Bitcoin slipped below $78,000 shortly after the Wall Street open as US inflation data landed higher than expected, pushing risk assets lower and weighing on crypto sentiment. The move followed a stronger-than-forecast July Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) print—an inflation measure the Federal Reserve closely tracks—setting up a busy stretch for traders with additional catalysts later in the week. With markets now parsing what the latest inflation signal could mean for the policy outlook, attention is also turning to Nvidia’s upcoming earnings release, widely viewed as a near-term driver of broader market volatility. Meanwhile, technical analysts are warning that recent strength may still fall short of a durable trend change. Key takeaways July US PCE inflation came in above expectations, with the year-on-year rate at 3.7% versus 3.6% expected. BTC’s decline accelerated after the Wall Street open, aligning with weaker moves in US equities and gold breaking below $4,600 per o...

Crypto activity that could be taxable on-chain reached at least $457 billion worldwide in 2025 , but the share likely captured by international tax reporting rules appears relatively small, according to a Chainalysis report on the OECD’s Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework (CARF). Chainalysis estimates the United States accounted for $112.6 billion of that total, while North America led regions with $134.6 billion , followed by the European Union at $125.1 billion . The report also highlights a structural mismatch: CARF may cover only a limited portion of activity that taxpayers could potentially report. Key takeaways $457 billion of potentially taxable on-chain crypto activity was identified globally in 2025 , but CARF reportedly covers only 14% of it. CARF coverage begins in 2026 , with reporting phased in across 48 jurisdictions . Chainalysis’ estimates include realized gains, crypto income (such as mining , staking , and lending ), and crypto-denominated payments, but exclud...

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has begun moving toward a major update to custody rules that govern how investment advisers and investment companies hold client assets, a change that could directly affect institutional crypto custody. According to the SEC’s regulatory filings, the agency submitted “Amendments to the Custody Rules” to the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) on Aug. 25 as part of the federal review process. The proposal would then return to the SEC for internal consideration before potentially being released for public comment. Key takeaways The SEC has sent proposed custody rule updates to OIRA for review under White House regulatory procedures. The changes target how investment advisers and investment companies hold client assets, including crypto, under the Investment Advisers Act and Investment Company Act. The stated goal is to reduce uncertainty for institutions trying to comply with existing federal securities ru...

Americans remain highly skeptical about putting cryptocurrency into workplace retirement plans, according to a new survey by the National Institute on Retirement Security (NIRS). The findings arrive as federal regulators and the Trump administration move in the opposite direction—seeking to broaden what employers may offer inside 401(k) and other defined-contribution accounts. In the NIRS survey, 77% of respondents said crypto in workplace retirement plans is risky, including 46% who called it “very risky.” At the same time, 53% opposed employers offering crypto as an investment option. The results also point to wider anxieties about retirement readiness: 80% said the US faces a retirement crisis (up from 67% in 2020), and 61% expressed concern about achieving financial security in retirement. Key takeaways 77% of Americans view crypto in workplace retirement plans as risky, with 46% calling it very risky. 53% oppose employers including crypto in retirement-plan investment menus...

High-performance blockchain designs have long wrestled with a structural trade-off: when execution is tied directly to consensus, the network’s throughput becomes limited by how fast validators can process transactions. As research and engineering teams push improvements in finality and block propagation, execution itself is increasingly viewed as the next bottleneck to redesign. MultiversX, a Cointelegraph Decentralization Guardians (CTDG) ecosystem participant, is now testing an approach that aims to remove that bottleneck. Its Supernova upgrade decouples consensus from transaction execution, enabling validators to vote without waiting for execution to complete—shifting computation into an asynchronous pipeline. Supernova is live on testnet, and deployment planning targets a mainnet activation date later this year. Key takeaways Supernova reorders the block workflow so proposers submit transaction blocks without executing first, while validators can vote immediately based on protoc...

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has proposed a new regulatory framework for token issuers that, if adopted, would make public token fundraising in the United States more practical—at least for projects able to meet specific conditions. The proposal, unveiled Aug. 18, would introduce exemptions designed for certain “investment contract” offerings involving crypto assets. At the center of the plan is a larger fundraising exemption that would let qualifying issuers raise up to $75 million in any 12-month period, alongside a smaller one-time exemption for startups. While the changes aim to reduce uncertainty, legal experts say the proposal is unlikely to recreate the unchecked ICO environment of 2017. Key takeaways The SEC’s proposal would create a $75 million exemption that renews on a rolling 12-month basis for qualifying public token offerings tied to investment contract analysis. Issuers could potentially run “serial” fundraising rounds, but later raises would still req...

Wall Street research firm Bernstein is forecasting a rebound in Bitcoin, arguing that the recent selloff could mark the transition away from the current bear phase and toward a new advance driven by institutional and corporate participation. In a research report published Wednesday and seen by Cointelegraph, Bernstein expects Bitcoin to retake its 2025 high and push into fresh cycle highs over the next several years, with targets ranging from $125,000 by late 2026 to as high as $500,000 by the end of the decade under a bull case. Key takeaways Bernstein expects Bitcoin to recover toward $125,000 by late 2026, positioning that level as a milestone tied to the firm’s cycle framework. The base case targets $150,000 by mid-2027 and a cycle peak of about $300,000 in 2029; the bull case ranges up to $500,000 in 2029. Bernstein maintains a longer-term Bitcoin target of roughly $1 million by 2033 in both scenarios. The firm links the forecast to Bitcoin’s historical four-year cycle pha...