US Interest in Bitcoin Sinks to Near 5-Year Low

Today in crypto, Boltz paused its Bitcoin swap service after a wave of AI-assisted hacking attempts and Hashdex said it will liquidate its spot Bitcoin ETF after failing to attract enough investor assets. Meanwhile, Bernstein warned that delays to the CLARITY Act could pressure crypto valuations.Boltz pauses service after wave of AI-assisted hacking attemptsBoltz, a non-custodial Bitcoin swap service, says it is disabling its service until further notice after a rise in AI-assisted hacking attempts over the last few months.In a post to X on Monday, Boltz said the decision came after seeing a steady increase in “automated AI-assisted probing” of its infrastructure this year. “After reviewing the results of our own recent security scans, we cannot responsibly re-enable Boltz swaps, especially as we are being actively targeted by what appear to be multiple resourceful groups while we race to deploy fixes.” Boltz’s operational pause highlights the difficulty that smaller development teams are facing, as attackers discover vulnerabilities and adapt exploits faster than they can respond.“In the past few days alone we saw a drastic acceleration [of attacks] and we do not believe this asymmetry will reverse,” said Boltz. Hashdex to liquidate its spot Bitcoin ETFHashdex is shutting down its spot Bitcoin ETF after failing to attract enough investor assets, marking the first major closure among the wave of US spot BTC funds.The asset manager said it will liquidate the fund this month after reviewing its trading activity, operating costs and investor demand. Remaining shareholders will receive cash distributions once the fund sells its approximately 225 Bitcoin holdings. The ETF, which trades under the DEFI ticker on NYSE Arca, currently manages about $14.3 million in assets.The fund entered the US spot Bitcoin ETF market in March 2024, months after rival products had already launched. Despite initial optimism that it could gain traction, the ETF never grew beyond roughly $18 million in assets. It originally debuted in 2022 as a Bitcoin futures ETF before converting to a spot fund. Among US-listed spot Bitcoin ETFs, it ranks as the smallest by assets, highlighting the growing divide between dominant issuers and smaller competitors.CLARITY Act failure could send crypto valuations lower: BernsteinThe odds of the CLARITY Act passage are dwindling as the US Senate is scheduled to begin summer recess at the end of this week, threatening another leg down for cryptocurrency valuations, according to wealth manager Bernstein.Bernstein said that the Senate’s failure to pass the legislation could trigger an immediate negative “industry knee-jerk reaction,” which may result in another leg down for Bitcoin and the broader crypto market.“From a tactical standpoint, we expect the crypto market to bottom and start showing momentum towards late Q3 and early Q4 prior to the mid-terms,” Bernstein analysts wrote in a Monday report shared with Cointelegraph.At the same time, however, the analysts said that Senate failure to pass the legislation may bring more proactive policy support from regulators, including the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which may accelerate rulemaking initiatives under Project Crypto.Project Crypto is a regulatory initiative first announced by SEC Chairman Paul Atkins in July 2025, which was later expanded into a joint staff initiative between the SEC and CFTC in September 2025. The initiative aims to create a workable regulatory framework for digital assets using existing agency authority while Congress finalizes crypto market legislation under the CLARITY Act.