Institutional Bitcoin demand has weakened significantly through August 2024, with on-chain data from CryptoQuant showing corporate and institutional treasury purchases slowing dramatically. Major firms like Strategy added only 1,200 BTC in August, while others averaged just 343 BTC each. This cooling demand has resulted in Bitcoin trading in a narrow range around $111,000, slipping 0.6% over two weeks and down 4.7% across 30 days.
Meanwhile, Bitcoin Hyper (HYPER) - a new Layer-2 solution built on Bitcoin - has attracted nearly $14.5 million in presale funding, demonstrating strong retail and early-stage investor interest. The project integrates the Solana Virtual Machine (SVM) as its execution layer, allowing developers to build applications with Solana's speed while anchored to Bitcoin's security. This enables sub-second transactions with minimal fees, addressing Bitcoin's limitations of 7 transactions per second and 10-minute block times.
The presale has reached $14.4 million with tokens priced at $0.012875 in the current round, which concludes in approximately 18 hours. Early buyers can stake HYPER tokens for yields up to 104% APY and gain priority access to governance votes and future airdrops. The project's Canonical Bridge allows users to transfer BTC from the base chain into the Hyper ecosystem, where it mints wrapped BTC usable across the Solana-powered environment.
