Author: NBTC

NBTC

NBTC is the editorial account for NBTC News, covering Bitcoin, Ethereum, DeFi, blockchain infrastructure, exchanges, mining, regulation and digital asset markets. The editorial team focuses on clear sourcing, timely updates and practical context for crypto readers.

difficulty falls 19.9% as miners pivot to AI

MiningAug 2

Bitcoin mining difficulty has dropped 19.9% from its peak in the third deepest ASIC era decline on record, as miners sell bitcoin at record rates and redirect power capacity toward artificial intelligence data centers. Bitcoin mining difficulty has dropped 19.9% from its all time peak. That single number captures a transformation that has been building for months but accelerated through the first half of 2026: the economics of mining bitcoin have deteriorated to the point where a meaningful share of the global fleet has shut down, and the operators that remain are increasingly looking beyond bitcoin for revenue. The decline,…

Bitchat Mesh App Defies India Cybercrime Notice After Protesters Use It During Network Restrictions

BlockchainAug 1

Bitchat, Jack Dorsey’s censorship-resistant, Bluetooth-enabled messaging app, has gone viral again, this time due to the Indian Government trying to get it banned from GitHub. In this latest round of authoritarian measures versus decentralized technologies, Bitchat has won. In July 2025, Jack Dorsey announced a new messaging application he described as a weekend project. The app, called Bitchat, was designed to work without internet access, phone numbers, user accounts, or central servers. It relied instead on Bluetooth mesh networks for local communication and the Nostr protocol for wider reach. A year later, that same application became the subject of a…

BlackRock Beats Strategy and Binance as Third-Largest Bitcoin Holder

BitcoinAug 1

BlackRock, one of the world's largest asset management firms and a key player in the Bitcoin ecosystem, has been ranked as the third-largest Bitcoin holder across the globe. Although BlackRock is globally renowned for its extreme focus on Bitcoin, the recent ranking by Arkham researchers has positioned the firm above Strategy, which is believed to hold more $BTC. Did BlackRock actually flip Strategy? While Arkham released a report confirming that BlackRock currently holds about 764,000 $BTC, commentators have argued that placing it behind only Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto and the leading U.S. crypto exchange Coinbase may have been an unfair…

Bitcoin rallied on cheaper gas while Americans expect rents to surge 8.3%

RegulationAug 1

There's a question buried in this week's US economic data that sounds simple but is surprisingly hard to answer: when Americans spend more money, does that mean they're buying more, or just paying more for the same stuff? Those are completely different things, and it's important to tell them apart. If people are buying more, then the economy is genuinely strong. But if they're just paying higher prices for the same amount of goods, then the economy is actually weakening, while looking healthy only on the surface. And the two big reports that landed this week each have a blind…

Sui Blames Triple Mainnet Halt on Gas-Charging Bug and a Known-Risk Patch That Backfired

AltcoinsAug 1

The Sui Foundation on Sunday published a post-mortem on the three mainnet outages that took its Layer 1 down on May 28 and 29, pinning the first two halts on a gas-charging bug introduced by the v1.72 "address balances" upgrade and the third on a separate randomness-state fault exposed when validators restarted to install an interim fix the team admits it shipped knowing it carried a low-probability halt risk. SUI, the network's native token, slid 6.6% in the 24 hours after the post-mortem and is down 18.5% over seven days at $0.82, trimming Sui's market capitalization to $3.31 billion, per…

CME’s Duffy Flags Tax Danger Zone for U.S. Perpetual Futures

LegalAug 1

A quiet legal skirmish over the definition of perpetual futures is threatening to reopen a tax question that many traders and platforms have ignored. CME Group CEO Terry Duffy warned on Wednesday that the unresolved fight over whether these contracts are swaps or traditional futures could eventually drag the IRS into the picture, according to the original report. The timing matters because U.S. crypto derivatives volumes are growing, and any forced reclassification would ripple through every exchange offering perpetuals to American users. Duffy’s comments surface as Washington is already grinding through broader crypto legislation. While most of that debate focuses…

Robinhood's Best Month? 2,424,301% RWA Transfer Volume Spike Draws Attention

ExchangesAug 1

Following the recent launch of RobinhoodChain earlier this month, the protocol has continued to post explosive growth in its key metrics across the DeFi and RWAs ecosystem. With Robinhood gaining massive traction following its big move this month, it has recorded an explosive surge in transfer activity over the last 30 days. Robinhood in the spotlight While the grand debut of the blockchain has brought the Robinhood ecosystem into the spotlight, the protocol has continued to gain traction amid rapid adoption from users across the world. Amid this unprecedented growth, the latest onchain data from the RWAs Foundation shows that…

Bitcoin miners saved Texas power grid from collapse, but their lucrative pivot to AI is stripping away the emergency brake

MiningAug 1

Texas broke its all-time electricity demand record twice in two days last week. ERCOT served a preliminary 91,308 megawatts around 5 p.m. on July 22, one day after demand hit 87,403 megawatts and erased the 85,508-megawatt mark that had stood since Aug. 10, 2023. Neither afternoon saw an appeal for energy conservation, and the system carried more than 20 gigawatts of headroom at the peak. Days later, the grid operator told regulators that demand could roughly double within six years to 175,000 megawatts, while a long-term forecast that had reached about 367,790 megawatts by 2032 was being reworked after regulators…

Flowra and Honeypot Expand Compliance Options for Institutional Validators on Solana

BlockchainAug 1

Flowra today announced a collaboration with compliance infrastructure provider Honeypot to introduce validator-level sanctions and risk screening for Solana, extending compliance capabilities into the block-building process through Flowra’s Programmable Block Policy framework. The collaboration enables institutional validators to define customizable policies governing which transactions and bundles can be included during block construction. By combining Honeypot’s compliance intelligence with Flowra’s validator infrastructure, the companies aim to provide regulated operators with additional tools to meet compliance requirements while maintaining independent control over how those policies are implemented. The initial rollout supports screening against sanctions-related criteria, including wallet addresses associated with sanctioned entities,…

Bitcoin Eyes $69,000 Next but on One Condition: Analyst

BitcoinAug 1

Bitcoin has suspended its recent price rally following a sudden price flip to the downside trajectory, failing to reclaim the much-anticipated $70,000 level. While the drawdown has seen Bitcoin remain in the red zone for the past few days, Bitcoin is back to trading below $64,000. However, popular crypto analyst Ali Martinez has spotted a new price target for Bitcoin. Bitcoin eyes 7% price surge On Thursday, June 18, Martinez shared on-chain data suggesting that Bitcoin could be preparing for another price leg up toward $69,000. However, this will not happen if the asset fails to hold support at $64,000.…