Cryptocurrency and Blockchain

Bitcoin miners collectively spent $30.7 billion on capital assets in their latest 2026 reporting periods, already 42.6% more than the $21.53 billion they deployed across all of 2025, according to BlocksBridge Consulting's Miner Weekly update. Nine comparable miners invested $5.11 billion in the first half of 2026 while generating only $341.2 million in directly reported AI and high-performance computing revenue—a 15-to-1 capex-to-revenue ratio that exposes the scale of the pivot away from traditional mining. The imbalance reflects the hard infrastructure costs of the transition: converting power contracts and land into AI-ready capacity requires substations, buildings, cooling systems, networking equipment, and in many cases GPUs—a construction and integration project with multiple dependency layers, not an incremental upgrade. Revenue is accelerating. The same nine miners generated $205.8 million from AI and HPC businesses in the second quarter, up 52% quarter-on-quarter, with Core Scientific, TeraWulf and Bitdeer among the companies reporting gains. Core Scientific's colocation revenue and TeraWulf's HPC leasing revenue showed significant increases. Yet even at this pace, the magnitude of earlier spending means the balance-sheet effect of large capex programs will persist in the near term. The practical question for investors is whether accelerating revenue translates into improving margins and consistent demand fast enough to justify the upfront deployment—or whether a recovery in Bitcoin's price will ease pressure on miners still operating sizable mining fleets while they wait for AI monetization to mature.

The Securities and Exchange Commission unveiled a proposed rule titled Regulation Crypto Assets, establishing a tailored framework for digital asset offerings under federal securities law. SEC Chairman Paul Atkins described the package as a minimum effective dose of oversight designed to give entrepreneurs a lighter path to raising capital without triggering traditional public registration costs. The proposal centers on two exemptions, permitting a startup exemption of up to $5 million over a four-year period and a fundraising exemption of up to $75 million within any 12-month stretch. Issuers utilizing the larger exemption must publish financial statements and comply with ongoing reporting duties, while both tracks require principles-based narrative disclosures rather than dense legal filings. The framework also includes a conditional safe harbor that could remove certain tokens from the legal definition of a security once an issuer finishes or permanently abandons promised managerial efforts. Additionally, the rules would override conflicting state registration requirements for qualifying offerings. The action arrives days after the US Senate left Washington for its summer recess without advancing the Digital Asset Market CLARITY Act, leaving lawmakers scheduled to revisit the stalled legislation in September.

President Donald Trump urged Congress to pass a fair version of the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act during a White House meeting with industry executives, driving a broader crypto market rally. The proposed legislation aims to establish jurisdictional boundaries between the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission by defining whether specific tokens qualify as securities or commodities. Negotiations in the Senate remain deadlocked over ethics provisions restricting public officials from profiting off crypto ventures, alongside competing legislative priorities before the midterm elections. While the Treasury's move to increase long-dated bond buybacks compressed yields and eased pressure on risk assets, the legislative window narrows as lawmakers face a mid-September procedural vote.