BTC August High, Jobs Report, & Google Drama

View from the Arch #144

August 11, 2026

The most important story this week:

This Week at Arch: Putting Bitcoin to work

Last week, PowerCompute refinanced $18 million of existing debt through a Bitcoin-backed credit facility with Arch.

The Nasdaq-listed company consolidated three existing loans and pledged 307 BTC as collateral. The new facility carries an initial interest rate of approximately 2%, compared with rates as high as 12% on portions of the debt it replaced.

For PowerCompute, the transaction created liquidity without requiring the company to sell Bitcoin from its treasury. It also reduced cash interest expense and gave the company additional flexibility as it invests in high-performance computing and AI infrastructure.

This is a useful example of what Bitcoin-backed credit can look like for a corporate treasury. A company with a meaningful Bitcoin position can use that asset as collateral to refinance debt, fund operations, or invest in growth while continuing to hold its Bitcoin and removing liquidation risk. 

As corporate Bitcoin ownership grows, financing structures like this give treasury teams another tool for capital efficiency.

This Week in Crypto

Bitcoin spent the week bouncing between $62K-$66K, briefly touching an August high above $65,300 on Friday.

  • Spot Bitcoin and Ether ETFs pulled in a combined $1.1B, the strongest week for either category since April, with BlackRock's IBIT alone hoovering up over 80% of the Bitcoin haul.

  • The next real catalyst for movement should be Wednesday's July CPI print.

And some ETH drama for you:

  • On August 4, Ethereum researchers published a draft proposal that would gradually zero out staking rewards once half of all ETH is staked - the idea being that beyond a certain point, extra staking buys diminishing security for a lot of diluted yield.

  • The backlash arrived approximately…four minutes later.

    • SharpLink's CEO called it an attack on Ethereum's core competitive advantage over Bitcoin - actual yield - and warned it could send institutions unstaking their ETH straight out the door.

    • Aave founder Stani Kulechov ran the numbers and calculated validators would eat a 48% pay cut at current staking levels.

This Week in TradFi

The S&P 500 closed above 7,700 for the first time ever this week, because of a jobs report that should probably make you nervous.

  • Nonfarm payrolls fell by 23,000 in July, badly missing the roughly 80,000 gain economists expected, and the Labor Department also revised the prior two months' job gains sharply lower.

  • Wall Street's read is a little rough: bad news for workers is great news for stocks, because a weakening labor market makes it that much less likely the Fed hikes in September.

  • The S&P posted its strongest week since April, up 3.6%, while the Nasdaq gained 5.2% on a chip-stock rebound.

Crude oil spent all week swinging on headlines about whether Iran and Oman will actually reopen the Strait of Hormuz to normal shipping traffic.

  • Prices fell sharply for most of the week as a deal looked plausible, tracking toward a roughly 9% weekly loss by Friday, then reversed hard after Iran floated a bill to ban U.S. and Israeli vessels from the strait entirely.

  • By Monday, doubt had crept back in enough that WTI jumped about 5% to $82.13 a barrel on renewed fears the agreement is stalling.

All eyes are on the CPI drop tomorrow, followed by PPI on Thursday and retail sales on Friday.

  • A hot print revives hike chatter and hits stocks and crypto alike, while a cool one locks in the September cut the market's currently pricing in.

This Week in Tech

Some Succession drama at Google this week:

  • Demis Hassabis, who has run DeepMind since its founding, stepped back from day-to-day control to become Chair of Google DeepMind and Chief Scientist of Alphabet, handing daily operations to CTO Koray Kavukcuoglu, who now reports directly to Sundar Pichai.

  • On the exact same day, Jeff Dean - Google's most senior technical executive after 27 years at the company - announced he was leaving to co-found a new startup called Discovery Loop alongside three other longtime Google researchers.

  • Insiders report that both exits follow a stretch of low morale, a talent exodus, and delayed model releases.

  • Alphabet's stock dropped roughly 4-5% on the news.

Intel's stock has nearly tripled this year - outperforming both AMD and Nvidia - and now the company announced a $15 billion stock offering on Monday to fund AI-chip and foundry expansion, with underwriters holding an option for another $2.25 billion on top of that.

  • The company reports that demand for AI computing hardware has outpaced Intel's ability to fill orders, and the company's data center unit grew revenue 59% last quarter, more than double its overall growth rate.

  • The market's response was less enthusiastic - shares fell 3-4% on dilution fears - but honestly that's a rounding error against a stock that's already up this much this year.

Arch is building a next-gen wealth management platform for individuals holding Alternative Assets. Our flagship product is the crypto-backed loan, which allows you to securely and affordably borrow against your crypto.

Disclaimer: None of the above is financial advice, seriously.