According to reports from AMBCrypto and WuBlockchain, Binance has achieved a significant milestone with its Bitcoin holdings climbing above 693,000 BTC - the highest level in almost two years. The exchange's Bitcoin balance has increased by approximately 77,000 BTC since the end of April, representing a substantial accumulation of digital assets. This surge is primarily attributed to investors transferring Bitcoin to Binance during periods of strong price appreciation, including the May rally and the recent August rally. CryptoQuant data shows the reserves rising from roughly 616,000 BTC in April to about 667,500 BTC by mid-August, with Darkfost's more recent figures putting the balance at 693,000 BTC by early September. As reported by Cryptorep, Binance now controls approximately 30% of Bitcoin reserves held across major exchanges, highlighting the exchange's dominant position in the market.
Bitcoin is currently trading at $78,000, representing a 30% recovery from its August lows around $60,000, as traders brace for major policy events. According to CoinDesk, the US CPI held steady at 3.4%, matching both the previous reading and expectations, while Wednesday's hotter-than-expected PPI reading triggered a brief selloff with Bitcoin down about 1%. Analyst Michaël van de Poppe has flagged $75,500 as the level that matters most in the near term, saying a sweep below it could bring Bitcoin down to $74,500, which he described as an ideal area to look for long entries. Another analyst noted that even a further pullback wouldn't necessarily be bad news, and could instead be forming a larger bullish pattern, as long as Bitcoin holds above the mid-$60,000 range, with major support just above $76,000.
According to CryptoQuant analyst Darkfost's latest data, Binance altcoin inflows have climbed to a seven-day average of approximately 31,800 deposit transactions, nearly quadrupling from 8,300 transactions in July. The surge comes as crypto markets prepare for the CLARITY Act vote scheduled for 2:15 p.m. ET on September 15 and Wednesday's Federal Reserve decision. Other major exchanges also recorded increased activity, with Coinbase altcoin inflows rising from roughly 2,200 to 4,700 transactions and Bybit reaching around 2,700 transactions. Darkfost noted that the increase could be tied to selling pressure but emphasized it was not unusually high at the time of analysis. The data tracks transaction counts rather than dollar values, with CryptoQuant defining inflow transaction count as the total number of deposits made to an exchange.
In a significant development for Bitcoin security, more than 100 researchers working alongside AI coding agents have made substantial progress in quantum attack prevention. According to recent reports, they have decreased the benchmark for a key step in quantum attacks on Bitcoin and Ethereum from 10.75 billion down to 1.496 billion between late May and July 26, though the paper was published just this week. The competition, called ECDSA.Fail and run by Eigen Labs, scored circuit designs by multiplying logical qubits against Toffoli gates, with the leading design using 1,151 logical qubits and roughly 1.3 million Toffoli gates. This represents a significant improvement, as the leading score came in at about half of Google Quantum AI's March benchmark, though the two used different counting methods and don't compare cleanly. This advancement addresses concerns about quantum computers potentially reversing Bitcoin's secp256k1 signature math to derive private keys from public ones.
According to the report, the second reason behind the surge could be Binance's Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU), which is designed to help protect users in extreme situations. The fund intends to deploy $1 billion to secure roughly 15,000 BTC to help the Bitcoin community through this transitional period. Additionally, the rise in scams and hacks, where total losses have already crossed $1.732 billion in 2026, has prompted some holders to temporarily move their Bitcoin to established third-party platforms for security reasons. Santiment notes that some Bitcoin holders moved coins from self-custody devices to exchange wallets for security after the ColdCard hardware wallet incident, which can increase an exchange's reported reserves without showing that those holders intend to sell. Cryptorep emphasizes that the current movement focuses attention on the amount of BTC available in one of the market's main exchanges and raises questions about potential selling pressure.
