This Week in Crypto (August 10–17): The SEC Cancels Its Own Crypto Vote, ETFs Give Back $389.7M in Five Sessions, and Strategy Sells Another 1,690 BTC

The biggest item in crypto news this week is a meeting that didn't happen. The SEC was scheduled to propose crypto-specific rules for the first time on August 14, then pulled the meeting the day before and named no new date. Around that: a Bank of Japan signal did more to move bitcoin than anything on-chain, spot ETFs erased the best inflow week since April in five sessions, and Strategy's 2026 selling reached nearly 7,000 BTC. Here's the week, story by story.

The week at a glance

The SEC canceled the first crypto rulemaking it ever scheduled

On August 13 the SEC posted notice that its August 14 open meeting was off. That meeting was to be the first time the Commission considered writing crypto-specific rules rather than applying existing securities law — specifically, exemptions letting token issuers raise capital without full registration. A spokesperson cited an "unforeseen scheduling issue." No replacement date was given.

On X: @EleanorTerrett — the meeting set to consider new rules for crypto asset investment contracts was pulled from Friday's calendar.

Worth separating from the coverage: as of August 14 there was no published proposal on the SEC's rulemaking index. The widely repeated "$75 million per 12 months" comes from a personal framework Chair Paul Atkins floated in March 2026 and explicitly labeled as his own thinking; a separate July draft from Senator Lummis proposed the greater of $50 million a year or 10% of outstanding asset value, capped at $200 million. Neither is Commission text, so the three-tier "Regulation Crypto" in several write-ups was an expectation, not a document.

On X: @CryptosR_Us — the SEC says it will reschedule and remains committed to regulatory certainty.

Even a completed vote would only have opened a proposal to public comment. The consequence is directional: the agency dropped nearly every inherited crypto case and promised rulemaking as the replacement, and the first scheduled act of that pivot slipped. It landed days after the Senate left for recess with the CLARITY Act 51 votes short of the 60 needed, pushing a procedural vote to September 15. Both tracks now wait on a calendar.

Bitcoin fell to $62K on a Japanese rates story, not a crypto one

Bitcoin opened the week above $65,000 and traded at $62,854 by August 14, retesting the $62,560 August 3 low with $60,000 as the next psychological floor. The driver was reporting that the Bank of Japan intends to hike in September and then move more than twice a year — a pace change that pressures the carry trades funding risk assets. The Fed is expected to hold at 3.50%–3.75%, and July PPI at 4.5% cut implied hike odds to 27%.

On X: @FarsideUK — August 13 bitcoin ETF flow: −$131.1M total, with ARKB −$58.8M and FBTC −$55.1M.

Liquidations point to a leverage flush rather than a spot exodus: $252 million on August 14, up 59% day over day, split $135M long against $117M short. That near-even ratio is chop, not a one-sided rout, and it's the shape that catches traders sizing against a directional view. Our guide to how perps work covers the funding and liquidation mechanics that decide whether a 4% move costs you anything.

Altcoins took the sharper end. Uniswap fell 8.58% to $3.21, down roughly 21% since an August 7 death cross. Bitcoin dominance held at 58.3%.

Spot Bitcoin ETFs gave back April's best week in five sessions

US spot bitcoin ETFs recorded $389.7 million of net outflows between August 10 and 14, the largest weekly withdrawal in six weeks. Seven days earlier the same funds took in $853.54 million, their best week since mid-April.

Only Tuesday printed positive.

On X: @FarsideUK — August 14: total −$56.2M, IBIT −$55.5M, FBTC −$6.8M, BITB +$6.1M.

The more interesting line is what didn't sell. Solana ETFs pulled in $10.26 million, their highest weekly inflow since May, while XRP funds took $2.25M and HYPE funds $2.74M. Ether ETFs finished roughly flat. Morgan Stanley's Q2 filing diverged from the weekly tape entirely, showing a 23% increase in IBIT shares and a 202% expansion in its Ethereum Trust position.

A weekly flow number measures fund plumbing, not conviction, and says nothing about who controls the coins — the difference between custodial exposure and self-custody that the ETF wrapper quietly removes.

Strategy's 2026 selling reached 6,948 BTC

Strategy disclosed on August 10 that it sold 1,690 BTC between August 3 and 9 for $108.6 million, an average of $64,262 a coin, and used the proceeds to repurchase STRC preferred stock. Bitcoin traded down to $64,000 the same day.

It was the fifth sale of the year, not the first.

On X: @saylor — "we hold ₿840,447 in our BTC Reserve and $4.65B in our USD Reserve," framed as a USD reserve increase and a $109M STRC repurchase.

The sales sit inside an announced $1.25 billion monetization program. As of August 9 the company held 840,447 BTC against a $63.36 billion cost basis, worth about $53.82 billion — an unrealized loss near $9.5 billion, or roughly $4.9 billion including the USD reserve. Saylor's February 2025 line, "Sell a kidney if you must, but keep the BTC," was posted above $84,000; he has since clarified it as personal guidance rather than corporate policy.

The kicker: a whale lost $25.6M to the same address that took $24.2M in 2023

More than $37 million left crypto users between August 9 and 15, and one August 12 incident accounted for two-thirds of it. The same address had already been drained of $24.2 million in September 2023 through malicious token approvals. The difference is what came back: the 2023 attacker returned about 90% of the funds, and the 2026 attacker returned nothing. PeckShield analyzed the wallets; whether the vector was a phishing signature or a key compromise is still unconfirmed.

The practical question a repeat drain raises is whether the first cleanup was ever finished, since a token approval granted in 2023 stays live until it's revoked. We'd suggest auditing standing approvals rather than assuming a past incident closed itself — our documentation covers reviewing and revoking Wallet Approvals, and what to do when a wallet is compromised if the answer is uncomfortable.

Also this week

• The Coldcard theft stopped growing but didn't resolve. The firmware exploit that opened August stands at $130M+ across 5,000+ addresses, and roughly 1,531 BTC still sits unmoved in attacker wallets as of mid-August — neither laundered nor recovered.
• CertiK put H1 2026 Web3 losses at $1.31 billion across 344 incidents, with wallet compromises and infrastructure breaches now the costliest attack surface.
• Solana funds were the week's only real bid, taking $10.26M while bitcoin products shed $389.7M — the widest divergence between the two categories since May.
• Dogecoin ETFs shed $564,840, a rounding error in dollars but a category that has now given back ground five weeks running.

What to watch next

Three dates carry this week's open threads. September 15 is the CLARITY Act cloture vote, needing 60 votes after the last count reached 51. The Bank of Japan's September meeting is now a larger input to bitcoin price than anything on-chain. And the SEC's next signal is either a rescheduled meeting or a proposal on the rulemaking index — silence through August would make "unforeseen scheduling issue" harder to sustain. Undated but worth a watch: any movement in those 1,531 Coldcard coins is the first liquidation signal in a two-week-old theft. If the week's through-line is that custody keeps deciding outcomes, our common wallet attacks guide is where to start.

Last updated: August 2026