CEX.IO's Official Community Channel

Institutional buying is accelerating, not fading. Spot Bitcoin ETFs took in $606 million yesterday, the largest single day since May 1, and the fourth consecutive day of inflows. The four-day run totals $1.61 billion. Ether ETFs added $221 million, also a fourth straight day. Both categories moving together suggests institutions are building positions across assets rather than rotating between them.

The CFTC chair told staff to start drafting crypto rules regardless of whether the Clarity Act passes. Until now the market treated the September 15 Senate vote as the only route to regulatory clarity. If the agency moves on its own, the bill stops being a single point of failure.

Not everyone is convinced. A record $2.7 billion in bearish bets were liquidated as the move began, and analysts note that short covering only provides temporary buying pressure because it ends once those positions close. Prediction market traders have stayed cautious rather than chasing. The question is whether real demand replaces forced buying.

Trump met crypto industry representatives at the White House and called on Congress to pass a “fair version” of the Clarity Act. He also said the CFTC is working to bring Hyperliquid onshore in a fully compliant way. Separately, the U.S. Treasury announced it will at least double its buybacks of long-term government debt, to at least $4 billion per operation. That puts more cash into the financial system, and more available cash might flow into assets like crypto.

The move triggered $2.74 billion in short liquidations. Traders betting on lower prices were forced to buy back in to close their positions, which pushed price higher and fed on itself. Spot Bitcoin ETFs took in $517 million, the largest daily inflow since May. Ether ETFs added $189 million.

Ether outpacing Bitcoin is worth its own note, with one caveat. The ETH/BTC ratio is already down 2% today, meaning bitcoin is clawing back some of what ether gained yesterday. Part of ETH’s move is simply that it swings harder in both directions, but there’s a structural piece too. The SEC and CFTC joint framework classifies ETH as a digital commodity rather than a security, which removes a regulatory question that hung over it for years.

The proposal opens a 60-day public comment period, so nothing takes effect immediately. But it lands while the Clarity Act sits stalled until September 15, meaning the agency chose to move on its own rather than wait for Congress. That was the exact scenario Chair Atkins floated three weeks ago.

Asian tech markets lost roughly $600 billion in a single session, with South Korea’s KOSPI down 5.5% and Japan’s Nikkei down 3.1%. Bitcoin held its level through it. A similar Asian selloff in late July dragged crypto down with it, so bitcoin ignoring this one suggests it’s trading less like a tech stock than it was a month ago.

VanEck, the asset manager behind one of the spot bitcoin ETFs, says 8 of its 12 capitulation indicators are flashing. Capitulation is the stage where even long-term holders give up and sell at a loss, and it historically shows up near the end of a downtrend rather than the middle. Their read is that the bottom forms in autumn, with room for one more leg down first. Separately, the largest bitcoin holders stopped selling and added $2.9 billion over the past 60 days.

Goldman Sachs called a September rate hike “very unlikely.” Traders who had bet on bitcoin falling were forced to buy back in, which pushed price up and drove volume 76% higher. Prediction markets now put the odds of the Fed holding rates at 74%.

Gaming tokens are up nearly 30% on the week while tokenized real-world assets, July’s leading sector, have gone flat. Money is moving between themes faster than earlier this year, which usually happens when no single macro story is strong enough to anchor everything.

Wall Street firms pushed back on the SEC’s crypto fundraising framework before Friday’s canceled vote. That rule would have let crypto projects raise money without full securities registration. Banks embracing crypto products and banks supporting crypto-friendly rules turn out to be two separate things.

Bitcoin is trading around $63,250, up about 2.6% over the past week, its best weekly showing in a while. ETF flows tell a different story though, with a third straight day of outflows on Friday at roughly $58 million. Price is grinding up while institutional money steps back, which is not a combination that usually lasts long.

Bitcoin's correlation with gold hit 63% over the past 24 hours while its dominance climbed to 58.5% and the Altcoin Season Index fell. Capital is quietly rotating out of altcoins and back into BTC, and the gold correlation suggests it's being bought as an inflation hedge rather than a risk asset. That's a meaningfully different buyer profile than what drove the last cycle.

Wednesday is the day to watch. FOMC minutes drop the same day Trump meets crypto industry representatives at the White House, with a CFTC regulatory session following Thursday. After the Clarity Act slipped to September and the SEC shelved its own framework, this is the first real chance in weeks for policy to give the market something concrete.

Bitcoin is trading around $63,163, down about 1.8% on the week and stuck in a tight range between $62,800 and $63,700. Traders are calling this the quietest tape since 2019, with perpetual futures activity at a three-year low.
• PPI came in softer than expected yesterday and pushed the S&P 500 above 7,800 for the first time, but bitcoin didn’t follow.

The SEC canceled its long-awaited Reg Crypto proposal, postponing the meeting without setting a new date. This was the framework Chair Atkins had positioned as the agency’s own path forward if Congress stalled on the Clarity Act. With the Senate vote now pushed to September 15 and the SEC route shelved indefinitely, both regulatory tracks the market was watching are stuck. That removes the last near-term catalyst on the policy side.

Tether completed its first full audit, with KPMG issuing a clean opinion on the financials backing $180 billion in USDT. This has been one of the longest-running open questions in crypto, and the timing matters: stablecoin regulation is being actively debated in Washington, and Tether now has third-party verification from a Big Four firm to bring into that conversation.

Bitcoin is trading around $63,800, up about 1.5% on the week after dipping below $64,000 following yesterday’s inflation data.
• U.S. CPI came in at 3.4% year-over-year, exactly in line with forecasts and down from 3.5%.
• September rate hike odds dropped to 38%, down from around 54% last week. The problem is that a soft print was already priced in, so there was nothing left to rally on.
• ETF flows reflected the mood with roughly $61 million in outflows yesterday.

Liquid staking governance tokens led the market this week, up nearly 12%, with SocialFi and Oracle close behind. The catalyst may be structural: Ethereum staking has climbed to 34% of total supply, and Fidelity filed to add staking with quarterly payouts to its $900 million ether ETF. When staking yield becomes accessible through a regulated wrapper, the protocols managing that yield tend to get repriced.

Roughly $15 billion in bitcoin has been moved to new addresses since the Coldcard exploit surfaced, as holders relocate funds out of potentially compromised wallets. New address creation has spiked alongside it. That is a significant volume of coins changing custody in a short window, and it explains part of the unusual on-chain activity this week. Security incidents rarely move price directly, but they do change how a large share of holders behave.

Bitcoin is trading around $63,600, down about 1% over the past week.
• U.S. CPI for July lands this afternoon, forecast at 3.4% year-over-year versus 3.5% prior.
• ETF flows were effectively neutral yesterday at roughly $5 million in inflows, a sharp cooldown from last week’s $854 million run. Nobody wants to take a position before the number.

Humanity (H) and Flow (FLOW) both gained over 10% in the past 24 hours. Humanity’s move fits a broader pattern, with the decentralized identity sector up 4.6% over the past week as one of the stronger performers. The wider altcoin market added roughly $4 billion yesterday, so the recovery is holding even with bitcoin sliding.

Corporate treasury enthusiasm for bitcoin is visibly shifting toward AI infrastructure. Riot Platforms signed a reported $9.1 billion compute deal with Anthropic, Keel shut down all its U.S. bitcoin mining to pivot fully into AI, and Bitdeer is moving the same direction.
• Meanwhile Trump Media booked a $360.6 million unrealized loss on digital assets for the first half. Companies that were buying bitcoin as a treasury play last year are now finding better returns in data centers, and that removes a demand source the market had come to rely on.