The Daily: Bitcoin miner HIVE lands $350 million AI cloud deal, and more

The following article is adapted from The Block’s newsletter, The Daily, which comes out on weekday afternoons.

Happy Monday! Markets are starting the week in a summer lull, but Capital.com Senior Market Analyst Daniela Hathorn told The Block that Wednesday's FOMC minutes could shake things up, with crypto traders watching for signs that the Fed's hawkish minority is gaining or losing support.

In today's newsletter, HIVE inks a five-year $350 million AI deal, Strategy sells $334 million in MSTR shares, Bitpanda is fined over MiCA violations, and more.

Meanwhile, Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino dismissed continued criticism following KPMG's audit, saying some critics cannot admit they were wrong.

👀 P.S. Don't forget to check out today's reader poll on bitcoin's reaction to the FOMC minutes later in the newsletter.

⛰️ Reminder: We're on the ground at SALT's Blockchain Symposium in Jackson Hole Aug. 17-20, with exclusive interviews and coverage of the biggest stories shaping crypto and global finance.

Bitcoin miner HIVE inks five-year $350 million AI cloud contract, adds $70 million in annualized revenue

Bitcoin miner HIVE Digital signed a five-year, $350 million GPU cloud services deal with an unnamed investment-grade enterprise customer through its BUZZ HPC subsidiary.

• The deal adds roughly $70 million in annualized revenue, bringing BUZZ HPC's total annualized revenue to about $180 million.
• BUZZ HPC will deploy 2,016 NVIDIA Blackwell Ultra GPUs at HIVE's Bell AI Fabric facility in British Columbia, with the cluster expected online later this year.
• HIVE expects to spend about $185 million on the deployment, funded partly by a $35 million customer deposit, convertible bond proceeds, and equipment financing.
• The agreement marks HIVE's second major GPU cluster deal in two months as the bitcoin miner expands its AI compute business.
  HIVE reported $79.1 million in quarterly revenue last week, including $7.1 million from BUZZ HPC, whose revenue increased 47% year over year.

Strategy sells $334 million in MSTR shares, makes no bitcoin purchases or sales as USD reserve hits $4.8 billion

Bitcoin treasury company Strategy sold roughly $333.7 million in MSTR shares last week (3.46 million shares) but didn't buy or sell any bitcoin, according to an 8-K filing with the SEC on Monday.

• The firm used $52.4 million in net proceeds to fund STRC dividends, $132.2 million to buy back STRC preferred stock, and $149.1 million to lift its USD reserve to $4.8 billion.
• Strategy held its bitcoin treasury at 840,447 BTC, still around 4% of supply and worth about $53.4 billion, though it carries roughly $10 billion in paper losses.
• Meanwhile, Tom Lee's Ethereum treasury company Bitmine added 9,926 ETH over the past week, lifting its treasury to 5.82 million ETH (4.8% of supply) worth roughly $11 billion.

Austria's FMA fines crypto broker Bitpanda $81,000 in first published MiCA penalty

Austria's Financial Market Authority fined Bitpanda €70,000 ($81,130), marking the country's first published legally binding penalty under MiCA.

• The regulator said Bitpanda failed to submit a crypto-asset white paper at least 20 working days before publishing it.
• Bitpanda also distributed a marketing communication before the required white paper had been published and omitted required disclosures and contact information, the FMA added.
• The penalty comes as Bitpanda reportedly weighs an IPO on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, targeting a valuation of €4 billion ($4.6 billion) to €5 billion ($5.8 billion).

Harmony plans pre-attack rollback after exploiter forged 3 trillion ONE tokens

Harmony plans to roll back its blockchain to before last week's exploit after concluding that attackers forged more than 3 trillion ONE tokens.

• The exploit allowed attackers to reuse valid cross-shard transaction receipts to mint new ONE without a corresponding debit elsewhere.
• One exploiter wallet successfully moved nearly 2.4 trillion ONE, worth almost $3 billion at pre-attack prices, in under two minutes.
• Harmony traced nearly all the forged tokens but rejected a burn, blacklisting, or token migration, describing the rollback as the "fairest and most secure" option.

US Treasury seeks public comment on GENIUS Act stablecoin rules

The U.S. Treasury is seeking public comment on proposed rules for implementing the GENIUS Act's stablecoin framework ahead of its expected Jan. 18, 2027, effective date.

• The proposal aims to clarify when stablecoins count as issued in the U.S. and when issuers or service providers are offering or selling them to U.S. persons.
• The GENIUS Act generally requires payment stablecoin issuers to obtain a federal or state license, while imposing additional restrictions on foreign-issued stablecoins.

Reader poll

Will bitcoin end the week higher after Wednesday's FOMC minutes?

YES, HIGHER

NO, LOWER

One click records your pick. We'll share the answer in a later edition.

Congratulations to the 52% of you in last Monday's poll who correctly guessed ether would outperform bitcoin last week!

In the next 24 hours

• It's quiet on the economic calendar front.
• Wyoming Blockchain Symposium continues. Coinfest Asia gets underway.

Never miss a beat with The Block's daily digest of the most influential events happening across the digital asset ecosystem.