Businesses Embrace Bitcoin Amid 2025 Bull Market Surge – River

Cryptocurrency

Summary:

Businesses poured $12.5 billion more into Bitcoin, elevating corporate holdings to uncharted territories in 2025.

Businesses have become a driving force in Bitcoin’s 2025 bull market, with corporate holdings now accounting for more than 6% of its total supply, according to a new report from River Financial.

The report found that in the first eight months of 2025 alone, business inflows into Bitcoin surpassed last year’s total by $12.5 billion, pushing cumulative holdings to 1.3 million BTC.

That represents a 21x increase since 2020. By comparison, individuals still hold the majority of Bitcoin at 65.9% of the supply, while funds, governments, and other entities make up the remainder.

Treasury firms lead amid rising mainstream adoption

River’s data shows Bitcoin treasury companies, firms created primarily to hold large Bitcoin reserves, have accounted for 76% of purchases since January 2024. Collectively, they manage more than $100 billion in equity, bonds, and other securities tied to Bitcoin exposure.

Additionally, the report highlighted that conventional businesses, ranging from real estate and healthcare to construction and software, are increasingly adding Bitcoin to their treasuries.

According to the report: “Bitcoin is no longer confined to miners or crypto-native firms.”

It highlighted that 3,000 U.S. businesses now use River’s services. The majority are small- to medium-sized enterprises with fewer than 50 employees, often allocating a significant portion of income to Bitcoin as a hedge against inflation and banking risks.

Shift in corporate strategy

Companies are allocating an average of 22% of net income to Bitcoin, with nearly one-third now holding more than half their treasury reserves in the asset.

River attributed the trend to Bitcoin’s fixed supply, 24/7 liquidity, and protection against counterparty risk, particularly after high-profile banking collapses in recent years.

Additionally, the report said that regulatory and accounting clarity has also cleared major barriers, particularly after the 2024 update of GAAP standards, which allowed businesses to report Bitcoin at fair market value, removing a key obstacle.

Meanwhile, the U.S. government’s creation of a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve earlier this year further reinforced its legitimacy in corporate circles. States like Texas and New Hampshire have also passed legislation to set up their own BTC reserves.

Adoption poised to accelerate

Despite the surge, fewer than 1% of businesses worldwide currently hold Bitcoin.

According to River, public perception remains the largest hurdle, with surveys showing that many executives still lack a basic understanding of the asset.

Still, River projects that Bitcoin will become a standard feature of corporate balance sheets as more firms openly share their treasury strategies.

The report said: “We believe that every business will hold Bitcoin on its balance sheet, while continuing to spend in dollars for the time being.”

Source: Cryptoslate

Risk Warnings and Disclaimers

You understand and acknowledge that there is a high degree of risk involved in trading. Following any strategies or investment methods may lead to potential losses. The content on the site is provided by our contributors and analysts for information purposes only. You are solely responsible for determining whether any trading assets, securities, strategy, or any other product is suitable for investing based on your own investment objectives and financial situation.

Add to Favorites

Manuel

Central Bank

Political

Stephen Miran pledged to lawmakers Thursday that he will act independently if he were confirmed as a new governor on the Federal Reserve Board, but he won't step down from his current White House post.

He said that he was counseled to take a leave of absence as chair of the Council of Economic Advisers if confirmed to serve on the central bank and then return to the White House after his term is up.

"I have received advice from counsel that what is required is an unpaid leave of absence from the Council of Economic Advisers," Miran said. He would take the post recently abandoned by Adriana Kugler that expires on Jan. 31.

"Considering the term for which I'm being nominated is a little bit more than four months, that is what I would be taking. As long as that is the advice of counsel, I'll follow the law."

Some lawmakers expressed skepticism that Miran would be able to act independently while maintaining his White House post.

"You're going to be technically an employee of the president of the United States, an independent member of the board of the Federal Reserve. That's ridiculous," Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) said.

Miran said that if he were nominated for a term longer than four months, he would resign from the Council of Economic Advisers.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) asked if the president would have him continue to serve as chair of the Council of Economic Advisers if Miran didn't vote the way the president wanted.

"I do not know the inside of anyone else's mind," Miran said. "What I can tell you is that if I am confirmed in the Federal Reserve, I will act independently based on my own independent analysis of the economy and climate policy."

Both Republicans and Democrats questioned Miran about the independence of the Fed during a more than two-hour hearing on Thursday.

"I think the Federal Reserve needs to remain quite and completely clear in its independence," said Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), noting that what Miran told him in private about upholding Fed independence still stands.

Miran told Scott he "couldn't be more in agreement that independence of the central bank is of paramount importance for the economy, for financial markets, for the long run stewardship of the country."

In a heated exchange, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) tried to test whether Miran is independent with a series of questions, including whether President Trump won the election in 2020, to which Miran repeatedly said Congress certified that President Joe Biden won.

Miran was also asked whether the Bureau of Labor Statistics faked numbers to make them look good under Biden.

"Just two straightforward questions about your independence, and you've blown both of them," Warren said.

Invoking Warren, Republican Sen. John Kennedy asked Miran, "Are you Donald Trump's puppet?" Miran replied, "No, I will continue to be independent in my thinking process."

Kennedy said, "We're gonna hold you to that. You need to call them like you see them."

Republican Sen. Mike Rounds asked Miran whether it's fair for the president to lobby the Fed to move things in a direction he believes can move the economy in a better direction.

Miran said he felt it was important to hear a variety of views, including opposing views, to make the right decision on policy, which would include allowing the president to lobby.

Miran's nomination to replace former Fed governor Adriana Kugler's seat was always a chance for Trump to shape the Federal Reserve. But with the president's contested firing of Fed governor Lisa Cook, the deliberations are becoming much more heated.

Warren and all Democrats on the Senate Banking Committee sent a letter last Friday to committee chair Tim Scott to postpone consideration of all Federal Reserve nominees following what they called Trump's attempt to "illegally fire" Fed governor Cook.

Instead of moving forward with Miran's nomination to the Fed, Banking Committee Democrats urged Scott to hold a hearing on the economic implications of President Trump's attacks on central bank independence for American families.

Warren has called Trump's firing of governor Cook "an authoritarian power grab that blatantly violates the Federal Reserve Act, and must be overturned in court."

In an essay last March for the Manhattan Institute, Miran called for reforms to recalibrate the Fed's governance to ensure it "remains insulated from day-to-day politics while enhancing its accountability and democratic legitimacy." Miran argues the Fed suffers from "groupthink" that has led to monetary policy errors.

Specifically, he called for increasing the president's oversight of the Fed, shortening governors' current 14-year terms, and imposing bans on what he called the revolving door between the executive branch and the Fed. Yet, Miran, currently chair of the president's Council of Economic Advisers, would be going from the executive branch to the Fed.

Miran also called for nationalizing the 12 regional Federal Reserve banks and giving the governors of the states in their districts the power to select each regional Fed's board of directors, which in turn would select the president of the regional Fed bank.

The confirmation hearing comes as a federal judge is expected to decide shortly whether the president can fire Lisa Cook for cause as a Federal Reserve governor because of allegations of mortgage fraud.

If President Trump is successful in his attempt to fire Cook for cause, he has suggested Miran could be considered for Cook's seat — a lengthier term at the Fed that won't expire until 2038.

"We might switch him to the other — it's a longer term," the president said during a Cabinet meeting last week.

TD Cowen's Jaret Seiberg said, "Both developments could give President Trump control over monetary policy, including whether to substantially reduce interest rates. It also opens the door for Trump to take control of the Federal Reserve banks."

The committee has voted to advance nominees the following week after confirmation hearings with, for instance, SEC Chair Paul Atkins. The same could happen here, with Miran being voted out of committee next Wednesday or Thursday. That would be followed by a floor vote in the full Senate soon after to have Miran in place for the next Fed policy meeting on Sept. 16-17.

Miran's appointment would add not only a Trump administration official to the Fed board, but also another member who is in favor of the central bank cutting interest rates as soon as its September policy meeting.

Source: Yahoo Finance

Risk Warnings and Disclaimers

Add to Favorites

Adam

Economic

Google can thank OpenAI for its big win in court.

After a federal judge ruled that Google wouldn't be forced to sell its Chrome browser — avoiding the harshest potential remedies in a landmark antitrust case — shares of the search giant surged by almost double digits.

What a relief for Google and its investors: They've been weighed down by the uncertainty of the pending decision for months. And now the company can move forward after prevailing over antitrust prosecutors set on reining in Big Tech's power.

But the court's ruling placed Google's strange relationship with generative AI on full display, highlighting what amounts to a double-edged sword for the company amid the new tech.

Popular AI-powered chatbots, which perform like more intuitive, capable, and far-reaching search engines, are threatening to displace Google's legacy search experience. They pose significant and unwelcome competition in a way that Bing has simply not.

But perhaps not entirely unwelcome. The competition's dramatic arrival meant two things: billions of dollars flowing into their operations and a legal lifeline for Google, providing a defense against monopoly accusations.

The judge, Amit P. Mehta, did not mince words, writing, "The emergence of GenAI changed the course of this case."

Google is still the dominant player in search. But AI technology has the potential to radically transform the landscape.

"Today, tens of millions of people use GenAI chatbots, like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude, to gather information that they previously sought through internet search," Mehta wrote. "These GenAI chatbots are not yet close to replacing [general search engines], but the industry expects that developers will continue to add features to GenAI products to perform more like GSEs."

To Google's credit, it understands the risk GenAI poses to its core business and has its own, Gemini, backed by its own search might.

And now, in the context of a competitive marketplace, it's harder to justify harsh restrictions on Google. The rising popularity and investment interest in AI companies means there are, or will be, clear alternatives to Google's search empire. Thus, tougher antitrust remedies placed on Google would also limit its ability to compete with AI upstarts in the nascent arena of AI-infused answer engines.

"These new realities give the court hope that Google will not simply outbid competitors for distribution if superior products emerge," Mehta wrote. "It also weighs in favor of 'caution' before disadvantaging Google in this highly competitive space."

We've heard this argument before, though not from the powers that be.

Eddy Cue, Apple's services chief, made similar arguments when he testified earlier this year, downplaying the importance of a lucrative search partnership with Google and saying that AI providers will ultimately become search engine alternatives.

As you might guess, that makes Apple another winner in the aftermath of the court ruling. Google won't be forced to end its deal to be the default search engine for Apple's Safari browser. Shares of Apple rose around 3%.

OpenAI and its conceptual peers managed to become an existential threat to Google and the paradigm of search, thereby serving as a justification for preventing its monopoly from being broken up.

Source: finance.yahoo

To stay updated on all economic events of today, please check out our Economic calendar

Risk Warnings and Disclaimers

Add to Favorites

Adam

Economic

DeepSeek is developing an artificial intelligence model with more advanced AI agent features to compete with US rivals like OpenAI in a newer frontier of the technology, according to people familiar with the matter.

The Hangzhou-based startup is building an AI model that’s designed to carry out multi-step actions on a person’s behalf with minimal direction from the user, said the people. The system is also meant to learn and improve based on its prior actions, the people said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the information is private.

DeepSeek did not respond to two separate emails seeking comment.

The company’s plan for a new agent-focused model, which hasn’t been previously reported, mirrors a broader shift in the tech industry.

OpenAI, Anthropic and Microsoft Corp. have each launched their own takes on agent software in recent months to streamline personal and professional tasks. Manus AI, a Chinese-founded startup, also gained global attention with what it calls a general AI agent.

Rather than simply respond to a user with a few pithy lines of text, as many chatbots do, this newer crop of services is intended to field more complex tasks, ranging from researching a vacation to writing and debugging computer code.

call to action icon

The goal for DeepSeek, and much of the industry, is to build increasingly autonomous AI systems that can initiate and execute complicated real-world action with little need for human intervention. To date, however, AI agents often require a fair amount of adult supervision.

Unlike its Chinese rivals, DeepSeek has maintained a fairly muted pace of development. That’s as rivals from Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. to Tencent Holdings Ltd. have kept up a frenetic pace of AI model rollouts and updates. Alibaba’s Qwen models have, in particular, gained a popular following.

Source: Bloomberg

To stay updated on all economic events of today, please check out our Economic calendar

Risk Warnings and Disclaimers

Add to Favorites

Manuel

Central Bank

Political

Financial markets may be looking at another bout of volatility over the next six months, economists cautioned, as U.S. President Donald Trump clashes with the Federal Reserve to exert influence on monetary policy.

Trump's persistent criticism of the Fed board and Chair Jerome Powell for not lowering interest rates, his attempt to fire Governor Lisa Cook, and the nomination of White House economic adviser Stephen Miran as a Fed governor are chipping away at investor confidence in the institution's authority.

"The market has been very calm for now (but) the narrative could turn ugly in the coming months," Sree Kochugovindan, senior research economist at abrdn, told the Reuters Global Markets Forum.

"The longer-term significance of the changing Fed composition next February becomes more important," she said, especially if Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) members start deviating significantly away from the 'Taylor rule.'

Named after its creator, American economist John Taylor in 1993, the 'Taylor rule' is a well-known formula for setting short-term interest rates based on the values of inflation and the economy's growth potential that is among metrics utilized by policymakers.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the Fed's structure prevents a president from "stacking the board", but reports suggest that Trump may seek influence by reshaping how the 12 regional bank presidents are chosen and reappointed.

The risk of a Trump-majority Fed board preventing the reappointment of some regional presidents next February is "probably underpriced", said Michael Brown, senior research strategist at Pepperstone. Though seen as a rubber-stamping exercise, "it could prove more politically influenced this time out," he added.

Steven Blitz, chief U.S. economist at TS Lombard, said the Trump administration's push represents a "potential dismantling of the Fed", even beyond the issue of central bank independence.

Source: Reuters

Risk Warnings and Disclaimers

Add to Favorites

Kevin Du

Economic

A dwindling number of prospective students will drive as many as 370 private colleges in the US to shutter or merge with another institution in the next decade, according to a major higher-education consulting firm.

Huron Consulting Group’s prediction is more than triple the total amount of private, nonprofit two- and four-year college closures that the National Center for Education Statistics calculated in the 10 years leading up to 2020.

The shrinking supply of students stems from a falling national birth rate that started in 2007 and hasn’t recovered. The Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education estimates that the graduating class of 2041 will be about 13% smaller than the 2025 cohort.

“Essentially the problem is we have too many seats in too many classrooms and not enough prospective students to fill them,” said Peter Stokes, a managing director at Huron. “Over the next decade, we’re going through a very painful but necessary re-balancing in supply and demand.”

Stokes said the firm analyzed more than 10 years of financial and enrollment data from since-closed and merged institutions in making its prediction, analyzing metrics such as net tuition revenue per student, enrollment, ratings, and the asset-to-liability ratio of closed schools.

The projected closures and mergers will impact around 600,000 students and affect about $18 billion in endowment funds, according to Stokes.

“These are schools where we see red flashing lights and warning signs that they’re in significant financial stress,” he said. Huron declined to disclose the names of schools that they expect will close or merge.

Another 430 institutions with over 1.2 million students and $134 billion in endowments face moderate existential threats, according to Huron, which serves over 580 education clients annually, a bulk of which are four-year public and private universities, according to a July earnings presentation.

In contrast, 114 private, nonprofit colleges shuttered from 2010 to 2020, according to National Center for Education Statistics data, and in the decade prior to that period, 59 schools closed.

Colleges across the country have already shut down this year, citing the slowdown of high school graduates. Among them are Northland College in Wisconsin and Limestone University in South Carolina. At least 40 schools have announced plans to close since 2020.

Recent research by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia found that a one-time 15% drop in prospective students, known as the “demographic cliff,” would cause 80 additional colleges to shutter.

Stokes said that schools need to come up with an early game plan to meet enrollment challenges. Colleges can consider diversifying their student populations by growing graduate, professional and part-time programs, for example.

“If you aren’t thinking five years ahead, you’re at a significant disadvantage,” he said. “If you only have three years of runway, your chances of survival are less than 50%. If you call us when you’ve got nine months of cash, you’re dead in the water and it’s too late.”

Source: Bloomberg Europe

To stay updated on all economic events of today, please check out our Economic calendar

Risk Warnings and Disclaimers

Add to Favorites

Adam

Economic

The big story

When Rinchen Wangdi Bhutia in 2016 moved from the hilly northeastern Indian state of Sikkim to Kolkata, one of the country’s metro cities, he was just a face in a crowd.

Bhutia quit his corporate life and started a cloud kitchen in 2023. A year later, he started posting short videos of his simple home-made meals. Strangers turned to followers and views into food orders. Success followed.

Today, he runs two restaurants, specializing in dumplings, in Kolkata. He has more than half a million followers, and his reels regularly notch a million-plus views.

The country has the highest number of users across social media platforms such as Facebook (350 million-plus), Instagram (413.8 million) and video app YouTube (over 467 million), according to data from Statista. Messaging app WhatsApp reportedly has over 500 million users in India.

OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman in February said India was the company’s second-largest market.

Bhutia is part of India’s digital growth story that is creating entrepreneurs, drawing investments, and attracting global tech giants, fueled in large part by a gigantic talent pool and tech userbase.

“India is a big center for key talent - from chip design to AI, so the tech companies want to invest and locate there to take advantage of a key resource,” said Bhaskar Chakravorti, dean of Global Business at The Fletcher School, Tufts University.

Between 2023 and 2025 so far Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Meta, Apple, and their peers have funneled tens of billions into India.

On Monday, Bloomberg reported that ChatGPT-maker OpenAI was looking for local partners to build a data center in India with at least 1-gigawatt capacity. This comes just a week after the company launched its cheapest subscription plan, priced at 399 rupees ($4.57) a month, in India.

“User acquisition in Western markets is plateauing, while, by contrast, India offers a demographic bulge of first-time users and a reservoir of talent that can build, test, and iterate at scale,” says Vivek Agarwal Global Policy Expert, Country Director-India at Tony Blair Institute for Global Change.

Google and Meta on Friday announced new partnerships with Reliance Industries as the Indian conglomerate seeks to accelerate its push into artificial intelligence.

“We are excited to put AI into the hands of more people and businesses so they can do extraordinary things,” Google CEO Sundar Pichai said, adding that India was home to “some of the world’s most dynamic businesses, a thriving start-up ecosystem, and incredible amounts of creativity and ambition.”

A study conducted by Tufts University ranks India eighth among 125 countries on its digital evolution momentum index. The Index is a data-driven evaluation of the progress of the digital economy over a sixteen-year period (2008 – 2023).

Showcasing the country’s digital growth is India’s Unified Payment Interface or UPI, which powers instant, low-cost, mobile-based payments in India, handling about 640 million transactions every day. It came into being just nine years ago. Google Pay and Walmart-owned PhonePe, which use the UPI infrastructure, are among the dominant payment providers in India, according to data from the National Payments Corporation of India.

Numbers vs. growth

Meta-owned WhatsApp, which also provides payment services, has struggled to make a breakthrough in the hyper-competitive digital payments space, despite the messaging app’s over 500-million-strong user base.

“Scale on paper does not equal scale in practice,” said Sanchit Vir Gogia, Chief Analyst & CEO, Greyhound Research.

Meta even acquired a 9.9% stake in Jio Platform, Reliance Industries’ digital services arm, in 2020, for $5.7 billion. “By bringing together JioMart, Jio’s small business initiative, with the power of WhatsApp, we can enable people to connect with businesses, shop and ultimately purchase products in a seamless mobile experience,” Meta said while announcing the deal.

A strong local partner in Jio, which has a telecom subscriber base of over 500 million, could not help Meta make WhatsApp Pay a success in India. “The JioMart integration faltered, partly because Reliance Retail itself has not scaled as rapidly as promised,” says Gogia.

NPCI data for July shows that WhatsApp had just 74 million transactions compared with Google Pay’s nearly 7 billion transactions.

But this hasn’t stopped U.S. tech majors from investing more in India, including Meta.

“India is becoming the proving ground where Big Tech’s longer-term wagers are starting to yield visible dividends,” said Agarwal.

India’s talent pool has also led to large foreign corporations setting up their global capability centers in the country. India accounts for more than 50% of GCCs worldwide, with more than 1,600 up and running centers, according to U.S.-based GCC consultancy ANSR.

These centers offer further incentives to tech companies looking for enterprise customers. The growth of GCCs in India makes it a “great place to deploy tech applications and serve a wide range of MNCs out of India,” said Tufts’ Chakravorti.

Top TV picks on CNBC

BDO India partner for Indirect Taxes, Maulik Manakiwala, says the latest GST rate cuts will fuel consumer spending and free up income for big-ticket buys.

Polka Mishra of Javelin Wealth Management says the direction of travel in global trade is moving away from the U.S. She also sees increasing corporate partnerships between China and India building.

Neil Shah, vice president of research and co-founder of Counterpoint Research, discusses India’s ambitions in the semiconductor industry and the developments at SEMICON India 2025.

Need to know

Tax structure overhaul. The Indian government’s move on Wednesday to formally reduce the goods and services tax on a variety of items is expected to spur consumption and ease the impact of U.S. tariffs.

Elephant-dragon tango. India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi met China’s President Xi Jinping at the 5th Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit, signaling improving ties.

Economy turbocharged. India’s economy grew at a faster-than-expected annual rate of 7.8% in the quarter to the end of June, boosted by the manufacturing, construction and service sectors.

In the markets

India’s Nifty 50 index closed marginally higher at 24,734, giving up most of its 1% gains during the day on the back of an overhaul in its goods and services tax. The index has gained 4.6% so far this year.

The benchmark 10-year Indian government bond yield ticked down to 6.5%.