- Bitcoin holds near $64,319 as the total crypto market cap rises to $2.2 trillion.
- South Korea’s KOSPI surges 16% intraday, its largest gain on record, ever.
- Strategy posts an $8.2 billion Q2 loss despite growing Bitcoin holdings 11%.
Bitcoin traded near $64,319, down slightly on the day, while Ethereum held around $1,906, up 1.46% weekly. XRP traded near $1.08, down 2.30% for the week, and BNB surged 3.16% daily to $589.26.
Total crypto market capitalization stood at $2.2 trillion, up 0.72% over the past day and the Fear & Greed Index read 37, still in “fear” territory.
Trending Searches Show Extreme Volatility
Moon Doge Coin dominated trending searches with an extraordinary 1,387.9% surge over 24 hours, while Pudgy Penguins gained 3.8% and GRVT Token collapsed 42.7%. The wide dispersion across trending names reflects a market where speculative capital is rotating rapidly between small-cap winners and losers.
South Korean Markets Post Historic Rally
South Korea’s KOSPI index surged as much as 16% intraday, setting a new record for its largest single-day gain, with SK Hynix jumping over 29% and Samsung Electronics climbing more than 26%.
The rally followed forced liquidation of a large hedge fund’s equity portfolio rather than a fundamental shift in sentiment. Japan’s Nikkei 225 also rose 4% in early trading, breaking above 64,000. Crypto miners pivoting toward AI infrastructure rallied alongside the broader move, with IREN closing up 30.54% and Bitdeer up 24.72%, tied to the same liquidation event.
Situational Awareness Hedge Fund Unwinds
Situational Awareness, a hedge fund founded by former OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner, was forced to urgently unwind positions after losses on AI stock bets and software shorts, with the fund’s size reportedly reaching $45 billion in early July before the losses hit. Citadel absorbed the majority of the fund’s equity portfolio, and the resulting liquidation is believed to have driven Thursday’s sharp rally in beaten-down miner and chip stocks.
Corporate Earnings Show Mixed Results
Strategy reported an $8.2 billion net loss for Q2, driven almost entirely by unrealized paper losses on its Bitcoin holdings, even as the company grew its BTC position by 11% to a peak of 846,000 coins before trimming. The company has paused new purchases for five consecutive weeks, building dollar reserves to $3.75 billion, enough to cover roughly two years of preferred dividend obligations.
Coinbase’s Q2 revenue of $1.22 billion missed the $1.29 billion consensus estimate, sending shares down about 5% after hours, though the company added 819 BTC to its holdings and posted positive adjusted EBITDA for a 14th straight quarter.
Meta disclosed nearly $700 billion in future spending commitments tied to AI data centers and cloud infrastructure, including $349.3 billion in irrevocable contracts and $347 billion in off-balance-sheet lease commitments.
Clarity Act Faces Narrowing Odds
JPMorgan flagged that prediction markets now price the Clarity Act’s passage probability at just 37% on Kalshi and 26% on Polymarket, warning that continued delays could push tokenization activity toward traditional finance rather than public crypto networks.
Senators Thom Tillis and Ruben Gallego submitted a new compromise on ethics provisions to the White House, though details remain undisclosed with the Senate’s August 7 recess deadline approaching. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent urged the Senate to vote on the bill immediately.
Security Incidents Continue
WEMIX confirmed attackers exploited a vulnerability in publicly available smart contracts, minting over 5.2 million unauthorized tokens without compromising internal systems or private keys.
Separately, roughly 594 BTC worth about $38 million were swept from 500 dormant single-signature addresses into one wallet, with the cause still undetermined; Coldcard’s CEO denied any device-level vulnerability. Anthropic disclosed that three of its AI models gained unauthorized access to real systems during safety testing due to a configuration error, following a similar incident at OpenAI.
On-Chain and Institutional Activity
DeFi lending posted its first monthly rebound of 2026, with active loan balances rising 7.2% to $22.2 billion after five consecutive months of decline. US-listed public companies now hold a combined 1.24 million BTC, representing 92.7% of all corporate Bitcoin holdings globally, having added 510,000 BTC over the past year, more than triple the amount mined in the same period.
Related: What Can the SEC Actually Do If the CLARITY Act Fails?
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