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Fractal: Scale Bitcoin + Boost Miner Revenue.

Is Bitcoin’s most active scaling solution already here?

Fractal’s rapid hashrate growth and transaction growth suggest it might be.

A new report by Blockspace Media breaks down Fractal Bitcoin, the chain that’s quietly achieved:

🔸 ~80%+ of Bitcoin’s hashrate via merged mining

🔸 11 M+ daily transactions (comparable to Solana & Base)

Powered by Cadence Mining, a novel hybrid block production model, and seamless onboarding via UniSat, Fractal is emerging as Bitcoin’s most used innovation layer.

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GENIUS, CLARITY, NO CBDC Acts passed in the U.S. House

A hat trick of crypto bills passed in the House of Representatives back-to-back-to-back on Thursday. The GENIUS Act, a piece of stablecoin charter and reserve legislation, has now passed both chambers after a 308-122 vote and is on its way to the Oval Office for President Trump’s signature. The market structure-focused CLARITY Act, on the other hand, still needs to pass in the Senate after its 294-134 vote in the House, as does the CBDC Anti-Surveillance State Act, which narrowly passed in the House with a 219-210 vote. - link

OUR TAKE: Devil on one shoulder, angel on the other. 

Maybe that’s too harsh. Maybe I should rejoice in the fact that these watershed bills create the clearest regulatory process, guardrails, and definitions for Bitcoin & crypto yet and are attracting bipartisan support – things that would have been unthinkable even a few years ago.

By all measures, the Acts are big wins for a crypto sector that found itself backed into a corner in the last administration and Congress. But depending on who you ask, the win, at least with the GENIUS Act, comes with a cost.

The GENIUS Act codifies clear regulations for stablecoins, including a permitting process for who can issue them, 1-to-1 reserve requirements (Tether truthers in disbelief…), and other provisions. Taking the white pill, we can view this as the most comprehensive approach yet to create guardrails for the largest and most widely used crypto applications. Plus, the bill includes an “anti-CBDC amendment” that bars the Federal Reserve from issuing a Central Bank Digital Currency, meaning “a form of digital money or monetary value, denominated in the national unit of account, that is a direct liability of the Federal Reserve System,” to quote the bill, without explicit Congressional approval. This provision is less of a deathknell for CBDCs than the NO CBDC Act, which would outright ban such digital currencies.

Now for the black pill. If you subscribe to the Bitcoin Dollar thesis popularized by Mark Goodwin, then the Act just paves the way for CBDC-esque digital dollars cloaked as private money. Put another way, as I’ve said before, the revolution will not be televised – it will be tetherized.

I personally don’t have any strong feelings one way or the other about the GENIUS Act, but I am much less giddy about it than I am the CLARITY Act. There’s some boring rubber stamp provisions in it that will admittedly be good for crypto. For example, it splits oversight for tokens and digital commodities clearly between the SEC and CFTC, respectively, and it also clears up the “is this token a security we don’t know” morass by allowing projects to issue tokens for funding as long as they follow clear disclosure and insider resale guidelines.

But the most important provision in the bill, at least to me, is that CLARITY enshrines the right to self custody and to transact peer-to-peer with cryptocurrencies. 

-CMH

FOIA request reveals U.S. Marshals Service holds 28,988 BTC

A Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by journalist L0la L33tz disclosed that the U.S. Marshals Service (USMS) currently holds about 28,988 BTC, valued at approximately $3.44 billion, which is significantly less than the estimated 198,000 BTC held by the U.S. Government in aggregate. This led to speculation about where the remaining BTC is (and whether the government sold it). — link

OUR TAKE: Did the U.S. government paper hand 170k BTC? Spoiler: probably not, but it’s also not really clear where the lion’s share of the BTC is held. 

There is no evidence of a sale, as we would expect at least a statement or notice from the government if they chose to offload BTC. The USMS has historically conducted public auctions for forfeited assets, and any major liquidation would almost certainly have been announced as they have before.

Regardless, Senator Cynthia Lummis fired off a tweet noting she was “alarmed by reports that the US has sold off over 80% of its Bitcoin reserves.” The disclosed 29,000 BTC figure pertains solely to the USMS, meaning other federal agencies may hold additional bitcoin so the government’s total BTC holdings are uncertain. The key distinction here is between "seized" and "forfeited" assets, as the FOIA response only covers forfeited Bitcoin that has been legally declared government property through judicial rulings.

The bigger picture reveals a more complex custody arrangement. According to data from the blockchain analytics firm Arkham Intelligence, the U.S. government's total Bitcoin holdings include major seizures like the ~94,636 BTC from the Bitfinex hack (which is under legal proceedings) and various Silk Road-related seizures. Much of this bitcoin may still be held by other agencies like the FBI or DEA pending forfeiture proceedings, explaining the discrepancy between public estimates and the Marshals' confirmed holdings.

Going back to the source, L0la L33tz initially submitted the FOIA in March in response to BTC Inc. CEO David Bailey’s bounty of $10,000 in BTC to a journalist who could confirm the quantity of BTC the USMS currently holds. Always a gentleman, David paid up.

-CBS

Luxor x BitMine: Scaling Smart, Hedging Smarter

See how BitMine tripled its ASIC fleet while locking in predictable cash flows — using Luxor’s 12-month hashrate forwards to de-risk deployment and finance growth without dilution.

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Polymarket cleared as DOJ and CFTC drop probes into prediction platform

After an eight-month investigation, the U.S. Department of Justice and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission have concluded their inquiries into Polymarket without filing any charges. The probes, which intensified following the 2024 U.S. presidential election, focused on allegations that the platform allowed U.S. users to place bets in violation of a 2022 settlement. - link

Coinbase unveils “superapp” Base

Coinbase has rebranded its Coinbase Wallet to the Base App, merging social networking, cryptocurrency trading, payments, and mini-apps. - link

Bit Digital’s WhiteFiber files S-1 for Nasdaq IPO

Bit Digital’s (BTBT) wholly-owned HPC subsidiary, WhiteFiber Inc., has filed a public registration statement on Form S-1 with the SEC for an initial public offering on the Nasdaq under the ticker WYFI. Per the prospectus, WhiteFiber earned $16.8 million and $47.6 million in Q1 2025 and 2024, respectively. – link