Morning Edition · Sunday, August 2, 2026
Crypto
Coldcard Cold-Wallet Theft Nears $89 Million as a Five-Year-Old Firmware Bug Reproduces Users' Keys
Galaxy Research counts three rounds that drained about 1,367 bitcoin from 4,585 single-signature wallets, all traceable to seeds that a 2021 update generated with predictable software randomness.
Crypto
Aztec Launches Alpha V5, an Ethereum Layer-2 That Proves Private Transactions on the User's Own Device
The network proves a fully private transaction in about 2.5 seconds on a laptop and cuts fees below five cents, but a critical vulnerability remains unpatched and audits are still running.
Crypto
Strategy Holds STRC Dividend at 12 Percent After $8.2 Billion Loss and Its First Bitcoin Sale in Four Years
Michael Saylor's firm paused new bitcoin purchases, sold coins to fund preferred dividends, and is building a multibillion-dollar cash reserve to protect its funding structure.
Crypto
SEC Reopens Nasdaq Bitcoin Options Approval as CME Argues the Contracts Belong to the CFTC
The challenge revives the unresolved question of whether bitcoin is a commodity or a security, and which regulator controls the fast-growing market for crypto derivatives.
Crypto
Index Coop Issuance Contract Hit by a Time-of-Check Bug as DeFi Exploit Losses Keep Compounding
A newly documented reentrancy-style flaw in a token issuance flow joins a run of smaller protocol drains catalogued this week across lending, perpetuals, and cross-chain venues.
Markets
Tokenized Stock Trading Jumped 288 Percent in July, but a Single Nasdaq-100 Token Drove Most of It
Without one QQQ token, monthly volume for tokenized equities would have fallen roughly 30 percent from June, which shows how concentrated the on-chain equities market still is.
Crypto
Miden Pitches 'Practical Privacy' With Guardian, a Recovery Layer for Confidential Accounts
The project argues that privacy will only reach mainstream and institutional use if confidential accounts can also be recovered and selectively disclosed, not just hidden.
Crypto
Russia Bans Crypto Mining in Moscow Region Until 2032, Citing Power-Grid Strain
The prohibition removes one of the country's densest demand centers from bitcoin mining and reframes electricity, not regulation, as the binding constraint on the industry.
Crypto
Bank of Italy Study Finds Stablecoin Remittances Often No Cheaper Than Traditional Transfers
A mystery-shopping experiment found that exchange fees, foreign-exchange spreads, and banking systems erase the on-chain savings that stablecoins are marketed on.
Crypto
Bitcoin Mining Difficulty Falls 14 Percent From Its Yearly High as Weak Revenue Forces Operators Offline
Forward markets signal little relief through year-end, pushing miners to shut older machines or pivot capacity toward other computing work.
Crypto
Solana Foundation's New Security Chief Warns AI Is Making Crypto Scams Harder to Detect
Michael Coates says vulnerabilities generated with artificial intelligence and synthetic identities, not just smart-contract bugs, will drive the next phase of blockchain security threats.
Macro
US and Japan Mount Joint Yen Intervention as Bessent Notes Point to a $5–10 Billion Purchase
Photographed Treasury notes and official confirmation of ongoing intervention signal a coordinated defense of the yen, a rare use of state currency purchases.