Equities update - August 7th, 2026

Week 32 saw a strong rebound across global equities as investors looked through the previous week's deleveraging and renewed confidence in the AI investment cycle following another broadly positive set of corporate earnings. Risk appetite was further strengthened supported by softer-than-expected US payroll data that reduced expectations for a September rate hike and contributed to further weakness in the US dollar. Against this backdrop, earnings across Bitcoin miners were generally weak, as lower Bitcoin prices and depressed hashprice led to multiple miners mining below their cost curve. Nevertheless, adoption across stablecoins and tokenised financial infrastructure continued to broaden, even as momentum behind the CLARITY Act stalled, with meaningful legislative progress now increasingly likely to be pushed into the post-election period or the next Congress.

Week 32 key developments in Blockchain Equities:

• Index performance: The Index declined 0.8% during the week, underperforming Bitcoin, which rose 4.1%. Macro sentiment improved into the end of the week following a materially weaker-than-expected US labour-market report, with non-farm payrolls falling by 23k in July versus expectations for an 80k increase, while June payrolls were also revised sharply lower. Although unemployment edged down to 4.1%, this largely reflected a decline in labour-force participation. The softer employment data reduced expectations for a September Federal Reserve rate increase, with market-implied odds falling from roughly 55–60% to around 40–45%, supporting risk assets. 

• Block Index key movers: 7-day top performers: CoinShares (+14.3%), Mercari Inc (+13.3%), Oracle (+12.5%) 7-day worst performers: Cipher Digital (-19.6%), Hut-8 (-16.3%), CleanSpark (-12.3%) 

• BLOCK Index July 2026 rebalance – diversifying and refining exposure across the blockchain ecosystem: The July rebalance reflected the continued evolution of the blockchain-equity universe, with Bitdeer Technologies and Bullish added to the Index, while Canaan, SoftBank and Ceres were removed. Bitdeer strengthens exposure within Mining Operations through its large-scale self-mining capacity and proprietary SEALMINER hardware platform, while Bullish broadens exposure to institutional digital-asset infrastructure across trading, custody, market data and indices through CoinDesk, alongside emerging tokenisation opportunities. The removals largely reflected declining thematic relevance: SoftBank’s blockchain investments have remained dormant, Canaan remains heavily exposed to the challenged ASIC hardware market with comparatively limited mining scale, and Ceres’ blockchain exposure was materially reduced following SBI Holdings’ acquisition of its Bitbank stake. Overall, the rebalance continues to improve the Index’s thematic purity by increasing exposure to businesses with more direct, scalable and strategically relevant participation in the evolving blockchain ecosystem.

•  Earnings recap – key holdings:

  • Mercari Inc, Block Inc, AMD  – Positive

  • Circle Internet Group, Galaxy Digital, Monex Group, MercadoLibre  – Mixed

  • CleanSpark, Cipher Digital, RIOT Platforms, Hut-8 – Negative

Other news - Index constituents:

• Galaxy expanded its institutional digital-asset infrastructure offering through a partnership with BNY, which will integrate Galaxy’s staking capabilities into BNY’s custody platform and use the company as a design partner for broader blockchain infrastructure. Separately, Galaxy raised approximately US$3.5bn of senior secured debt to fund the next phase of its Helios data-centre buildout, further demonstrating its shift towards long-duration AI infrastructure revenues alongside its traditional digital-asset businesses.

• Bitdeer signed a 16-year, US$4.7bn AI/HPC lease at its 100% renewable energy Tydal facility covering 121MW of critical IT capacity, with approximately 90% expected NOI margins and an estimated US$500m of remaining capex.

• Strategy continued to prioritise liquidity and preferred-equity stability over pure Bitcoin accumulation, selling 1,638 BTC for approximately US$105m during the week while issuing c.US$291m of common equity. The company also repurchased c.US$81m of STRC at an average price of around US$89 and increased its USD Reserve to approximately US$4bn, taking cumulative Bitcoin sales since late May to 5,258 BTC for US$323m.

• Circle announced the founding validator cohort for its Arc blockchain ahead of a planned 16 September mainnet launch, with participants including BlackRock, DTCC, Mastercard, Visa, Galaxy Digital, Standard Chartered and SBI.

• BlackRock expanded its tokenisation strategy into Europe by launching tokenised share classes across selected money-market funds within its European cash-management platform.

Other news – non - index constituents:

• Wells Fargo announced plans to launch tokenised deposits for corporate and commercial clients, initially covering US dollars and sterling and enabling 24/7 programmable settlement on its proprietary blockchain infrastructure.

• Schroders received approval from the Central Bank of Ireland for a tokenised share class of a US dollar money-market fund, supported by JPMorgan's Kinexys infrastructure.