Oil prices jumped above $100 a barrel after a strike on the Saudi-owned tanker Encelia in the Red Sea, The New York Times reported. The incident occurred on July 23 and sparked a fire aboard the vessel. The Houthis claimed responsibility, saying two Saudi tankers—including Encelia—had breached a maritime blockade. Saudi state media confirmed the attack and said all crew members were safe. Brent crude, the global benchmark, climbed to its highest level in more than a month as traders priced in higher supply risks tied to a critical shipping corridor. Key Takeaways Market pricing suggests rising odds that oil could move toward a new all-time high, with prices reacting sharply to the incident. Trading activity indicates investors see Middle East geopolitical tension as a supportive backdrop for further oil price gains. Recent oil-market moves align with heightened supply-risk concerns, pushing up short-term price expectations. What to Watch Monitor developments in Middle East security that could reshape oil-market dynamics. Comments or actions from key policymakers—including OPEC's Mohammad Sanusi Barkindo and Saudi Energy Minister Abdulaziz bin Salman Al Saud—may signal potential shifts. Additional reports of strikes or disruptions in key shipping lanes could further influence expectations for oil to reach new highs by year-end. Get live prediction-market analysis, powered by Vera. Sign up for Vera.

Intel reported second-quarter revenue of $16.1B, handily topping the $14.4B consensus estimate and delivering its fastest sales growth in nearly 15 years. Shares of $INTC rose 11% in after-hours trading following the earnings release.

Crypto derivatives exchange BitMEX will wind down and cease trading after more than 11 years in operation, its owner and operator HDR Global Trading Limited said. The decision followed a strategic review of the company and broader industry conditions. Exchange operations will end at 04:00 UTC on Sept. 23, 2026, and new account registrations have already been halted. BitMEX said trading will continue until the shutdown date, with staged restrictions designed to support an orderly exit. Starting Aug. 26 at 04:00 UTC, users will no longer be able to open new positions and will be limited to reducing existing exposure. In the following weeks, the platform will progressively force-close remaining positions. Any positions still open when trading ends will be automatically liquidated. The exchange added that contracts with limited liquidity may be settled early under existing settlement procedures, with affected customers to be notified in advance. Users are encouraged to close positions and withdraw funds well before Sept. 23, 2026. After trading stops, accounts will remain accessible for viewing balances and transaction history and for initiating withdrawals. BitMEX cautioned that withdrawal processing could slow during the transition due to higher demand and longer blockchain confirmation times, especially on Bitcoin. It also plans to introduce additional withdrawal reviews. The company stressed that it does not offer any "priority" withdrawal service and urged customers to watch for phishing attempts or anyone claiming they can accelerate access to funds. For customers who leave assets on the platform after Sept. 23, BitMEX said accounts will shift to withdrawal-only access. Verified customers will be charged either $50 per month (or the monthly equivalent) or 1% annually on remaining balances, whichever is greater. Fees will be deducted monthly and could increase in the future with notice. BitMEX said its reserves exceed customer liabilities and pointed users to its Proof of Reserves and Liabilities page as support for the claim that customer assets remain fully backed. Founded in 2014, BitMEX was an early driver of perpetual futures and helped popularize the 100x leveraged perpetual swap. The exchange said that over its 11+ years of operation it never lost customer funds to hacks, highlighting the record as central to its security approach. The announcement follows a recent leadership shake-up: former CEO Stephan Lutz, CFO Ina Steiner and chief growth officer Raphael Polansky have departed, and former global general counsel and COO Peter Wilkinson has become CEO. BitMEX management has changed several times since 2020, when founders Arthur Hayes, Ben Delo and Samuel Reed stepped down amid U.S. enforcement actions related to AML deficiencies—charges to which BitMEX later pleaded guilty. Earlier reports said the company had been exploring a sale and reorganizing leadership as part of that process. BitMEX described the shutdown as a difficult decision while reiterating its commitment to Bitcoin's principles of neutrality, transparency and decentralization through its peer-to-peer model and its stated focus on safeguarding customer assets. The closure marks the end of a notable chapter for one of crypto's early derivatives venues that helped standardize perpetual futures across the industry.

Galaxy Digital is set to tap the U.S. high-yield market for the first time, preparing a $3.5 billion junk-bond offering to finance a major buildout of its Helios AI data center campus in West Texas. Proceeds are expected to support construction as well as debt-service reserves tied to the project. The transaction would mark a shift in Galaxy's funding playbook. The company has historically leaned on convertible notes, and the move into high-yield bonds underscores a broader push to scale its AI and infrastructure platform alongside its crypto business. The planned sale also lands as developers increasingly use speculative-grade debt to fund AI-focused data centers; Bloomberg data show about $28 billion of U.S. junk-bond proceeds have been raised this year for similar projects. According to a person familiar with the matter cited by Bloomberg, the offering is expected to price on July 23. Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs are leading the sale. The issuance would consist of five-year notes sold by a Galaxy subsidiary. Under the proposed structure, the issuer would start repaying 4% of original principal annually beginning 10 months after construction is completed. Galaxy said the funds would help finance a portion of the Helios Data Center Campus in Dickens County, about 60 miles east of Lubbock, and provide debt-service reserves. The company has regulatory approval for up to 1.6 gigawatts of power at Helios for AI and high-performance computing workloads. The first phase is already completed, and construction on the next phase is scheduled to begin in 2027. Commercial momentum has picked up. Earlier this month, Galaxy said CoreWeave signed 15-year capacity leases at Helios, which Galaxy estimates could generate more than $1 billion in annual revenue once the campus is fully operational. The announcement follows a similar large-scale AI-infrastructure financing last month, when an Applied Digital subsidiary raised about $1.59 billion in the U.S. junk-bond market to expand CoreWeave capacity in North Dakota. Galaxy is also strengthening its West Texas profile. The company signed a 15-year agreement with Texas Tech University to rename the school's football venue "Galaxy Stadium" starting with the 2026 season. The partnership designates Galaxy as Texas Tech Athletics' official digital assets and data center partner and includes planned collaboration on AI initiatives, workforce training and NIL opportunities; financial terms were not disclosed. Beyond Helios, Galaxy has broadened its activity across crypto and regulated services this year. It launched a $5 million Bitcoin Quantum Readiness Initiative to support post-quantum cryptography and related tooling, citing research that about 6.9 million BTC could be exposed if future quantum computers break current cryptographic protections. In May, the firm expanded regulated offerings through GalaxyOne Prime NY after securing a BitLicense and a Money Transmission License from the New York Department of Financial Services. Galaxy has also announced plans for a $100 million crypto-focused hedge fund. The planned $3.5 billion sale would be a major financing milestone as Galaxy pivots from convertible debt toward high-yield issuance to scale Helios and pursue surging demand for AI compute. If priced as expected, the deal would add substantial capital to one of the company's largest long-term infrastructure bets and highlight the growing role of the U.S. high-yield market in funding AI data center development.

TL;DR Verus Bridge was hit by a second exploit, with roughly $7.54 million drained from its Ethereum bridge on Thursday—about two months after an earlier $11.58 million hack struck the same contract. Investigators say the issue was not broken cryptography but a missing on-chain value check: the contract accepted valid signatures and Merkle proofs yet did not verify that Ethereum payouts matched value actually committed on the Verus chain. Security firms tied the flaw to incomplete Solidity validation, and users were urged to avoid the bridge until fixes are publicly confirmed and independently audited. Verus Bridge has suffered another major security incident, with an attacker extracting about $7.54 million from its Ethereum bridge reserves on Thursday. The breach appears to mirror May’s exploit, when approximately $11.58 million was stolen from the same contract, raising fresh questions about whether a known validation issue was left unresolved. Blockaid said the latest theft impacted multiple assets, including ETH, tBTC, USDC, USDT, EURC, MKR, and scrvUSD. In a post dated July 23, 2026, Blockaid reported that the attacker used the bridge's import path to trigger payouts on Ethereum that were not backed by corresponding value on the Verus blockchain. According to Blockaid, the bridge processed the required signatures and Merkle proofs but failed to confirm that the amount being released on Ethereum matched what had been committed on the source chain. The weakness stemmed from a missing value validation inside the smart contract rather than any failure of signature or proof systems. Halborn and Merkle Science previously reached similar conclusions in their assessments of the May exploit, tracing the problem to the checkCCEValues function and roughly 10 missing lines of Solidity validation. Merkle Science said the earlier attacker could turn about $10 in VRSC transaction fees into a payout worth $11.58 million. Halborn noted that even a transaction valued near 1 cent could satisfy the bridge's signature and proof checks, then prompt Ethereum to release assets worth millions—allowing minimal source value to unlock an outsized destination payout. Reports indicate Thursday's incident targeted the same contract and import path, though it involved a different transaction, attacker wallet, and destination for the stolen funds. The recurrence comes as bridge security has generally improved across DeFi. Immunefi data cited in the report showed bridge hacks represented 73% of DeFi losses in 2022 but only 3% in 2025. Even so, broader industry progress offers little protection when a publicly identified vulnerability remains unaddressed. Verus had not published an official postmortem for Thursday's exploit at the time of reporting. After the May incident, Merkle Science advised users to avoid the bridge until the validation flaw was fixed and independently audited. With no public confirmation of a completed remediation and audit, users and liquidity providers are again being urged to exercise caution.

Crypto derivatives exchange BitMEX said it will shut down, with trading slated to end on Sept. 23, according to Odaily Planet Daily. The platform, founded in 2014 by Arthur Hayes, Ben Delo and Samuel Reed, made the move after a strategic review by parent company HDR Global Trading. BitMEX was an early force in popularizing perpetual swaps as a core product in digital-asset derivatives. CryptoQuant data show its daily Bitcoin futures volume started to slide around May 2021 and never returned to the roughly $1 billion to $5 billion per day range seen at its October 2020 peak. Restructuring advisor Roshan Dharia said midsized centralized exchanges are under structural strain as liquidity concentrates on larger venues and compliance costs rise. He estimated the top five exchanges now account for about 80% of global spot trading volume, squeezing midsized and regional players with thinner margins and few routes to scale. CoinGecko data put BitMEX ninth among derivatives exchanges in August 2023, with a 0.9% share of trading volume. By 2025, it had fallen out of the top 10 perpetual swaps exchanges, while annual perpetual swaps volume across the leading platforms rose 47.4% to $86.2 trillion over the same period.

Hackers gained control of Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev's X account and used it to tout a fraudulent cryptocurrency token branded "Vladhood".

Goldman Sachs said Brent crude could rise above $120 a barrel in the fourth quarter if disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz continue.

U.S. spot ether ETFs took in $72.64 million on Wednesday, edging out the $68.99 million net inflow into spot bitcoin funds, as investors continued to concentrate allocations in the two largest digital assets. Bitcoin ETFs extended their inflow streak to seven consecutive sessions, bringing cumulative net additions over the period to $999.38 million. Ether ETFs notched a fourth straight day of inflows, totaling $184.93 million across the four-session run. Within bitcoin ETFs, BlackRock's IBIT led Wednesday's creations with $38.78 million. Grayscale's Bitcoin Mini Trust added $37.88 million and Fidelity's FBTC gained $21.49 million. Bitwise's BITB and Morgan Stanley's MSBT recorded smaller inflows of $5.36 million and $3.77 million. Grayscale's GBTC saw a $38.30 million redemption, partially offsetting the day's gains. Total bitcoin ETF trading value reached $1.11 billion. Combined net assets ended at $80.36 billion, down from the prior session despite positive flows, reflecting moves in the underlying market. Bitcoin ETFs have brought in $499 million so far this week, according to Sosovalue. Ether ETFs posted the stronger daily print. BlackRock's ETHA attracted $53.47 million, while Fidelity's FETH added $19.18 million. No ether product reported net outflows. Ether ETF trading value totaled $597.49 million, and combined net assets finished at $10.57 billion. Smaller crypto ETF categories lagged. Solana ETFs recorded a $1.27 million net outflow, led by declines of about $686,590 from Fidelity's FSOL and roughly $585,460 from Grayscale's GSOL. Solana ETF trading value was $54.46 million, with net assets at $908.74 million. XRP and HYPE ETFs reported no net creations or redemptions. XRP ETF assets remained above $1 billion at $1.04 billion, while HYPE ETF assets ended at $301.78 million. Flat flows do not imply a lack of trading: existing ETF shares can continue to change hands in the secondary market without triggering new share creation or redemption. Overall, the latest data underscored continued investor preference for scale, with most incremental capital flowing to bitcoin and ether while smaller crypto ETFs struggle to build steady momentum.