News linked to both this project and an event.
Chinese listed company Zhibao Technology has announced the signing of a non-binding term sheet with Joyer Tech for a PIPE financing based on 3,500 Bitcoins.
: BNB Chain Agent commercial clearing layer TermiX announced that Web3 security infrastructure GoPlus and smart contract security auditing firm Salus have officially become Provider Agents on the Agent.family platform. They have launched two production-grade security audit services, promoting the autonomous invocation and settlement of "security capability as a service" for AI Agents in on-chain commercial scenarios.GoPlus has packaged its verified token contract deep scanning capability as a standard Provider Agent service. DeepScan conducts comprehensive security checks on token contracts, identifying risk patterns such as Rug Pulls, honeypot scams, contract permission abuse, and trading restrictions, and generates structured audit reports.Salus has launched smart contract auditing and penetration testing services, encompassing formal verification, fuzz testing, machine learning-based vulnerability detection, and manual expert auditing. It covers high-risk vulnerability categories such as reentrancy attacks, access control issues, integer overflows, and DoS attacks. Salus, a seed-stage investment from Binance Labs, is a core security partner within the BNB Chain ecosystem.
BIT US stock options trading will officially launch on July 24. Following its margin trading (securities lending and borrowing) service, BIT is further expanding its derivatives matrix to provide users with lower-cost, risk-controllable tools for US stock trading and hedging.In terms of fees, BIT US stock options charge $0 commission for both buying and selling, with platform usage fees as low as $0.30 per contract—only half the fee charged by similar platforms. The minimum fee per transaction is $0.99, consistent with US stock trading, and options trading incurs no additional markup, helping users enter the market with a lower threshold.The initial launch will cover approximately 2,000 highly liquid US stock underlying assets, and will prioritize opening options buyer trading (Long Call / Long Put), while not yet supporting seller (Short) opening positions. The maximum loss for buyers is locked in as the premium paid at the time of order placement, effectively avoiding liquidation risks in extreme market conditions. The product's coverage scope and trading methods will be gradually expanded based on risk control system validation and market demand.Early bird exclusive offers and experience benefits are now available. By completing your first option trade or inviting a friend to participate, you can receive multiple early bird rewards, including 30 days of free real-time options quotes and popular stocks. For event details, please refer to the BIT US Stock Channel.Risk Warning: Options trading involves risk, which may result in the total loss of the premium paid. Please use investment and financing tools reasonably based on your own investment objectives and risk tolerance.
According to Chaoxiang Research, UBS released a SemiBytes Flash Note on July 20, 2026, judging that the semiconductor sector is transitioning from a broad-based rally to a phase of severe divergence, while the AI-themed crowded trade continues. The report covers five core topics. The release of Kimi K3 drives another upgrade in open-source model scale; longer context windows boost demand for HBM and storage, with NVIDIA being the biggest beneficiary. Micron's cumulative free cash flow over the next few years is expected to exceed $400 billion; after the buyback ban is lifted, the theoretical buyback ratio could exceed 40%, which is not yet fully priced in by the market. Divergence within the analog chip sector is intensifying; stocks with higher AI exposure have gained a 42x P/E premium, while valuations for stocks with automotive and industrial exposure remain near historical averages. Position crowding data shows that Lam Research, Broadcom, Seagate, Micron, and AMD remain in a state of extreme long positioning crowding.
TownSquare, an institutional yield and cross-chain lending brokerage service infrastructure, announced the official launch of its ICO public sale. This public sale is technically supported by the Echo Sonar platform from the Coinbase ecosystem. The valuation is divided into two tiers: a $150 million valuation based on a 6-month lock-up, and a $200 million valuation with no lock-up and full release at TGE, with a fundraising cap of $1 million. Currently, 30 minutes into the public sale, over $200,000 has been raised. According to data, most users chose the second tier with the $200 million valuation. This public sale is the first project based on the Monad ecosystem on Sonar, supporting USDC and USDT0 tokens on Monad. Previously, TownSquare completed a total of 3 rounds of financing totaling $16.25 million, with participation from World Liberty Financial, Auros Ventures, Amber Group, Animoca Ventures, OKX Ventures, as well as angel investors and institutions from ecosystems such as Monad, a16z, etc. It is projected that the previous valuation is comparable to this ICO valuation. TownSquare Sonar Public Sale Registration: townsq.xyz/sale
Elon Musk has completed the acquisition of APR Energy, a mobile power generation company, with the overall transaction valued at least $1 billion. Documents show that Duos Technologies sold its 5% non-voting stake in New APR Energy, realizing a net gain of $50.4 million, which implies an enterprise value exceeding $1 billion. Headquartered in Florida, USA, APR Energy specializes in modular gas and diesel mobile generator sets, with a total installed capacity exceeding 1 GW. Individual projects can be deployed in as fast as 15 to 30 days, providing temporary and backup power for data centers.Industry analysts suggest that this acquisition aims to support the expansion of xAI's computing cluster and reduce reliance on the public grid. However, the fossil fuel-based power generation model will also bring trade-offs in terms of carbon emissions, compliance, and long-term operational costs. (Techrepublic)
Trasia Labs has announced the completion of a $1.75 million seed funding round, with Multicoin Capital as the sole institutional investor. The project is a perpetual contract trading platform natively built on Hyperliquid, primarily targeting the Asian market. It is currently connected to the native perpetual market on Hyperliquid in a non-custodial manner, with plans to later launch its own perpetual contracts based on the HIP-3 protocol.
: AI reasoning cloud startup General Compute has obtained a $400 million loan from Upper90. This deal is the world’s first financing project to use dedicated inference chips as collateral. The company has built a proprietary AI reasoning cloud platform based on SambaNova’s self-developed ASIC chips, primarily targeting Agent-type AI computing workloads. Compared to traditional GPU clouds, it offers faster token processing speeds and lower operational latency. The hardware requires no water cooling and can be directly deployed in traditional data centers and idle cryptocurrency mining facilities.
NVentures, the venture capital arm of Nvidia, may have invested approximately $196 million in the UK-based fintech company Revolut.A confirmation statement filed with Companies House in the UK reveals that a shareholder entity, suspected to be NVentures LLC, holds approximately 141,834 shares in Revolut. Based on the issuance price disclosed in Revolut's funding round, these shares are valued at around $195.9 million.Previously, neither Nvidia nor Revolut had publicly disclosed the specific investment amount or shareholding scale of NVentures in the company. This document leak indicates that Nvidia is further expanding its presence in the fintech sector through strategic investments.Founded in 2015, Revolut is one of Europe's leading digital banking platforms, covering areas such as payments, foreign exchange, investments, and crypto asset services. In recent years, Nvidia has been consistently investing in AI, fintech, and next-generation internet infrastructure companies through NVentures, and this investment in Revolut is also seen as part of its strategy to expand its AI and digital finance ecosystem. (TechFundingNews)
Odaily News Renowned trader Ansem posted on X, stating that buybacks (for token prices) actually don’t have much effect.Ansem further noted that Hyperliquid's annualized revenue is $800 million, while Pump.fun's annualized revenue is $440 million; however, HYPE's FDV is as high as $65 billion, whereas PUMP's FDV is only $1.4 billion. Both teams regularly use a portion of their business profits for buybacks, yet their P/S ratios are vastly different.This disparity doesn't stem from how much revenue the businesses actually generate, but rather reflects the market's "trust premium" for the teams — a trust determined by their actions and decisions in the market. Hyperliquid never over-promises, focuses purely on product delivery, and generously rewards core users who contribute the most to the platform based on established metrics. In contrast, Pump.fun generated $1 billion in revenue, raised another $1 billion in an ICO, and promised users an airdrop, but has yet to deliver. Despite being one of the most successful and profitable businesses in the crypto industry, they lack a social consensus bond with their core user base and thus cannot achieve the trust premium that Hyperliquid enjoys.Therefore, what determines a business's valuation includes not only the "tangible value" derived purely from revenue and other metrics but also "intangible value." Trust, memetics, and attention are all crucial in the market, yet they are currently discussed far too little.
AI infrastructure startup Fireworks AI has announced the completion of a $1.5 billion financing round, valuing the company at $17.5 billion. The company, previously backed by NVIDIA, primarily provides developers with cloud-based services for running open-source AI models, helping enterprises deploy AI applications at lower costs. This funding round was led by Atreides Management, Index Ventures, and TCV, with participation from NVIDIA, Evantic, and Lightspeed Venture Partners, among others. Currently, Fireworks processes approximately 40 trillion AI tokens daily. Its clients include companies such as Elastic, GitLab, and MongoDB. Previously, over half of its revenue came from the AI coding tool Cursor, but its client base has since become more diversified. (CNBC)
: The South Korean Financial Services Commission has published a revision draft of the "Enforcement Decree of the Special Act on Prevention of Telecommunications-Based Financial Fraud and Refund of Damages." The plan includes transferring funds from phone scams that have been moved into crypto assets under the scope of victim compensation, and clarifies the standards for returning and valuing crypto assets. The relevant regulations are expected to take effect on October 1st.According to the new regulations, if the frozen assets are cryptocurrencies, victims will, in principle, receive compensation in the same type and quantity of assets. If the defrauded assets differ in form from the frozen assets, compensation will be made in the form of the assets actually existing at the time the account was frozen. In cases involving a mixture of cash and crypto assets, regulators will value the crypto assets based on the market price at the time of freezing to determine the final compensation amount. The South Korean Financial Services Commission stated that clarifying the asset form for return and the valuation time point will facilitate faster and fairer compensation in complex cases where funds from multiple victims are mixed. It is reported that the public consultation period for the revision draft will last until August 24th. (Etoday)
According to Fortune, Miami-based payment infrastructure startup Cyclops announced the completion of a $20 million Series A financing round, led by Nava Ventures, with participation from Castle Island Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Circle, Lasagna Ventures, and GPT Ventures.
According to on-chain analyst Ai Yi’s monitoring, a significant price gap has emerged between SK hynix’s domestic Korean stock and its U.S. ADR. SKHX is priced at approximately $1,303.85, while SKHY stands at around $170.61, with the price difference reaching up to about 30.9%. This reflects strong demand from U.S. capital markets for leading AI chip and HBM (High Bandwidth Memory) assets. Analysis suggests that the conversion between the two is unidirectional—ADR shares can only be canceled and exchanged for ordinary Korean shares, and no one would do so when a premium exists. This explains why the price gap persists and cannot be arbitraged away.
Odaily, OpenAI founder Sam Altman-backed drone company Brinc has announced the completion of a $125 million funding round, led by existing investor Motorola Solutions, with participation from Index Ventures and previous investors such as Dylan Field. The company focuses on applying AI-based drone technology in the field of public safety, including replacing certain high-risk manual response tasks. (Bloomberg)
stablecoin banking platform Flex has announced the completion of a $70 million Series B1 funding round, led by Halo Fund. The new capital will be used to expand Flex Global, its stablecoin-based cross-border commercial banking platform, helping mid-sized enterprises conduct global payments and treasury management via stablecoin infrastructure. Data shows that the annual stablecoin payment volume has reached approximately $390 billion, with B2B transaction volume growing roughly 733% year-over-year. Meanwhile, as of April 2026, Visa's stablecoin settlement volume had reached an annualized $7 billion, representing a 50% year-over-year increase. (Forbes)
the South Korean government has announced the "2026 H2 Economic Growth Strategy," declaring it will accelerate three major "super projects" in semiconductors, AI data centers, and embodied AI. It also plans to enhance industrial competitiveness through blockchain and digital asset ecosystem development. According to the plan, South Korea aims to double its memory chip production capacity over the next five years and launch an AI chatbot for all citizens and a unified AI education platform in the second half of this year.Notably, the South Korean government proposed advancing large-scale demonstration projects for the blockchain and digital asset ecosystem in the second half of this year. It also intends to launch a blockchain-based pilot for tokenizing government bonds, exploring linkages with the Bank of Korea's institutional CBDC to drive financial infrastructure upgrades. Additionally, South Korea plans to establish strategic investment accounts and a national growth fund to expand long-term capital support for strategic industries such as artificial intelligence, quantum technology, security, and blockchain. (Etoday)
: Digital asset trading platform Gate has announced that it will open subscriptions for the second phase of its Pre-IPOs project, OpenAI (OPENAI), from July 15, 2026, 15:00 to July 17, 2026, 15:00 (UTC+8), supporting participation with both USDT and GUSD. The total subscription value for the project is approximately $20 million, with 27,700 OPENAI asset certificates issued at a price of 1 OPENAI = $722. The minimum investment is 100 USDT or 100 GUSD, with implicit handling fees and custody costs waived. OpenAI, driven by products like ChatGPT, is advancing generative AI development and has received investments from Microsoft and others, with an implied market valuation of approximately $895 billion.The OPENAI asset certificate is a pre-IPO mirror note for OpenAI, designed to reflect the company's value before and after its public listing. Gate will hedge its exposure by acquiring the corresponding stocks and will offer pathways including pre-market trading, long-term holding, and future conversion into underlying stock assets, stock tokens, or USDT. Allocations are calculated based on the "average hourly locked amount"; the earlier the participation and the longer the lock-up period, the higher the weight. The certificates will be unlocked in three phases on July 17, August 17, and September 17, with pre-market trading opening on July 20. Concurrently, Gate is launching VIP/Super Agent airdrops, GT rewards, and a 3.8% annualized GUSD minting yield. Furthermore, Gate has already introduced Pre-IPOs, IPO Access, Gate Stocks, and gStocks, covering US, Hong Kong, and Korean stocks, encompassing over 12,500 stocks and ETFs, and will continuously expand its global asset ecosystem, including ETFs and RWAs. Gate will continue to bridge traditional finance with on-chain assets, providing global users with a more open, efficient, and one-stop investment service.
following the recent launch of margin trading functionality, BIT (formerly Matrixport) today officially announced the上线 of its US stock short selling (short) function, marking a key闭环 in BIT's brokerage business achieving a long/short two-way trading ecosystem for US stocks. This provides investors with tools to hedge risks and profit flexibly in a volatile market, and lays sufficient foundational infrastructure for the upcoming options trading.Regarding this business upgrade, Elio Cui, Head of BIT Brokerage, stated: "With the launch of short selling, BIT Brokerage has become one of the very few trading platforms in the industry that simultaneously supports margin trading, short selling, and options布局 under a real US stock framework. Our product planning has been built from the start to benchmark against the complete investment experience of traditional brokerages. Within a single account, users can seamlessly execute long/short two-way allocation and risk hedging, navigating different market cycles with higher capital efficiency."After this feature goes live, users of BIT's integrated account (margin account) who meet the initial margin requirements can short sell designated US stocks. The platform will dynamically update key risk control indicators such as margin rates, stock borrowing costs, and short pool availability in real-time to ensure transparency and efficiency in trading.As a crucial part of enhancing its US stock brokerage services, BIT also reminds investors that short selling involves market risks and is affected by factors such as market volatility, stock borrowing costs, and interest rate fluctuations. The platform will dynamically adjust the list of stocks available for short selling based on market liquidity and risk control policies, offering investors qualified US stock short selling opportunities within a stable and secure framework.To coincide with the launch of the new service, BIT Brokerage is offering a limited-time "0 fee" promotion.
the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) and PitchBook recently released the "Venture Monitor" report, noting that after SpaceX's listing and the potential IPOs of Anthropic and OpenAI, the combined value generated by these three companies will reach an unprecedented level. The report states: "With SpaceX going public, combined with the future exits of these companies, the value created will surpass the total exit value of all US VC-backed companies since 2000." The core factor lies in the extremely high valuation expectations of these three companies.SpaceX is currently valued at approximately $1.77 trillion, while Anthropic and OpenAI are also moving towards multi-trillion-dollar enterprise valuations. The market estimates that the combined valuation of the three companies could exceed $4 trillion. This scale far surpasses past large-scale tech IPOs. Data from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) shows that total US IPO fundraising last year was about $70 billion, whereas SpaceX's single-company valuation has already reached a level that traditional large-scale IPOs find hard to match. As a once-highly-watched tech IPO case, Uber was valued at around $84 billion when it went public in 2019, which is less than 5% of SpaceX's current valuation.However, the comparison by NVCA and PitchBook is based on "enterprise value created," not the actual cash-out amounts for investors. Additionally, the analysis does not include non-US companies like Alibaba. Furthermore, the value created by already-public companies such as Apple, Google Android, YouTube, and Instagram is not counted in the VC exit statistics.The report points out that over the past 25 years, the US tech market has seen several historic IPOs, including Google in 2004, Tesla in 2010, and Meta in 2012. These companies have since become some of the world's most valuable enterprises. Additionally, companies like LinkedIn, Slack, and WhatsApp were acquired for over $20 billion.The NVCA believes that the current IPO cycle driven by artificial intelligence (AI) could further break these records. The analysis suggests two main reasons driving this trend:First, tech companies are staying private for longer periods than in the past, accumulating higher valuations through prolonged financing and business expansion. If today's Google were in its early stages, it might also choose to go public later to achieve a higher market valuation.Second, the AI industry is highly capital-intensive. Training large AI models requires massive investment, pushing AI companies to continuously raise substantial funds and driving rapid valuation growth.Industry insiders believe that the potential scale of IPOs by SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI will test the capacity of the US capital market. As AI companies transition from the private financing stage to the public market, how trillions of dollars in tech assets flow into the stock market will become a focus for investors. (DigitalToday)