Crypto
bitcoin
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Orange rush

Everyone’s buying bitcoin except Strategy

“Some weeks you just need to HODL.”

Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy

It’s been a great week for bitcoin, which hit a new all-time high yesterday, crossing $112,000 for the first time.

Bitcoin treasury companies also notched a record, acquiring 159,107 bitcoin in Q2, according to Bitwise, far surpassing the 95,431 BTC purchased in Q1.

One notable absentee this week: Strategy, the largest bitcoin corporate holder, with 597,325 bitcoin, paused its weekly bitcoin purchases for the first time since April.

“Some weeks you just need to HODL,” cofounder Michael Saylor posted on X.

Others didn’t feel the same, and kicked off the second half of 2025 with more buys:

  • Metaplanet acquired 2,205 bitcoin for $238.7 million and now holds 15,555 bitcoin.

  • Another Japanese company, Remixpoint, raised $215 million via financing to purchase bitcoin, with a short-term goal of buying 3,000 bitcoin.

  • Semler Scientific acquired 187 bitcoin for $20 million, now holding 4,636 bitcoin. Earlier this week, Benchmark Equity Research initiated coverage of the company with a “buy” rating and a price target of $101, a 140% upside from today’s price, following the company’s bitcoin pivot in May.

  • Energy management platforms company KULR Technology also increased its bitcoin holdings, acquiring 90 bitcoin for $10 million. It now holds 1,021 bitcoin.

  • Paris-based semiconductor company Sequans Communications, which surged earlier this week after raising 7x its market value to buy bitcoin, executed its first purchase, acquiring 370 bitcoin “as part of its newly launched bitcoin treasury strategy.”

  • Another French company, The Blockchain Group, also added to its stockpile by acquiring 116 bitcoin. It now holds 1,904 bitcoin.  

  • Further north, The Smarter Web Company, a London-listed technology company, acquired 226.42 bitcoin as part of its “10 Year Plan” treasury policy. It now holds 1,000 bitcoin.

  • KULR Technology acquired 90 bitcoin and now has 1,021.

Meanwhile, new entrants to the treasury game keep coming. Real estate company Murano said it had executed a standby equity purchase agreement worth up to $500 million to invest in bitcoin.

The company, which owns and develops hotel, resort, and commercial properties throughout Mexico and aims to become “a major BTC holder,” acquired 21 bitcoin to start its stockpile.

Finally, Chinese bitcoin mining company Cango announced it mined 120.7 bitcoin:

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Sage D. Young

Ripple launches treasury platform to manage cash and cryptocurrencies

Ripple, the firm closely tied to the fifth-largest cryptocurrency, XRP, introduced a new treasury platform for digital asset and traditional cash management for users like financial officers, treasurers, and accountants. 

Ripple’s move comes more than three months after it acquired treasury software provider GTreasury for $1 billion, one of several steps to grow the firm’s position in corporate finance.

Combining Ripple’s blockchain rails and GTreasury’s software, the new platform’s goal is to simplify treasury operations. It eliminates settlement delays with payment times of three to five seconds and optimizes yield from working capital 24/7 through tokenized money market funds such as BlackRock’s BUIDL and overnight secure repo markets with RLUSD, according to a Tuesday blog post. 

Ripple Treasury also aims to provide “real-time cash positions, automated forecasting, and seamless reporting across traditional cash, digital assets, RLUSD, and XRP holdings,” the blog post stated.

Last year, Ripple filed its national banking license application with the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, while the firm’s subsidiary Standard Custody & Trust Company applied for a Federal Reserve master account, which would allow Ripple to hold RLUSD reserves directly with the Fed.

XRP has seen $2.4 billion in trading volume in the last 24 hours, increasing 1.8% in the period. The token’s all-time high was set in July 2025 at $3.65. Meanwhile, spot XRP ETFs had nearly $9.2 million worth of inflows on Tuesday, bringing cumulative inflows to $1.4 billion.

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US-CRYPTOCURRENCY-CLIMATE-EMPLOYMENT-CHINA
$82B
Sage D. Young

Crypto money laundering activity totaled more than $82 billion in 2025, more than 8x higher than 2020’s figure of $10 billion, according to a Tuesday report published by crypto analytics firm Chainalysis. Chinese-language networks dominated the ecosystem, accounting for roughly 20% of the illicit activity, or $16.1 billion, last year:

“Compared to other laundering endpoints, since 2020, inflows to identified CMLNs [Chinese-langugage money laundering networks] grew 7,325 times faster than those to centralized exchanges, 1,810 times faster than those to decentralized finance (DeFi), and 2,190 times faster than intra-illicit on-chain flows.”

Tom Keatinge, director at the Centre for Finance & Security at security think tank Royal United Services Institute, told Chainalysis that the rapid development of Chinese-language networks is an “an unforeseen consequence” of China’s imposition of capital controls.

“Wealthy individuals seeking to move money out of China and evade these controls provide the impetus and liquidity pool needed to service organized crime groups based in the West,” he noted.

Keatinge told Chainalysis, “The professional enablers of this capital flight provide the services necessary to match these two independent yet mutually beneficial needs.” 

Chinese-language networks offer six primary money movement techniques to clean dirty money, which include recruiting individuals to rent out their financial identities, selling illicit cryptocurrency at a discounted rate, and obscuring fund origins through multiple transactions. 

Overall, this Chinese ecosystem processed nearly $44 million per day last year. 

crypto
Sage D. Young

Avalanche joins class of cryptocurrencies with at least one ETF

Investment management company VanEck on Monday introduced the first exchange-traded fund offering spot exposure to AVAX, the native token for the Avalanche blockchain and the latest cryptocurrency with an ETF. 

The new investment vehicle also aims to provide staking rewards for holders, according to the press release. AVAX, which has seen over $354 million in trading volume in the last 24 hours, is up slightly today. The token is trading at $11.70 as of 1:20 p.m. ET, a far cry from its all-time high of $144.96 in 2021. 

The nascent VanEck fund joins a group of its crypto-specific ETFs, including the firm’s bitcoin ETF, with $1.4 billion in total assets; its ethereum ETF, which holds $147.5 million; and its solana ETF, with assets totaling $27.9 million.

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