Key takeaways

Pi Network (PI) fell another 6% on Monday after dropping 7% the previous day, extending its prolonged downtrend.
Retail participation continues to weaken, with Open Interest falling below $9 million, signaling declining leveraged trading activity.
Analysts warn that ongoing token unlocks could continue to pressure prices if supply outpaces demand.

Pi Network (PI) remained under heavy selling pressure on Monday, falling around 6% after suffering a 7% decline in the previous trading session.

The continued weakness reflects fading retail participation, declining leveraged positions, and concerns that ongoing token unlocks could keep supply ahead of demand. 

Technical indicators also suggest the correction may not be over, with the token approaching a key support level near $0.075.

Retail demand continues to fade

Recent derivatives data points to weakening interest among traders. According to CoinAnk, Pi Network’s Open Interest (OI) declined to $8.48 million on Monday from $8.91 million a day earlier.

The drop in Open Interest indicates that traders are closing leveraged positions rather than opening new ones, reflecting reduced confidence and lower speculative activity around the token.

Pi Network price analysis: Bears target the $0.075 support

Technically, Pi Network has remained in a persistent downtrend since late April, forming a falling channel pattern on the daily chart.

The latest decline has pushed the token closer to the channel’s lower support trendline around $0.075.

If sellers successfully break below this level, the next significant support is located near $0.0679, which corresponds to the 1.618 Fibonacci extension measured from the previous decline between $0.1998 and $0.1183.

Technical momentum continues to favor the bears. The Relative Strength Index (RSI) has fallen to approximately 10, placing the asset deep in oversold territory and highlighting the intensity of the recent selling pressure.

Meanwhile, the Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD) remains below the zero line, with both the MACD and signal lines trending lower while negative histogram bars continue expanding.

Together, these indicators suggest bearish momentum remains firmly in control despite increasingly oversold conditions.

The immediate focus remains on the $0.075 support level. A decisive breakdown below this area could accelerate losses toward $0.0679, reinforcing the prevailing downtrend.

On the upside, if buyers manage to defend support and trigger a rebound, PI could first target the 1.272 Fibonacci extension at $0.0961, followed by the important $0.1000 psychological resistance.

Until stronger buying activity returns, however, Pi Network’s technical outlook continues to favor additional downside as weak retail demand and expanding token supply weigh on market sentiment.

On July 9, 2026, at approximately 03:30 UTC, a solo miner using a palm-sized Bitaxe device mined block 957382 through Public Pool, claiming the full 3.1382 BTC block reward. That includes the 3.125 BTC subsidy plus roughly 0.0132 BTC in transaction fees, worth roughly $200,000 at the time.

The device ran at an average of 995.2 GH/s, close to its rated 1 TH/s, for about eight hours before submitting the winning share. That share carried a difficulty of 294.14 trillion, more than double the network target, which is what confirmed the block solve. Because the miner was the only worker on the address, the entire reward went to one person, with no pool fee taken.

The Odds Behind the Win

Bitcoin’s network hashrate sat at roughly 874 exahash per second (EH/s) at the time, with difficulty near 133.9 trillion. A miner running 1 terahash per second (TH/s) controls about one-eighty-seventh-millionth of the network’s total hashrate.

Analysts estimate a device with that hashrate would need roughly 16,000 to 18,300 years on average to find a block. This miner found one in a single overnight eight-hour session.

That is the nature of bitcoin mining. Every hash has an equal shot at solving the current block, regardless of who owns it or how much hashrate they control. Someone wins every block. Most solo miners run for years without a payout. A small number hit the jackpot on their first attempt.

What a Bitaxe Actually Is

The Bitaxe is an open-source, single-chip bitcoin miner built around Bitmain’s BM1370 chip, the same silicon family used in some industrial Antminer S21 units. A Gamma-series Bitaxe ships with roughly 1.0 to 1.3 TH/s of stock hashrate, draws 15 to 21 watts, and typically sells for $60 to $150.

It connects over Wi-Fi, runs community-built AxeOS firmware, and displays live stats on a small screen. Hobbyists built the platform a few years ago as an educational tool rather than a profit machine. Its share of global hashrate is too small to guarantee steady payouts through a shared pool, which is exactly why solo mining exists.

How the Public Pool Made the Win Possible

In pooled mining, rewards are split among everyone contributing hashrate. Solo mining works differently. If a miner’s device finds the winning share, that miner keeps the entire block reward.

Public Pool supports both modes and charges 0% fees on solo configurations, which has made it a common choice for Bitaxe owners. Miners connect through a Stratum address, use their own bitcoin address as the username, and watch the dashboard track hashrate and best difficulty share in real time.

This marks the second Public Pool solo win attributed to a single Bitaxe that the community has tracked in quite some time. Solo CKPool remains another major solo pool option, charging a small fee in exchange for a longer operating history. There’s also Braiins Solo, Parasite Pool, and Futurebit Solo among the list of solo pools available, each with different features and rules.

Roughly 42 days ago, Bitcoin.com News reported on a $300 machine, a Canaan Avalon Nano 3S with 6.68 TH/s of hashpower, discovering block height 951771. At the time, our newsdesk calculated that a Canaan Avalon Nano 3S, operating at just under 7 TH/s, has roughly a 6.72-in-a-billion chance of discovering any given Bitcoin block, or about one in 148,904,370.

Community Response

The win spread quickly on X under tags including #Bitaxe and #SoloMining. One widely shared post read, “Never let anyone convince you that you can’t mine a block!!!”

Several sites that track solo block wins logged the event alongside prior Bitaxe victories.

What This Means for Home Miners

The expected value of solo mining at this scale remains tiny, often pennies a day in BTC terms. Consistent income still comes from pooled mining. What events like this show is that the door stays open. A device costing less than a mid-range smartphone, running on standard household power, can still claim the same reward as a warehouse full of industrial rigs. In that respect, solo mining closely resembles a lottery: the odds of winning are extraordinarily long, but someone eventually beats them.

For the operator behind block 957,382, a $150 piece of hardware and a $1 to $2 monthly electricity bill turned into a life-changing payout in under a day.

The United Kingdom could add as much as 33 billion British pounds ($44 billion) to its annual economic output by 2035 by becoming a leader in tokenized financial markets, according to a government-backed industry task force. 

The estimate appears in the first report from Wholesale Digital Markets Champion Chris Woolard, who was appointed by HM Treasury to help implement the government’s digital markets strategy. 

Developed with an industry task force, the report sets out a 12-month plan to test blockchain in a financial transaction where securities are used to borrow cash. It also calls for the UK to issue its first tokenized government bond by the first quarter of 2027.

The industry task force brings together more than 50 companies from traditional finance and crypto, including BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, HSBC, UBS, Coinbase, Circle, Ripple, Kraken, DTCC and Euroclear.

The roadmap attempts to move UK tokenization beyond isolated pilots and into live markets where securities can be traded, settled and used as collateral. The report said the task was now to move “from pilots to scale” and “from ambition to action.”

Ripple, which is listed among the task force’s industry members, backed the initiative on Monday. “Onchain funds, bonds and repo aren’t experiments,” the company said, adding that such instruments are already proving “cheaper, better and faster than their legacy equivalents.”

UK builds on digital gilt and settlement initiatives

The digital government bond, or gilt, itself is not a new proposal. The UK first announced the Digital Gilt Instrument pilot in November 2024.

This was followed by a July 2025 update outlining plans for onchain settlement, over-the-counter trading and secondary-market development. On Feb. 12, the government appointed HSBC’s Orion platform to support the pilot.

The new report adds a timetable and expands the intended role for the financial instrument. Beyond calling for issuance, the report seeks subsequent digital-gilt offerings, live secondary-market trading and eligibility for use as central bank collateral. 

The report said tokenized securities have limited value unless they can be traded or used to raise cash, and urged the Bank of England to accept digital gilts as collateral. 

Related: UK politicians mull permanent crypto donation ban in wake of Nigel Farage scandal

The UK also has a blockchain-based wholesale payment infrastructure that could support such markets. In December 2023, London-based Fnality launched a sterling-denominated payment system tied to central bank reserves, designed to support real-time repo, tokenized securities settlement and cross-currency payments.

Magazine: Has Bitcoin bottomed for this cycle? Analysts say ‘not yet’

Hyperliquid price holds above key support as traders watch the $61.92 level.
Bitcoin’s move around $63,000 could shape HYPE’s next direction.
Hyperliquid’s total open interest has climbed to nearly $11 billion.

Hyperliquid (HYPE) has entered a crucial phase after retreating from its recent record high, with traders closely watching whether the token can stabilise above key support levels.

The latest pullback comes as broader cryptocurrency markets react to rising geopolitical tensions, leaving Bitcoin’s next move at the centre of attention.

However, while HYPE has lost momentum over the past week, the network continues to post strong trading activity, creating an interesting contrast between short-term price action and underlying platform growth.

Hyperliquid price tests support after weekly decline

HYPE is trading around $65, down 7.0% over the past seven days after reaching an all-time high of $76.87 on June 16.

The correction has pushed the token toward an important support area between $64 and $65, where buyers have started defending prices.

The next few trading sessions could prove decisive.

If the Hyperliquid price manages to reclaim $67 with stronger buying volume, the token could make another attempt at the $70 level.

However, a failure to hold the current support zone would shift attention to $61.92, which has emerged as the next major technical floor.

A break below $61.92 could expose the token to additional downside, with $60 becoming the next area traders are likely to monitor.

Bitcoin remains one of the biggest external factors influencing that outlook.

The broader market has been under pressure following renewed geopolitical uncertainty, and Bitcoin’s ability to remain above $63,000 is viewed as an important signal for risk assets across the cryptocurrency market.

If Bitcoin maintains above $63,000, it could provide enough stability for HYPE to consolidate. A move below it, on the other hand, could trigger another wave of selling across altcoins.

Technical indicators point to mixed short-term momentum

The latest technical indicators suggest that HYPE has not yet established a clear directional trend despite the recent correction.

The Relative Strength Index (RSI) currently stands at 47.99, placing it in neutral territory.

This indicates that the token is neither overbought nor oversold, leaving room for either buyers or sellers to take control depending on broader market conditions.

Exponential moving averages paint a more constructive picture over a longer timeframe.

HYPE continues to trade above its 50-day, 100-day and 200-day exponential moving averages (EMAs), signalling that the broader uptrend remains intact despite the recent decline.

At the same time, the token has dropped below its 10-day and 20-day EMAs, showing that short-term resistance remains in place before momentum can fully recover.

This combination of indicators suggests that while the long-term forecast remains positive, the near-term direction will depend on whether buyers can regain control around current price levels.

Hyperliquid platform activity continues to expand

Although HYPE has pulled back from its recent highs, activity on the Hyperliquid ecosystem continues to grow.

The protocol’s total value locked (TVL) stands at approximately $6.013 billion, reflecting continued capital committed to the platform.

At the same time, 24-hour trading volume remains close to $296 million, highlighting sustained market participation despite recent volatility.

Another notable development is the rapid growth in derivatives activity. Total open interest has climbed to roughly $11 billion, while real-world asset (RWA) perpetual contracts account for approximately $3.6  billion of that figure.

Real-world asset (RWA) open interest on Hyperliquid reached a new ATH of $3.6B

Total OI reached a new high for 2026 of $11B pic.twitter.com/FJyeuUq0ya

— Hyperliquid (@HyperliquidX) July 13, 2026

The increase shows that traders are expanding beyond crypto-native products into tokenised exposure linked to traditional financial assets.

The growth in RWA trading has become one of the defining trends for Hyperliquid during 2026, helping the platform attract additional trading activity even as digital asset prices experience short-term swings.

Key HYPE price levels to watch

The coming days are likely to be shaped by both technical price levels and broader market sentiment.

The first area to watch remains $64-$65, where buyers have so far attempted to defend support. If that zone holds and HYPE reclaims $67 on stronger volume, attention could quickly shift back toward $70.

On the downside, $61.92 has become the most important technical support. A sustained move below that level would increase the probability of a deeper correction toward $60, particularly if Bitcoin also loses support at $63,000.

For now, the Hyperliquid price finds itself at a pivotal point.

Short-term momentum has weakened following a 7% weekly decline, yet the broader technical structure remains constructive, while platform activity continues to reach new milestones.

Whether the token resumes its broader uptrend or extends its correction is likely to depend on Bitcoin’s next move and how traders respond around these key technical levels.

Coinbase Ventures, the corporate venture capital (VC) arm of cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, led the ranks of crypto-focused VC’s with 30 deals in the first half of 2026.

Runner-up Animoca Brands completed 19 investments, while Silicon Valley VC a16z logged 18 deals and stablecoin giant Tether completed 15, according to data aggregator CryptoRank. 

In the past 12 months Coinbase Ventures completed a peer-best 75 deals, followed by Animoca Brands with 40, YZi Labs (previously Binance Labs) with 39, GSR with 31 and a16z with 30.

Those VC deals defy a bear market that saw the total amount raised by cryptocurrency companies fall to $1.4 billion in June, down 63% from $3.8 billion in April. 

Deal counts also fell in June, to 61 fundraising rounds, down from 89 rounds in May. Still, last month showed a slight recovery compared to April, when crypto VC funding hit a two-year low of $698 million across 71 total fundraising rounds.

So far in July, crypto firms raised $456 million across 12 funding rounds.

Top active investors and top categories by funding deals. Source: CryptoRank

Looking at the deals of the past six months, Coinbase Ventures participated in seven investment rounds tied to payment protocols, four rounds for DeFi projects and three rounds for infrastructure and real-world asset tokenization projects, respectively. 

However, the number of unique investors shrunk to 242 in June, from 452 unique investors in October 2025.

Related: Bitcoin whale moves $188M for first time in 7 years

DeFi, payments, AI remain leading VC categories

Decentralized finance (DeFi), payments and AI attracted the lion’s share of crypto VC funding during the past year.

DeFi protocols saw 216 fundraising rounds in the period, while payments startups logged 131 rounds and AI-crypto companies raised 128 rounds, according to CryptoRank.

Crypto VC capital, invested by category, one-year chart. Source: CryptoRank

Infrastructure providers raised 110 funding rounds, while all other sectors saw fewer than 100 investment rounds over the past year.

In terms of geographical distribution, US-based VCs accounted for $5.8 billion and Australia-based VCs contributed $3.6 billion of funds over the past six months. More than $11.6 billion was invested from undisclosed locations.

Magazine: Strategy sells $216M Bitcoin, Bollinger bullish on BTC: Hodler’s Digest, June 29-July 6, 2026

Thailand’s central bank is stepping up stablecoin surveillance as part of a wider effort to crack down on money laundering, illicit finance and “gray money” in the country.

The Bank of Thailand is working with the Kingdom’s Securities and Exchange Commission to audit high-volume stablecoin transactions, with a focus on USDt (USDT), cash transactions and currency exchanges, to identify and stop illicit financial flows.

“The measures we are implementing are not short-term fixes; they require the continuous deployment of multiple parallel strategies,” Bank of Thailand Governor Vitai Ratanakorn said, according to local media outlet The Nation on Saturday.

Thailand is targeting the “gray economy,” which largely consists of cash that may have come from suspicious origins, such as scam call centers that have proliferated in the region. While there are no reliable figures for the gray economy, 2025 scam losses may have amounted to $3.4 billion, amid 173 million scam calls and texts. 

Stablecoins have become a popular method of transferring large amounts due to near-instant cross-border settlement. 

Cash, forex and gold trading targeted

The move will expand commercial bank compliance duties across cash networks, currency exchanges, gold bullion trading and “suspicious stablecoin transactions” in an effort to prevent regulated entities from facilitating corruption or shadow economies, it reported.

High-value cash transactions will also require a source-of-funds declaration, and exchanges of large volumes of big banknotes for smaller denominations without a clear business reason will also be monitored. Cash deposits of more than 5 million baht ($150,000) also require full disclosure. 

Related: Thailand crypto platforms freeze 10K accounts in AML crackdown: Report

Thailand has often been touted as a crypto haven, but digital asset and stablecoin payments are still outlawed by the central bank and there has been regular rule tightening on crypto businesses. 

Crypto trading remains legal, with the country’s largest exchange, Bitkub, seeing about $26 million in daily volume. However, almost 40% of that is forex, with the USDT/THB pair being the most popular, according to CoinGecko. 

Scammer crackdown gone wrong

Thailand’s banks imposed sweeping account restrictions and froze three million bank accounts in 2025 as part of its crackdown on mule accounts, gray capital and suspicious activity.

However, thousands of individuals and legitimate businesses were caught in the dragnet in what media reports described at the time as a “scammer crackdown gone wrong.” 

Features: Robinhood L2 sparks ETH optimism, Saylor ‘muddies waters.’ Hodler’s Digest

This article first appeared in Miner Weekly, a weekly newsletter by BlocksBridge Consulting, curating the latest news in energy, bitcoin, and AI compute from The Energy Mag. Subscribe to receive it in your inbox once a week.

Bitcoin miners no longer needed to talk only about hashprice, fleet efficiency or the next difficulty adjustment. They could talk about campuses, lease terms, hyperscalers, neoclouds, inference workloads and “critical IT load.” The same substations that once fed racks of ASICs were reintroduced to investors as scarce energy gateways into the artificial intelligence boom. In a power-constrained market, that story worked.

It worked so well that a new question is starting to matter: who got liquidity while the story was working?

That question is moving to the foreground as the TEM AI Infrastructure Growth Index, a basket tracking bitcoin miners, neoclouds, power suppliers and other companies tied to the physical build-out of AI infrastructure, has fallen 16% over the past month. The pullback does not erase the long-term argument for energy-backed compute. Nor does it suggest that recent insider sales or shareholder trims were improper. Many of the transactions were disclosed as prearranged trades under Rule 10b5-1 plans, which are designed to let insiders sell stock according to instructions set in advance.

But market optics change quickly. A planned sale during a rally can look routine. A planned sale followed by a sectorwide drawdown starts to look like a liquidity window.

The recent tape has given investors several examples to digest. Core Scientific (NASDAQ: CORZ)’s legal chief sold shares as the company’s AI data center narrative helped lift the stock. Riot Platforms (NASDAQ: RIOT)’ chief executive disclosed a prearranged sale after the miner’s stock rebounded. Tether trimmed Bitdeer (NASDAQ: BTDR) exposure after buying during an earlier selloff and selling into a recovery. TeraWulf (NASDAQ: WULF) disclosed a new batch of share sales by its chief shortly before one of the most consequential AI lease announcements in the sector.

And at IREN, the controversy is less about insiders selling than about insiders being paid. The company’s board approved more than 18 million restricted stock units for its co-founder co-CEOs, adding a governance and dilution debate to a stock that had become one of the most visible winners of the miner-to-AI pivot.

Together, these episodes mark a shift in the AI infrastructure trade. Investors are no longer only asking which companies have power. They are asking who captures the economics, who absorbs the dilution, who keeps upside exposure and who monetized the rerating before the trade cooled.

TeraWulf Enters the Spotlight

TeraWulf offers the most vivid case study because the company remains one of the sector’s clearest AI-infrastructure rerating stories.

On June 29, Beowulf E&D Holdings, an entity managed by TeraWulf Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Paul Prager, disclosed a sale of 275,000 TeraWulf shares at a weighted average price of $26.596 per share, generating about $7.3 million in gross proceeds. The sale came one week before TeraWulf announced its 20-year AI infrastructure lease with Anthropic.

That June transaction was part of a broader run of disclosed sales by Prager and Beowulf E&D Holdings since late March. In total, Prager and the entity he manages sold about 1.59 million TeraWulf shares for roughly $32.7 million in gross proceeds, implying a weighted average sale price of about $20.55 per share.

Then on July 6, TeraWulf announced a 20-year lease with Anthropic at its Justified Data campus in Hawesville, Kentucky. The lease is expected to generate about $19 billion of contracted revenue over its initial term and support about 401 MW of critical IT load. TeraWulf also agreed to sell its 50.1% interest in the Abernathy joint venture to a Fluidstack-led investor group, monetizing an investment valued at about $450 million and giving the company capital to redeploy into wholly owned AI infrastructure projects.

That is the sort of transaction investors have been waiting for from power-rich miners: a long-term AI customer, a large contracted revenue figure and an argument that legacy mining infrastructure can be upgraded into a higher-multiple asset base.

It is also the kind of moment that makes insider liquidity worth watching.

Cipher, Riot and Core Scientific Show the Same Pattern

Cipher Digital (NASDAQ: CIFR) adds the most recent example to the liquidity-window theme.

On July 8, Cipher CEO Tyler Page filed to sell 112,500 CIFR shares with a market value of about $2.38 million, implying an average price of $21.19. The sale was tied to a Rule 10b5-1 trading plan adopted on Dec. 19, 2025. Cipher previously disclosed that Page’s plan covered potential sales of up to 1.5 million shares through Dec. 24, 2026. The 112,500-share notice was 7.5% of the total 1.5 million-share ceiling under the plan.

Riot Platforms had its own version of the story. In May, CEO Jason Les sold 175,000 shares valued at about $4.2 million under a Rule 10b5-1 plan adopted in August 2025. On June 22, he sold another 250,000 shares with a market value of $7.03 million.

Core Scientific has been another focal point for the AI-mining crossover trade. The company emerged from bankruptcy in 2024 and has since repositioned itself around high-density colocation and AI infrastructure, while continuing to report a decline in self-mining revenue.

Core Scientific’s chief legal and administrative officer Todd DuChene filed on July 6 to sell 140,000 shares with a market value of $3.0 million. The planned sale followed 12 prior 10,000-share disposals since April 13, bringing disclosed sales under the plan to about 260,000 shares and $5.9 million in gross proceeds.

These are important caveats. Rule 10b5-1 refers to prearranged trading plans designed to separate insider transactions from later corporate developments, and sales by executives with large equity holdings can reflect diversification, taxes or personal liquidity rather than a negative view of the company. It is not a confession of bearishness. Executives with large stock-heavy compensation packages often sell even when they remain optimistic about a company.

But public markets do not only process legality. They process alignment. When executives sell after a stock has rerated on AI expectations, and the sector then pulls back, investors start asking whether the balance of risk and reward has shifted from insiders to the public float.

The liquidity-window theme is not limited to executives.

Tether’s recent Bitdeer transactions show how strategic holders also used the AI-mining rebound to reduce exposure. As TheEnergyMag reported, Tether trimmed its Bitdeer positions at an average price of around $20 in early June, after buying into Bitdeer for $8.85 apiece during a market selloff earlier this year. While Tether remained one of Bitdeer’s largest shareholders, the trade still fits the pattern: buy into weakness, trim into the AI rerating, and retain a large enough position to keep participating if the story continues.

IREN Adds the Governance Layer

IREN brings a different but related issue into focus.

The company has become one of the most closely watched AI infrastructure names after moving beyond bitcoin mining and pursuing large-scale AI cloud and data center opportunities. But its latest compensation disclosure triggered a backlash among some retail investors and market commentators.

On June 30, IREN’s board approved grants of 9,099,328 restricted stock units each to co-CEOs William Roberts and Daniel Roberts. The awards are subject to a combined six-year vesting and holding period. The company said neither co-CEO will receive another equity incentive grant until fiscal 2031, and that the awards were designed to retain and incentivize the executives through IREN’s next phase of growth.

That explanation did not quiet the debate. Critics focused on the size of the package, its dilution and the fact that the company is still in the middle of proving that its AI infrastructure strategy can generate durable returns. IREN shares fell sharply as governance concerns met a broader selloff in AI-related stocks.

The IREN episode is not an insider-sale story. It is arguably more important: a debate over how much of the AI infrastructure upside founders and executives should receive before the business model has fully matured.

This is where the AI infrastructure trade begins to resemble other capital-intensive booms. The first phase of the rally was about scarcity. The next phase is about governance, capital discipline and execution. In that phase, disclosed insider sales, strategic-holder trims and large founder equity grants become part of the same story. They tell investors where the private incentives sit inside a public-market boom.

This article first appeared in Miner Weekly, a weekly newsletter by BlocksBridge Consulting, curating the latest news in energy, bitcoin, and AI compute from The Energy Mag. Subscribe to receive it in your inbox once a week.

Pakistan Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (PVARA) chairman Bilal bin Saqib has called for continued dialogue on the treatment of digital assets under Islamic law after meeting prominent scholar Mufti Taqi Usmani, who backed a ruling against purchases made with crypto.

In a Saturday post, Saqib said the discussion covered blockchain technology, digital assets, stablecoins and tokenized real-world assets (RWAs), as well as the need to protect Pakistanis from fraud, exploitation and financial harm.

Saqib said the different categories of digital assets merit “careful technical assessment alongside rigorous Shariah examination, rather than being viewed through a single lens.”

The exchange highlights tension between Pakistan’s push to build a regulated crypto market and religious objections that could shape public acceptance. Religious views could carry significant weight in Pakistan, where about 231.7 million people, or 96.35% of the population, identified as Muslim in the 2023 census. 

Pakistan’s crypto framework meets religious scrutiny

According to Pakistani newspaper Dawn, Usmani and five other scholars signed an Islamic legal ruling issued by Jamia Darul Uloom Karachi, a prominent Islamic seminary, on Friday. 

The ruling reportedly said purchases made with crypto, including stablecoins such as USDT, were not permitted because digital tokens did not qualify as recognized property or wealth under their interpretation of Islamic law.

Saqib did not directly challenge the claim. Instead, he called for scholars, regulators and industry participants to continue discussing distinctions among digital-asset categories. 

“I shared that blockchain, digital assets, stablecoins, and tokenized real-world assets represent a broad spectrum of technologies and use cases,” he said. 

Related: PUSD stablecoin deploys on ADI Chain, targeting $3T Islamic finance market

The discussion comes as Pakistan relaxes restrictions toward a licensed virtual-asset sector. On April 15, the State Bank of Pakistan allowed banks to open accounts for virtual asset service providers (VASPs) licensed by the PVARA, ending an eight-year restriction on regulated institutions dealing with crypto. 

The move followed the passage of the country’s Virtual Assets Act 2026 in March, which established PVARA as the statutory body responsible for licensing and oversight of virtual asset activities. 

Magazine: Bitcoin nearing late stages of bear market: Jamie Coutts, Real Vision

Key takeaways

Bitcoin (BTC) dropped below $64,000 despite improving derivatives data.
Analysts at QCP note that July has historically been one of Bitcoin’s strongest months, averaging gains of around 7.5%.
Glassnode says Bitcoin is showing signs of structural stabilization, with spot selling pressure easing significantly.

Bitcoin (BTC) started July on firmer footing, recovering above the $63,000 level as improving derivatives positioning and easing selling pressure helped stabilize the cryptocurrency market.

The rebound follows several weeks of volatility and comes as analysts point to historically favorable seasonal trends, strengthening technical conditions, and improving institutional flows as factors supporting Bitcoin’s recovery.

At the time of writing, Bitcoin was trading near $63,190, up approximately 0.6% over the past 24 hours.

July seasonality favors Bitcoin bulls

Analysts at crypto trading firm QCP noted that Bitcoin’s early-July recovery aligns with historical market patterns.

According to the firm, July has traditionally been one of Bitcoin’s strongest-performing months, delivering average returns of roughly 7.5%.

QCP added that lighter trading volumes during the U.S. Independence Day holiday helped preserve the bullish momentum that emerged after softer-than-expected U.S. labor market data eased pressure on risk assets.

The firm also observed that stress across Bitcoin’s derivatives market has begun to ease.

Recent derivatives data suggests traders are becoming less defensive. QCP highlighted several encouraging developments:

Implied volatility continues to trend lower.
Near-term put option skew has moderated after rising sharply during the recent market decline.
Traders have shown notable interest in $70,000 call options expiring at the end of July, indicating expectations for additional upside.

However, optimism remains measured.

The firm also pointed to ongoing demand for $58,000 put options expiring later this year, reflecting concerns among some investors that Bitcoin’s current rebound could resemble the temporary recovery seen during the 2022 bear market before prices resumed their decline.

Bitcoin price forecast: BTC could drop below $63,000

The BTC/USD 4-hour chart remains bullish and efficient following last week’s rally. The momentum indicators suggest that the market is currently consolidating.

The RSI of 55 means that neither the buyers nor the sellers are in control. The MACD lines are also in the neutral zone, reinforcing the current bias.

If the bearish trend resumes, BTC could slip below the $63,000 level and test the 4-hour TLQ at $61,365. 

However, if the bulls regain control, Bitcoin could surge past the $64,000 barrier and retest the June 15 high of $67,125.