Friday, August 28th

• Coinbase turns Bitcoin into a down payment

• Bitdeer has a record month

• Treasury stocks bounce, but most are still underwater

• Bitcoin treasury companies face their reckoning

• Maestro sunsets its API, goes open source

Market Prices

Markets: Bitcoin broke above $80,000 this week for the first time since May, gaining 23% in seven days before easing back into the $79,000s after a hotter-than-expected inflation print. Spot ETFs are riding an eight-day inflow streak, pushing August's total past $3 billion, the strongest month of 2026.

Market Updates

Coinbase and Better Make Bitcoin-Backed Mortgages Available to Everyone

Coinbase and Better Mortgage made their token-backed conforming mortgage generally available to all Coinbase One members, letting borrowers pledge bitcoin or USDC as collateral for a down payment instead of selling it, after a June waitlist drew over $260 million in projected loan demand.

• Approved Coinbase One members get a lender credit of 1% of the mortgage value, capped at $10,000, toward closing costs.

• Better says 41% of its pre-approved borrowers qualify on income and credit but lack cash for a down payment, the exact gap this product targets.

Bitdeer's Record Production Comes as Miners Chase AI Capital

Bitdeer mined 1,190 BTC in July, up 322% year-over-year and claiming an estimated 8.7% of global block rewards, while simultaneously signing a $4.7 billion, 16-year AI data-center lease in Norway.

• Self-mining hashrate now sits around 76.7 EH/s, with another 18.7 EH/s from co-mining deals.

• Bitcoin mining stocks broadly caught a bid this week: Canaan, American Bitcoin, and Cango jumped as much as 67%, outperforming several AI infrastructure names on the same day.

Treasury Stocks Catch a Bid, But the Discount Hasn't Closed

Strategy shares jumped 12% Thursday to $137.95, about four times bitcoin's own gain that day, while its STRC preferred climbed back toward its $100 par value.

• Strategy's 840,447 BTC are now worth roughly $67 billion against a $63.4 billion cost basis, putting the position back in unrealized profit.

• Strive's SATA preferred issued fresh shares to buy an estimated 440 BTC over August 20-21 after clawing back to its own $100 par value.

Why It Matters

Bitcoin's rally is touching every part of its institutional infrastructure at once, mortgages, mining capacity, and treasury-company stock prices, but only one of those is solving a structural problem. The other two, mining's flight toward AI leases and this week's treasury-stock bounce, are papering over pressure that hasn't actually gone away, as this week's Deep Dive lays out.

By The Numbers

3.7%

Wednesday's hotter-than-expected PCE inflation print, versus 3.6% expected, the data point that knocked bitcoin off its $80K+ highs.

74

The Crypto Fear and Greed Index reading, up from 27 less than two weeks ago, a jump analysts say signals the market may be overheating.

1.23M BTC

The bitcoin held across 195 public companies as of August 27, with many of those vehicles still trading at a discount to the value of the coins they hold.

The Deep Dive

Bitcoin Treasury Companies Are Having Their Reckoning

The Signal

Bitcoin is back near $80,000. The companies that built their strategies around owning it aren't.

An FT analysis of the 50 public companies that pivoted hardest into bitcoin treasuries found their combined market value has collapsed from roughly $150 billion in July 2025 to about $67 billion today, even as bitcoin itself sits within reach of its old highs.

The Numbers

What Changed

• 43 of the 50 companies now trade below the share price they had before announcing their bitcoin treasury strategy. 35 are down at least 50%.

• The group flipped to net sellers of bitcoin in July, selling an estimated 2,500 more BTC than it bought.

• Strategy alone sold nearly 7,000 BTC between late June and mid-August to cover dividends, interest, and preferred-stock buybacks.

• Genius Group is trying to restart the model from zero: it liquidated its entire bitcoin position in April, and now plans an $827 million bitcoin treasury (plus an $800 million AI treasury) by fiscal 2031, this time funded through preferred stock.

• Strategy's own stock still jumped 12% Thursday to $137.95, about four times bitcoin's gain, with its STRC preferred nearing its $100 par value.

The Read

• The flywheel only worked while trading above NAV: issue shares for more than the bitcoin's value, buy more, repeat. Below NAV, the same chain runs in reverse, issuing shares now dilutes holders to buy bitcoin, destroying value instead of creating it.

• Strategy's bounce doesn't change that math. The stock is still far below its peak, and it's sold bitcoin in multiple months this year just to cover its own obligations.

• The bigger question isn't whether these companies survive, it's whether simply holding more bitcoin is still enough to create value, or whether the next version of this trade has to make that capital productive instead of just accumulating it.

Watch Next

• Whether more treasury companies start selling BTC instead of raising fresh capital.

• Whether Genius Group can actually fund its rebuild.

• Whether Strategy's bounce holds if bitcoin's rally stalls.

• Whether July's shift to net selling was a one-month blip or the start of a trend.

Maestro Updates

Sunsetting our Developer API

Our Developer API sunsets September 18 across Bitcoin, Cardano, and Dogecoin. Everything runs as normal until then.

Open-Sourcing Our UTXO Indexing Framework

We're open-sourcing the production infrastructure behind it, a generalized UTXO indexing framework for Bitcoin, Cardano, and Dogecoin. Bitcoin ships first, then Cardano and Dogecoin, all before the cutoff.

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