Important News from Last Night and This Morning (July 21 - July 22)

Former President Trump is preparing to impose new tariffs on dozens of countries as early as this week, with the 10% global temporary tariff he previously implemented set to expire on Friday (July 24). The new tariffs are expected to match the current 10% tariff, but the government is also conducting other investigations that may grant it legal authority to propose higher tariffs.

The United States and China plan to hold talks in September regarding the risks and regulations of artificial intelligence, as a key outcome of the previous US-China summit. Sources indicate that the talks are expected to take place before Chinese President Xi Jinping's planned visit to the US on September 24, although specific dates have yet to be finalized. The US delegation is expected to be led by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, while the list of other officials, agenda, and meeting location are still under negotiation.

The Johor state government has announced the cancellation of NS0 Malaysia Sdn. Bhd.'s business license in Forest City and has ordered it to cease all operations starting July 22. The statement emphasized that this decision was made based on the results of law enforcement inspections and legal procedures, stressing that even if a project has investment backing, it will be dealt with "zero tolerance" if there are violations of license conditions, immigration laws, or safety and sovereignty risks. The Johor state government also urged the Ministry of Home Affairs, Immigration Department, police, and relevant security agencies to continue investigating potential abuses of second passports, false identity statements, and violations of entry conditions, while requesting the Digital Ministry and MDEC to re-examine its qualifications such as "Malaysia Digital" and strengthen due diligence and inter-departmental coordination regarding the background, funding sources, and operational narratives of foreign-funded institutions. This project was initiated by former Coinbase CTO and author of "The Network State" Balaji Srinivasan, and is essentially a paid co-living and co-working community where founders, engineers, creators, and digital nomads from over 70 countries live in the same area, paying approximately $1,000 to $2,000 per month (mostly in cryptocurrency), which includes accommodation, three meals, gym access, coworking space, and various lectures/Demo Days, with the slogan "Learn, Burn, Earn, Fun."

The planned merger of cryptocurrency companies Twenty One Capital, Strike, and Elektron Energy has been terminated. Jack Mallers, CEO of Twenty One Capital and Strike, has resigned from his position at Twenty One Capital, with Elektron Energy CEO Raphael Zagury taking over. Reports indicate that the three companies had previously planned to integrate their businesses with support from Tether, but the deal has now fallen through, and Zagury will manage the relevant business lines of Twenty One Capital.

The Federal Investigation Agency of Pakistan has established a virtual currency investigation department within the newly launched National Command and Control Center, focusing on combating money laundering and terrorist financing using virtual assets. Officials responsible for counter-terrorism stated that this department will collaborate with the newly established Pakistan Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority to specifically investigate criminal activities involving crypto assets, and recommend that the National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency and Narcotics Control Bureau establish similar units to address the use of crypto assets in cybercrime and drug trafficking. The agency has also integrated functions such as anti-money laundering, border entry and exit monitoring, human trafficking, and smuggling investigations within the NC3, and is promoting new regulations and personnel expansion to shorten case processing times and enhance law enforcement coordination efficiency.

A UK robotics startup has announced the completion of a $152 million Series A funding round, with a post-money valuation of $1.35 billion, bringing its total funding to $270 million, making it the first "unicorn" in Europe focused on humanoid robots. This round was led by Prime Movers Lab, with participation from Schaeffler, Bosch, Fubon Financial Holdings, and Aglaé Ventures. The company has signed an order for 1,000 robots with Schaeffler and has secured production capacity for 100,000 units over the next five years with support from Bosch. Its flagship product is the wheeled humanoid robot HMND 01, primarily targeting logistics, manufacturing, and retail scenarios, with plans to launch commercial pilots at customer sites for 3 to 6 months starting at the end of the year. The company is also developing a four-layer AI platform, KinetIQ, to coordinate robot clusters for industrial tasks.

The self-custody trading platform JTX has been launched, offering professional traders spot trading of Solana ecosystem tokens and tokenized physical assets, supporting cbBTC, SOL, HYPE, and various memecoins, as well as tokenized stocks and ETFs. JTX enables users to hold their private keys through on-chain settlement and self-custody, while providing professional-grade tools such as limit orders, automated execution, and conditional orders to bridge the gap between self-custody and high execution quality. The platform charges a fee for each transaction, with 80% used for repurchasing and burning JTO tokens, managed by a DAO, and the remaining 20% distributed to referrers based on trading volume. The company plans to subsequently integrate perpetual contracts, prediction markets, and mobile applications into JTX.

The prediction market platform has applied to the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission to expand its perpetual contracts to precious metals such as gold, silver, and platinum, aiming to bring this product, which has primarily been used for crypto assets, into the traditional commodities market. The contract is a perpetual futures contract with no expiration date and leverage, initially offering trading five days a week, 24 hours a day, based on the corresponding spot market time, with a future assessment on whether to extend it to 7×24 hours. The commission will decide whether to approve the product within 45 days. The platform states that, in addition to precious metals, there is also rising demand for perpetual contracts in asset classes such as foreign exchange and stocks, and the company is actively evaluating related expansion directions.

A decentralized trading platform has officially launched on the Robinhood Chain, offering over 95 US stock tokens with zero fees and 24/7 trading, and has introduced a beta version of perpetual contracts based on the USD stablecoin USDG as collateral, covering US stocks, ETFs, commodities, and crypto assets. Users can conduct cross-margin trading through a single self-custody account, supporting leading tech stocks such as Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft, Tesla, Meta, Alphabet, and Amazon, as well as products linked to SPY, QQQ, GLD, USO, BTC, ETH, SOL, and XRP. The platform was founded by its founders, with early involvement from the team in development, serving as strategic investors and integrating infrastructure.

All USDⓈ-M AERGOUSDT perpetual contracts will be closed and automatically settled on July 24 at 14:30 (UTC+8), and the contracts will be officially delisted after settlement.

A Chinese large model company plans to initiate Pre-IPO financing discussions starting in August, targeting a maximum valuation of $50 billion and intends to list in Hong Kong. The company has just completed a round of financing at a valuation of $31.5 billion, expected to finalize in a few days, and will immediately start a new round of financing, which will be the last round before the IPO. Reports cite sources stating that after the launch of its 28 trillion parameter open-source large model, its annual recurring revenue reached $300 million in June, a significant increase from $200 million in April, with daily sales having grown at least sixfold since its release.

The founder announced on his channel that this summer will see the largest deployment of non-custodial crypto wallets in human history—native non-custodial wallets will be built into every client, providing instant, zero-fee crypto transactions for over 1 billion users. The founder stated that this vision "is about to become a reality."

A stablecoin clearing bank startup has completed a $180 million funding round, with a post-money valuation of $1 billion, led by investors and others. The company has received conditional approval for a national bank license from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency in the US and plans to expand dollar clearing while extending its customer base in Latin America, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. The company does not issue its own stablecoin but builds "AI-native" clearing infrastructure that connects traditional payment systems with blockchain networks, supporting programmable, 24/7 stablecoin clearing, and has already provided euro clearing under a licensed entity in Finland, processing billions of euros annually and serving institutional clients.

The Russian State Duma has passed the first comprehensive regulatory law on crypto assets, which will take effect on September 1. The new law requires that only institutions registered in a "special registry" can operate cryptocurrency trading platforms and authorizes banks to refuse transfers to unauthorized platforms. Retail investors can only purchase the most liquid cryptocurrencies through licensed intermediaries, with an annual purchase limit of about $3,800 per intermediary, while qualified investors are not subject to limits. The law provides judicial protection for holders of unreported crypto assets and includes regulations on mining, issuance and circulation, as well as services provided by brokers, asset managers, and trading platforms. Russia still prohibits the use of cryptocurrencies for payment of goods and services domestically but allows limited use in foreign trade settlements, mining income transactions, and certain digital asset-related settlements.

Bitcoin and the crypto market have recently experienced a bullish trend, with market news indicating that an agreement has been reached on the ethical clauses of the CLARITY Act, which is expected to increase the likelihood of advancing the bill in Congress, paving the way for institutional investors to further participate in the crypto market. From the perspective of capital flow, this round of increase is not driven by a single force, as institutional investors, long-term holders, and derivatives traders are all showing positive signals. The spot Bitcoin ETF has attracted over $700 million in inflows over the past five trading days, marking the longest consecutive net inflow period since May of this year, contrasting sharply with the massive sell-off earlier this summer, when the market faced redemption pressure of about $7.5 billion from mid-May to June. Additionally, large Bitcoin whales have continued to increase their holdings over the past two months, while medium-sized wallets have shown selling behavior, which may become a "positive signal" for Bitcoin's mid-term trend. Meanwhile, the activity in the Bitcoin futures and options market has also rebounded. Recently, a trader or trading group made a large-scale purchase of Bitcoin call spread options, betting that Bitcoin will rise to $72,000 by the end of the month.

In his second term, he set a precedent for pardoning corporations in modern American history, having pardoned nine companies to date, including the parent company of a crypto trading platform. The company faced a $100 million fine for violating anti-money laundering regulations and signed the pardon order on March 27, 2025, pardoning four former executives, including the co-founder, as well as the company itself, coinciding with the week the fine was due. Reports indicate that the idea of pardoning corporations was first proposed in early 2025 when the company was quietly seeking a pardon, with some officials citing the precedent of King Charles II of England pardoning companies over 300 years ago. Notably, the company had quickly launched a trading product linked to a meme coin in January 2025—this meme coin business brought in $636 million in revenue last year; the co-founder later wrote in support of its stance on embracing meme coins. The corporate pardons in the second term have cumulatively waived nearly $200 million in fines, some of which were originally intended for compensating victims.

Announcing the launch of the "Bitcoin Quantum Security Preparedness Program," which plans to invest up to $5 million in developer funding and promote the Bitcoin network's upgrade to resist quantum attacks through research projects and an expert advisory committee. The program consists of three core components: first, providing up to $5 million in funding support for the development of post-quantum cryptography solutions; second, conducting research related to quantum computing and Bitcoin security; third, establishing a quantum security advisory committee to invite academic experts to participate in discussions on the technical roadmap.

The official released a report on the service interruption incident on July 14, detailing the causes of the accident, the recovery process, and subsequent improvement measures. The incident stemmed from a resource name conflict during a routine configuration update, leading to the failure of critical network components, affecting transfers, card transactions, and on-chain services, but user funds were never at risk. At 12:34 PM (Eastern Time) on July 14, a routine configuration change was deployed to the shared production cluster, and due to the pre-production check not identifying the resource name conflict, related resources were unexpectedly modified, rendering the entry gateway unavailable. Starting from 12:37 PM, all traffic entering the cluster was interrupted, and internal services could not access infrastructure components.

The affected scope included retail users' off-chain transactions, suspension of deposits and withdrawals; debit card transaction failures; suspension of on-chain exchange services; institutional clients' transfer and settlement failures or delays; and unavailability of developer account opening and deposit services. The entry gateway resumed operation at 1:20 PM, and by 1:23 PM, the incident was largely alleviated, with backlog tasks cleared within a few hours. The company stated it would expand the protective mechanisms during the deployment phase, enhance redundancy capabilities between deployment tools and infrastructure, and regularly review emergency access mechanisms to improve system reliability, aiming for zero downtime.

The U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia, in conjunction with the Secret Service, announced that over $25 million in cryptocurrency has been seized as part of an investigation into multiple international online fraud cases, with the funds suspected to be linked to cryptocurrency investment scams targeting residents in the U.S. and Canada. This action is part of the "Fraud Center Strike Force," initiated by the D.C. Attorney General in 2025, which has recovered over $800 million in assets to date. On July 21, the prosecution submitted five civil forfeiture complaints to the U.S. District Court, involving various methods such as fake cryptocurrency investment platforms and online romance scams, with criminal groups hiding the source of funds through multi-layer wallets and mixing operations.

Cryptocurrency advocacy organizations have filed a lawsuit against the recently passed digital asset transaction tax bill in Illinois. The bill, part of Illinois' budget plan for fiscal year 2027, was signed into law last month and proposes a 0.2% tax on digital asset transactions starting January 2027, referred to by the industry as "the strictest digital asset tax in the U.S." The 32-page complaint points out that Illinois is taxing digital assets separately due to technological differences, constituting discriminatory treatment against specific technologies. The association emphasizes that it is not seeking special treatment but rather demands that "properties with the same economic attributes should be treated equally, regardless of the technology used for ownership records, transfers, or settlements." The complaint also warns that if this tax is established, other states may follow suit in imposing similar taxes on emerging technologies such as AI settlement systems and cloud payment networks.

Blockchain network developers have raised an additional $10 million from South Korea's Shinhan Financial Group and Standard Chartered Bank's SC Ventures, increasing their recent funding round total from $355 million to $365 million, with this round still valuing the company at $2 billion. The developed Canton Network is a public Layer 1 blockchain aimed at regulated financial institutions, allowing institutions to manage assets and financial workflows on-chain while maintaining compliance and privacy controls. The previously announced $355 million funding was led by several institutions.

Shareholders of the publicly listed Bitcoin reserve company in the UK have approved the sale of all Bitcoin holdings with a 90% support rate, returning capital to investors and delisting from the London Stock Exchange. The company currently holds 668 BTC (approximately $43.5 million), making it the second-largest publicly listed Bitcoin reserve company in the UK. The proposal was put forward by shareholders, with four out of six directors opposing it. The company's Bitcoin reserve strategy lasted less than a year. Last year, it raised $218 million through convertible notes, with investors accepting 1,097 BTC in lieu of part of the cash. Months later, the company sold 579 BTC to repay noteholders who chose not to convert. As of April, the stock price had dropped over 99% from its peak.

The core development company of a blockchain has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in a Delaware court earlier this month. According to documents submitted on July 15, the company reported assets between $100,000 and $500,000, with liabilities reaching up to $10 million, listing nearly 299 creditors, among which the largest unsecured claim is over $1.6 million from a co-founder who has been ousted. This co-founder retains a 34.25% stake and had previously filed a lawsuit for legal fees related to a Department of Justice grand jury investigation concerning a token issuance scandal, which was supported. The company was once a core developer of the Ethereum Layer 2 network, completing a $38 million Series A funding led by investors. The token issuance in December 2024 faced a crisis due to market maker sell-offs, and after an internal investigation, the co-founder was dismissed, with core development work transferred to other companies.

The ETFs for Solana and Hyperliquid have captured nearly 80% of the trading volume for non-Bitcoin and non-Ethereum ETFs. The Solana ETF has an asset management scale of $904 million, while the Hyperliquid ETF, launched just two months ago, has attracted $350 million in net inflows, with both accounting for approximately 2% of their respective token market values. In contrast, Bitcoin ETFs account for about 9% of their market value, indicating that altcoin ETFs still have room for growth. The flow of funds may vary depending on the type of investors—SOL and HYPE are positioned further along the risk curve, attracting risk-tolerant allocators; Bitcoin and Ethereum benefit from a more stable and passive investor base. As both continue to interact with regulators and build infrastructure, they may open doors for more investors.

The most controversial ethical clause details of the bill have raised dissatisfaction, with the core disagreement being over the jurisdiction of law enforcement—Democrats insist that state attorneys general should have the authority to enforce ethical restrictions on federal officials, while the White House and Republicans maintain that the Attorney General should serve as the highest law enforcement authority. This clause will restrict government officials, including the President, Vice President, and all members of Congress, from associating with the cryptocurrency industry, posing a key obstacle to the bill's advancement. White House officials stated on Tuesday during an industry briefing that Democrats still hold their position. They had previously agreed to the "most comprehensive and far-reaching ethical clauses in history," but Democrats have yet to see the exact text, while the White House claims to have "made every effort" to meet Democratic demands. August 7 is viewed as a critical deadline for the bill's passage this year, with the industry expecting a vote as early as next Monday. Additionally, divisions within the House Republicans may affect subsequent deliberations, and there are discussions within the Democrats about inserting prediction market policies into the bill, but this move could derail the entire effort.

Later news indicated that the Treasury Secretary stated: the bill is in the final sprint, urging Congress to pass it before the recess.

Bitcoin is approaching the key resistance level of $68,000 after rebounding about 15% from its July low. Analysts point out that this level is close to the average cost price for buyers over the past five months, and many previously losing investors may choose to sell when returning to the cost price for the first time, creating selling pressure. Additionally, the $68,000 area is also the previous high from mid-June, where the last rebound failed and fell below $58,000. Analysts expect that the first test of this resistance level will trigger a strong reaction. They believe that market conditions are gradually improving—the spot Bitcoin ETF has shifted from continuous outflows to moderate inflows, but demand has not fully recovered. Bitcoin's share of spot trading volume has risen from about 50% a year ago to nearly 67%, indicating that investors still prefer Bitcoin over small-cap tokens, with market sentiment remaining defensive. Research indicates that CME Bitcoin futures open interest has dropped to its lowest level since 2023, with 30-day spot trading volume only at 62% of the annual average, and late July is traditionally the weakest period of the year. The current situation is described as a "typical summer lull."

A digital asset index filtered by income has been jointly launched, targeting institutional investors seeking systematic digital asset allocation. This index is based on fundamental screening, excluding Bitcoin and meme coins, and only includes tokens and companies with real utility and actual income, weighted by market capitalization adjusted for circulation, with the first batch containing 18 constituents that generated over $3 billion in annualized income in the past two quarters, including Hyperliquid, Solana, and Aave. The index adapts the financial viability standards of the S&P 500 for digital assetization, requiring protocol income to be positive for several consecutive quarters and meet minimum thresholds, verified by on-chain data providers, and confirming that income is distributed to holders through buybacks, staking yields (after inflation), dividends, or treasuries controlled by token holders. It is stated that discussions are ongoing with asset management institutions regarding ETFs and other products based on this index, with no tracking products launched yet.

An open-source decentralized group chat application has been launched, aiming to challenge team collaboration platforms like Slack. This application is built on a decentralized social protocol, targeting teams composed of humans and AI agents, supporting chat, project management, coding, and PR collaboration. It is stated that this application is decentralized, open-source, allowing users to control their data, and teams can collaborate with members and dedicated agents in shared spaces.

Plans are underway to create a "universal exchange" in Canada, providing users with cryptocurrency, tokenized stock, and prediction market trading services. It claims that blockchain technology enables seamless trading around the clock, breaking the time and access limitations of traditional banks and stock markets. They are working with Canadian regulators to promote the implementation of this plan. Previously, they have provided prediction market and stock trading services in the U.S. and are continuously expanding their business boundaries.

The registration statement has been approved by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and is expected to begin trading its Class A common stock on the Nasdaq Global Select Market on July 28, with the stock symbol "IOND." This is a direct listing, and the company will not sell any shares or receive any proceeds from the sale of shares by registered shareholders. It is positioned as a digital infrastructure company providing data center solutions for AI and high-performance computing.

The Ethereum Improvement Proposal EIP-8222 ("Lean Staking") is attracting attention from institutional stakers, aiming to isolate deposits and withdrawals and re-anonymize validators through STARK cryptography, allowing institutions to participate in staking without publicly disclosing their overall staking positions, addressing long-standing privacy issues. The head of staking and DeFi products stated that this proposal allows institutions to stake without revealing their positions to the market, but enhanced privacy may bring operational cost increases, delays in fund withdrawals, and compliance audit challenges at the execution level. While fixed deposit amounts may help enhance anonymity, they could reduce capital efficiency; institutions still need to manage validator keys, custody arrangements, penalty risks, and regulatory reporting. This proposal is still in the discussion stage and has not yet determined a deployment timeline.

It is stated that AI funds are rotating from storage chips to Ethereum, citing data that the relative performance of Ethereum to the Roundhill Memory ETF has widened to 72 percentage points since June 25—Ethereum has risen 24%, while the DRAM ETF has fallen 38%. The DRAM ETF, launched in April this year, is the first fund to invest solely in storage chip manufacturers, with SK Hynix and Samsung accounting for about 41% of its weight. This fund raised $6.5 billion in 27 trading days, setting a record for the fastest ETF issuance. It is pointed out that BlackRock's tokenized BUIDL fund and applications like Robinhood Chain are all built on Ethereum, forming the bullish logic for institutions regarding Ethereum.

The company disclosed a loss of approximately $630,000 due to a suspected hacker attack. The attackers sent phishing links to employees through compromised Telegram accounts, inducing them to install malicious extensions. After nearly a month of data theft, they stole 147,000 tokens on July 13. The company is highly confident that the attack originated from a hacker organization. It also admitted to security negligence—due to insufficient support for hardware wallets in its protocol, the company "temporarily" set all owner keys to software wallets, violating its internal principle of prioritizing hardware wallets, which led to the keys being stolen from the compromised computer. The company stated that it is working with exchanges, law enforcement, and ecological partners to recover the stolen assets.

In the last 24 hours, we have filtered the most noteworthy AI news for you, helping you cut through the AI noise.

The official disclosure revealed that its upcoming models, including GPT-5.6 Sol, breached the sandbox environment during internal security assessments and infiltrated the infrastructure of an open-source AI platform, which reported the breach for the first time on July 16. This incident has raised widespread concerns in the industry about the autonomous capabilities of cutting-edge AI models.

A U.S. federal judge approved a $1.5 billion class-action settlement agreement reached with a group of authors, with each author set to receive approximately $3,000 in compensation per book. This settlement creates a historical record for copyright payments related to AI training data.

The company launched Gemini 3.6 Flash, 3.5 Flash-Lite, and the cybersecurity-focused 3.5 Flash Cyber model. This security model is positioned as a "cost-effective alternative to large AI security models," aimed at quickly identifying and patching security vulnerabilities.

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