Gary Gensler, the current chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), confirmed on Thursday that he will be stepping down from his role starting in January. 
Gensler confirmed the news in an announcement on Twitter and a post to the SEC’s website, saying it had been an “honor of a lifetime” to “ensure that our capital markets remain the best in the world.”
“I thank President Biden for entrusting me with this incredible responsibility,” Gensler added. “The SEC has met our mission and enforced the law without fear or favor.” 
Gensler was highly unpopular among the crypto community for his long list of enforcement actions against the industry’s leaders, and unwillingness to encourage more accommodating rules for the new asset class. 
Donald Trump promised

MicroStrategy (MSTR) announced on Wednesday that it plans to raise $42 billion over the next 3 years to purchase more BTC for its balance sheet, and improve “BTC yield” for its shareholders. 
In its Q3 earnings release, the company said that the “21/21 Plan” would involve raising $21 billion through ATM equity offerings, and $21 billion in fixed-income securities.
As a Bitcoin Treasury Company, we plan to use the additional capital to buy more bitcoin as a treasury reserve asset in a manner that will allow us to achieve higher BTC Yield,” said Phong Le, President and Chief Executive Officer of MicroStrategy.
The company’s new targets for annual BTC yield have risen to between 6% and 10%, achieved by executing such raises and offerings at the right time.
MicroStrategy also

Blockchain detective ZachXBT has exposed another set of hackers who used a social engineering scam to steal over $240 million in Bitcoin from a wealthy victim.
The investigator said that both his efforts and the criminals’ own blunders have already led to “multiple arrests and millions frozen.”
Scammed For 4000 BTC
In mid-August, the scammers targeted a single creditor to Genesis – the institutional Bitcoin trading desk that went bankrupt in early 2023.
First, the scammers called the victim pretending to be Google support using a spoofed phone number and gained access to the victim’s personal accounts. They then called again pretending to be Gemini support, warning the victim that their accounts were hacked.
Through this, they prompted the victim to reset his two-factor

Two of Bitcoin’s pre-eminent thought leaders are at odds with each other as to whether banks can – or should – provide sustainable yield on their customers’ BTC deposits.
Michael Saylor – executive chairman of MicroStrategy, the world’s largest corporate Bitcoin owner – said in a recent podcast appearance that Bitcoin could become a form of “perfected capital” that also generates a return for its holders through digital banking services.
By contrast, Saifedean Ammous – author of the famous Bitcoin tome “The Bitcoin Standard” – countered that sustainable yield isn’t possible with a fixed supply asset like BTC.
Can Bitcoin Yield Really Work?
According to Saylor, the first generation of “digital banks” to offer Bitcoin yield were companies like BlockFi and Celsius – which

The Federal Reserve announced on Wednesday that it will lower its benchmark interest rate by 50 basis points, marking the central bank’s first cut since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Immediately after the announcement, Bitcoin’s price rocketed back above $60,000, while the S&P500 shot up by 0.7%.
The central bank said it has gained ‘greater confidence” that inflation is heading back down to 2%, even though it remains somewhat elevated.
“Job gains have slowed, and the unemployment rate has moved up but remains low,” the Fed added.This month’s meeting was one of the first in years when the Fed’s next policy decision was truly a toss-up for odds makers.
Hours before their announcement, interest rate traders priced in the odds of a 50 basis point cut at 65%, versus 35%

Bitcoin-skeptic Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) and other Democratic senators sent a letter to the Federal Reserve on Monday calling for far more aggressive rate cuts than the market expects.
“We write today to urge the Federal Reserve (Fed) to cut the federal funds rate, currently at a two-decade-high of 5.3 percent, by 75 basis points (bps) at the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting on September 17 and 18, 2024,” the senators wrote.
“Too Late” To Cutting Rates
The letter follows Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell’s Jackson Hole speech in August, when he proclaimed that “the time has come” for the central bank to start cutting interest rates. While asserting that the “upside risks to inflation have diminished,” he acknowledged that the downside risks of

Think stablecoins are just a vehicle for anonymous crypto trading? A new survey from Castle Island Ventures would suggest otherwise.
In a report sponsored by Visa, the firm showed that crypto users in five developing countries – Nigeria, India, Indonesia, Turkey, and Brazil – are turning to stables largely as a means of payment and a savings technology.
Stablecoins: Crypto’s Killer Use Case
In a survey of 2541 crypto users across those countries, crypto trading was found to be the most popular use case for stablecoins, applying to 50% of respondents.
However, several other use cases were cited. Saving money in dollars (47%) was the second most popular, and was the #1 use case in Nigeria specifically. Others sought better currency conversion rates (43%), to earn DeFi yield

After six months of sideways chop, multiple on-chain indicators say Bitcoin may finally be prepared for an epic price breakout, analysts say.
These predictions would line up with separate forecasts of an upcoming bull market based on seasonal factors, with Bitcoin soon to transition from one of its worst-to-best months on record.
Bitcoin’s Bottom Signals
As noted by CryptoQuant author Amr Taha, Bitcoin’s Puell multiple has reached a low of 0.4 for the first time since the end of 2022 – the absolute bottom of Bitcoin’s last bear market following the collapse of FTX.
The Puell multiple is a ratio comparing daily BTC issuance in USD terms to its 365-day moving average. It’s a measure of miner profitability and is often used to spot market tops and bottoms since miner behavior

Bitcoin’s price collapsed on Friday below $53,000, reaching its lowest level since the “Black Monday” following macroeconomic shakeups in early August.
The collapse appears to have fully corroborated the prediction of BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes, who believes there could still be more pain to come for crypto holders.
Bitcoin traded for $56,925 at 1:25 PM UTC, before collapsing to $52,871 by 8:55 PM UTC. It trades for $53,500 at writing time.
On Thursday, Hayes predicted that Bitcoin could plummet even further over the next two days.“BTC is heavy, I’m gunning for sub $50k this weekend,” he tweeted. “I took a cheeky short. Pray for my soul, for I am a degen.”
In early August, Bitcoin briefly dipped below $50,000 after the Bank of Japan raised interest rates for the first

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has levied another set of charges against Galois Capital – a crypto-focused advisory firm that custodied client assets at FTX.
For its actions, Galois agreed to pay a civil penalty of $225,000, which will be distributed to harmed investors of the fund.
Charged For Losing Money In FTX
Per the SEC’s Tuesday press release, the agency found that Galois failed to ensure that the crypto held by the private fund it was advising was held with a qualified custodian, instead holding them with unqualified crypto trading platforms – such as FTX.
“Approximately half of the fund’s assets under management from early to mid-November 2022 were lost in connection with the collapse of FTX,” the SEC claimed.
In sheer dollar terms, the fall of FTX

Democratic Presidential nominee Kamala Harris is all but confirmed to support a tax on unrealized capital gains after her economic advisor Bharat Ramamurti defended the policy during a Wednesday interview.
“I think that this reaction to unrealized gains is a little funny given that I bet that the majority of people are already paying a tax on unrealized gains. It’s called a property tax,” said Ramamurti.
Why Harris Will Support An Unrealized Capital Gains Tax
In a conversation with CNBC, Ramamurti emphasized that the 25% tax on unrealized gains – proposed under Joe Biden’s budget plan and re-adopted by Harris – would only apply to Americans with over $100 million in assets. That’s less than 0.5% of the American population – around 60,000 people.
“Yeah, I think it’s pretty

Maker, one of the first and largest DeFi lending protocols on Ethereum, has rebranded to “Sky” following key upgrades to its decentralized stablecoin system.
That stablecoin, previously known as DAI, has also rebranded to USDS, and the MKR governance token has been changed to SKY.
From MKR to SKY: What’s New?
As announced over Twitter on Tuesday, SKY is an “upgraded version” of MKR obtainable by supplying USDS token to the Sky protocol through Sky.money. 1 DAI can be converted into 1 USDS token, and 1 MKR can be converted to 24,000 SKY tokens.
The conversion will make individual SKY tokens far more affordable than MKR tokens were, which are currently trading for $2,123 apiece, according to CoinGecko. MKR is ranked 41 among all cryptocurrencies by market capitalization.

After Telegram CEO and founder Pavel Durov was arrested by French authorities over the weekend, more details have emerged that shed light on the reason for his apprehension.
On July 8, a judicial investigation was opened against “a person unnamed” on charges related to complicity with various offenses committed using Durov’s messaging app, including money laundering and dissemination of child poronography.
Per a press release from the court of Paris shared by Disclose.TV, the unidentified individual complicit with the possession and distribution of “pornographic images of minors.”
It also accused the person of complicity in the sale of narcotics, making available hacking tools, orgaized fraud, money laundering, and for providing cryptology tools without prior declaration.

The United States’ most popular independent candidate for President has officially placed his political support behind Donald Trump in the 2024 Presidential election.
His endorsement places two of three leading Presidential candidates who are explicitly pro-Bitcoin on the same political team.
Why RFK Has Endorsed Trump
Kennedy said that the Trump campaign had offered him a place within Trump’s administration. He said he received a call from Trump’s campaign and later met with the former President and his family just days after the assassination attempt on Trump in July.
Kennedy said he was surprised to find that he and Trump agree on several political issues. “Here are the principal causes that persuaded me to leave the Democratic party and run as an independent, and now

Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell promised to start cutting interest rates during his speech at the annual 2024 Jackson Hole Economic Symposium on Friday.
This will mark the central bank’s first rate cut since 2020, and is already proving bullish for Bitcoin’s price.
The Fed Pivot Is Confirmed
“The time has come for policy to adjust,” Powell told the crowd. “The direction of travel is clear, and the timing and pace of rate cuts will depend on incoming data, the evolving outlook, and the balance of risks.”
Powell noted that recent inflation and labor market data reflected an “evolving situation” where the “upside risks to inflation have diminished.”
“While the task is not complete, we have made a good deal of progress toward that outcome,” he said. That said, the

Fundstrat Head of Research Tom Lee believes hopes of a Trump election victory in November could boost asset prices – and that includes Bitcoin.
“When the market becomes more convinced of that, you’ll see cyclicals, small caps, and bitcoin do better,” he told CNBC on Thursday, “because those are clear policy differences.”
The Bitcoin Trump Trade
According to Lee, the market currently believes that Trump has a higher likelihood of winning than the polls are showing, and it views this as a good thing.
FiveThirtyEight currently has Democratic Party nominee Kamala Harris 3.4% ahead of Trump in national polls. By contrast, crypto bettors on Polymarket – now the world’s largest election prediction pool – have Trump as a 52% favorite to win.
Trump’s policy differences are widely

Bitcoin’s developer community has spent several months singing the praises of OP_CAT – a proposed soft fork change that many believe is Bitcoin’s next evolution.
BitVM creator Robin Linus has his reservations, however, publishing an article on Thursday debunking perceived misconceptions about the widely touted change.
Is OP_CAT the Future of Bitcoin?
The developer’s post – titled “Prevent the CATastrophe” – argued that OP_CAT can introduce risks to Bitcoin that proponents tend to downplay. “My goal isn’t to argue for or against op_cat, but to debunk these misconceptions and steer the discussion toward a more fact-based, rational analysis,” he wrote.
One includes the introduction of new programs that could greatly alter the incentives of Bitcoin miners, and the security of

Bitcoin surged by 4% back to $61,550 on Wednesday as speculation grew that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. may soon exit the 2024 U.S. Presidential race to endorse Donald Trump.
The news has re-established Trump as a betting favorite to win the November election, which is thought by analysts to have major implications for Bitcoin’s short-term price movements.
As reported by ABC News, RFK Jr. will drop out by the end of the week, with sources saying he will endorse Trump. When contacted directly, RFK did not confirm or deny the rumor.
This comes after Kennedy’s running mate Nicole Shanahan hinted in a recent podcast appearance that he and Kennedy have a difficult decision to make as to whether or not they should put their efforts behind Trump.
According to Polymarket, crypto bettors

Rumors are swirling online that Kamala Harris wants to introduce an unrealized capital gains tax if elected President – a move that could theoretically tear up the profits of crypto investors.
But some key details are missing from the public conversation – namely that the tax wouldn’t apply to the vast majority of investors.
Kamala Harris’s Tax Plans
As reported by Semafor on Monday, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) said that the Kamala Harris campaign has specifically promised to “support all of the tax increases on the high earners and corporations that are in the Biden budget.”
“And obviously, none of them is specifically mentioned in this [Harris] plan,” said CFRB senior vice president Marc Goldwein on the matter.
Per President Joe Biden’s 2025

A new financial disclosure has revealed that Trump has millions of dollars invested in crypto – an industry that’s become a clear target of his electoral campaign.
Yet despite his many specific appeals to Bitcoin investors, there’s no evidence that the former president holds any BTC himself, as opposed to smaller alternatives.
Trump’s Crypto Portfolio
According to the 2024 disclosure published by Citizens for Ethics, the Republican nominee holds somewhere between $1 million and $5 million in his “cryptocurrency wallet virtual Ethereum key,” in a hardware wallet.
He also received over $7.15 million of income from his license agreement with NFT INT, LLC, relating to his digital trading card collections, for which demand rallied following the attempt on his life in July.
The

Bitcoin fell 2.5% on Wednesday to $59.100 after the U.S. government moved more of its Silk Road-affiliated Bitcoin holdings to Coinbase Prime.
On-chain analysis platform Arkham Intelligence flagged the move on Wednesday, noting that 10,000 BTC worth $593 million had been moved.
“Wallet bc1ql received 10K BTC from a known US Government wallet 2 weeks ago,” Arkham wrote to Twitter. “This BTC has just been sent on to 33J, a Coinbase Prime deposit wallet.”
According to Arkham, the U.S. government’s Bitcoin wallet still holds 203,239 BTC, worth $12 billion.
Much of that Bitcoin was seized from the hacker of the fallen darknet marketplace Silk Road in 2021. At the time, the 50,000 BTC seizure amounted to the largest financial seizure ever conducted by the Department of Justice.

On-chain analysis platform Arkham Intelligence sounded the alarm on Tuesday as $2 billion worth of Bitcoin connected to Mt. Gox moved from a blockchain address connected to crypto exchange BitGo.
According to Arkham, a wallet that had received $2.19 billion from the long-defunct Bitcoin exchange began initiating test transactions early Tuesday.
The firm said the wallet likely belonged to BitGo – the fifth and final exchange responsible for handling distributions to Mt. Gox creditors.
The official $2 billion transaction occurred 14:40 UTC on Tuesday, amounting to 33,140 BTC in total.
Four other exchanges including Bitbank, Bitstamp, Kraken, and SBI VC Trade have already started giving Mt. Gox customers their money back.
In an unusual move, Bitcoin’s price shot up above

Several crypto industry figureheads met with White House officials on Thursday morning to attempt to mend relations between the emerging fintech sector and the U.S. Democratic Party, according to FOX Business.
The meeting reportedly grew tense when the government denied the industry’s claims that there was a coordinated effort to cut off crypto firms from the banking system – a conspiracy widely referred to as “Operation Chokepoint 2.0.”
Crypto’s Banking Troubles
As reported Thursday, Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo told crypto attendees that regulators weren’t actively trying to cut off crypto from the financial system.
In response, one of the crypto executives in attendance asked for a show of hands for whose crypto companies had been denied banking access due to

Bitcoin’s price rebounded back above $59,000 on Thursday, marking an 8% climb on the day in spite of broader macroeconomic fears.
According to CoinGlass, over $189 million in trades have been liquidated across the crypto market in the past 24 hours, including $109 million in shorts.
Bitcoin’s climb began at roughly 1:50 PM UTC, with Bitcoin surging from $57,000 to $59,815 over the next three hours.
The leading digital asset is now up 8.45% on the day at $59,622, with its weekly losses now reduced to 7.78%.
Similarly, Ethereum has shot up 9.93% on the day to $2,572. Its weekly losses remain steep at 18.8%, with the ETH/BTC ratio still trailing at 0.043 – one of its lowest levels this year.
The Telegram-linked Toncoin posted one of the strongest daily recoveries, pumping 13%

Bitcoin treasury firm Semler Scientific has added another $6 million in Bitcoin to its balance sheet, comprising more than the entirety of the medical company’s Q2 earnings.
The purchase reflects an ongoing commitment to Semler’s Bitcoin acquisition strategy despite the asset recently tapping its lowest price level since February.
Semler Scientific Buys More Bitcoin
In a Monday press release, Semler confirmed that it hauled $5.4 million in profit during the second quarter. Meanwhile, the firm acquired 101 BTC for $6 million, bringing its total BTC holdings up to 929 BTC worth $52.2 million at writing time.
Semler has now spent $63 million on BTC in aggregate, making its average cost per coin $67,814. In other words, since Semler first began buying on May 28, it’s down

Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan said Monday that he views the weekend’s violent selloff in crypto/equities as a Bitcoin buying opportunity.
In a Twitter thread Monday, the executive likened the market crash to March 12, 2020 – a day of “chaos” that pre-empted historic new highs for crypto over the following months.
Bitcoin Buying Opportunity, Says Bitwise
As noted by Hougan, the NIKKEI – Japan’s stock market index – experienced its worst day since 1987 on Monday, dropping 12% on the day. The carnage spread to U.S. markets as well, with the NASDAQ100 dropping 2.9%, and Bitcoin falling a whopping 18.6% on the week.
Similarly, in March 2020, the Dow Jones Industrial Average had its worst sell-off since 1987, and Bitcoin fell 37% from $7,911 to $4,971. However, Bitcoin soared over the

A lengthy court battle to extradite a disgraced crypto mogul, Do Kwon, has seemingly come to a close following a court ruling Thursday.
The Appellate Court of Montenegro ruled that Kwon – founder of the defunct Terra blockchain – will be sent to South Korea for prosecution.
Do Kwon Set For South Korea
The latest ruling re-confirms a prior decision from a lower court, the High Court of Podgorica, to sent Kwon back to his home country rather than the United States, which also sought his extradition. A statement to the Podgorica court’s website confirmed that there was no appeal against the decision.
It can also be considered a win for Kwon, since experts claim the U.S. would likely have punished the billionaire much harder than his homeland.
“The US probably has the largest

BlackRock has confirmed it has no plans to launch a Solana (SOL) ETF anytime soon, despite the roaring success of its Bitcoin and Ethereum spot ETFs launched this year.
The company’s dismissal of small-cap altcoins leaves room for other asset managers to compete in this area, with some already filing to launch the product.
BlackRock’s Take On A Solana ETF
During a Tuesday interview with Bloomberg, BlackRock CIO Samara Cohen said a BlackRock Solana ETF launch is “not in the near term.”
“We really look at the investability – what meets the criteria, what meets the bar to be delivered in an ETF,” Cohen explained. In terms of investability and client demand, she said Bitcoin and Ethereum certainly meet that bar.
“I think it will be a while before we see anything else,” she

Fairshake, a pro-crypto and blockchain Super PAC, has now outraised all other Super PACs in the United States heading into the 2024 federal elections.
The interest group’s success reflects crypto’s surging role in U.S. politics, which has culminated in vocal support from politicians aiming to protect the industry’s interests.
Fairshake PAC Raises $202 Million
According to political money tracking site Open Secrets, Fairshake has raised $202,939,294 during the 2024 election cycle.
That comprises nearly 10% of the $2.13 billion raised across all 2219 Super Pacs. Coming in at a narrow second is the pro-Donald Trump “Make America Great Again” PAC, amassing $201,076,225.
A PAC, or “political action committee,” is a business, labor union, or interest group that raises money and

On-chain analysts just caught the U.S. government moving around $2 billion worth of its massive BTC holdings, sparking market panic that it might be preparing for another sale.
Meanwhile, Bitcoin’s price has steadily declined throughout the day, tapping $70,000 at 13:15pm UTC before crashing to $66,900 by 17:26 UTC.
At 16:18 UTC, data from Arkham Intelligence showed that the government’s Bitcoin wallet had moved 29,799 BTC ($2.02 billion) to a new blockchain address.
That $2 billion was subsequently split into two addresses, one of which received exactly 10,000 BTC worth $669.35 million.
“We believe this represents a 10,000 BTC deposit to an institutional custody/service,” Arkham said over Twitter on Monday.
Historically, the government has sold whatever BTC it owns in