Hunter Biden-linked meme token LAPTOP is set to begin trading on Coinbase-backed Base at around 20:00 Beijing time on Sept. 9, but the launch is being met with broad skepticism across crypto circles. Debate around the token has centered on the team’s reported 30% allocation, its overt political branding, and comparisons with earlier political celebrity coins such as TRUMP. Several well-known industry figures have publicly distanced themselves from the project rather than endorse it. Base creator Jesse Pollak said the team had been approached but "consciously decided" not to take part in the token’s design or promotion, while stressing that Base is a permissionless network. Cobie separately said the token was not a joint launch with Hunter Biden, Jesse, Coinbase, or Base, and argued that control over token issuance on Base does not amount to endorsement. Ansem posted a 13-minute video on the topic that drew more than a million views, but did not promote the trade. The backlash has also reached platforms. Pump.fun and Kraken both deleted related posts after criticism, while podcast outlets such as MarketBubble declined interview requests and publicly turned negative on the token. With TRUMP reportedly down about 97% from its peak and nearly 1 million addresses sitting on roughly $3.8 billion in combined losses, LAPTOP is entering the market with attention, but very little visible conviction from the broader community.

Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas said on X that his team has interviewed about 35 people from the crypto industry and traditional finance, with selected material set to appear in a book. He said the interview list includes some skeptics as well. According to Balchunas, each conversation lasted about one hour. He also named the participants, a group that includes Lyn Alden, Ian Allison, John Ameriks, Michael Batnick, Jim Bianco, William Birdthistle, Doug Boneparth, Natalie Brunell, Austin Campbell, Nic Carter, Nikki Dunn, Ric Edelman, Tony Edwards, Nate Geraci, Alex Gladstein, Ben Hart, Corey Hoffstein, Matt Hougan, Tim Keefe, Elizabeth Kashner, Kathy Kriskey, Chris Kuiper, Art Laffer, Dave Nadig, Sergey Nazarov, Zach Pandl, Nathanial Popper, Cullen Roche, Anthony Scaramucci, Matt Sigel, Alex Thorn, Carolyn Weinberg and Cathie Wood.

A market analysis from Unchained says the Bitcoin treasury trade is beginning to change shape as some pure-play public companies move away from accumulating BTC and crypto. VanEck head of digital assets research Matthew Sigel recently highlighted a list of firms that have abandoned those strategies, including Satsuma Technology, whose shareholders voted on July 21, 2026 to liquidate all 668 BTC, return capital to investors, and delist, with more than 90% approval. At the same time, Unchained points to the emergence of a cash-flow-based alternative. It cites Orange Juice, a proposed permanent capital company backed by a Bitcoin treasury and founded with names including Lyn Alden and Jeff Booth, as an early signal. About a week later, Tether-backed Twenty One Capital disclosed an executive shake-up and outlined a revised strategy that Unchained says closely resembled Orange Juice’s plan. Glenn Cameron, Global Head of Onramp Institutional, told Unchained that two successor models are emerging from the pure-play structure: Strategy’s credit model and a permanent capital model. The report frames the debate around which approach can hold up better and what rising competition could mean for MSTR.

Macro strategist Lyn Alden says Bitcoin is experiencing its weakest investor confidence this cycle. She sees no new all-time high this year. Strategy sold 3,588 BTC worth $216 million. BIP 110 debate calls for caution.

Bitcoin treasury holding company Orange Juice has closed a $40 million seed round, with Mexican billionaire Ricardo Salinas leading the financing. The company said the proceeds will be used to acquire profitable U.S. businesses and build a Bitcoin treasury. Orange Juice was co-founded by macro analyst Lyn Alden and author Jeff Booth, among others. It said it follows a permanent capital model centered on acquiring and holding profitable American companies for the long term, then using corporate cash flow to buy Bitcoin as a treasury reserve. The company’s stated goal is to build a Bitcoin-standard holding company modeled after Berkshire Hathaway.

Bitcoin Magazine published an opinion article arguing that the fight around BIP-110 rests on a flawed view of what a Bitcoin full node is and what it can actually do. The proposal, formally titled “Reduced Data Temporary Softfork,” seeks to restrict the kinds and amount of arbitrary data that can be inserted into consensus-valid Bitcoin transactions by narrowing scripting functionality. According to the piece, the effort is being led by the pseudonymous developer Dathon Ohm and has drawn support from the Knots community, while facing opposition or indifference from much of the senior Bitcoin developer base. The article says BIP-110 is approaching a mandatory signaling period in the coming weeks, creating the possibility of a split from the main consensus rules implemented in Bitcoin Core. Still, miner support remains minimal. At the time of writing, the piece says signaling stood at less than 1% of blocks in the current difficulty adjustment period. The author contends that full nodes help users verify supply, transaction history, privacy, and network sync, but do not by themselves confer the power to rewrite Bitcoin’s consensus rules. Drawing on earlier conflicts such as the 2017 Bitcoin Cash fork and the User Activated Soft Fork, the article argues that nodes matter only when they carry economic weight and have backing from developers, investors, miners, and major economic actors. It concludes that BIP-110 has not secured that broader coalition and is therefore unlikely to succeed.

Public companies sharply reduced Bitcoin buying last week, with Strategy pausing purchases and boosting its cash position to about $3.23 billion, according to figures cited in Odaily’s latest crypto-equity market roundup. SoSoValue data showed net Bitcoin purchases by listed companies excluding miners totaled just $1.33 million for the week ended 8 a.m. ET on July 20, down 98.4% from the previous week. Strategy and Japan’s Metaplanet made no purchases during the period, while asset manager Strive bought 21 BTC for $1.15 million at an average price of $63,221 per coin. The report also highlighted new equity accumulation in Strategy shares by several asset managers. Vanguard’s Mid-Cap Value ETF, Swedbank AB, and Capital Group’s Growth ETF each disclosed additions to their MSTR positions. In Ethereum treasury names, BitMine said its ETH holdings had reached 5.78 million coins, or about 4.8% of Ethereum’s circulating supply, while the company’s crypto assets, cash, and marketable securities totaled $11.5 billion. Separately, the piece linked the cautious tone in crypto-linked equities to growing short interest in U.S. stocks, renewed rate-hike expectations, and weakness across major semiconductor names.

Crypto primary-market activity picked up sharply in the week of July 13 to July 19, with 17 disclosed blockchain funding deals worth more than $812 million, according to PANews. Capital continued to cluster around a smaller number of larger rounds, a trend also visible in first-half 2026 data from Tiger Research and RootData, which showed $13.3 billion in crypto capital inflows across 435 rounds, down 78% from the 1,978-round peak in 2022. The week’s largest deal came from Crypto.com, which said it received a $400 million strategic investment from Citadel Securities at a $20 billion valuation, marking the exchange’s first institutional funding round in its 10-year history. Beyond CeFi, stablecoin payments and financial infrastructure remained a major draw, with deals for Cyclops, Pact Labs, Flex and Velocity. PANews also highlighted continued momentum in AI-linked markets, from DGrid AI in Web3 infrastructure to large non-crypto rounds such as Fireworks, Walden Robotics and LimX Dynamics, as investors kept backing AI compute, developer platforms and embodied intelligence commercialization.