Bank of America Strategist: Market Ignoring Risks, Warn of Backlash from AI Investments

According to a report by The Nation Thailand, Thailand’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed criminal charges against Bitkub Online and two of its former directors—Sakolkorn Sakavee and Thaweesap Rawan—with the country’s Department of Special Investigation (economic crime suppression agency) on July 23. The charges allege that after Bitkub was hacked in 2021, the platform submitted false daily net capital reports to regulators between May 10 and October 30 of that year, failing to truthfully disclose the theft of digital assets worth roughly 1.7 billion baht. The two former directors were also accused of making false entries in corporate documents, misleading regulators into believing customer assets were properly safeguarded and Bitkub had not sustained losses. In a statement, Bitkub responded that the incident occurred around five years ago, and relevant personnel opted not to disclose the theft at the time to prevent a bank run. The exchange’s co-founders personally purchased an equal quantity and type of digital assets to cover the shortfall, ensuring customer assets suffered no losses. Thailand’s SEC also confirmed on September 8, 2025 that customer assets are safe and intact.

Well-known trader Killa (@KillaXBT) posted screenshots describing the situation as "textbook-like". Binance’s plunge protection team is back. Typically, when large bid orders start clustering just below the price, market makers and algorithms tend to temporarily front-run them. The screenshots show multiple horizontal lines appearing below Bitcoin’s current price starting around $62,000, with the densest, most prominent buy orders forming from roughly $58,000 downwards. As of press time, Bitcoin is trading at $64,803.44 according to HTX data, with a 0.46% drop over the past hour. After Bitcoin plunged below $60,000 on June 6, large buy orders emerged below BTC’s market price on Binance, an event Killa referred to as the "plunge protection team" returning. Killa, a BTC-focused quantitative trader, previously predicted the peak of this bull run in May 2025 and boasts over 200,000 followers on X. In mid-April, he shorted Bitcoin at $74,688 and shifted to long positions during the broad market sell-off on June 5.

Fu Peng, the newly appointed chief economist of Xinhuo Group, shared his views yesterday, noting that global assets—including the fundamentals of mainstream cryptocurrencies—are tied to liquidity. The current shift from loose to tight liquidity has triggered a "shrinking circle" market trend, with funds flowing into high-certainty core assets. Fu Peng believes the AI industry has reached a critical inflection point, moving from the capital-burning hardware infrastructure phase to value validation. Major players like Google have seen their free cash flow drop to zero, and capital markets no longer endorse the logic of mere capital expenditure expansion. “The AI industrial chain is divided into upstream, midstream, and downstream segments, each with its own independent industry lifecycle, and clear sector rotation shifts and allocation windows. Never treat AI as a 'faith' to hold blindly long-term; turning the AI sector into pure concept speculation will definitely lead to pitfalls.” “The full AI industry cycle spans roughly 20 to 25 years, with the first 10 years already completed. The first decade’s core focus was upstream hardware infrastructure, while the next decade’s will be end-user applications. However, a cycle gap exists currently, and the next 10 to 18 months will be the industry transition window. During this window, do not go all-in; strictly follow industry cycle rules for allocation to avoid volatility risks.” On the other hand, the crypto market will follow liquidity contraction. After the winnowing process, core assets such as Bitcoin and Ethereum will stabilize, while junk coin speculation will become ineffective. Investors need to allocate in stages according to industry cycles and be wary of leverage risks.

According to Onchain Lens monitoring, Hyperliquid repurchased and burned 130,900 HYPE tokens over the past seven days, valued at roughly $7.65 million, with an average repurchase price of $58.45. A total of 130,900 HYPE tokens were removed from circulation this week.

U.S. Senator Cynthia Lummis has released an updated draft of the CLARITY Act, which would require digital commodity exchanges, brokers, and dealers to segregate customer assets and prohibit using customer funds and assets as the platforms’ own property. The draft also proposes classifying digital commodities and other assets held by platforms for customers as "customer property" in bankruptcy liquidation proceedings, reducing users’ risk of being categorized as general unsecured creditors.

BlackRock, Coinbase, Strategy, Anchorage Digital, ARK Invest, Block, Blockstream, Fidelity Digital Assets, and Galaxy have formed the Bitcoin Security Consortium, pledging a combined $15 million over three years to fund Bitcoin security research and open-source development focused on quantum computing defense. The consortium does not hold or allocate funds; each member will directly select developers and researchers to support. It noted that it will not guide Bitcoin development or take positions on protocol changes. Mike Schmidt of Brink, a nonprofit developer funding organization, will coordinate the work on a volunteer basis. Currently, no quantum computer exists that can crack Bitcoin’s cryptography. Approximately 6.9 million BTC, worth $450 billion, are held in addresses that could be affected if such quantum computers emerge. Fixing this issue will require coordination among wallets, exchanges, miners, and users. Relevant efforts include proposals like BIP 360, which designs a new output type to limit public key exposure and pairs with post-quantum signature schemes. Robert Mitchnick, head of digital assets at BlackRock, stated that Core developers do important work, and the organization will provide additional funding for Bitcoin’s long-term security.