Bitcoin has entered one of its quietest trading stretches on record, according to Fidelity Digital Assets, which said the asset’s volatility is now lower than roughly 98.5% of all days in its 17-year history. The firm also said spot trading volume has dropped to its lowest level since 2019, pointing to a market that has gone unusually still. In a post on X, Fidelity compared the setup to a coiled spring, saying that the longer volatility stays compressed, the greater the chance of a meaningful move once that range breaks. The report notes that Bitcoin’s price has barely moved over the past 30 days. It was recently trading at $65,329, nearly 50% below the all-time high it set in October 2025. Fidelity did not call the next move’s direction, but said low-volatility periods like this do not usually last indefinitely. Other firms cited in the report offered similar observations. VanEck said Tuesday that Bitcoin’s 30-day realized volatility had fallen to 27.2% annualized from 30.4% a month earlier, and stood at less than half its long-run average of about 80%. The firm added that, based on the length of prior cycles, a bottom could form between September and November this year. The article also cited K33 Research, which said 2025 was Bitcoin’s least volatile year on record and predicted in December that the asset would outperform both gold and equities in 2026.

Norway’s sovereign wealth fund had indirect exposure to 11,549 BTC at the end of the first half of 2026, according to K33 Head of Research Vetle Lunde. The exposure came through equity stakes in companies including Strategy, Metaplanet, MARA, Coinbase, Block and Tesla, and was valued at about $725 million based on the price used in the note. K33 said the position was up 21.2% in the first half of the year and 60.5% over the past 12 months, marking the sixth consecutive reporting period of growth. Strategy accounted for nearly 86% of the total, equivalent to about 9,914 BTC. As of June 30, the fund owned roughly 1.17% of Strategy, a stake then worth $357.3 million. K33 added that the bitcoin exposure likely was not the result of an active BTC allocation, but rather a byproduct of the fund’s broad and diversified portfolio. The BTC-linked exposure represented about 0.03% of the fund’s total assets. The fund also gained indirect ETH exposure for the first time through Ethereum treasury company BitMine.

Crypto markets saw a dense mix of policy, institutional and infrastructure developments over the past 24 hours. Hyperliquid is exploring a compliant route into the U.S. perpetual futures market, according to The Information, a move that would matter because the platform does not currently serve U.S. users. At the same time, GSR markets head Spencer Hallarn said in an interview with Cryptonomist that many tokenization platforms still lack meaningful trading activity, arguing the bottleneck is platform design rather than demand for tokenized assets. Elsewhere, MARA disclosed in an SEC filing that it pledged 18,750 BTC to secure two bitcoin-backed loans totaling $750 million, with proceeds set to support general corporate purposes and its acquisition of Long Ridge Energy & Power. New York City Council has also opened an inquiry into advertising practices across prediction market platforms including Polymarket and Kalshi, adding another layer of scrutiny to the sector. Other major items included Fidelity’s plan to add staking and quarterly cash distributions to its spot Ether ETF, a Coreum bridge exploit that drained nearly 200,000 XRP, and data showing public bitcoin miners have sold about 28,000 BTC this year. The session also featured updates on Bitmine’s growing ETH treasury, Kalshi’s fundraising push, and a fresh warning from Australia’s ASIC over the digital asset platform Yepbit.

Bitcoin slipped below $64,000 after July U.S. consumer inflation data came in broadly as expected, offering little fresh fuel for crypto markets. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported headline CPI eased to 3.4% from 3.5% in June, while core inflation edged down to 2.5% from 2.6%. Analysts cited in the report said the figures bought the Federal Reserve time but did not force a repricing toward either a more hawkish or more dovish policy path. Market attention has now shifted to the Jackson Hole central banking conference and this week’s producer price index release. In derivatives, traders were still paying more for downside protection, with premiums on $60,000 puts for late-August expiry sitting above those for $70,000 calls, according to DWF Labs managing partner Andrei Grachev. Bitfinex said implied volatility had fallen to very low levels, while on-chain data showed long-term holder supply dropped by 210,000 BTC in the first weekly decline of 2026. At the same time, balances held by wallets with more than 1,000 BTC climbed to 3.06 million BTC on Aug. 8, a 2026 high, suggesting larger holders were absorbing supply as retail sellers exited.

Bitcoin's trading activity has sunk to multi-year lows, according to K33 Research. The 30-day average daily volume of BTC/USDT perpetuals on Binance and Bybit dropped to $10.8 billion, the lowest since 2023, with only 5% of trading days seeing lower volume. Spot Bitcoin daily volume also slid 18% week-over-week to $1.8 billion, and 7-day volatility fell to 0.6%, the lowest since Christmas 2025. K33's head of research, Vetle Lunde, described the market as locked in a self-reinforcing "hibernation cycle." Meanwhile, open interest in Bitcoin perpetuals remains elevated at roughly 300,000 BTC between June and August, above the 2025-2026 average, raising the risk of liquidation-driven volatility. Investors now await Wednesday's US July CPI report, with economists expecting 3.4% year-over-year headline inflation and 2.5% core inflation. CME FedWatch implies about a 50% chance of a 25-basis-point rate hike in September. Bitcoin has been range-bound between $60,000 and $80,000 for six months, roughly 50% off its October 2025 record high.

A flaw linked to Coldcard hardware wallets appears to have had a measurable impact on Bitcoin on-chain activity, according to K33 head of research Vetle Lunde. He said the attack likely pushed roughly 890,000 BTC to move within seven days, setting the highest seven-day active supply reading of 2026. K33 estimated that, at the time its report was prepared, about 1,596 BTC had been stolen from roughly 7,300 addresses. The issue traces back to a Coldcard firmware flaw introduced by Coinkite in March 2021 that may have produced wallet seeds with insufficient randomness. Since July 30, coordinated transfers have moved about 1,600 BTC from thousands of addresses, worth more than $100 million, while a possible fourth wave may have brought the total close to 2,000 BTC. On-chain data also showed Bitcoin’s seven-day hot supply rising from 403,101.95 BTC on July 28 to 797,407.72 BTC on Aug. 4, a gain of about 394,306 BTC, or 98%. Separately, Timechainindex.com’s Sani said exchange net inflows reached 22,052 BTC since Friday’s Coldcard hack.

Decentralized exchanges accounted for 24.14% of centralized exchange spot volume in July, the highest share since The Block began tracking the metric in 2019. The milestone came during a weaker month for trading overall, with both DEX and CEX volumes declining, though onchain activity held up better than centralized venues. According to Blockworks, DEX spot volume fell 26% month over month to $130.77 billion from $177.55 billion in June, the lowest monthly total since September 2024. Daily DEX volume topped $6 billion only once during the month, on July 8. Even so, DEX market share continued to rise after spending most of 2024 below 10% of CEX volume and climbing into an 18% to 21% range through the first half of 2026. DefiLlama data as of Aug. 3 showed Uniswap leading all DEXs by trailing 30-day volume, followed by PancakeSwap and Pump.fun’s PumpSwap. By chain, Solana ranked first, ahead of BNB Chain, Ethereum and Base. Robinhood Chain also emerged quickly after launching its public mainnet on July 1, becoming the fifth-largest chain by DEX volume over 30 days. Blockworks said stablecoin pairs made up about 30% of July DEX activity, while K33 Research said the broader slowdown looked seasonal rather than structural.

WuBlockchain’s weekly roundup pulled together 10 of the crypto stories that mattered most this week, led by a fresh signal from U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Paul Atkins that the agency is prepared to write its own crypto market structure rules if Congress does not pass the CLARITY Act. Atkins said legislation would offer a more durable framework, while the SEC has already placed rules for crypto issuance, custody, and trading on its 2026 agenda. The list also highlighted Morgan Stanley Investment Management’s launch of spot Ethereum and Solana ETPs, both listed on NYSE Arca with 0.14% fees and staking plans, as well as BNY’s move to put fund transaction processing and shareholder records on blockchain rails while keeping its traditional transfer agency system. Corporate treasury strategy remained a major theme, with Strategy reporting a second-quarter net loss of $8.22 billion tied to bitcoin fair-value changes and saying future fundraising will no longer be used exclusively to buy BTC. Other items in the roundup included Robinhood’s latest earnings call, a new OSC survey showing 25% of Canadians now hold crypto, MiCA compliance among top stablecoins, digital asset treasury firms pivoting toward AI data centers, weak July bitcoin spot activity, and Binance Research’s finding that the first half of 2026 was defined by broad on-chain contraction rather than sector rotation.