The Evening Brief: Russia mines out; Senate targets Trump's bank; scams surge on MiCA migration

Russia banned cryptocurrency mining and pool participation in Moscow, the Moscow Region, and parts of Kursk through December 31, 2032, according to government decree No. 936 signed July 25 and published July 31. The measure directly cuts mining capacity in the world's second-largest Bitcoin mining jurisdiction. Russia accounted for an estimated 175 exahashes per second, or 16.4% of Bitcoin's global computing power in Q1 2026, placing it second only to the United States, per the desk's reporting citing Luxor's Hashrate Index. The ban cites power grid strain, with mining currently consuming roughly 1 gigawatt in the Moscow power system and regional data-center capacity potentially reaching 3.6 gigawatts by 2032, according to Interfax reporting the desk cited.

In Washington, the Senate Banking Committee's Democratic minority introduced the Ending Presidential Corruption in Banking Act on August 15, in response to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency's approval of World Liberty Financial's national bank charter on January 5, 2026. The bill would prohibit Presidents, Vice Presidents, their immediate families, and senior government officials from owning or controlling banks. The measure represents a direct legislative response to what Senator Elizabeth Warren and eight co-sponsors characterize as an unprecedented conflict of interest. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon stated in June that the Senate's Digital Asset Market Clarity Act had "almost no legal protections" to prevent illicit finance and that banks "will fight it" if stablecoin yield provisions remain unchanged. The Clarity Act requires 60 Senate votes, with debate scheduled to conclude in mid-September before midterm elections, and several Republican senators already signaling they may withhold support without bank-friendly adjustments.

Meanwhile, the EU's Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation came into full force on July 1, forcing more than 1,700 unlicensed crypto platforms to exit and displacing up to 10 million users into only 323 licensed alternatives. The mass migration created an immediate window that scammers exploited. European regulators now report a coordinated surge in regulatory impersonation scams, with the European Securities and Markets Authority confirming criminals have misused its identity, name, and logo in falsified documents. France's AMF documented scammers posing as AMF employees and convincing victims to pay upfront fees to recover stolen funds. The Netherlands' AFM and Austria's Financial Market Authority issued warnings targeting retail users to verify migration providers against the official ESMA register before transferring assets.

Institutional bitcoin positioning showed divergent signals. Tudor Investment raised its direct stake in BlackRock's spot bitcoin ETF (IBIT) by 18.9% to 688,529 shares in Q2 2026, ending a year-long series of quarterly reductions and reversing 12 months of consecutive cuts. The Q2 stake was valued at $22.9 million; current holdings are worth approximately $24.5 million. However, the position remains 91.4% below the 8.05 million-share peak reached at year-end 2024, when it was valued at $427 million. UBS increased its call option exposure on IBIT to 1.95 million underlying shares in Q2 2026, a 24-fold increase from 80,000 shares in Q1, while direct IBIT holdings rose 12% to 407,890 shares worth approximately $13.6 million. UBS cut put option exposure roughly in half, shifting its net posture more bullish, though direct holdings remain below the 548,614 shares held at year-end 2025. The desk's reporting notes that one quarter of buying after sustained selling does not by itself establish renewed conviction, and that the position's size relative to Tudor's total portfolio suggests bitcoin remains a modest allocation.

Capital concentration into regulated infrastructure hardened in H1 2026. Crypto startups raised $11.2 billion across 377 disclosed funding rounds, with zero dollars going to permissionless, ungoverned projects, according to NeosLegal tracking cited by the desk. Payments and stablecoins captured $3.7 billion, prediction markets pulled in $2 billion, and crypto exchanges and trading platforms raised $1.7 billion. All disclosed institutional capital flowed to businesses requiring regulatory approval to operate. The hardware wallet provider SafePal disclosed on Sunday that an authorization flaw in its order-tracking plug-in exposed names, addresses, and contact details of 39,798 customers who placed orders between March 2025 and April 2026, though no cryptocurrency funds, seed phrases, private keys, or government identification documents were compromised.

The desk's boards recorded net selling pressure. Bitcoin traded at $63,653.85 on August 16, down 0.34% in 24 hours and 2.97% over 30 days, with the Fear and Greed Index at 34 (Fear). Bitcoin ETF flows were negative on August 14 at negative $56.2 million, with the last five sessions showing net outflows of $385.2 million and three consecutive days of outflows. The desk's Whale Watch board shows $62.6 million in net bitcoin value moving onto exchanges over the past 72 hours, with the biggest single inflow being $62.6 million in BTC to Coinbase. Separately, $149.8 million in USDT moved onto Bitfinex, indicating stablecoin buying power remained available on the margin despite the broader selling posture. Open interest on BTC futures at OKX stands at $2.1 billion with funding at 0.01% for the 8-hour rate (11.0% annualized), and the long-short ratio sits at 2.24, suggesting leveraged longs remain positioned aggressively relative to shorts despite the outflow pattern.