its Bitcoin treasury.

In early February, the company held roughly 943 BTC before announcing that it had reduced its holdings to zero, while maintaining that it remains committed to the Bitcoin ecosystem. According to Bitdeer executive Ross Gann, the sales were made to help fund the company’s broader expansion strategy, including acquisitions of powered land for AI and Bitcoin mining infrastructure.

By contrast, several major Bitcoin miners continue to maintain large Bitcoin treasuries. MARA Holdings, Riot Platforms, CleanSpark and Hut 8 each hold at least 10,000 BTC, according to BitcoinTreasuries.NET, with MARA’s holdings exceeding 36,000 BTC.

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

Wells Fargo (WFC) will offer tokenized deposits for select corporate and commercial clients later this year, starting with enabling round-the-clock U.S. dollar-to-British pound transactions on its proprietary blockchain.

The bank frames round-the-clock settlement, programmable payments and parity with its existing deposit protections as future enhancements, saying the system will let clients move, program and settle funds 24/7/365 “when fully deployed.”

The limited initial rollout will expand to more clients, countries and currencies throughout 2027. Its system will automatically route eligible payments through tokenized deposits when doing so improves speed or flexibility, without changing how clients interact with the bank.

Tokenized deposits represent conventional bank balances on a blockchain. Unlike stablecoins, they remain commercial bank money and Wells Fargo says they will carry the same regulatory protections and deposit-insurance eligibility as its existing deposit products.

Future features will include conditional payments using smart contracts, according to the bank.

The platform could also support in-house custodial wallets and connections to other blockchains. Wells Fargo said it can integrate with a shared tokenized-deposit network being developed by The Clearing House, according to the Wall Street Journal.

But the Democratic-led states strongly refute this reasoning, insisting in the lawsuit that “the Administration cannot use forced labor as a pretext to continue its illegal tariff scheme. The tariffs the USTR imposed are so broad that they defy the USTR’s own stated aims and make a mockery of the statute used to justify them.”

California Attorney General Rob Bonta, who co-led the coalition, claimed Trump is “so intent on raising the cost of living for Americans that he is willing to break law after law after law to do so.”

“Tariffs are taxes, and the American people cannot and should not shoulder the extra costs that come from the President’s failed and illegal economic policy—no matter how much the President wants them to,” he added, in a statement announcing he is suing the Trump Administration over its tariffs for a third time.

Joining California in the lawsuit are Arizona, New York, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Kentucky, Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, Maryland, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey,  North Carolina, New Mexico, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia Washington, and Wisconsin.

Galaxy Digital’s research chief says new victim reports tied to the Coldcard vulnerability have enabled the identification of additional attackers—highlighting that the incident may be broader than earlier estimates suggested.

According to Galaxy Research, the total losses tied to the Coldcard exploit have increased to about $100 million across three confirmed “attack waves,” with a possible fourth wave that could push the figure closer to $130 million in Bitcoin.

Key takeaways

• Galaxy Digital (Alex Thorn) says at least 15 attackers exploited the Coldcard vulnerability, based on newly received victim reports.
• Estimated losses have risen to roughly $100 million across three confirmed waves, with a suspected fourth wave that could increase totals to about $130 million.
• Dragonfly’s Haseeb Qureshi argues that “$2 of AI hardening” might have prevented the exploit, sparking a debate over AI’s role in vulnerability discovery.
• Tokenomist’s Tatsapat Saerejittima cautions that social media claims about rapid AI discovery were not based on a documented blind test.
• Castle Labs co-founder Francesco points to a potential link between the wallet’s private key setup and the vulnerability’s exploitability.

Victim reports reshape the attacker picture

In a Tuesday X post, Alex Thorn, head of research at Galaxy Digital, said Galaxy had received additional victim reports since the incident—reports that helped the firm label attacker activity that might otherwise have gone unnoticed.

Thorn’s comments emphasize that this was not a typical centralized-exchange-style compromise. Instead, the exploit mechanism differed in a way that made new patterns detectable once victims began reporting details.

He also cited an example: “Due to one single victim’s report of less than 1 BTC stolen, we identified a new attack with 12 BTC siphoned from 126 addresses,” Thorn wrote.

Loss estimates climb as confirmed waves expand

The broader impact is reflected in Galaxy Research’s figures. Loss estimates connected to the Coldcard exploit have grown to about $100 million across three confirmed attack waves.

Galaxy Research has also flagged a suspected fourth wave. If that additional wave is confirmed, the total losses could reach approximately $130 million in Bitcoin.

The incident has reopened ongoing security questions for cold storage users: while “offline” storage is generally considered safer than hot, connected systems, the Coldcard incident underscores that vulnerabilities in wallet firmware or key-generation logic can still be exploited—even when the device is designed to minimize exposure to networks.

AI hardening debate: speed claims vs. testability

As the incident spread, discussion intensified around whether advances in AI could accelerate vulnerability discovery and whether defensive “hardening” could have stopped the exploit. Dragonfly managing partner Haseeb Qureshi argued that roughly “$2 of AI hardening” could have prevented the Coldcard attack.

Qureshi referenced social media reports suggesting that some AI models were able to rediscover the underlying vulnerability quickly—one claim centered on Claude regenerating the issue in eight minutes. Qureshi added that the results may have been influenced by web search.

He also pointed to an example involving the open-source AI model GLM 5.2, stating that it was able to rediscover the attack in 20 minutes with web access turned off.

However, the narrative around rapid AI discovery met pushback from analysts who stress methodological rigor. Tokenomist’s data lead, Tatsapat Saerejittima, told Cointelegraph that it is unlikely AI models would have independently found the vulnerability before it was public.

“The claim that AI found it in 2 mins came from a pseudonymous Reddit user who scanned the code after the vulnerability had already become public. There was no blind test, no documented methodology, and no assessment of the model’s false-positive rate.”

Where private key setup may have mattered

Another technical thread concerns how Coldcard structured private key entropy. Crypto research company Castle Labs’ co-founder, Francesco, told Cointelegraph that while AI can reduce the time and cost of discovering cryptocurrency vulnerabilities, the wallet’s private key may have contributed to the exploitability.

Francesco said Coldcard used a level of private key entropy of 40 bits—lower than what other wallets typically adopt. He compared this to a standard approach where a 12-word seed corresponds to 128 bits of entropy. He attributed the difference to a firmware bug, suggesting the conditions for exploitation may have been more favorable than they would be under typical key-entropy assumptions.

Francesco also indicated that, as AI models become more capable and more integrated into both cybersecurity and offensive tooling, the broader cost of bug discovery is likely to keep dropping.

What investors and users should watch next

With Galaxy Research pointing to a possible fourth attack wave and analysts debating how quickly vulnerabilities can be rediscovered and mitigated, attention should shift toward whether additional victims corroborate the suspected wave and how cold-wallet vendors respond—particularly around firmware-level assumptions in key generation and any hardening measures that could reduce the chance of repeat exploitation.

Bitcoin has traded between $60,000 and $67,000 for several weeks, making $63,000 one of the most heavily supplied price areas. The only larger concentration sits between $78,000 and $82,000, where bitcoin topped out in May.

Glassnode’s Entity-Adjusted UTXO Realized Price Distribution (URPD) shows how much bitcoin supply last moved within each price band, with each entity’s balance assigned to its average acquisition price. More than 3% of the supply, approximately 515,000 BTC, is concentrated around $63,000, while more than 2%, or roughly 362,000 BTC, sits around $61,000.

Bitcoin is also trading almost exactly in line with its 200-week moving average, which tracks the asset’s average weekly price over the past 200 weeks. The indicator currently stands at $63,657, compared with bitcoin’s price of $63,822, highlighting significant accumulation in this range.

Glassnode’s 30-day Accumulation Trend Score, broken down by wallet-size cohort, shows that retail investors are currently the most aggressive buyers at these prices. Every other cohort is also accumulating, including whales holding at least 1,000 BTC, which are showing similarly strong accumulation.

Bitcoin has already slid dramatically from its 2025 peak, but investor Michael Terpin says the market still hasn’t reached a true “bottom” that typically follows capitulation. Speaking to Cointelegraph on its Trade Secrets show, Terpin argued that BTC could fall much further before stabilization—potentially aligning with a decline of around 66% from its October 2025 all-time high.

Terpin pointed to an expected drop to the low-to-mid $40,000s, framing the move as part of a continuing market cycle rather than an abrupt end to volatility. He also cautioned investors against assuming that institutional participation and spot exchange-traded funds automatically eliminate the traditional boom-and-bust rhythm.

Key takeaways

• Michael Terpin expects Bitcoin could still decline about 66% from its October 2025 all-time high, implying prices around $43,500.
• He said one hallmark of a real market bottom is that prices do not “pop back” quickly after the low.
• Terpin argued greed and mis-timing have historically derailed traders, referencing prior cycle behavior around the 2021 peak.
• He maintained that Bitcoin’s four-year cycle is not finished, despite debate that ETFs and institutions have changed the pattern.
• Terpin warned investors to understand the risks of buying corporate vehicles exposed to Bitcoin—such as Strategy—rather than holding BTC directly.

Terpin’s “rock bottom” framework for Bitcoin

In his conversation with Cointelegraph, Terpin emphasized that markets often end only after a specific kind of capitulation—one that doesn’t quickly reverse. “One of the defining hallmarks of the bottom is that it doesn’t pop back,” Terpin said.

That idea is central to why he believes BTC’s current drawdown is not enough to confirm a floor. Rather than treating volatility as proof of a finished cycle, Terpin suggested the market needs to pass through a deeper phase of selling pressure before recovery becomes durable.

Cointelegraph previously published Terpin’s remarks via a Trade Secrets segment on X.

Why Terpin thinks pain isn’t over

Terpin’s forecast is built around the magnitude of the remaining decline from Bitcoin’s October 2025 all-time high of $126,100. He told Cointelegraph he expects Bitcoin to fall roughly “66%,” which would put the asset in the $40,000 range—he said “down into the 40s,” and characterized that as “about where we’re gonna go.”

On a purely arithmetic basis, a 66% drop from $126,100 corresponds to a price near $43,500. Terpin noted this level is not far from where Bitcoin last traded in a similar range—around early February 2024—according to the price levels referenced in his remarks.

While Terpin’s outlook is bearish, the bigger message is about timing and confirmation. He argued that traders frequently confuse sharp declines or short-lived bottoms with the end of a cycle. To him, the bottom only counts when it behaves like one—meaning it doesn’t instantly bounce as if the selling phase never happened.

Lessons from prior cycles: the greed trap and macro pressure

Terpin linked his bottom framework to recurring trader behavior. He said greed repeatedly causes people to misjudge cycles—an issue he illustrated by pointing back to Bitcoin’s 2021 cycle top. After BTC reached around $69,000 in November 2021, Terpin said the market transitioned into a prolonged consolidation period, and many traders delayed exit decisions by betting on higher prices.

He recalled the late-2021 optimism that Bitcoin would reach $100,000—along with the “laser eyes” meme that circulated during the rally. Terpin argued that traders had time to reduce risk when Bitcoin was still trading above $60,000, but that expectations and momentum incentives led many to hold too long.

Terpin also highlighted a macro backdrop that he believes hurt successive cycles. He said there have been “two cycles in a row now with bad macro,” arguing that investors expected improvements that did not materialize. He referenced the assumption that political developments would be supportive but said that tariffs and other factors contributed to ongoing conditions that facilitated manipulation.

In the same discussion, Terpin noted that Bitcoin ultimately reached $100,000 in December 2024, shortly after Donald Trump won the US presidential election—an example he used to show how macro and policy narratives can still intersect with market performance, even if the broader cycle outcome is not what traders expect.

The four-year cycle debate and the role of institutions

Terpin described himself as a believer in Bitcoin’s traditional four-year cycle and pushed back against the 2025 argument that institutional adoption and spot ETF launches have permanently altered Bitcoin’s typical “boom-and-bust” pattern. In his view, the presence of institutions does not remove the incentives for selling.

“I think we’re still following the halvings,” Terpin said. He added that the idea that markets only go up from here because “institutions don’t sell” is “garbage,” emphasizing: “Institutions absolutely sell.”

For investors, that stance matters because it frames ETF/institutional adoption as potentially changing liquidity channels rather than eliminating cycle dynamics. If Terpin is right, the key risk for late-cycle buyers is assuming that institutional flows will permanently suppress downside—when, in his interpretation, sell-side pressure remains a feature of the cycle.

Bitcoin versus Bitcoin exposure stocks, including Strategy

Terpin’s caution extended beyond timing to vehicle selection. He said investors should recognize the structural differences between owning Bitcoin directly and buying companies that hold or profit from Bitcoin exposure. He specifically addressed Strategy and the accumulation strategy associated with its executive chairman Michael Saylor.

Terpin acknowledged Strategy’s track record but urged investors not to treat corporate share performance as a clean substitute for holding BTC. “Historically, you’ve done better if you buy Strategy at the bottom and then sell it at the top than if you buy the Bitcoin,” he told Cointelegraph.

However, he stressed that the outcome depends on continued execution—one reason he said he would personally “rather bet on Bitcoin than a single company.” He pointed to 2022 as an example of how Bitcoin-linked corporate strategies can still experience severe drawdowns when Bitcoin itself moves against them, noting that Saylor avoided being “wrecked” then even while being underwater with his Bitcoin holdings.

Terpin also contrasted portfolio management needs between Bitcoin and altcoins. He suggested that investors looking for a less hands-on approach should prefer BTC over altcoins because altcoins require more active attention through the cycle. He framed the “cycle strategy” as something investors can revisit only a few times over the four-year period: assess when the market is nearing a bottom and when it is getting close to a top, while spending the remainder of the time away from constant trading.

For readers, the next watch items are straightforward but demanding: whether Bitcoin shows the kind of bottom behavior Terpin describes—particularly a lack of immediate “pop back”—and how sell-side dynamics respond as the market tests lower levels. Terpin’s argument is less about predicting an exact number and more about demanding confirmation that the cycle’s pain has genuinely run its course.

A wallet holding about $36 million worth of BTC stolen from Coldcard devices has taken in 23 deposits since the theft while becoming a collection box for an assortment of heartfelt and bizarre notes.

Indeed, 14 of these deposits carried written messages, including one that asked the thief for five BTC to spend on cocaine and prostitutes.

Coinkite, the Toronto company behind Coldcard, disclosed a catastrophic bug in its hardware wallets last week. For over five years, its firmware had been generating seed phrases with roughly 40 bits of entropy instead of its intended 128.

Hackers subsequently set about using computational brute-force to crack customers’ private keys and sweep their BTC.

On-chain thefts now top $100 million, via 1,596 BTC stolen from ~7300 addresses, according to Galaxy Research, graffiti has moved in to communicate with the anonymous adversary.

Meanwhile, 23 depositors have delivered 81,527 satoshis worth about $52 after mining fees, to the hacker. Their senders paid another 9,706 satoshis, roughly $6, in fees.