Aug 3, 2026, 10:51 a.m.
3 min read
Summary
- Bitcoin and ether fell as the $114 million Coldcard hardware wallet hack shook confidence in self-custody and pushed some holders back to exchanges.
- Derivatives markets showed mixed signals, with BTC futures open interest at a one-month high, a slightly bearish long-short skew, and options volatility steady as call bets cluster around $68,000 and $70,000.
- NEAR Protocol reported more than $24 billion in lifetime volume for its Intents system and rolled out quantum-safe cryptography, dynamic resharding and AI compute staking.
Bitcoin BTC$62,546.59 and ether (ETH) are under pressure as the multimillion-dollar hack of the hardware wallet Coldcard enters a fifth day, raising questions over the safety of direct custody as a holding strategy.
The incident has rocked sentiment on crypto social media, with numerous small holders complaining of losing long-term holdings and reassessing their faith in crypto.
"Worse for sentiment, it [the hack] has spooked holders into sending coins back to exchanges, the opposite of the self-custody trend crypto is built on,” analysts at Marex said. “When the thing wobbling is cold storage itself, a cheaper barrel does not fix it."
Given the gravity of the situation and the $114 million of bitcoin stolen, the price reaction of the largest cryptocurrency appears relatively restrained. BTC was recently 1.5% lower over 24 hours to $62,595, a level it has visited several times in recent weeks, with ether down nearly 2% to $1,842. The CoinDesk DeFi Select Index has dropped 2.5%.
Bitcoin’s 200-week simple moving average, currently placed above $63,000, is back in focus after the Michael Saylor-led Strategy (MSTR) said it is tracking the long-term average and hinting at resuming purchases after a five-week pause, its longest, funded by preferred stock held at a steep 12%.
Geopolitical news flow remains confusing. President Donald Trump said new talks with Iran will begin today, an assertion that Iran quickly rejected. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said there are no plans to receive a delegation from the U.S. nor send an Iranian one.
Derivatives Positioning
- Long-short ratio skews bearish: The crypto long-short futures volume for takers is leaning more bearish than late last week, with over 52% in shorts. A taker is an entity that removes liquidity from an exchange’s order book by executing an order immediately against a resting order.
- BTC OI rises: Activity has picked up slightly in BTC futures, with open interest (OI) rising to a one-month high of 772K BTC. Positioning is leaning bullish, with annualized funding rates moderately positive at 4%. However, the 24-hour cumulative volume delta is slightly negative, which means bears are being more aggressive and trading at market prices rather than passive limit orders.
- Mixed action in altcoins: ADA, ETH, and BCH are other notable OI gainers, while open interest in SOL continues to slide. TRX, DOGE, CC, and GRAM stand out with negative funding rates, a sign of growing bias for bearish short positions. Still, rates aren’t deeply negative, meaning these markets do not look crowded with bearish bets.
- Steady volatility index: Despite the Coldcard hack and rising Treasury yields, there are no signs of any stress or panic in the crypto options market. That’s evident from the BVIV, the 30-day implied volatility index, which is hovering near 37% for the fourth straight day. The IV is influenced by demand for options or hedging instruments offering protection from uncertainty and price swings.
- Calls dominate trading: In Deribit-listed options, calls at $68,000 and $70,000 are the most traded bets. A call represents a bullish bet on the market.
Token Talk
- NEAR's Intents system has crossed $24 billion in lifetime volume, according to the protocol's monthly development recap. Intents are a way of transacting where a user states the outcome they want, like swapping one token for another across different blockchains, and the network figures out how to execute it, rather than the user manually routing each step.
- The transactions came on the back of the network shipping protocol version 2.13 last month. Two features stand out. Quantum-safe signing upgrades the cryptography that secures transactions so it can withstand future quantum computers, a threat that is still years away but one a number of chains are now preparing for. Dynamic resharding lets the network split its workload across more lanes automatically as traffic grows, a way of scaling without manual intervention.
- NEAR is leaning further into AI. It launched staking for AI compute, meaning holders can lock up NEAR tokens to help provision and earn from the computing power that AI applications run on, tying the token's use directly to AI demand.
- NEAR recently traded around $1.72, CoinDesk data show.
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The Evolution of the Crypto CEX Landscape: A Case Study on Binance
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Binance remains crypto’s leading exchange, expanding from spot and derivatives into RWAs, payments, savings, yield, and broader financial services.
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Binance remains crypto’s leading exchange, expanding from spot and derivatives into RWAs, payments, savings, yield, and broader financial services.
Why it matters:
Binance remains crypto’s leading exchange, expanding from spot and derivatives into RWAs, payments, savings, yield, and broader financial services.