News linked to both this project and an event.
EthSystems announces its official establishment. The company was founded by the original team of the Ethereum Foundation's "Institutional Privacy Working Group" and has received support from Bitmine, Sharplink, Joe Lubin, and others. It primarily develops Ethereum-based privacy and compliance technology for regulated entities such as banks and asset management institutions, aiming to support institutions in conducting on-chain financial activities without disclosing sensitive information such as transaction details and client identities.
EthSystems, an institutional privacy technology company for Ethereum, has officially launched, securing strategic funding from ecosystem supporters including Bitmine, Sharplink Gaming, and Joe Lubin.EthSystems focuses on developing privacy technologies tailored for banks, asset management firms, and other regulated institutions, enabling them to execute financial transactions at scale on the Ethereum network while protecting sensitive information such as transaction details and client identities. The company was founded by the core team of the Ethereum Foundation's Institutional Privacy Task Force (IPTF). The team had previously conducted a year-long open-source research and development effort on the EthSystems official website and established collaborations with multiple central banks, regulatory bodies, large banks, and asset management institutions.EthSystems stated that while institutions have begun exploring stablecoins, tokenized assets, and Ethereum-based settlement solutions, widespread adoption still faces privacy and compliance challenges. Financial institutions require more than just access to the blockchain network; they need a complete infrastructure that meets the requirements for protecting trade secrets, complying with regulations, and ensuring compatibility with existing financial systems. The goal is to build a "selective disclosure" privacy architecture, allowing transaction participants to view only the information they are authorized to access, while preserving Ethereum's core advantages of decentralization, security, and openness, and complementing two other organizations:Ethlabs: Focused on core Ethereum protocol and infrastructure research and development;Ethereum Institutional: Responsible for institutional collaboration, education, market research, and ecosystem coordination;EthSystems: Concentrated on application-layer technology, translating institutional needs into operational privacy protocols and financial systems.
According to Odaily Planet Daily, Ethereum ZK Layer2 Starknet has officially launched the compliant privacy framework STRK20, providing native privacy transaction capabilities for various digital assets on-chain. The framework operates based on a privacy pool mechanism. Once user assets are deposited into the privacy pool, all transactions are encrypted, with details such as transfer addresses and amounts being invisible to the outside. Developers can quickly integrate this privacy system using the accompanying SDK and wallet API, catering to the private transfer needs of various ERC-20 assets. STRK20 incorporates a complete compliance process: users must undergo pre-screening before entering the privacy pool; only upon receiving a legally effective formal query request and after an independent assessment, will the platform selectively disclose specific users, corresponding time periods, or designated transfer records, without revealing the private data of unrelated users.
a16z Crypto has released an analysis stating that traditional finance (TradFi) is not merging with decentralized finance (DeFi), but is instead selectively adopting blockchain technologies that meet its own needs. A long-standing narrative within the crypto industry has been that DeFi and TradFi will eventually merge, combining open liquidity with institutional distribution to form a new system superior to traditional finance. However, the reality may be different.The core driver for traditional finance's adoption of blockchain is not the concept of decentralization, but commercial efficiency. As long as blockchain can help institutions reduce costs, improve settlement efficiency, expand distribution channels, and enhance customer relationships, they will adopt the relevant technology. “TradFi is not entering DeFi; it is utilizing the parts of DeFi that fit its own operational models and reshaping these technologies according to institutional requirements.”a16z Crypto stated that a new category of financial infrastructure may emerge in the future—"programmable financial infrastructure" based on a blockchain foundation but optimized for institutional constraints. The blockchain technologies currently being adopted by institutions mainly include:Atomic Settlement: Reduces counterparty risk and decreases tied-up collateral capital;Shared Ledger: Lowers the cost of back-office reconciliation;Programmable Money: Automates interest payments, margin management, and corporate actions;Automated Market Makers (AMM): Being repurposed for on-chain foreign exchange and tokenized asset pricing.
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)
Flap, a token launch platform now live on the Robinhood Chain, has introduced a 2% purchase limit per wallet (based on total supply) during the bonding curve phase for tokens with no transaction tax. There is no purchase limit for token developers on their initial buy, and all selling is unrestricted. Once a token graduates, the 2% purchase cap will be lifted, allowing the token to trade normally on DEX.
According to the official announcement, Huobi HTX listed SNXX/USDT and RAM/USDT perpetual contracts on July 14, with a maximum leverage of 10x for both. Meanwhile, Huobi HTX launched the SNXX and RAM contract trading competition from 15:00 on July 14 to 15:00 on July 21 (UTC+8), with a total prize pool of up to 20,000 USD. During the event, users who complete registration and participate in SNXX/USDT and RAM/USDT contract trading with a cumulative valid trading volume ≥ 1,000 USDT can share the prize pool based on trading volume ranking; new contract users who complete contract trading of event tokens will also receive exclusive benefits.
, according to official sources, MGBX will list the spot trading pairs SKHYB (SK Hynix) and ANSEM (The Black Bull) at 18:00 (SGT) on July 14, 2026.Deposit Opening Time: 16:00 (SGT) on July 14, 2026Trading Opening Time: 18:00 (SGT) on July 14, 2026Withdrawal Opening Time: 19:00 (SGT) on July 15, 2026SKHYB: SKHYB is a tokenized bStock representing SK Hynix, one of the world's leading semiconductor companies, primarily producing DRAM and NAND flash memory chips used in servers, smartphones, personal computers, and AI-related devices.ANSEM: $ANSEM (The Black Bull) is a community-driven meme coin based on the Solana blockchain.
Haseeb posted on X, stating that with models like GLM 5.2, Fable, and GPT 5.6 already launched and actively used by attackers, DeFi has not experienced the anticipated "hacker apocalypse." Chart data shows that based on the current year's data and running rate, the annualized amount stolen from DeFi in 2026 is approximately $1.89 billion. The cumulative stolen amount for the year is around $986 million, lower than the 2025 level and still within the historical range. Haseeb noted that the deeper change now is that while the number of hacker attacks has increased, the scale of individual attacks is declining more rapidly. Attackers are increasingly targeting smaller protocols and abandoned projects, while large protocols have implemented more security enhancements. As a result, overall fund security has not significantly deteriorated.
Odaily, Polymarket-based DeFi startup Gondor has announced the launch of Gondor v1, claiming it will be the first margin account product for Polymarket. The version is expected to go live publicly in September.Gondor v1 will allow users to manage cross-margining across their entire Polymarket portfolio, using the full portfolio as collateral for loans. Users can then use the credit line to purchase more prediction market shares, achieving higher capital efficiency and leverage operations.This marks an expansion from the beta version Gondor launched seven months ago. The previous product primarily allowed users to take out loans against individual Polymarket positions, while v1 expands the collateral scope to the entire portfolio.Prediction markets like Polymarket and Kalshi typically operate on a full collateral model, requiring users to deposit the entire risk amount upfront and lock up funds until the event is settled. Gondor aims to unlock this locked capital through portfolio margining and lending mechanisms, allowing users to gain additional liquidity and continue placing bets without immediately selling their positions.
According to the official announcement, HTX listed SHAZ/USDT, GEV/USDT, SNOW/USDT, and APP/USDT perpetual contracts on July 13, with a maximum leverage of 10x for all. Additionally, HTX launched the SHAZ, GEV, SNOW, and APP contract trading competition from 15:00 on July 13 to 15:00 on July 20 (UTC+8), with a total prize pool of up to 20,000 USD. During the event, users who complete registration and participate in SHAZ/USDT, GEV/USDT, SNOW/USDT, and APP/USDT contract trading with a cumulative valid trading volume ≥ 1,000 USDT can share the prize pool based on their trading volume ranking; new contract users who complete contract trading of event tokens will also receive exclusive benefits.
: 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.
According to CoinPost, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi delivered a video address at the opening ceremony of WebX 2026, reaffirming the government's policy to promote the social implementation of Web3. Prime Minister Takaichi introduced the "Startup Comprehensive Support Package" launched in May 2025, a plan further strengthened based on the "Five-Year Plan for Startup Cultivation," aiming to expand funding supply from the government and financial institutions to startups and accelerate their scaled development. Prime Minister Takaichi stated that WebX, as Asia's largest-scale Web3 summit gathering approximately 15,000 people globally, is an important platform for all parties to equally discuss the future of society and industry and promote business cooperation. She expects synergies between government policies and the WebX platform to drive the continuous development of Japan's innovation ecosystem.
Odaily News: Michael Saylor posted Strategy's orange dot Bitcoin accumulation chart on X on July 12. Strategy previously sold 3,588 BTC between June 29 and July 5, generating $216 million to support preferred share obligations and strengthen its U.S. dollar reserves. The chart shows Strategy has made 113 BTC purchase events, holding 843,775 BTC with a total purchase value of approximately $63.69 billion and an average purchase price of about $75,476. Strategy’s latest dashboard reveals that its BTC holdings are valued at approximately $53.991 billion based on a BTC price of $63,988. MSTR has a market cap of $35.17 billion, an enterprise value of $54.838 billion, an mNAV ratio of 1.02, U.S. dollar reserves of $2.55 billion, debt of $6.754 billion, and preferred stock value of $15.464 billion. (Bitcoin.com News)
on July 10, 2026, Metaplanet announced a joint research initiative with JPYC, Progmat, and Metaplanet Securities to explore Bitcoin-backed digital credit products. The plan involves using Bitcoin as collateral for tokenization tools, including settlements via a yen-pegged stablecoin and digital corporate bonds managed by security tokens. As of the end of the second quarter of 2026, Metaplanet held approximately 43,000 BTC, valued at $2.75 billion based on Saturday's BTC exchange rate. Metaplanet stated that the research has not yet yielded a product, and no issuance date, interest rate, product structure, or sales method has been determined. Its 43,000 BTC holdings have not been staked to any specific product at this stage. (Bitcoin.com News).
Bonzo Finance, a lending protocol based on Hedera, suffered an oracle attack, resulting in a loss of approximately $9 million. The attacker exploited collateral whose SAUCE token price had been artificially inflated to borrow assets far exceeding their actual value from the protocol. According to a preliminary incident report released by Bonzo Finance, the attacker deposited only 250 SAUCE tokens, then submitted a single price update that artificially inflated the token's price by approximately 12 orders of magnitude. Subsequently, the address borrowed 6.63 million USDC and 34.5 million wrapped HBAR from the lending pool.This attack was not due to a vulnerability in Bonzo Finance's smart contracts or the underlying Hedera network itself, but rather stemmed from a flaw in the on-chain oracle verifier of the oracle service provider Supra. It erroneously accepted a SAUCE price data point where the signature had been zeroed out. Supra has since confirmed the issue and completed a fix.
Bitget Stock Spot rToken has listed SK Hynix (rSKHY). From now until July 17, users trading rSKHY can enjoy a 0 fee promotion.In addition, the platform has launched a exclusive event for new users, with a total prize pool of 50,000 USDT equivalent in SK Hynix. During the event, new registered users who complete a net deposit of at least 1,000 USDT and their first trade can randomly receive 10-88 USDT equivalent in rSKHY. New users participating in rSKHY trading can also unlock corresponding tiered stock rewards based on their cumulative trading volume, with the highest individual reward being rSKHY worth 888 USDT. The participation period is from July 10 to July 17.It is reported that rTokens, identified by the letter "r" followed by the stock ticker symbol (e.g., rNVDA for Nvidia), are issued by Reality, a licensed RWA protocol under Bitget. Through a partnership with compliant broker Alpaca, they are directly connected to global liquidity pools such as Nasdaq and NYSE. Their features include: 1:1 reserve of underlying assets held by a licensed custodian, stock dividends distributed 1:1 in token form, corporate actions (such as stock splits and reverse splits) mirrored synchronously, and the holdings can be used as cross-collateral for unified accounts and USDT-margined contracts.
The international banking communication organization SWIFT has announced that its blockchain-based distributed ledger technology is ready to enter the initial application phase. A total of 17 global financial institutions will serve as early adopters to test real-time transactions based on Tokenised Deposits.SWIFT stated that since announcing its plan to integrate a blockchain ledger into its technical system at the 2025 Sibos conference, it has taken only nine months to progress from concept design to preliminary implementation. This project aims to help financial institutions explore the application of digital assets and new forms of digital value on top of the existing trusted, secure, and global infrastructure.The first application scenario focuses on improving the efficiency of cross-border payments. As the demand from businesses and consumers for 24/7 financial services increases, traditional payment systems are constrained by time zones and operating hours. The SWIFT ledger will provide a secure coordination layer for participating banks, enabling them to facilitate round-the-clock transfers of funds based on tokenised deposits issued on their own ledgers, before final settlement through existing clearing systems.SWIFT stated that tokenised deposits were selected as the first pilot direction because they represent a regulated digital form of commercial bank money. This approach can enhance customer experience and liquidity management efficiency without altering existing compliance, credit risk, and control systems.
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)