Bitcoin Hits 8-Month High of $85,326 as $383 Million in Shorts Liquidated

Google and Apple are both hiring for digital-asset roles, a sign that stablecoins and tokenization are becoming core expertise inside Big Tech. Google Cloud is seeking an architect in Hong Kong to help protocol foundations, exchanges and custodians tokenize real-world assets across Asia-Pacific, while Apple is filling an Apple Pay strategy lead role focused on Apple Card, Apple Cash and peer-to-peer payments. The listings follow Samsung's plan to build stablecoin features into Galaxy phones through Samsung Wallet. Separately, Kalshi is facing accusations of fake trading volume on its newly launched crypto perpetual futures, with analyst Benny flagging that Kalshi's Ether perp logged 539 million in 24-hour volume against just $3.1 million in open interest, a 174-to-1 gap, and pointing to repetitive $5,500 trades making up as much as 58% of daily volume; Kalshi's product lead pushed back, saying the numbers reflect maximum potential payout, not fake activity. MicroStrategy added 950 BTC for $75.7 million last week, its first purchase since late August, funded from the company's dollar reserve, which now sits at $5 billion, bringing its holdings to 846,000 Bitcoin bought for a total of $63.81 billion.

Bitcoin surged past the $86,000 level today, touching its highest point since January. As of 10:07 p.m. Thailand time, Bitcoin had climbed 6.04% to $86,088.80 in trading on the Coin Metrics platform, while analysts expect Bitcoin to potentially push up to the $90,000 level. Matt Hougan, chief investment officer of Bitwise, told CNBC's Squawk Box Europe that the "crypto winter" is over and predicted this will become the strongest and longest bull market in crypto history. Over the past five days, Bitcoin's price has risen more than 7%, and over the past three months it has climbed nearly 35%. Analysts at BTIG said in a report that as long as Bitcoin remains above the $75,000 level, the bulls can set a target for the price to break through $82,000 on its way toward $90,000. Bitcoin's rally came even after the U.S. Senate last week blocked the Clarity Act from moving forward. Hougan said the bill's failure to pass the Senate could also be a supportive factor for crypto prices, since the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission will continue to set the rules.

Bitmine Immersion Technologies bought another 27,562 Ethereum, worth roughly $74 million, extending a weekly buying streak that has run without pause since its treasury strategy launched on June 30, 2025. The NYSE-listed company said Monday its holdings now total 5,983,940 ETH, worth about $16.1 billion at a reference price of $2,688 per coin, which represents 4.9% of Ethereum's total supply of 122.1 million tokens and leaves Bitmine, by its own count, 98% of the way to its stated goal of controlling 5% of the network, a target it calls the "Alchemy of 5%." Chairman Tom Lee said a crypto bull market has been underway since late June, driven by a rotation out of AI stocks back into crypto, strengthening tokenization fundamentals and the end of the four-year cycle, and argued Ethereum has been the best-performing macro asset this quarter, outpacing the S&P 500 by 6,519 basis points. Counting cash, other tokens and what it calls "moonshot" investments, Bitmine's total holdings reached $17.1 billion as of Saturday, including 212 Bitcoin, $714 million in cash and marketable securities, a $180 million stake in Beast Industries and a $105 million position in Eightco Holdings. Bitmine remains the world's largest Ethereum treasury and the second-largest crypto treasury overall behind Michael Saylor's Strategy, and it continues to generate staking income, with 5,067,309 ETH, about 85% of its holdings, staked through its MAVAN platform for projected annualized revenue of roughly $357 million.