Monday’s announcement that Texas Governor Greg Abbott set a moratorium on approval of ERCOT-linked data centers pending an audit won’t impact miners’ approved electricity contracts. Bitcoin miners with operations in Texas are not expected to be impacted by a moratorium on approval of data center projects connected to the state’s grid operator ordered by Governor Greg Abbott, Bernstein analysts said Tuesday. Abbott on Monday directed the Public Utility Commission of Texas and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) to audit all data centers seeking to connect to the state’s power grid. The duration of the audit was not specified and comes amid increasing public backlash to the pace of data center build-out across the state, The Texas Tribune reported. Bernstein analysts told clients on Tuesday that as most of the Bitcoin (BTC) miners operating in Texas are under contract for approved electric capacity, those operations are unlikely to be impacted by the moratorium. Read more
XAUt added to its bullion backing during gold’s worst quarter since 2013, as tokenized commodity holder counts continued to rise. The physical gold reserves backing Tether Gold (XAUt) increased 9.5% in the second quarter, which Tether said reflected growing demand for tokenized gold exposure. Gold fell 14.1% during the quarter, its worst quarterly performance since the second quarter of 2013, data from TradingView shows. “Holders of Tether Gold are not only buying XAUt when the price of gold is rising. They are using periods of market weakness to increase their ownership of physical gold through a product that is fully backed, transparent, portable and accessible onchain,” said Paolo Ardoino, CEO of Tether, in Monday’s XAUt attestation report. Read more
Italy’s largest bank Intesa Sanpaolo increased its staked Ether ETF position to $7.1 million while reducing its holdings in two spot Bitcoin ETFs. Intesa Sanpaolo, Italy’s largest banking group, tripled its position in an iShares staked Ether exchange-traded fund during the second quarter while reducing its position in the iShares spot Bitcoin ETF. The bank reported holding 349,600 shares of the iShares Staked Ethereum Trust ETF (ETHB) worth $7.1 million as of June 30, according to Friday filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. That was up from 116,200 shares valued at $3.15 million at the end of March. Intesa retained 3.47 million shares of the ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF (ARKB) worth $67.6 million, its largest crypto-linked holding in the filing. The share count was down about 4% from the first quarter. Read more