Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) faced significant pressure to close out the week, falling roughly 1% to trade at $64,000 as investors aggressively rotated out of artificial intelligence-linked assets.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 index dropped as much as 5% amid heavy selling of A.I. stocks, while the Nasdaq Composite (NASDAQ: NDAQ) shed more than 550 points at its low point during the session.
Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH) fell as much as 3%, trading at $1,830 late in the day, having failed to hold gains made earlier in the week alongside Bitcoin’s brief push above $65,000.
Rising oil prices added further strain on digital assets, with Brent crude climbing 5% on July 17 to $88 a barrel, up 30% over the prior two weeks amid continued U.S.-Iran hostilities.
Higher energy costs raise the prospect of Federal Reserve interest rate hikes to combat inflation, a scenario that historically damages risk assets like cryptocurrencies and growth-oriented equities.
Strategy (NASDAQ: MSTR), the cryptocurrency treasury firm led by Chairman Michael Saylor, held its Bitcoin position steady at 843,775 BTC last week, while raising its U.S. dollar reserves by $466.7 million to $3 billion through at-the-market stock sales.
The Financial Action Task Force, the Paris-based watchdog, warned that organized crime is increasingly using cryptocurrencies to move illicit funds, with crypto money laundering reaching a record $158 billion globally in 2025, according to Chainalysis.
Citadel Securities made a $400 million investment in Crypto.com as part of a funding round that valued the digital asset exchange at $20 billion, marking the platform’s first institutional fundraise since its founding a decade ago.
Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) expanded its E*TRADE platform to include cryptocurrency trading, allowing clients to buy, sell, and hold Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana (CRYPTO: SOL) at a 0.50% fee per transaction.
The U.S. Treasury announced it had frozen $131 million in digital assets across multiple cryptocurrency wallets linked to Iran’s Central Bank and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, as part of broader sanctions enforcement efforts.
Binance unveiled plans to transform itself into a cryptocurrency “super app,” with Shunyet Jan, the exchange’s head of spot trading, stating: “We’re trying to not just be a crypto exchange, but be a super app that involves payment.”
Bitcoin miners CleanSpark (NASDAQ: CLSK), BitFuFu (NASDAQ: FUFU), and Canaan (NASDAQ: CAN) all reported lower production in June, despite Bitcoin’s mining difficulty falling more than 10% to its lowest level of 2026.
Prediction market platform Kalshi recorded $31 billion in trading volumes for June, a 70% increase from May, driven largely by World Cup betting which totaled $22.42 billion and pushed overall prediction market volumes to $50 billion for the month.
Bitmine Immersion Technologies (NYSE: BMNR), led by Chairman Tom Lee, reported that Ethereum staking generated 98% of its revenue in the quarter ended May 31, contributing $45.7 million, with Lee forecasting annualized staking revenue of $284 million once all holdings are fully staked.
