In the never-ending battle between bitcoin BTC$63,022.30, the digital gold, and the traditional yellow metal, veteran trader Peter Brandt has picked a side, and it’s not the one bitcoin bulls would have hoped for.
Brandt, CEO of Factor LLC and widely followed chart analyst, said on X that he is mulling liquidating some of his BTC and using the proceeds to buy gold, as he sees the yellow metal outperforming BTC.
“I am contemplating selling some of my Bitcoin and going to Gold with the money. Looks to me that Gold is going to gain substantially on Bitcoin,” Brandt told his followers on X.
Both BTC and gold have recently taken a beating, though bitcoin has fared noticeably worse than the traditional safe haven metal. The leading cryptocurrency by market value slid 20% in June to below $60,000, marking its worst monthly performance in four years. Gold, by comparison, dropped 11.7% to nearly $4,000 per ounce.
The divergence looks even starker on a year-to-date basis, with BTC down 28% in 2026 versus a 3.9% decline for gold.
Bucking the trend
Brandt’s view flies directly in the face of the popular market narrative among crypto bulls’ that anticipates a massive rotation of money back into BTC and digital assets.
India’s central bank revives push to isolate banks from crypto: Report
The Indian central bank reportedly urged lawmakers to keep banks insulated from crypto and private stablecoins while preserving room for regulated tokenization.
According to a report by The Economic Times, RBI Deputy Governor Rohit Jain and Executive Director P. Vasudevan presented the central bank’s position to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance on Thursday.
In a background note submitted to the panel, the RBI reportedly said prohibition remained a recognized policy option and recommended preventing the use of crypto in payments and settlements while restricting banking-sector exposure.
The central bank reportedly warned that applying traditional regulation to crypto could legitimize speculative assets and create a false perception of safety among users. However, it urged policymakers to distinguish crypto from tokenized government securities, corporate bonds and other regulated financial instruments so that restrictions would not hinder tokenization.
Chainalysis
Source: Chainalysis
Russia on track for digital ruble rollout on Sept. 1: Central bank governor
Russia’s central bank governor, Elvira Nabiullina, confirmed that the country was prepared to roll out its central bank digital currency (CBDC) in two months, following the timeline it laid out last year.
According to a Thursday report from Russian state media outlet RIA Novosti, Nabiullina said that “everyone is ready” for a Sept. 1 digital ruble launch. The CBDC will launch as a complement to Russia’s fiat currency, the ruble, and will initially be accepted by financial and credit institutions.
The digital ruble has already been targeted by preemptive sanctions from European Union authorities, which announced restrictions on the CBDC in April in response to Russia’s “war of aggression against Ukraine.”
SBI Crypto shuts Bitcoin mining pool after 5-year run
SBI Crypto, a cryptocurrency-focused division of Japanese financial conglomerate SBI, is shutting down its Bitcoin mining pool after a five-year run.
Data from SimpleMining shows SBI Crypto currently ranks as the 12th largest Bitcoin mining pool globally, with about 21.46 exahashes per second (EH/s) of hashrate and roughly 2.24% of total Bitcoin network share.
The company announced Wednesday that it will end mining pool operations on July 31 and will stop accepting mining shares at the same time. It did not provide its rationale for closing the pool.
SBI Crypto said miners should keep directing hashrate to the pool until the cutoff so final payouts can be calculated correctly before operations end. “We would sincerely appreciate your continued support by mining with us until the final day of operation,” it said.
The US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned 134 cryptocurrency wallet addresses identified as belonging to terrorist group ISIS-Khorasan (ISIS-K).
ISIS-K has historically solicited crypto through donation campaigns on various websites and messaging platforms. The wallet addresses were added to the OFAC’s Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) list on Wednesday.
Stablecoin issuer Tether has frozen the balances associated with 131 Tron addresses, while the remaining three sanctioned addresses were on the Monero network, blockchain forensics company Chainalysis said in a Wednesday report.
The development comes over a week after the OFAC’s previous round of sanctions against ISIS-supporting financiers using cryptocurrency. On June 22, the OFAC sanctioned three individuals and six entities across Europe, the Middle East and West Africa, including Syria-based MSB Bitcoin Xchange and Turkish MSB Spider.
OFAC said the previous round of sanctions targeted “key facilitators who enable ISIS to move funds among its regional affiliates.”
Metaplanet buys 2,823 BTC, surpasses 43,000 in Bitcoin holdings
Japanese investment company Metaplanet acquired 2,823 Bitcoin during the second quarter at a price below its average purchase price, as its holdings surpassed 43,000 BTC.
The company acquired its latest trove at an average price of about 12.71 million yen ($78,850 at current exchange rates), reducing its average acquisition cost to about $95,117 per BTC from $96,258, according to a Thursday announcement.
Metaplanet now holds 43,000 Bitcoin acquired for about $4.1 billion. It also reported about $10.95 million in revenue from its Bitcoin income generation strategy in the quarter, which earns premiums by selling cash-secured options and employing other Bitcoin-related yield strategies.
Meanwhile Nasdaq-listed South Korean company K Wave Media sold its remaining 88 BTC to repay $6 million in debt, exiting the Bitcoin treasury strategy, according to a Tuesday filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
Dubai crypto market hits 50 licensed firms after new VARA approval
The Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA), Dubai’s crypto regulator, has granted its 50th virtual asset service provider (VASP) license.
On Thursday, VARA said its latest approval went to tokenized assets platform Tribe Tokenisation FZE.
The milestone provides one measure of the growth of Dubai’s crypto licensing regime, though license totals alone do not show how many firms are operational or the level of business they generate.
Against that backdrop, Dubai’s 50 licensed VASPs exceed the totals reported in Hong Kong (13) and Singapore (37).
Bank of Korea governor outlines tokenized bond vision, unified ledger plan
Hyun Song Shin, the governor of the Bank of Korea, praised tokenization for its ability to simplify the issuance and management of government bonds.
Shin said during a Wednesday panel discussion at the European Central Bank (ECB) Forum on Central Banking in Sintra, Portugal, that tokenized bonds would make it easier to verify collateral, credit the asset provider’s account and reverse transactions at the appropriate time.
“The big prize is tokenizing government bonds,” Shin said, adding that it is “much easier, much less prone to mistakes if you have everything tokenized.”
US Treasury debt is the largest tokenized real-world asset category, representing $14.6 billion, or about 46% of the $31.7 billion RWA market, according to data provider RWA.xyz.
Shin also outlined plans to bring tokenized government bonds, wholesale central bank digital currencies and tokenized commercial bank deposits on a unified ledger, as part of an extension to “Project Hangang,” a Bank of Korea-led pilot project testing a blockchain-based wholesale CBDC system.
Related: South Korea adds token securities to capital market overhaul
Taiwanese lawmakers have passed a law to establish a regulatory framework for crypto, which includes licensing and rules for stablecoins.
Taiwan’s financial watchdog, the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC), said that the Legislative Yuan passed the law requiring all virtual asset service providers, or VASPs, to get approval from the regulator to operate.
The law also says stablecoins issued in Taiwan must get approval from the central bank and the FSC, and issuers must maintain sufficient reserves with a trustee and undergo regular audits.
The law is the first to regulate crypto and stablecoins in Taiwan, bringing it in line with other governments in the region, such as Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong, that have long passed laws to regulate the sector in a bid to attract the industry.
Solana Company to back Kazakhstan’s $6B crypto megacity ambition
Nasdaq-listed crypto treasury firm Solana Company signed an agreement to support the development of Alatau City, Kazakhstan’s planned digital-first megacity.
The company signed an MOU to help build Alatau City’s blockchain and crypto infrastructure during the Alatau City Roadshow in Shenzhen and Hong Kong in June, which reportedly secured 30 cooperation agreements with a combined investment potential of over $6 billion.
“We look forward to deepening this partnership and expanding the Solana ecosystem’s footprint across the region,” said Solana Company chair and CEO Joseph Chee.
The deal further pushes Kazakhstan into Solana’s corner. Last year, Kazakhstan launched Central Asia’s first Solana Economic Zone in the country’s capital of Astana with the Solana Foundation.
The Kazakhstan Stock Exchange (KASE) launched its first Solana ETF last week, giving investors regulated exposure to Solana (SOL) through one of the biggest stock exchanges in Central Asia.
Alatau
The village of Zhetygen will become Alatau. Source: Wikimedia Commons
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Artem Tolkachev is Chief RWA Officer at Falcon Finance, which builds collateral-first dollar infrastructure.
What actually determines whether a stablecoin gets used, not just parked, is whether the venues where people trade, borrow and hedge will accept it as collateral. Can you post it as margin on an exchange? Does it get a sensible loan-to-value in a lending market? Can it move across venues without losing so much to haircuts that it becomes irrelevant? Collateral acceptance is the line between a dollar token that sits in a wallet earning a coupon and one that does real work in the financial system.That difference, parked versus used, isn’t academic. A parked token is inert capital; a token the market accepts as collateral lets its holder trade, borrow and hedge without selling it, which is the whole reason to hold a dollar on-chain rather than dollars in a bank.
This is the variable almost no one is pricing in. We are about to add tens of billions of dollars in new stablecoin supply on the assumption that supply equals genuine adoption. It doesn’t. If that supply arrives while exchange and venue risk teams leave their collateral frameworks exactly where they are, the result won’t be adoption, it will be stranded collateral: tens of billions of dollars that are technically live, dutifully earning their 3%, and going precisely nowhere.
The president also disclosed holding north of $100 million in various cryptos, and a few smaller stakes in firms like Corewave.
Senator Elizabeth Warren, the senior-most Democrat on the Banking Committee, called for an ethics provision in the Clarity Act in a statement after the disclosure, saying, “The crypto legislation heading to the Senate floor must prevent the president, vice president, senior administration officials, members of Congress and their families from profiting off the crypto industry. If it does not, it will only turbocharge Donald Trump’s brazen crypto corruption.”
Similarly, Senator Ruben Gallego said in a post on X after the disclosure that he would do “everything I can to crack down on [Trump’s] corrupt crypto dealings.”
While Gallego was one of two Democrats to vote the bill out of committee, he said during the markup hearing in May that the bill needed “real, enforceable standards” on ethics and that he was not guaranteeing a vote on the Senate floor for the bill.
And while Trump’s disclosure gives Democrats a firm number they can point to when calling for an ethics agreement, it does not fundamentally change the argument over an that provision. Democrats — including Gallego and Senator Angela Alsobrooks, the only other Democrat to vote for the bill in committee — had already made it clear that they wanted a deal that restricts senior government officials like the President from profiting off of crypto before they agree to vote for the bill’s overall passage. Negotiators still have to come to an agreement and Trump will still need to sign off on it, regardless of the disclosure.
Bitcoin (BTC) consolidated near two-week highs into Sunday’s weekly close as traders geared up for fresh market turbulence.
Key points:
Bitcoin approaches its highest levels in two weeks, but Mondays have been “terrible” for BTC price action, a trader warns.
BTC/USD is in the process of deciding the fate of its 200-week moving average.
Crypto market analysis sees “greener shoots” on the back of the latest US macro data.
Trader: Past seven Mondays “absolutely terrible” for BTC price
Data from TradingView showed BTC/USD focusing on $62,700, the site of a key long-term trend line, the 200-week simple moving average (SMA).
BTC/USD four-hour chart with 200-week SMA. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView
Bulls managed a trip to $63,450 on Saturday amid thinner exchange order books and a three-day US holiday weekend.
“Seeing stronger passive supply here pressing price from above,” commentator Exitpump wrote in their latest analysis on X.
BTC order-book data. Source: Exitpump/X
Trader Daan Crypto Trades flagged short position liquidations as the price gained, with data from CoinGlass putting the 24-hour crypto total at $167 million.
“Classic short squeeze, price grinds higher into a level everyone’s shorting until forced covering does the rest,” he commented on X.
“Now the question is whether $62.6K (Weekly 200MA) holds as support or if this was just liquidity getting cleared before rolling over again.”
BTC/USD vs. crypto liquidation history (screenshot). Source: CoinGlass
Fellow trader Killa had a word of warning, reiterating that the past seven Mondays had seen major price weakness.
“7/7 Mondays have been absolutely terrible for $BTC,” they told X followers.
“Will we repeat the exact same pattern next week?”
Bitcoin ETFs contribute to crypto’s “greener shoots”
In a new analysis published on Friday, trading company QCP Capital eyed potential tailwinds forming for crypto and risk assets.
These included renewed net inflows to the US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs).
As Cointelegraph reported, last week’s US nonfarm payrolls report came in below anticipated levels, sparking a softening in hawkish expectations of interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve.
“The clearest dovish tell was a 2% pop in gold, though that reads more as a real-rate and safe-haven hedge than growth conviction,” it acknowledged.
“Crypto, though, is showing greener shoots: BTC spot ETFs snapped a six-session outflow streak to pull in $224mn on Thursday, their first positive print in over a week and an early sign that dip buyers are stepping back in after roughly $2.4bn of redemptions.”
Fed target rate probabilities for July 29 FOMC meeting (screenshot). Source: CME Group
The latest data from CME Group’s FedWatch Tool saw a near-80% chance of the Fed holding rates at current levels at its July 29 meeting.
QCP added that before then, conducive Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation data would be needed for “broader confirmation of a front-end dovish repricing.”
Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange by trading volume, recorded a sharp surge in weekly outflows as Ethereum withdrawal activity climbed to a multi-year high.
According to DefiLlama data viewed by Cointelegraph on Sunday, Binance saw $1.23 billion in net outflows during the week beginning June 29, a 207% increase from roughly $400 million the week prior, while monthly net outflows totaled about $3.2 billion.
Separately, CryptoQuant community analyst Darkfost reported Friday that Binance’s Ethereum withdrawal transactions hit their highest level in more than three years, with over 166,000 withdrawal transactions in a single day.
While some of the movement may reflect accumulation behavior, Darkfost pointed to regulatory uncertainty stemming from the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) and short-term market positioning as possible drivers.
ETH outflows vs price rebound
Binance’s ETH withdrawals marked the sharpest increase in withdrawal transactions recorded on Binance since March 2023, coinciding with Ether posting a modest rebound of around 10% over two days, according to CryptoQuant data.
“This surge in withdrawals could reflect genuine demand building around the $1,500 level, with investors choosing to take exposure and pull their funds off the exchange, a pattern that typically points toward longer-term accumulation rather than short-term trading,” Darkfost said.
Source: CryptoQuant
Ether prices showed a broader recovery over the past week. According to Coingecko data, ETH rose about 12.5% over the past seven days, trading at $1,766 at the time of publication.
Related: Bitcoin profit and loss ratio falls to 43-month low
Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, also edged up 4.3% over the same period, trading at $62,925 at the time of publication.
Outflows dominate CEXs while inflows remain fragmented
Apart from Binance, several other centralized exchanges (CEXs) also recorded outflows over the past week.
Bitfinex saw $407.5 million in outflows, followed by Gate at $214.3 million. OKX recorded $87.1 million in outflows, while Bybit posted $78.4 million, according to DefiLlama data.
Top five exchanges sorted by weekly net flows. Source: DefiLlama
On the inflow side, Crypto.com and HashKey Exchange led gains over the past week, recording around $63 million and $53.3 million in net inflows, respectively.
Smaller inflows were also seen across KuCoin at $22.1 million, Gemini at $17.4 million, and Bitvavo at $15.8 million over the same period.
Magazine: Bitcoin copying 2022 ‘almost perfectly,’ Ether to $4K in 2026: Market Moves
In the Nevada Supreme Court, Kalshi lost an effort a few days ago to halt a requirement that it block its customers in the state from much of the platform’s trading activity. The denial signed by three state justices on Wednesday said they were “not persuaded” by the business’ emergency motion, and Kalshi may also face legal trouble for failing to geofence its business by a court-imposed deadline.
In Ohio, Kalshi sued the gaming regulator on Monday — following earlier, parallel court arguments from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission — seeking to halt Ohio’s penalty against the company on accusations it’s run an unlicensed sports-betting operation.
The next day, a local court in Michigan granted that state’s gaming regulators a temporary, two-week restraining order against Kalshi to stop it from offering, advertising or facilitating sports betting there.
“Kalshi is targeting Michigan’s most vulnerable residents with sports betting dressed up as investing — and without intervention, the harm will keep getting worse,” said Michigan Gaming Control Board Executive Director Henry Williams in a Tuesday statement.
On the positive side for prediction platforms: The CFTC and its pro-innovation chairman, Mike Selig, are aggressively trying to make the case that Kalshi and the others belong under the sole jurisdiction of the agency as the U.S. derivatives regulator, arguing in its own lawsuits against several states that the contracts sold in the prediction markets are effectively the same as those an agricultural business might buy to hedge against future crop prices changes.
As such, Allium can tie only about 6% of Polymarket’s political-market wallets to a country – so the firm says the figures should be read as directional rather than exact.
Polymarket did not immediately respond to request for comments ahead of U.S. market hours.
Meanwhile, a further interesting bit is what Americans bet on. Geopolitics made up 46% of U.S. notional against 36% for the platform as a whole, while elections drew 16% from U.S. wallets against 32% platform-wide, meaning the American crowd trades foreign wars at nearly three times the rate it trades the elections everyone else favors.
Of U.S. cohort’s twelve biggest markets, five were bets on the Iran war. Its single largest, at $20.8 million, was a novelty market on whether Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy would wear a suit.
Those are largely the markets regulated U.S. venues do not carry. Kalshi and Polymarket’s compliant U.S. arm stick mostly to economic data, rate decisions and elections, so the demand flows to the offshore version that lists regime change and ceasefires.
The pattern regulators might fear is the one the data does not show.
On markets that have resolved, U.S. wallets backed the winner 81.9% of the time against 80.3% for everyone else, effectively no edge, and returns if held were nearly identical.
South Africa’s tax authority has proposed new guidance that clarifies how crypto assets are taxed under existing income and capital gains tax frameworks.
The South African Revenue Service (SARS) on Wednesday published draft guidelines on crypto asset taxation, applying South Africa’s existing tax framework, primarily the Income Tax Act, 1962, alongside capital gains tax rules.
The draft provides that most crypto activities, including trading, swapping and spending, are generally treated as disposals that may trigger tax events. It still emphasizes that the rules depend heavily on each taxpayer’s specific circumstances.
If adopted, the proposed guidelines are set to impact millions of local users, as SARS reported in 2024 that at least 5.8 million residents held crypto assets.
Crypto treated as an asset, not currency
The guidance document reiterated that crypto assets are not legal tender or foreign currency, but rather intangible assets for tax purposes.
“The preferred interpretation of the legal nature of crypto assets is that, although highly versatile and capable of negotiability, they are not ‘currency’ and, consequently not ‘foreign currency’,” the agency said.
Source: SARS
Taxpayer’s intention as a key element
The guidelines place significant emphasis on a taxpayer’s intention when determining how crypto is taxed.
According to SARS, whether a person is classified as a trader or a long-term investor depends on their behavior, transaction frequency and the purpose for holding the asset.
An excerpt on how taxpayer intention is assessed, according to the proposed guidelines. Source: SARS
“It is important to consider the taxpayer’s intention at the time of acquisition, at the time of selling the asset, and whilst holding the asset, as a taxpayer’s intention regarding an asset may change over time,” the authority said. SARS added that this requires a broad assessment of all relevant facts and circumstances.
Related: Crypto lobby urges Congress to pass staking and mining tax bill as is
The guidelines also say crypto assets may fall under South Africa’s donations tax, as the assets are treated as “property” under tax law, with tax rates ranging from 20% to 25%, depending on the value of the donation.
Public input open until August 31
The draft guidance is not final law and is open for public comment until August 31. SARS said it is intended to attempt to provide interpretive clarity rather than introduce new legal obligations.
South Africa has emerged as one of Africa’s largest crypto markets. According to Chainalysis’ October 2024 report, the country received about $26 billion in crypto value during the one-year period covered by the study.
Chainalysis also found that institutional and professional-sized transactions were the largest contributors to total value received, particularly from late 2023 through the first quarter of 2024, highlighting a shift toward larger and more structured market activity.
Magazine: AI is banking the unbanked in Africa… faster than crypto
“If we don’t have a euro on the blockchain, the banks will use the dollar because it’s there, it’s available and it has a lot of liquidity,” Sell told CoinDesk. Rather than each bank issuing its own euro stablecoin, Qivalis is encouraging them to work together in a single shared network.
Sell said Qivalis is not trying to compete directly with USDC. Its goal is to give European banks, businesses and payment firms a regulated euro alternative as tokenized finance expands. That would allow institutions to settle in euros rather than converting assets into dollars and back again.
As more banks join, the consortium also benefits from the same network effects driving USDC’s adoption. “The more banks we have in the consortium, the better. Our network has stronger network effects,” Sell said.
Investing in infrastructure
Agant’s MacKenzie said he sees the same trend emerging in the U.K.
Banks are no longer focused only on digital assets, he said. Instead, they are investing in the infrastructure needed to connect stablecoins with traditional finance for payments, treasury operations and settlement. Businesses generally prefer settling obligations in their own currencies, he said, rather than converting into U.S. dollars first.
That may be the impetus for introducing non-dollar stablecoins, such as Societe Generale’s EUR CoinVertible (EURCV), Credit Agricole’s EURXT and Qivalis’ impending offering. But existing is insufficient. It’s how the bank deploys the stablecoin to its customers that will determine its success.
