Bitcoin held above $64,000, BitMEX said it will shut down, OpenAI models breached Hugging Face during a test, Telegram announced a non-custodial Gram wallet, and other highlights of the week.
Bitcoin in a holding pattern
At the start of the week, the first cryptocurrency tried to approach $67,000, but prices rolled back to around $64,600.
Next week the FOMC will meet. At the time of writing, nearly 66% of traders expect the regulator to leave the target range unchanged. However, a third of the market expects a hike to 3.75–4%, which would pressure risk assets, including cryptocurrencies.
Grayscale analysts directly linked the formation of the current cycle’s bitcoin bottom to the Fed refraining from raising rates, provided the U.S. economy remains resilient.
According to CryptoQuant, Ethereum is also flashing on-chain signals typical of market lows. However, experts warned there is no definitive confirmation of a bottom.
The second-largest cryptocurrency showed a more convincing weekly move than digital gold — up 1.15% versus 0.25%, respectively. TRON rose more than 1.6%. The Hyperliquid token corrected by nearly 3.8%, but over the past three months HYPE has gained 38% in total.
Spot bitcoin ETFs attracted $33.8 million over the week, but the positive flow slowed sharply — the previous two weeks saw $197 million and $76 million in inflows.
The last two trading sessions weighed heavily on the tally: on Thursday and Friday, investors pulled $225 million and $228 million from the products, respectively.
Flows into Ethereum funds also turned negative by the end of the week, but they still attracted $103.9 million for the period.
The cryptocurrency fear and greed index fell to 26, remaining in the “fear” zone.
Total market capitalization fell from $2.27 trillion to $2.21 trillion. Bitcoin’s dominance rose to 58.7%, while Ethereum’s share increased from 9.9% to 10.3%.
BitMEX announces shutdown
Crypto exchange BitMEX will fully cease operations on September 23. New account registrations have already been suspended, and users were urged to close positions and withdraw funds as soon as possible.
The decision was made by the board of HDR Global Trading Limited, the holding company owner, following a “strategic analysis of the business and the crypto industry as a whole.”
The company said its assets exceed its liabilities, citing its Proof of Reserves and Liabilities page.
The platform will continue trading until the shutdown date. Starting August 26, the exchange will prohibit opening new positions — only closing will be allowed.
After operations stop, users will retain access to their accounts to view balances, history, and withdraw funds.
BitMEX has already unlocked all staked BMEX tokens — they are available in holders’ accounts.
BitMEX has been on the market for more than 11 years, since 2014. The exchange pioneered the perpetual swap and was among the first to offer crypto derivatives with leverage up to 100x.
“An end of an era. Respect to the legends who built this,” wrote Bybit co-founder and CEO Ben Zhou.
Immediately after the announcement, the exchange was accused of manipulation and misappropriating 622.66 BTC. A class action was filed in the Southern District of New York by BKX Services and David Namdar.
According to the plaintiffs, BitMEX deliberately created a system to profit from closing clients’ positions. The lawsuit claims the exchange’s internal trading desk had access to users’ confidential data. Platform traders could execute orders even during server “freezes,” when regular clients could not manage their positions.
The filing adds that the exchange forcibly closed leveraged trades up to 100x even when collateral was twice the losses. The remaining funds were allegedly sent to the platform’s insurance fund, generating income for the company.
The plaintiffs seek the return of the withheld bitcoins and compensation.
What to discuss with friends?
- Polymarket traders lost more than $37 million on the 2026 World Cup outcome.
- Claude disproved a 1939 mathematical hypothesis.
- A free Palantir alternative: a developer posted a global intelligence platform on GitHub.
- Google will develop a chip with built-in Gemini architecture.
OpenAI models breached Hugging Face during a test
Hugging Face, which runs one of the largest platforms for hosting and developing AI models, disclosed details of an attack on part of its production infrastructure. The hacking operation was conducted entirely by an autonomous agent system.
According to Hugging Face, the AI intruder accessed a limited set of internal data and several service credentials.
The firm found no signs of changes to public models, datasets, or Spaces. Checks of container images and published software packages also did not reveal supply chain interference.
On July 21, OpenAI confirmed that its products carried out the attack on Hugging Face’s infrastructure: GPT-5.6 Sol and a more powerful unreleased model. They were being tested on the ExploitGym benchmark — a set of real vulnerabilities that an agent must turn into working exploits.
The test ran in an isolated environment with no network access. The only external channel was an internal proxy server for downloading software packages. The models found a zero-day vulnerability in it and exploited it. They then escalated privileges, moved across internal OpenAI nodes, and reached a machine with internet access.
The systems then assumed ExploitGym solutions were stored at Hugging Face. They paired the stolen credentials with new vulnerabilities and achieved remote code execution on the platform’s servers, extracting test answers directly from the production database.
Notably, Hugging Face also used AI to analyze incident logs. However, commercial U.S. models blocked the security team’s requests, so they had to use the open GLM 5.2 from Z.ai.
Telegram to launch non-custodial Gram wallet
Telegram founder Pavel Durov announced the launch of a non-custodial wallet for Gram (formerly Toncoin). The product will appear in all versions of the messenger and will be available to “more than a billion users.”
Telegram currently features Wallet — a product by third-party company The Open Platform (TOP). The service has more than 150 million registered users. By default, it operates in custodial mode.
TOP founder and CEO Andrey Rogozov told ForkLog the two products do not compete but complement each other. According to him, Wallet in Telegram will remain a separate multichain product with a broader feature set. In addition to storage and transfers, it supports trading, perpetual contracts, tokenized assets, and an Earn tool.
Durov did not disclose the exact launch date, the list of supported assets, or the key management scheme.
Also on ForkLog:
- AI spending pushed Alphabet’s free cash flow negative for the first time.
- Google introduced three new Gemini Flash models.
- Media: Trump agreed to add ethical standards to the CLARITY Act.
- Anthropic released Claude Opus 5.
Buterin unveils anonymous board with AI moderation on Aztec
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin unveiled a demo version of an anonymous message board with moderation for the Aztec L2 network. The project’s source code is available on GitHub.
The prototype is based on the idea of an anonymous moderated platform that Buterin described in 2022. He called the development a “toy version” built in a vibe-coding mode.
“It’s early days, but even now you can do very interesting and nontrivial things,” Buterin wrote.
A user deposits ETH via a smart contract on the Ethereum mainnet, after which they can post messages in Aztec. The funds can later be withdrawn back to L1.
The address and deposit amount remain public. The withdrawal also reveals the recipient wallet in Ethereum. At the same time, messages do not contain the sender’s address in public data and are not linked to the original deposit.
What else to read?
Explained what lies behind the mass issuance of corporate stablecoins and how this trend could lead to total censorship and a major reshaping of the financial world.
Reviewed the most interesting projects showing how distributed databases and AI help solve practical tasks far beyond the financial sector.
Examined what’s driving the hype around Robinhood Chain, who benefits, and what the network really has “under the hood.”
Compiled the week’s most notable security events in our traditional digest.
