People walk past a neon sign advertising a Bitcoin and Ethereum crypto currency exchange in Warsaw, Poland on 19 May, 2024.
Jaap Arriens | Nurphoto | Getty Images
Bitcoin is a stone’s throw from its all-time high after an overnight rally that also propelled ether to levels not seen since 2021.
The price of bitcoin was last higher by 1% at $119,782, according to Coin Metrics. Ether was down about 1.6% at $4,181, after surging on Sunday to its highest level since December 2021. On Friday, it broke $4,000 for the first time since December.
The moves took place alongside a rise in U.S. equity futures earlier in the morning, as investors looked ahead to a batch of key inflation reports. Stocks are also trading on the cusp of all-time highs.
Given how hot cryptocurrencies and stocks ran in the second quarter, many investors expected a healthy and strategic cooldown in August, which has historically proven a weak trading month for trading including in the crypto market.
The crypto surge has been largely fueled by buying during Asia’s trading hours, driven by the rapid expansion of U.S. debt, according to Markus Thielen, CEO of 10x Research. He noted that bitcoin’s breakout of its “consolidation” in early July coincided with President Donald Trump signing of the Big Beautiful Bill, which included a $5 trillion debt ceiling increase.
“Bitcoin’s breakout isn’t random, it’s being fueled by the fastest U.S. debt expansion in history and that momentum isn’t slowing down,” he said. “Whether the economy stays strong or dips into recession, the flood of new debt is a tailwind for hard assets like bitcoin and gold.”
“The next major resistance level at $133,000 is now in sight, with positioning and market structure favoring the bulls,” he added.
Meanwhile, stocks tied to the price of ether rallied, as inflows into the new crop of treasury companies that’s emerged recently have pushed the price of the second largest cryptocurrency above $4,000 – historically a challenging level for investors psychologically and technically.
Shares of Bitmine Immersion Technologies surged 25% — after closing up almost the same amount Friday — while SharpLink Gaming gained 11%. Last week, ether ETFs saw greater inflows ($326.83 million) than bitcoin ETFs ($246.75 million), according to SoSoValue.
Bitcoin is just about 3% off its July 14 all-time high. Ether is still off its November 2021 record by 14%.
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As part of the offering, Circle is offering its underwriters a 30-day option to buy an additional 1.5 million shares.
Circle shares closed Tuesday up 1.3% after the company reporting its first quarterly results as a publicly traded company. While charges tied to its IPO weighed on its second-quarter results and led to a loss of $4.48 per share, it saw revenue rise 53% on the back of strong stablecoin growth.
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Mike Intrator, co-founder and CEO of CoreWeave, speaks at the Nasdaq headquarters in New York on March 28, 2025.
Michael M. Santiago | Getty Images News | Getty Images
CoreWeave shares fell about 6% in extended trading on Tuesday even as the provider of artificial intelligence infrastructure beat estimates for second-quarter revenue
Here’s how the company did in comparison with LSEG consensus:
Earnings per share: Loss of 21 cents
Revenue: $1.21 billion vs. $1.08 billion expected
Revenue more than tripled from $395.4 million a year earlier, CoreWeave said in a statement. The company registered a $290.5 million net loss, compared with a $323 million loss in second quarter of 2024. CoreWeave’s earnings per share figure wasn’t immediately comparable with estimates from LSEG.
CoreWeave’s operating margin shrank to 2% from 20% a year ago due primarily to $145 million in stock-based compensation costs. This is CoreWeave’s second quarter of full financial results as a public company following its IPO in March.
CoreWeave pointed to an expansion in business with OpenAI, a major client and investor. Also during the quarter, CoreWeave acquired Weights and Biases, a startup with software for monitoring AI models, for $1.4 billion.
In May, management touted 420% revenue growth, alongside widening losses and nearly $9 billion in debt. The stock still doubled anyway over the course of the next month.
CoreWeave shares became available on Nasdaq at the end of the first quarter, after the company sold 37.5 shares at $40 each, yielding $1.5 billion in proceeds. As of Tuesday’s close, the stock was trading at $148.75 for a market cap of over $72 billion.
A CoreWeave data center project with up to 250 megawatts of capacity is set to be delivered in 2026, the company said in the statement.
Executives will discuss the results and issue guidance on a conference call starting at 5 p.m. ET.
This is breaking news. Please check back for updates.
U.S. President Donald Trump (L) invites Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang to speak in the Cross Hall of the White House during an event on “Investing in America” on April 30, 2025 in Washington, DC.
Andrew Harnik | Getty Images
The Trump administration is still working out the details of its 15% export tax on Nvidia and AMD and could bring deals of this kind to more companies, the White House’s Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday.
“Right now it stands with these two companies. Perhaps it could expand in the future to other companies,” said Leavitt, the White House’s spokesperson.
“The legality of it, the mechanics of it, is still being ironed out by the Department of Commerce, and I would defer you to them for any further details on how it will actually be implemented,” she continued.
President Donald Trump confirmed on Monday that he had negotiated a deal with Nvidia in which the U.S. government approves export licenses for the China-specific H20 AI chip in exchange for a 15% cut of revenue. Advanced Micro Devices also got licenses approved in exchange for a proportion of its China sales, the White House confirmed.
“I said, ‘If I’m going to do that, I want you to pay us as a country something, because I’m giving you a release,'” Trump said Monday.
“We follow rules the U.S. government sets for our participation in worldwide markets,” Nvidia said in a statement this week.
Trump said the export licenses for AMD and Nvidia were a done deal. But lawyers and experts who follow trade have warned that Trump’s deal may be complicated because of existing laws that regulate how the government can charge fees for export licenses.
The Commerce Department didn’t immediately return a request for comment.
The H20 is Nvidia’s Chinese-specific chip that is slowed down on purpose to comply with U.S. export relations. It’s related to the H100 and H200 chips that are used in the U.S., and was introduced after the Biden administration implemented export controls on artificial intelligence chips in 2023.
Earlier this year, Nvidia said that it was on track to sell more than $8 billion worth of H20 chips in a single quarter before the Trump administration in April said that it would require a license to export the chip.
Trump signaled in July that he was likely to approve export licenses for the chip after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang visited the White House.
The U.S. regulates AI chips like those made by Nvidia for national security reasons, saying that they could be used by the Chinese government to leapfrog U.S. capabilities in AI, or they could be used by the Chinese military or linked groups.
The Chinese government has been encouraging local companies in recent weeks to avoid using Nvidia’s H20 chips for any government or national security-related work, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday.