The 54 firm-strong group, which is backed by the City of London Corporation, will spend the next year working on live tokenisation use cases across UK financial markets.
SBI Holdings’ blockchain initiative pivots to Solana for tokenization, stablecoin issuance
Japanese asset giant SBI Holdings’ (8473) blockchain initiative is turning to Solana for its stablecoin and real-world asset (RWA) tokenization efforts.
SBI Solana Global, previously SBI R3 Japan, aims to use the network to connect Japan’s domestic market to global liquidity, according to a Monday post on its website.
The SBI Solana Global joint venture, which also counts Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group (SMFG) among its shareholders, now includes the Solana Foundation, the Zug, Switzerland-based organization that oversees the layer-1 network.
“By creating a new market for Japan-originated digital assets, the collaboration aims to establish Japan as a core hub for onchain finance in Asia,” SBI Holdings said in the statement.
SBI Holdings lists supporting the issuance and distribution of stablecoins, supporting the structuring and distribution of tokenized RWAs and developing payment infrastructure for AI agents among the venture’s functions.
The blockchain initiative previously centered around Corda, the permissioned blockchain developed by R3.
SBI Holdings has been active in expanding its digital asset business in recent months, agreeing to buy Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Bitbank last month for around $289 million.
Bitcoin holds $62,600 as the Iran conflict reignites and CPI looms
Bitcoin traded near $62,600 on Tuesday, down 0.3% over 24 hours and roughly flat on the week, per CoinDesk data. The market is steady on the surface but the macro backdrop underneath it has turned.
President Trump reinstated the U.S. blockade of Iranian ships through the Strait of Hormuz and demanded a 20% fee on all other cargo moving through the waterway, reviving a conflict that a June peace deal had appeared to settle.
Brent crude rose as much as 2.8% to about $85 a barrel, its second day of gains, and traders lifted bets on a Fed rate hike.
That combination runs directly against crypto. Oil pushing higher feeds the inflation pressure that kept the Fed hawkish through June, and the easing of that pressure was much of what let bitcoin recover from its late-June lows near $58,000. The peace trade is now unwinding, and rate-hike odds are climbing back.
Bitcoin has spent a month between roughly $59,000 and $66,000, and the majors are mixed. Ether held near $1,783 and is up on the week, while Solana, XRP and Hyperliquid are all down 5% or more over seven days.
Today’s June inflation print is the more immediate test. A soft number would ease the rate-hike pressure the Iran news just revived. A hot one, especially with oil climbing, would stack a second hawkish signal onto the first, two weeks before the Fed meets July 28 and 29.
U.S. government moves $288 million in seized bitcoin, ether to Coinbase Prime
The US government just staged its seized crypto for an exchange, and it took an extra hop to get there.
Wallets tied to the government moved about $288 million in seized bitcoin and ether onto Coinbase Prime over roughly half a day on Monday, blockchain data from Arkham shows. The ether went direct, while the bitcoin took a detour through fresh intermediary wallets first.
The movements are despite an executive order in March 2025 by President Donald Trump, which designated seized bitcoin for the country’s Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and said it should not be sold.
A government wallet tied to Ryan Farace, the “xanaxman” case, sent 2,875 BTC worth roughly $178 million to a new address, which forwarded the full 2,875 BTC to a Coinbase Prime deposit wallet minutes later.
A second wallet linked to defunct exchange BTC-e sent 925.512 BTC worth $57 million through the same pattern, in from the seizure address, straight out to Coinbase Prime. Both intermediary wallets were emptied out.
The ether skipped the middle step, however. A wallet connected to Brian Krewson, the Oracle employee named in a $54 million laundering scheme, sent 30,007 ETH worth $53.09 million directly to a Coinbase Prime deposit address.
Battle over blockchain stock ownership is heading to Washington regulators
“I’d encourage the Commission not to dismiss third-party stock tokens, but to treat them as what they are — a different class of financial instrument, with clear separation from real stocks.”
Not everyone agrees
Some market participants, however, say the STA’s proposal risks grouping together fundamentally different tokenization models.
“The key is whether the tokens represent true stock ownership or just economic exposure,” Dinari CEO Gabe Otte told CoinDesk.
He said many of the STA’s concerns are valid but apply primarily to synthetic tokenized products. He pointed to the SEC’s January statement, which distinguishes custodial tokenized securities from synthetic structures, arguing that regulated custodial models should be evaluated separately.
“Both issuer-sponsored and custodial models offer true stock ownership and these should be distinguished from synthetic models for the benefit of the end investor,” Otte said.
Alan Konevsky, CEO of digital securities platform tZERO, agreed that issuer-sponsored tokenization offers important advantages by preserving the direct relationship between companies and investors. But he argued the market is likely to support multiple compliant approaches.
“Innovation is accelerating, and we expect multiple compliant, non-misleading, economically and technologically meaningful models to emerge as the market matures,” Konevsky said.
Eli Cohen, chief legal officer at tokenization platform Centrifuge that focuses on bringing funds onchain, said the letter reflects transfer agents’ concerns that issuer-sponsored tokenization could lose ground if third-party models become more widely adopted.
Strategy (MSTR) Raises $467M, Skips Bitcoin Buy Again
Strategy (MSTR) sold about $466.7 million worth of its stock last week and put the proceeds toward cash rather than bitcoin, according to an 8-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday. The move lifted the company’s U.S. dollar reserve to $3 billion and marked another week without a purchase from the largest corporate holder of bitcoin.
Between July 6 and July 12, the Michael Saylor–led firm sold 4,818,781 Class A common shares through its at-the-market equity program. It issued no preferred stock under its other ATM facilities during the period.
The company said the fresh cash pushed its dollar reserve up by some $450 million, and that it holds the reserve to cover dividend payments on its preferred stock and interest payments on its outstanding debt.
Strategy neither bought nor sold bitcoin over the week. Its holdings stand at 843,775 BTC, a position the company acquired for an aggregate price of about $63.69 billion including fees and expenses, at an average of $75,476 per coin.
At current prices near $63,000, that stack is worth about $53 billion, which leaves the firm with roughly $10.7 billion in paper losses. The holdings equal around 4% of bitcoin’s 21 million supply cap.
Markets read the filing without much enthusiasm. MSTR fell close to 3% in premarket trading on Monday, extending a slide that has erased 38% of the stock’s value since the start of the year. Bitcoin dropped through the weekend to trade around $62,500, a decline that pulled the so-called bitcoin proxy lower with it.
A shift in Saylor’s posture
For most of Strategy’s history, the pattern ran one direction: raise capital, buy bitcoin, repeat. This year has broken that rhythm. The company has leaned on a wider capital structure, and its recent disclosures show cash building rather than coins.
The clearest break came on July 5, when Strategy sold 3,588 BTC for $216 million — the largest bitcoin sale in its history. The disposal followed a Sunday post from Saylor on X, part of a weekly ritual that market watchers treat as a signal.
In the past, captions such as “A good time to add more dots” and “Looks better with more dots” landed ahead of purchase announcements. The tone has turned harder to read. A June 28 message reading “We’re gonna need more charts” preceded a new capital framework instead of a buy, and Sunday’s post, captioned “Orange dots tell only part of the story,” arrived before a filing that showed no purchase at all.
The building block behind the change is STRC, a preferred instrument that expanded the company’s capital structure and created new obligations to service. That structure is what makes the cash reserve matter. Dividend and interest commitments now form a fixed cost that
Strategy must meet whether bitcoin rises or falls, and the dollar reserve exists to keep those payments funded.
How much runway does Strategy have?
For now, the near-term picture looks manageable. A $3 billion reserve gives Strategy a cushion against its dividend and interest commitments, and Monday’s filing shows the company can raise cash without touching its bitcoin.
Selling stock dilutes shareholders but leaves the treasury whole; selling coins does the opposite. This week, Strategy chose the first path.
The open question is what happens if the choice starts to narrow. As long as the equity market absorbs new share sales at prices the company finds workable, the ATM program can fund its obligations. A sustained slide in MSTR, or a longer bitcoin downturn, would tighten that math and could turn optional sales into forced ones.
The firm’s paper losses give the shift its weight. Strategy sits on about $10.7 billion in unrealized losses, and its stock has surrendered 38% this year. Against that backdrop, the pivot from buyer to cash-builder reads less as a retreat than as a company managing a capital structure that now carries fixed costs of its own.
Bitcoin traded flat near $62,500 in the hours after the disclosure.
White House Crypto Adviser To Take Leave of Absence as CLARITY Act deadline looms
Patrick Witt, the White House’s pointman on the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, is taking a leave of absence at the end of July for several months of military training, Crypto In America reported.
Witt, who has served as the executive director of the President’s Council of Advisors for Digital Assets since August, is expected to wrap up his work on July 24 before reporting for Judge Advocate General (JAG) training with the Georgia Army National Guard. The training will qualify him to serve as a legal officer in the Guard, the report wrote.
“Patrick has always been forthcoming and honest with every stakeholder that he was taking military leave later this month,” said Cody Carbone, CEO of Digital Chamber, on Tuesday.
The move comes as the CLARITY Act, which would create the first comprehensive US regulatory framework for the crypto market, faces a narrow window to pass the Senate before lawmakers begin the Aug. 8 recess, which many see as a critical deadline for the bill.
Source: Patrick Witt
Cointelegraph reached out to the White House and Patrick Witt for comment.
Related: CLARITY Act gains second law enforcement endorsement before Senate push
Witt has been instrumental in advancing negotiations between the crypto and banking industry representatives over certain aspects of the crypto market structure bill, including stablecoin yield and disputes over ethics provisions.
In Witt’s absence, the President’s Council of Advisors for Digital Assets’ deputy director, Harry Jung, is expected to take on his responsibilities, though Witt intends to remain involved in the process during his military training, according to sources who spoke with Crypto In America.
Magazine: Will the crypto lobby’s $189M campaign get CLARITY over the line?
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Solo BTC miner makes $200,000 using $150 equipment
A solo bitcoin miner recently hit the jackpot in a lottery-like stroke of luck, turning a modest investment into an outsized gain.
The miner equipped with a small, hobbyist-grade device called a Bitaxe recently struck Bitcoin block number 957,382 and walked away with 3.1382 BTC, worth roughly $200,000.
The miner was running the rig for just eight hours through the Public Pool service. His average hash rate? A measly 995 GH/s, or about 1 terahash per second.
This marks the second time a single Bitaxe has solo-mined a block on Public Pool.
Data tracking handle Public Pool posted the win on X.
What is a Bitaxe?
It’s an open-source, credit-card-sized ASIC miner powered by the same Bitmain BM1370 chip found in massive industrial Antminer S21 machines. The Bitaxe Gamma version pumps out 1 to 1.3 TH/s while using just 15-21 watts of power. You can buy one for $60 to $150.
Think of it as the mining equivalent of winning the lottery with a scratch-off ticket from a gas station.
Solo mining is having a moment
This isn’t the first time a solo miner has made big gains on a small investment.
Strive (ASST) Adds 18 Bitcoin, Pushing Treasury To 19,900 BTC
Strive, Inc. (Nasdaq: ASST) bought 18 bitcoin last week, a modest addition that lifted the Dallas-based company’s treasury to 19,900 coins, according to an 8-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday.
The purchases ran from July 6 through July 10 at an average price of about $64,028 per bitcoin, including fees and expenses, for a total of some $1.2 million. The buy is small next to Strive’s earlier moves this year, and it tracks a bitcoin price that has fallen well below the levels the firm paid in prior rounds.
Alongside the purchase, Strive reported cash and cash equivalents of $154.1 million as of July 10, up $700,000 from July 2. The company still holds 505,000 shares of Strategy’s Variable Rate Series A Perpetual Stretch Preferred Stock, known as STRC, with a fair value of $44.2 million, down $202,000 over the same stretch.
Its own preferred instrument, the Variable Rate Series A Perpetual Preferred Stock that trades as SATA, remains at 7.83 million shares outstanding.
Strive’s jump from an asset manager to treasury company
Strive traces its bitcoin strategy to a fast run of moves that began last year. Vivek Ramaswamy and Anson Frericks founded Strive Asset Management in 2022, and in 2025 the firm went public through a reverse merger with Asset Entities, taking the ASST ticker and reframing itself as the first public asset-management bitcoin treasury company. Its stated aim is to accumulate bitcoin and outperform the asset over the long run.
The accumulation came in bursts. Strive bought 1,567 bitcoin in late 2025 at an average of $103,315 and funded the effort through preferred-stock offerings. In January 2026, it added 123 more at $91,561 and won Semler Scientific shareholder approval for an all-stock acquisition that would bring about 5,048 bitcoin onto its balance sheet.
The combined company would hold close to 12,800 coins at that time, a total that would rank among the largest corporate holders and place it ahead of names such as Tesla and Trump Media. By May 1, Strive’s own treasury had reached 15,000 bitcoin.
A smaller step in a lower market
Monday’s filing shows a different pace. An 18-coin purchase at $64,028 stands in contrast to the six-figure prices Strive paid a few months ago, a gap that reflects a broad decline in bitcoin through the first half of the year.
The measured addition, paired with a cash balance that held near $154 million, points to a company adding to its position at a slower cadence while it works through the Semler deal.
BTC, XRP, ETH slip ahead of inflation report and Warsh testimony
West Texas Intermediate crude futures have surged to nearly $80 a barrel from $67 at the start of the month, stoking fresh concerns about inflation.
Focus on CPI and Warsh testimony
Investors will receive a fresh read on price pressures Tuesday when the Labor Department releases the June consumer-price index at 8:30 a.m. ET.
Economists surveyed by Bloomberg forecast that headline CPI will fall below a 4% annual rate. The report is expected to show the first declines in both headline and core inflation since January, following May’s readings of 4.2% and 2.9%, respectively.
Even if the figures meet expectations, they risk being viewed as backward-looking in light of the recent oil price surge. Should inflation instead prove more persistent, the data could amplify concerns about the Fed’s path forward.
Attention will then turn to Mr. Warsh’s testimony on Capitol Hill. Given the Fed chair’s preference for limited forward guidance, investors will be watching closely for any signals on rates and inflation.
According to analysts at ING, he could “if he chooses, emphasize the tameness of inflation expectations.”
They added that Mr. Warsh “has enough ammunition here to ride the rate hike risk and instead hold pat. Even if he comes under pressure to hike, the richness attached to the 5yr part of the curve tells us that any hike (if delivered) is likely to be subsequently reversed, with the prospect still for bigger cuts than hikes.”