CMC Market Pulse delivers actionable market insights, giving you all the key narratives and developments you need in under 5 minutes.
Market Overview 📉
*Data as of 6:45 AM UTC on August 7, 2026.
Bitcoin (BTC) consolidated this week, largely trading within a small range, rising 0.229% while Ethereum (ETH) fared slightly worse, rising 0.18% in the same period. Total crypto market cap stayed unchanged from the week before, hovering at $2.19T.
Weekly liquidations return to normal levels again from last week’s volatility, with this week seeing less than $250M in liquidations daily. Funding rates largely remained muted in the healthy positive ranges, although a select basket of alts are showing heavily negative funding.
📌 Michael Saylor’s Strategy raises its USD Reserve by $250M and repurchases $81M in STRC shares, bringing their total USD Reserve to $4B. -
📌 MasterCard completes their acquisition of BVNK, expanding their ability to support global stablecoin payments. -
📌 Visa powers stablecoin merchant prefunding and payout capabilities for Visa Direct, in a collaboration with zerohash. -
Why does it matter?
Traditional equities rally amidst strong earnings from hyperscalers and positive developments in the Iran conflict, while crypto struggles and goes sideways due to a variety of negative catalysts including the Coldcard hack, delays in the CLARITY Act, and more. The S&P 500 is up 3.32% this week, while the Nasdaq lags slightly at 3.26% up.
Notable altcoin outperformers this week included SKYAI (SKYAI), Cardano (ADA), Humanity (H), MemeCore (M), and Ethena (ENA).
Narrative of the Week 📰
Popular hardware wallet, Coldcard, has been exploited, due to a code bug in key generation, allowing attackers to brute force seedphrases and clearing out over $100M in BTC from victims.
📌 Hardware wallet Coldcard has been exploited, due to the non-randomness of key generation from keys generated from 2021 onwards. Users are advised to immediately migrate their funds if possible. -
📌 Galaxy Research confirms that as of 4th August losses have exceeded $100M, with losses expected to continue growing into the coming weeks. -
📌 The Coldcard hack deals another blow to the hardcore self-custody advocates, as holders flee to CEXes for safety. -
Why does it matter?
The Coldcard exploit has shaken foundational trust in self-custody, forcing Bitcoiners into emergency fund migrations and driving a retreat back toward centralized exchanges and institutional custodians.
Major Project Updates 🗓️
📌 Ethereum researchers release EIP 8361, which seeks to reduce issuance to zero once more than 50% of the ETH supply is staked, among other changes to ETH’s issuance structure. -
📌 BitGo’s WBTC migrates away from LayerZero to Chainlink, citing security as its top priority. -
📌 Cloudflare introduces Cloudflare Wallets, enabling the use of stablecoins to make and receive payments across the web. -
📌 Circle announces the founding validator cohort and key integrations for their Arc blockchain leading up to its mainnet launch on September 16. - Link
📌 POAP winds down after 5 years of operations. The protocol went into maintenance mode earlier this year in March. -
📌 ElizaOS founder, Shaw, shuts down its foundation, shifting focus to open-source development without ties to its token. -
Why does it matter?
EIP-8361 structurally changes how validator rewards work, with some critics pushing back on security concerns, centralization risks, and governance fears.
DeFi Brief 🏦
*Data as of 6:45 AM UTC on August 7, 2026.
📌 BlackRock partners with Securitize to release the BlackRock Daily Reinvestment Stablecoin Reserve Vehicle (BRSRV), continuing their push into cash management on-chain. -
📌 Uniswap introduces Pools, a launchpad built specifically for the Robinhood chain. The launchpad boasts no launchpad fees, autocompounding liquidity, sniping mitigation, and more. -
📌 Solana yield protocol, Kamino, introduces Kamino Yield, linking on-chain capital with institutional credit markets. -
Why does it matter?
BlackRock continues the move on-chain, cementing the blockchain as the global TradFi settlement layer, while providing a ‘safe yield’ option on-chain for idle capital.
Fundraises 💰
📌 Decentralized spatial infrastructure protocol, Vangrid, raises $9M in a funding round with investors including Animoca Brands, Hashkey Capital, Borderless, Gate.io Labs, and more. -
📌 Crypto rewards network, Bundle, raises $5.5M in a pre-seed funding round led by Ethereal Ventures and Further, with support from Nascent, GSR, Anchorage, and more. -
📌 Stablecoin infrastructure provider, Yellow Card, raises $40M in a strategic funding round with investors including SC Ventures, Sony Innovation Fund, Polychain, and more. -
📌 Ripple makes undisclosed investments into infrastructure solutions, Licuido and ZILO, deepening their push into capital markets. -
Tweet of the Week 📝
Source: @boldleonidas
A brutal week for the self-custody maximalists.
