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On-chain data shows the 7-day average Bitcoin Hashrate has shot up to a new all-time high (ATH) despite network Difficulty being at a record level.

Bitcoin Mining Hashrate Has Seen A Sharp Increase Recently

The “Hashrate” refers to a Bitcoin indicator that keeps track of the total amount of computing power that the miners as a whole have connected to the BTC blockchain. The metric is useful for gauging the sentiment among these chain validators.

When the value of the Hashrate goes up, it means new miners are joining the network and/or old ones are expanding their farms. Such a trend implies BTC mining is looking profitable to this cohort.

On the other hand, the indicator witnessing a decline suggests some of the miners have decided to pull out of the chain, potentially because they are no longer able to pay off electricity bills.

Now, here is a chart from Blockchain.com that shows how the 7-day average Bitcoin Hashrate has changed over the past year:

Looks like the value of the metric has shot up in recent days | Source: Blockchain.com

As displayed in the above graph, the 7-day average Bitcoin Hashrate has seen a sharp surge recently and has set a new all-time high (ATH) of around 1.03 zettahashes per second (ZH/s). This increase in the metric has come as the price of the cryptocurrency has made some recovery.

Miners depend on the asset’s price for their revenue, so bullish price action allows them to expand. Though, while price conditions may have been favorable in the past week, another factor hasn’t been. Namely, the Difficulty.

The Difficulty is a feature built into the Bitcoin blockchain that controls how hard the miners would find their task of BTC mining on the network right now. This metric’s value automatically changes about every two weeks based on network conditions.

More specifically, the Difficulty adjusts according to whether the miners have been slower or faster than the network target rate of 10 minutes per block. The chain ups the metric if miners are going through the average block in less than 10 minutes, while it lowers it if the validators aren’t able to keep pace.

Prior to the latest adjustment, Bitcoin miners were aggressively expanding their Hashrate, becoming significantly faster than the network wants them to be. The chain responded with a notable Difficulty increase that took the metric to a new record of 136.04 terahashes, as data from CoinWarz shows.

The Difficulty adjustments that have occurred over the last three months | Source: CoinWarz

Difficulty increases can squeeze the revenue of the most vulnerable miners, so Hashrate often dips following them. And indeed, the same occurred after the latest adjustment as well, but the drop was temporary.

Thus, it would appear that the spike in Difficulty hasn’t been able to scare away the Bitcoin miners this time.

BTC Price

At the time of writing, Bitcoin is floating around $116,400, up almost 5% in the last seven days.

The trend in the price of the coin over the last five days | Source: BTCUSDT on TradingView

Featured image from Dall-E, CoinWarz.com, Blockchain.com, chart from TradingView.com

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So the core developers are now officially shit. When do you try to make it easier to use shit Bitcoin?

Please read everyone in the strange room. I think Bitcoin is just a database. But what kind of database is that? Free Dick Picks and Monkey JPEG Database? Or currency database?

If you’re wondering what Bitcoin is aiming for, read a white paper. To scream out loud, read the title and understand what Bitcoin is meant.

Bitcoin: Peer-to-peer electronic cash system

no! Don’t say anything about the shit, dick picks, or monkey JPEG in the title?

The following is a guest post and opinion from Corey Billington, Co-Founder and CEO at Blubird.

Most token launches play out the same way. Founders spend weeks buried in spreadsheets, lawyers churn out disclaimers, and influencers start teasing “TGE soon.” Behind the scenes, though, private round investors are just waiting for cliffs to end so they can dump. Circulating supply spikes, token price tanks, and social media fills with threads about “unlock risk.”

Somewhere in the mess, we forget the obvious: tokens are infrastructure, not short-term fundraising tools.

I’ve worked with over 80 teams, and the same pattern keeps coming up. Founders rush to mint a token so they can raise without touching equity. Then they try to backfill utility into the product later — a strategy that rarely succeeds. That backwards approach is what leads to all the usual failures: oversized insider allocations, unlock schedules that make no sense, and “use cases” that no one actually uses.

At that point, every token purchase is just helping someone else cash out.

Why Raising First and Figuring It Out Later Breaks Everything

When your token’s main job is to raise money, you’re walking into two problems: legal risk and market damage.

On the legal side, if your token doesn’t have real utility from the start, it starts looking like a security — and the SEC isn’t known for nuance. You can call it a utility token, but the Howey Test doesn’t care about your pitch deck. And if you pair that with a fast emissions schedule and the token price crashes — don’t be surprised if frustrated holders come knocking.

But the real damage is strategic. Projects that treat the token like a fundraising shortcut almost never have a plan for what happens after launch. They end up building around cliffs, vesting charts, and investor pressure, not product usage or user growth.

And then, they’re bleeding tokens into a market that isn’t ready to catch them. 90% of token unlocks crash prices, even when 5% of the total supply is released. Meanwhile, over the next few months alone, scheduled unlocks will total around $9 billion.

Build the Business Plan First, Not the Tokenomics Last

The best token models start with the business. I mean a proper plan — the kind you’d pitch to a Series A investor and that forces you to map out what the company actually does, how it grows, where revenue comes from, and who benefits.

This clarity gives you the answers. Does this even need a token? Where does the token naturally plug into the product? What roles do users, validators, contributors, or liquidity providers play in creating demand?

Once that’s mapped, you can start modeling out the flow: who earns, who spends, who stakes, and when. Then you stress-test it: ‘What happens in a down market? What if usage explodes? How would fees, rewards, and emissions respond?’

Tools like Machinations can help you out here; so does walking through the model with someone who’s seen a hundred of them. But if the foundation is rotten, all the software and advice in the world won’t fix it.

If the Token’s Not Essential, Don’t Launch It Yet

Here’s what I tell every team: if your product can launch without a token, it probably should. Use equity, milestone-based SAFEs, or rev-share notes to fund early dev. When the product has traction — and there’s a clear role for the token in the loop — then you’re good to deploy.

Launching too early just invites speculation, so you end up spending the next two years defending a price chart instead of growing your user base.

On the other hand, when tokens are essential — e.g., powering blockspace fees, staking access to data feeds, or gating ecosystem rewards — their utility becomes the anchor. Demand grows with usage; the token is earned, spent, and recycled inside the product itself. That’s when emissions don’t destroy value, because you’ve got real activity behind it.

Take Solana: daily unlocks of roughly $14 million in tokens have weighed on its price, yet periods of strong network demand have repeatedly pulled it back up. Sui offers another case in point — after a January 1 unlock that released 64.19 million tokens (about $300 million), the token still surged nearly 28%, reaching a new all-time high of $5.1.

Founders Need to Design for Longevity, Not Launch Day

Founders love vesting cliffs and time-based unlocks — it’s simple, easy to model, and ticks the box for “long-term incentives.” Still, time alone isn’t a great signal. It’s way more efficient to tie unlocks to real milestones: number of active validators, modules shipped, usage targets hit; so the token supply would grow with the network.

Don’t build your model in a vacuum. Add slippage, bear markets, and team delays. If your model can’t survive those shocks, it’s not ready for launch.

And once you think it’s bulletproof, get someone to tear it apart. Experienced builders will spot the incentive flaws and edge cases your team’s too close to see.

Tokens Shape the Whole Market — So Build Accordingly

A lot of this comes down to mindset. If more founders treat token design as actual infrastructure — not cosmetic branding or a fundraising hack — we’d see better launches and stronger networks.

Venture investors are already starting to shift: the best of them focus on demand loops, not hype cycles. Exchanges are favoring transparency and sustainability over mystery unlocks and flash marketing. And regulators are more likely to respect a commodity-style utility token when it’s baked into usage, not just bolted on for optics.

Basically, it all boils down to this: if removing your token doesn’t break the loop, don’t launch. Build the loop first, then the token.

The landmark US GENIUS Act could serve as a major catalyst for stablecoin adoption both domestically and abroad. But rather than simply boosting demand for dollar-backed digital currencies, it may unintentionally push capital into the tokenization market as investors seek yield on their holdings.

That was one of the key takeaways from a recent interview with Will Beeson, a former Standard Chartered executive and now founder and CEO of Uniform Labs, a developer of institutional liquidity solutions for tokenized financial markets.

A central provision of the GENIUS Act is its blanket ban on yield-bearing stablecoins, which prevents holders from earning interest on their digital dollar balances. According to Beeson, this restriction will accelerate the flow of capital into tokenized real-world assets (RWAs).

“With yield-bearing stablecoins off the table, institutions need a compliant way to earn yield while staying liquid,” Beeson told Cointelegraph. “Capital is already shifting.”

He noted that trillions of dollars in non-interest-bearing stablecoins are poised to enter digital finance. “Institutional holders aren’t going to sit on idle, depreciating assets. They’ll demand yield — and infrastructure that makes accessing it […] compliant,” he said, adding: 

“The next phase isn’t about holding idle stablecoins. It’s about programmatic access to risk-free yield, and the ability to move between cash and high-quality assets at will.”

Beeson’s view is shared by Aptos Labs’ Solomon Tesfaye, who told Cointelegraph that the GENIUS Act will benefit tokenization as much as it does stablecoins.

To meet this need, Beeson’s Uniform Labs is building Multiliquid, an institutional liquidity layer for tokenized markets that enables programmable, real-time conversion between tokenized assets, such as US Treasurys and money market funds, and stablecoins.

Multiliquid’s open-architecture design allows compliant issuers to integrate without commercial agreements.

While declining to name partners, Beeson confirmed that Uniform Labs is “working with a number of leading institutions, fintechs, and stablecoin issuers” ahead of its production launch later this year.

Before launching Uniform Labs, Beeson served as chief product officer at Libeara, a tokenization platform incubated by Standard Chartered’s SC Ventures.

Related: Tokenized money market funds emerge as Wall Street’s answer to stablecoins

Tokenization surge to broaden beyond private credit, government bonds

Although the GENIUS Act gives newfound legitimacy to stablecoins — and to digital currencies more broadly — “the next phase of digital assets is focused on asset tokenization,” wrote Sandra Waliczek, a member of the World Economic Forum’s blockchain and digital asset division.

Waliczek highlighted tokenization’s potential to level the investing playing field for asset classes like real estate and private equity, which have historically been restricted to wealthier investors.

“Tokenization changes this by enabling asset fractionalization, breaking assets into smaller, more affordable units,” she wrote.

So far, the nearly $26 billion tokenization market has largely centered on private credit and government bonds. But as Beeson noted, the disruption will extend far beyond those segments, encompassing “corporate bonds, credit and credit funds, commodities, equities, real estate funds, private equity funds, and ultimately private equity and real estate assets themselves.”

Related: GENIUS Act scrutinized for stablecoin yield ban as TradFi tokenization gains steam

]]> https://earlybirdsinvest.com/genius-ban-wont-stop-institutions-from-seeking-stablecoin-yield-ex-standard-chartered-exec/feed/ 0 52711 https://earlybirdsinvest.com/sec-takes-crypto-roundtables-nationwide-opens-with-aug-4-stop-in-berkeley/ https://earlybirdsinvest.com/sec-takes-crypto-roundtables-nationwide-opens-with-aug-4-stop-in-berkeley/#respond Sat, 02 Aug 2025 11:41:22 +0000 https://earlybirdsinvest.com/sec-takes-crypto-roundtables-nationwide-opens-with-aug-4-stop-in-berkeley/

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) will expand its series of crypto roundtables and take its crypto policy outreach on the road beginning Aug. 4 in Berkeley, California.

According to an Aug. 1 statement, the tour is meant to give founders and developers, especially teams with 10 or fewer employees and less than two years old, face time with the Commission outside Washington, D.C. 

Crypto Task Force lead Hester Peirce stated the agency wants to hear from stakeholders who could not attend prior sessions, adding:

“The Crypto Task Force is acutely aware that any regulatory framework will have far-reaching effects, and we want to ensure that our outreach is as comprehensive as possible.”

Teams can request a slot by emailing [email protected] with the subject line “Crypto on the Road,” naming the city of interest and including one or two attendee names along with a brief description of the project and team. 

To promote transparency, the Task Force plans to publish a list of participating projects.

The new “Crypto on the Road” schedule runs through December. The Task Force plans to visit Berkeley on Aug. 4, Boston on Aug. 19, Dallas on Sept. 4, Chicago on Sept. 15, New York City on Sept. 25, Irvine on Oct. 3, Cleveland on Oct. 24, Scottsdale on Oct. 29, New York City again on Nov. 12, and Ann Arbor on Dec. 5. 

Dates are tentative and may shift as logistics are finalized.

Expanding efforts

The roadshow builds on the SEC’s spring engagement with industry players. The Commission held its first Crypto Task Force roundtable on March 21 in Washington.

Panelists ranging from advocates to skeptics concurred that there is a pressing need for regulatory clarity for digital assets, despite the diverging opinions on how to establish it.

Much of the debate centered on token classification and whether existing securities laws adequately address decentralized systems. 

Advocates pointed to decentralization as a key gauge for determining when a token should fall outside securities laws. At the same time, skeptics argued the Howey test remains workable, noting the SEC’s track record in recent motions. 

Following the first roundtable, the SEC decided to host four additional events, ranging from regulation clarity to decentralized finance’s role in US innovation.

By moving conversations into local hubs, the Commission is seeking a wider sample of real-world experience, from smart contract developers and tokenization teams to early-stage consumer apps, before it advances proposals that could define how crypto fits under federal securities law.

Mentioned in this article

Solana has shown a potential breakout from a Symmetrical Triangle. Here’s where the next price target could lie, according to an analyst.

Solana Has Surged Above Symmetrical Triangle Resistance

In a new post on X, analyst Ali Martinez has talked about how Solana has just broken a resistance line. The level in question is part of a Symmetrical Triangle, a pattern from technical analysis (TA).

This pattern belongs to the class of triangles, formations that involve the asset trading within two converging trendlines. The upper line acts as a source of resistance, while the lower one as that of support.

A break out of either of these levels implies a continuation of trend in that direction. A surge above the triangle is a bullish sign and a drop under it a bearish one. Since the price’s range becomes narrower as it travels within a triangle, a breakout can become more likely as it approaches the apex.

Related Reading

Generally, triangle breakouts are considered to be of the same length as the height of the formation (that is, the distance between the upper and lower trendlines at their widest).

There are three popular triangle types: Ascending, Descending, and Symmetrical. The first and second variants have one trendline parallel to the time-axis. In the case of the Ascending type, it’s the upper level. This means that as Solana moves inside an Ascending Triangle, its range gets narrower toward a net upside.

Similarly, the Descending Triangle involves the opposite setup, with the support line being parallel to the time-axis instead. The third type, the Symmetrical Triangle, is the middle ground between the two: it has the two trendlines approaching each other at a roughly equal and opposite slope.

In other words, the Symmetrical Triangle represents a period of consolidation where the range gets narrower in true sideways fashion. Due to this fact, a breakout is more-or-less equally probable to occur in either direction. In contrast, there is a bias associated in Ascending and Descending Triangles.

Now, here is the chart shared by Martinez that shows the Symmetrical Triangle Solana was trading inside just earlier:

As is visible in the above graph, the Solana price was nearing in on the end of the triangle and as probability would dictate, a breakout was becoming likely. The asset indeed ended up finding a break and it seems to have been in the up direction.

Related Reading

So what could be next for SOL? According to the analyst, the asset might target $164. This level corresponds to the 1.272 Fibonacci Extension line. Fibonacci Extension levels are defined based on ratios found in the popular Fibonacci series.

The 1.272 level, in particular, corresponds to the square root of 1.618, which is the famous ‘Golden Ratio.’

SOL Price

At the time of writing, Solana is floating around $158, up 3% in the last 24 hours.

Featured image from Dall-E, charts from TradingView.com