Bitcoin Holds Near $64K as Hack, Fed, and Options Rattle July Close

Bitcoin capped July on unsteady footing Friday, trading near $63,874 as the month wrapped up with a flurry of competing headlines. Crypto prices had surged Thursday after the Federal Reserve held benchmark interest rates unchanged, since any increase in borrowing costs tends to make riskier assets like digital currencies less appealing to investors. Ethereum briefly climbed to $1,923 in early trading before retreating alongside BTC as Friday selling pressure set in.

Despite the late-day weakness, the broader market had a standout month. The CoinDesk 20 index was on pace for its biggest monthly gain since July 2025, and the global crypto market capitalization reached $2.3T with a 24-hour trading volume of $57.99B. Bitcoin held a 56.3% dominance share even as Layer 2 tokens and XRP Ledger ecosystem coins led daily gainers. Options traders, however, shifted tone heading into August, with the $60,000 BTC put contract leading open interest as sentiment turned cautious.

Coldcard Exploit Drains $38M in Bitcoin From Hardware Wallets

The sharpest security story of the week came from a coordinated exploit targeting older Coldcard Mk3 hardware wallets. According to CryptoNews, an attacker drained 594 BTC from roughly 500 single-signature wallets in under 30 minutes, with the theft traced to a flaw in firmware version 4.0.1 where weak random number generation made wallet seeds predictable. Many of the affected wallets had sat untouched for years before the theft swept across three consecutive blockchain blocks.

Coldcard publicly warned users to move funds immediately, confirming the issue also affects certain older Mk4, Mk5, and Q firmware versions. The $38M loss underscored persistent risks in self-custody hardware, particularly for users who have not updated firmware or migrated to newer wallet generations. BlackRock, Fidelity, Franklin Templeton, Goldman Sachs, and SoFi separately made news this week by endorsing the crypto market structure bill as the Senate timeline tightens, adding a regulatory backdrop that could reshape how digital assets are classified and traded in the U.S.