Saudi crude exports dropped 460K barrels/day in July to 4.19M bpd. Houthi threats are now targeting Yanbu, the backup port Saudi built specifically to bypass Strait of Hormuz chokepoint risk. Tankers are going dark on transponders. Global energy supply chains remain incredibly fragile.

Strategy now holds 840,447 bitcoin and just bumped its USD reserve to $4.65B while buying back $109M of $STRC.

China added 20 tonnes of gold in July, their largest monthly purchase since October 2023. That's 21 consecutive months of buying. 2,366 tonnes total and climbing. They're also moving reserves from London to Hong Kong to build their own trading hub.

Strategy now holds 842,138 bitcoin worth $54.66 billion at an average cost of $75,653. Down 14% on their position.

The BIP-110 chain found its second block but is 7 blocks behind the main chain.

.(simpleminingio) mined block 961,634 using Luke Dashjr’s DATUM protocol. This block extended the bitcoin main chain as it did not signal support for BIP 110 consensus rules. While many members of Ocean’s team support BIP 110, they created a protocol to let their customers decide what they think is best. This should be lauded.

BIP-110 hit its mandatory signaling period today at block 961,632. When Ocean mined a non-signaling block, BIP-110 nodes rejected it and forked off the main chain. With less than 3% miner support, the BIP-110 chain now trails the canonical chain with virtually no hashrate behind it.

BIP-110 nodes just forked off the main chain after rejecting a non-signaling block at height 961,632.

25 blocks until BIP-110 mandatory signaling.

33 blocks away from BIP-110 mandatory signaling.

Bitcoin ETFs just had their best week of inflows (~$1B) since April. IBIT, FBTC, and others saw inflows every single day this week.

.Jessica Rose analyzed the FDA's briefing document for Moderna's mRNA-1010 flu injectable (mFlusiva) and found there was no saline placebo group in the trial. The comparator group got an existing flu vaccine instead. Deaths looked comparable at ~0.3% in both groups, but the mRNA-1010 group actually had 2.6x more deaths than the comparator. The FDA calls this a "numerical imbalance." Compared to a hypothetical saline placebo, "the likelihood of dying in either vaccine group would be approximately 30 times higher than in the saline placebo group." "You cannot compare an existing potentially problematic vaccine to a novel one and call the former a placebo. You mask the harms, which appears to be the intention, by doing so." "We're talking about death here, people. You can't recover from that. You can recover from flu, however."

Corporate America is on pace for the biggest earnings beat EVER recorded. S&P 500 companies are beating EPS estimates by +29.2%. The 5-year average is +7.0%. That's 4.2x the historical norm. Blended net margin hit 16.9%. All time high. Strip out Alphabet's $98B unrealized equity gain and Amazon's $53B Anthropic gain and earnings growth is STILL +32.0% YoY. We are in the middle of the largest investment boom in history. And it's just getting started.

A firmware flaw in one of Bitcoin's most popular hardware wallets just led to $130M+ in stolen BTC. 210,000+ BTC moved out of long-term holder wallets. Spot ETFs have seen inflows every single day. Price has not made a new low.

"Digital detectives are going sleepless after Bitcoin wallet hack." Bloomberg profiles the community response to the $130M Coldcard exploit. Alex Thorn, who's spoken with 100+ victims: "These are average everyday people saving their money in Bitcoin. They were true believers." Becca Rubenfeld on the developers working around the clock: "It's like they're off at war. That's the vibe."

All 8 Flock surveillance cameras in Winona, Minnesota were cut down and removed over a few days. Poles sawed at the base, cameras gone. It's part of a growing nationwide backlash against automated license plate surveillance. Multiple cities have now shut their Flock systems down entirely.

Senator Lummis after the Clarity Act vote delay: "We've come too far to quit. This fight is far from over."

PubKey says their Bitcoin payments are offline until further notice. "It was never meant to be easy. Survive and flourish."

Critical vulnerability being actively exploited on BTCPay Server. Update to v2.4.2 immediately. If you can't update right now, turn your server off.