Bitcoin's free-market lesson: the fork, the miners, the result.

Bitcoin forked. The fork died in two blocks. The Senate punted the Clarity Act. BTC is above $65K anyway. Here's why none of that is contradictory. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ SPONSORED BY Monday, August 10, 2026   This weekend delivered a lesson in how bitcoin actually works. The BIP-110 fork — a proposal to restrict Ordinals inscriptions, rejected by distributed consensus — went live at block 961,632. Miners, choosing the most profitable chain, abandoned it after two blocks. No regulator intervened. No committee overruled anyone. The market decided. “Bitcoin worked exactly as designed,” Michael Saylor said. Meanwhile the Senate couldn’t muster the 60 votes needed for the Clarity Act and adjourned for recess — but bitcoin broke above $65,000 anyway, up 3.7% on the week, as the weak jobs report softened the dollar, ETF inflows kept coming ($853 million over the weekend alone), and hedge funds turned net long on CME for the first time in months. The market found its own signal while Washington punted to September. CPI data this week will be the next test. And separately: Coinsbuy was drained of $8 million in a coordinated cross-chain attack across TRON and Ethereum — the industry’s $972 million hack tab for the year keeps climbing. Read today’s full report → Market snapshot As of 8am EST Asset Price 24h BTC $65,013 +0.17% ETH $1,925 +0.50% SOL $76.40 +1.20% XRP $1.03 −0.60% Prices approximate. Visit coindesk.com/price for live data. A message from RealFi Most stablecoins leave capital sitting still. RealFi is different. It connects on-chain capital to real-world markets like US Treasuries, money market funds, and private credit. Real transparency. Real impact. RealFi. RealFi is launching August 2026. Join the Testnet now at realfi.co Find out more CoinDesk Disclosure: The information contained in this newsletter, and any information linked through the items contained herein, is not intended to provide sufficient information to form the basis for an investment decision. You should seek additional information regarding the merits and risks of investing in any cryptocurrency or digital assets. L1.co Disclosure: This material is for informational purposes only, and the content contained herein should not be considered investment advice or a solicitation, offer, or recommendation to sell or buy any asset, strategy, or product. Investing in digital assets involves a high degree of risk, including the loss of principal. What matters today Markets   Story 1 of 3 Bitcoin’s BIP-110 episode is free-market capitalism in purest form. The BIP-110 story that played out over the weekend is worth reading as a case study in decentralized governance. The proposal aimed to restrict non-financial data — Ordinals inscriptions specifically — from the Bitcoin blockchain to free up block space. It was debated openly by the developer community, failed to secure broad consensus, and was rejected. Crucially, no central authority made that call. Then BIP-110 supporters exercised their right to fork — creating a new chain at block 961,632 to implement their preferred rules. Miners, acting on economic incentive, chose the more profitable chain: the original Bitcoin. The BIP-110 fork, inheriting Bitcoin’s full mining difficulty but attracting only a fraction of the hashpower, produced two blocks and ground to a halt. The original network continued uninterrupted with virtually all activity, liquidity and security intact. Michael Saylor summed it up on X: “Bitcoin worked exactly as designed.” The counterpoint he draws is instructive: in conventional economies, falling corporate profitability should trigger layoffs and restructuring, but governments often block that process for electoral reasons, prolonging industrial sickness. Bitcoin had no such circuit breaker — the market ran its course. On spot price, BTC remains near $65,000, range-bound but in the upper half of its summer channel, as Ichimoku Cloud analysis puts it inside a consolidation zone, with a sustained close above the cloud required before a trend-change signal is confirmed. CPI data this week will be the next meaningful macro input. Read more → Markets   Story 2 of 3 BTC above $65,000 even as the Senate punts the Clarity Act to the fall. Bitcoin held near $65,200 on Monday, up 3.7% on the week — a recovery from an early-August low near $62,000 — even as the U.S. Senate left the Clarity Act unpassed and broke for its August recess. The bill mustered 51 of the 60 votes needed for cloture, pushing any action to September 14 at the earliest. That the market held its gains confirms what strategists argued last week: the delay was largely priced, so the failure to pass landed as confirmation of an existing expectation rather than a fresh negative. The bid is coming from flows and macro, not Washington. Spot bitcoin ETFs strung together consecutive days of inflows — $853 million poured in over the weekend alone, with BlackRock’s IBIT taking the bulk. The dollar softened following the weak July jobs report, loosening the backdrop that had pinned bitcoin through summer. Hedge funds trading bitcoin futures on the CME turned net long, a rare positioning shift that signals professional traders are increasingly betting on prices rising rather than structurally shorting the basis trade. Michael Saylor posted Strategy’s bitcoin-buy chart on X over the weekend captioned “Doing business,” widely read as signaling another purchase is coming, days after the firm disclosed selling about 1,638 BTC to fund share buybacks. ETH also held gains near $1,925. XRP underperformed, down about 5% on the week to $1.03, despite four consecutive weeks of XRP ETF inflows — a divergence analysts flagged as puzzling. Iran-Oman deal talk eased Hormuz concerns further, lifting oil-sensitive risk assets. CPI data due this week is the next macro test. Read more → Finance   Story 3 of 3 Crypto exchange Coinsbuy loses $8 million in coordinated two-blockchain attack. Crypto exchange Coinsbuy lost more than $8 million in a coordinated attack across TRON and Ethereum on August 9, according to onchain data reviewed by blockchain security researchers. The attacker began with a 5 USDT test transaction before draining eight TRON wallets of 6.04 million USDT in roughly an hour. Simultaneously, three Ethereum wallets were emptied of 1.89 million USDT and 77 ETH, swapped via 1inch through a wallet created the same day. Onchain records tie both chains together through cross-chain swapper Bridgers, whose Ethereum payout contract sent funds directly into the swap wallet, connecting what appeared to be separate operations into a single incident. The attacker routed roughly 79% of the stolen funds through instant exchange FixedFloat using approximately 50 single-use addresses. ChangeNOW froze a six-figure sum. About 282 ETH, worth roughly $542,000, remains unmoved across five addresses. Within 24 hours, Coinsbuy refilled the drained wallets to within 0.05% of their pre-attack balances — a behavior that researchers say suggests the team does not believe private keys were compromised, pointing instead to a withdrawal-path vulnerability. The attack vector has not been identified and Coinsbuy has not issued a public statement. The incident adds to an increasingly costly year: the industry had already seen roughly $972 million stolen through late July. The week’s other notable finance story: Mastercard is acquiring stablecoin firm BVNK for $1.8 billion, and Robinhood has launched no-fee crypto trading in the UK as part of an AI-powered all-in-one app. Read more → CoinDesk Disclosure: The information contained in this newsletter, and any information linked through the items contained herein, is not intended to provide sufficient information to form the basis for an investment decision. You should seek additional information regarding the merits and risks of investing in any cryptocurrency or digital assets. L1.co Disclosure: This material is for informational purposes only, and the content contained herein should not be considered investment advice or a solicitation, offer, or recommendation to sell or buy any asset, strategy, or product. Investing in digital assets involves a high degree of risk, including the loss of principal. Crypto Daybook Americas: A newsletter from CoinDesk Were you forwarded this newsletter? Sign up here.  Copyright © 2026 CoinDesk, All rights reserved.  CoinDesk, Inc., 61 9th Avenue, 5th Floor, New York, NY 10011, USA Unsubscribe Manage preferences