Weekly results: miners are massively moving into AI, bitcoin tests support, and neural networks are becoming hackers' weapons.
The outgoing week was eventful: the leading cryptocurrency pulled back to August lows, public miners continued a massive sell-off of coins to fund AI projects, and law enforcement in Moscow conducted raids at the legendary "Gorbushka" mall. I break down the key events in more detail.
Bitcoin: Pullback to the Uncertainty Zone
July's momentum fizzled out. On August 14, the BTC price dropped below $63,000, effectively erasing the gains of the previous week, which had closed at $65,200. Notably, at the start of the seven-day period, CryptoQuant analysts pointed to resistance around $67,000–$72,000, calculated based on the realized price of short-term holders. Even BlackRock began talking about a shift in sentiment and a complete divergence of the asset's dynamics from the stock market.
However, Glassnode experts characterized the market as "compressed": the price is squeezed between the median realized price ($63,000) and the cost basis of short-term investors ($68,700). A break below the lower boundary, in their estimation, opens a direct path to $58,500. By the end of the week, the asset settled near $63,000, losing 3.3% over seven days. Ether fell 2.1% to $1,880, and among the top cryptocurrencies, only Hyperliquid's HYPE token was in positive territory (+4.7%).
Institutional demand also weakened: spot bitcoin ETFs recorded their largest weekly outflow since early July at $398.7 million, while Ethereum funds lost $2.2 million after a strong inflow the week prior. The Fear and Greed Index stalled at 34, remaining in the "fear" zone, and the total market capitalization slipped from $2.22 trillion to $2.17 trillion.
Miners: The New Economics of Mining
Bitcoin sales by miners are no longer a crisis measure—this is a deliberate strategy of transitioning to AI infrastructure. Over the week, four companies announced such moves. Former Bitfarms, now Keel Infrastructure, decommissioned all its mining capacity in the U.S., preparing sites for data centers. Riot Platforms signed a 20-year, $9.1 billion contract with an AI lab over several days (according to my data, this is Anthropic), sold 4,300 BTC, and raised up to $573 million for building a campus in Texas.
The scale is impressive: MARA sold 23,093 BTC for $1.6 billion in the first half of the year, while Hyperscale Data sold 685 BTC for $43 million. The reasons are obvious—fee revenues have fallen to a decade low, and the hashrate of public companies has declined by 21.2% over three quarters. This is a fundamental shift: mining as a business increasingly resembles a high-tech data center rather than just the extraction of digital gold.
Cybersecurity: AI in the Hands of Malicious Actors
The AI theme took a sinister turn this week. On one hand, volunteers from Bitcoin Red Team lost access to OpenAI tools, forced to return to Chinese models. On the other, South Korean analysts identified the use of local AI systems by the hacker group Kimsuky for attacks on crypto companies, and Taiwanese authorities revealed details of a breach of government institutions using AI agents.
The founders of the bitcoin service Boltz handed the project over to "veterans" after a series of attacks, presumably carried out by neural networks. Meanwhile, the July campaign against Coldcard hardware wallets concluded: the damage amounted to at least 1,778.84 BTC ($112.7 million). I also note data leaks: Trezor lost information on 13,689 users, SafePal—about 40,000. The most alarming news came from Anthropic: multi-agent AI systems demonstrate issues with trust, lying, and even collusion. This is a signal the industry is still underestimating.
Regulation: Pressure on Russia and Stalling in the U.S.
On the evening of August 13, law enforcement conducted mass searches at Moscow's "Gorbushka" shopping center in a case involving crypto exchangers. In parallel, major banks began requiring legal entities to confirm the inclusion of counterparties in the non-existent register of digital currency exchange operators of the Central Bank. As experts rightly note, this is the logic of banks' self-insurance, initiated by Rosfinmonitoring. The situation will become clearer after September 1, when the law "On Digital Currency" comes into force, but uncertainty regarding criminal liability for illegal circulation will persist until 2027.
The picture in the West is no better. The Clarity Act, which should bring clarity to regulation, is stalling: Galaxy Digital estimates only a 10% chance of its passage, and the Senate vote has been postponed to September 15. Meanwhile, institutional players continue to enter the market: Israel's largest bank, Leumi, is launching cryptocurrency trading through a partnership with Galaxy Digital, and the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund disclosed a stake in BitMine worth $81.9 million.
My comment: The week showed that the market is in a consolidation phase ahead of an important decision. The outflow from ETFs and price weakness are not panic, but rather a redistribution of capital in anticipation of macroeconomic triggers. However, the main risk is not the price of bitcoin, but the escalation of the AI arms race in cyberspace: while regulators debate the status of cryptocurrencies, malicious actors are already using the most advanced technologies to attack infrastructure.