Bitcoin Options Flash $80K Max Pain as Wall Street Loads Up
Key Takeaways Binance led $41B in BTC futures as CME open interest jumped 6.82% on Aug. 5. Newhedge.io showed BTC futures basis rebounded to 4.3%; watch CME expiries next. Deribit and Binance max pain stayed above $69K; Aug. expiries may test bullish bets. Binance Dominates the Futures Battlefield Binance controls the largest share of bitcoin…
CLARITY Act misses cloture as bipartisan talks drag on
The CLARITY Act missed a key procedural opening after Senate Majority Leader John Thune filed cloture on several other measures while bipartisan negotiations over the crypto bill continued. Summary Thune did not file cloture on the CLARITY Act, narrowing its pre-recess path. The Senate instead prioritized spending legislation, nominations and a college sports bill. Disputes…
Google Pixel 11 Leak Reveals ‘HiLight’ Notification Feature, Raises Questions About Charging Claim
Google’s Pixel 11 lineup may be getting a new way to demand attention without lighting up its screen. Another leaked specification, however, appears to be glowing a little too brightly. A series of leaked marketing materials suggests Google will introduce a new rear notification light called HiLight across the Pixel 11 series. The images also…
Italy’s Largest Bank Dumps BTC ETF for Staked Ethereum ETF
In Bitcoin ETF news today, Intesa Sanpaolo, Italy’s largest bank, filed its Q2 2026 Form 13F, the SEC’s mandatory quarterly disclosure of institutional long positions in US-listed securities, on August 4, and the numbers tell a sharp story. The bank slashed its BlackRock iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) position by roughly 94% while tripling its stake…
TikTok reportedly tested a safety feature by withholding it from millions
For millions of TikTok users, protection from harmful content spirals depended on which side of an experiment they landed on. A confidential internal document obtained by Bloomberg Aug. 4 found that TikTok excluded 10 percent of its U.S. users from an algorithmic safety update in early 2022. At the time, that would have amounted to…
Crypto Can Survive CLARITY Act Failure, Not the Wait
Key Takeaways Bitwise’s Matt Hougan sees Clarity Act odds near a coin flip. Hougan said SEC Chair Paul Atkins’ July 31 vow to bring finance onchain softens the blow if the bill dies. Bitwise says stablecoins and tokenization have hit “escape velocity,” especially with a Senate vote due before Aug. 7. ‘Can’t Thrive in the…
Ethereum Proposal Seeks to Cap ETH Staking at 50% of Supply
Some builders fear lower staking rewards could weaken DeFi activity by making staking-based strategies less attractive. A group of Ethereum contributors has proposed EIP-8361 as a way to reduce staking incentives to ensure that no more than 50% of the supply is locked up by validators. That proposal has triggered a heated debate over…
Meta Ran Ads That Contained AI-Generated Child Sexual Abuse Imagery
Editor’s note: This article contains descriptions of imagery depicting child sexual abuse. Reader discretion is strongly advised. Over the last nine months, Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta has run dozens of paid ads that include explicit AI-generated child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and images of minors alongside sexually suggestive statements, according to details of the ads shared…
SpaceX stock falls 11% as AI spending hits $15.8B
SpaceX stock fell as much as 11% on Wednesday after record AI investment, and an approaching share unlock overshadowed the company’s stronger-than-expected second-quarter revenue. Summary SpaceX generated $7.8 billion in Q2 revenue, up 92% from a year earlier. AI-related capital expenditure jumped to $15.8 billion, compared with $749 million a year ago. Piper Sandler cut…
Shopify says AI search is driving more traffic and sales, not replacing Google
E-commerce software maker Shopify seems to be benefiting handily from people using AI to search. On the company’s second-quarter earnings call, Shopify President Harley Finkelstein said AI has become a “complement to search, rather than a substitute for it,” and had particularly benefited the long tail of e-commerce, including the smaller merchants that make up…
