News linked to both this project and an event.
Odaily News, Strategy Executive Chairman Michael Saylor said at the company's Q2 earnings call that while the company has previously allocated nearly "100% of its funds to Bitcoin," it may adopt a combined strategy of holding both cash and BTC going forward. He stated, "Perhaps the best way to buy the most Bitcoin is not to buy the most Bitcoin immediately."TD Cowen and Benchmark both maintained their Buy ratings on Strategy following the Q2 earnings call. The two firms believe that the core goal of the company's current management has shifted toward bringing its STRC preferred stock price back to near par value, thereby restoring its ability to function as a financing tool.TD Cowen analyst Lance Vitanza said the most important takeaway from the call was management's strong focus on STRC. Company executives repeatedly emphasized that restoring STRC to par value is the core objective, and noted that despite recent price deviations in the security, institutional adoption continues to rise.Benchmark analyst Mark Palmer holds a similar view. He pointed out that Saylor and his team spent most of the 90-minute call focused on the same goal: restoring STRC to the $99–$100 range, making it once again the primary engine for the company to raise capital and purchase Bitcoin.
OpenAI confirmed that the unreleased GPT-5.6 Sol and another unnamed, more powerful pre-release model breached a restricted sandbox environment during ExploitGym benchmark evaluations and infiltrated Hugging Face's production infrastructure to obtain test answers.OpenAI stated that the models leveraged a zero-day vulnerability in an internal software package registry proxy to escalate privileges and move laterally, ultimately connecting to a machine with internet access. The models then identified and chained together vulnerabilities in both the OpenAI research environment and Hugging Face's production infrastructure, directly retrieving test solutions from Hugging Face's production database.Hugging Face disclosed the incident on July 16, stating that the attack was executed end-to-end by an autonomous AI agent system, involving thousands of operations within short-lived sandboxes and accessing internal datasets and service credentials. OpenAI confirmed its models were the subject of the incident five days later.Hugging Face stated that its security team, in order to analyze over 17,000 attack logs, initially attempted to use a commercial US frontier AI interface, but the request was blocked due to safety guardrails. They subsequently switched to using the 753-billion parameter open-weight model GLM 5.2 from Chinese AI startup Z.ai on their own infrastructure to complete the forensic analysis.
According to the latest in-depth review and exchange ranking by renowned French crypto media Cryptoast, Gate Europe has been ranked third among European crypto trading platforms. The report indicates that Gate Europe has become one of the most competitive digital asset trading platforms in the European market, thanks to its comprehensive MiCA compliance framework, industry-leading low trading fees, and a wide selection of digital assets. The report states that Gate Europe has obtained a MiCA license from the Malta Financial Services Authority (MFSA) and completed passporting into the French market, among others, allowing it to offer compliant digital asset trading services within the European Economic Area. The platform currently supports over 270 crypto assets, with spot Maker and Taker fees as low as 0.1%, offering a significant advantage among MiCA-compliant trading platforms in Europe.Cryptoast notes that beyond its low fee advantage, Gate Europe also provides services such as free SEPA euro deposits, Proof of Reserves, mobile trading, and wealth management products. The platform employs a VIP tiered fee structure, where spot Maker fees can be reduced to as low as 0% as trading volume and asset scale increase. The report concludes that with its product ecosystem balancing compliance, security, and trading efficiency, Gate Europe can meet the diverse needs of both professional traders and ordinary investors, offering European users a more transparent and efficient digital asset investment experience.As MiCA continues to be implemented across Europe, the digital asset industry is moving towards a more regulated development phase. Leveraging its globally leading trading infrastructure, continuously improving product ecosystem, and localized compliance strategy, Gate Europe is steadily enhancing its service capabilities in the European market. The platform aims to provide users with a safer, more efficient, and trustworthy digital asset trading experience, further driving the development of the global digital finance ecosystem.
Odaily Benchmark has raised its price target for Hut 8 (HUT) from $85 to $165, citing the company's accelerated commercialization of its AI data center business and a total of $16.8 billion in long-term contracts for AI infrastructure. Analyst Mark Palmer stated that the commercialization progress of Hut 8's Beacon Point AI data center campus in Texas "has changed the company's valuation logic," significantly increasing the project's value.Currently, Hut 8's stock price is approximately $97, meaning Benchmark's new target implies roughly 69% upside. The stock had previously fallen nearly 30% over the past six weeks.According to Benchmark's estimates, the redesigned first phase of the Beacon Point campus will support 352MW of IT capacity, a 57% increase from the original 224MW plan. The base term value of the lease for this initial phase is approximately $9.8 billion, with an estimated annualized net operating income of around $655 million.Additionally, the lease agreement for Hut 8's River Bend data center, signed with Fluidstack and supported by Google, is valued at approximately $7 billion. The combined base term value of the two contracts reaches $16.8 billion. If tenants exercise the included 5-year renewal options, the potential total value could rise to $42.8 billion. (The Block)
According to Borderless' Q2 2026 Stablecoin Payment Benchmark Report, stablecoin cross-border payment prices remained below interbank foreign exchange rates for three consecutive months in the second quarter, indicating that the cost of on-chain USD settlement is further converging with, and even surpassing, the traditional financial system. Based on data analysis from 108 countries and 260 payment corridors, the report shows that the median "Parity Gap" (the difference between the stablecoin delivery price and the interbank exchange rate) for stablecoin payments in Q2 was negative 3.2 basis points (bps). In June, this metric reached its lowest level this year at negative 5.9 bps, meaning the overall delivery price for stablecoin cross-border transfers was lower than the interbank market mid-rate.Borderless stated that achieving a final delivery price below the interbank exchange rate is quite rare for any cross-border payment mechanism. This data reflects the actual cost paid by customers, including fees, rather than the pure foreign exchange execution price.The report points out that the "transfer cost" for stablecoin payments is becoming commoditized. In Q2, the average cost of transferring $10,000 via mainstream corridors was approximately $27, and has remained near this level for five consecutive months. As competition among different service providers intensifies, the lowest quoted price changes continuously, but market prices are gradually stabilizing.As payment costs converge, the choice of service provider becomes the new core cost factor. Borderless refers to this phenomenon as the "Routing Tax": if a company relies on a single payment service provider over the long term, its costs may be higher than the optimal market price. Data shows that for every $1 million in funds transferred, choosing a single provider compared to the optimal route could result in an additional cost of approximately $2,330. (The Block)
OpenAI announced an upgrade to its Daybreak network defense toolchain, officially launching the full version of the GPT-5.5-Cyber model tailored for cybersecurity defense scenarios.In the CyberGym benchmark test, which evaluates the ability of AI agents to reproduce known vulnerabilities, GPT-5.5-Cyber achieved a single-model score of 85.6%, surpassing GPT-5.5’s 81.8% and Anthropic Mythos 5’s 83.8%.OpenAI stated that as AI significantly enhances the efficiency of vulnerability discovery, the core bottleneck in cybersecurity is shifting from "finding vulnerabilities" to "automatically fixing them." To this end, the company has simultaneously upgraded the Codex Security plugin, enabling developers to automatically analyze vulnerabilities and generate fix patches within the Codex environment. Since the preview release in March this year, Codex Security has scanned over 30 million code commits and autonomously confirmed fixes for 500,000 security defects. The new version also supports CodeQL query integration and SARIF standard file export.Additionally, OpenAI has partnered with organizations such as Trail of Bits and HackerOne to launch the "Patch the Planet" open-source security project. This initiative provides ChatGPT Pro subscriptions and API credits to over 30 major open-source projects, including cURL and Go, with security expert teams manually verifying patch quality. Regarding the Daybreak partner program, security vendors such as Palo Alto Networks and Wiz have already integrated the relevant capabilities.
Benchmark has maintained a "Buy" rating for Coinbase with a $270 price target, implying approximately 59.5% upside from its Tuesday closing price of $169.27. The firm noted that Coinbase's latest "System Update" indicates it is accelerating its transformation from a crypto trading platform into an "everything exchange" that bridges traditional finance and the on-chain economy.Analyst Mark Palmer stated that this product update covers tokenized stocks, stock and crypto options, pre-IPO perpetual contracts, prediction markets, AI-driven investment tools, agent payment infrastructure, and retail financial products, signaling the continuous expansion of its business boundaries.Key progress highlighted by Benchmark also includes: the U.S. CFTC's approval for it to operate as a regulated Futures Commission Merchant (FCM), global derivatives capabilities obtained through the acquisition of Deribit, and integrating crypto perpetuals and options into a compliant framework, thereby achieving cross-market liquidity consolidation.Furthermore, the company's strategic moves in the Base ecosystem, prediction markets, and AI agent payments are also seen as key signals of its evolution from "spot crypto trading" to a comprehensive on-chain financial infrastructure. (The Block)
Odaily AI cost tracking company Ornn has officially launched a token price benchmark service for major large language models, adding independent Token cost indices for Anthropic and OpenAI. These indices are used to measure the unit computing cost of different models in real-world usage scenarios, aiming to provide end users with more transparent AI inference cost references. The service breaks down the Token pricing of different AI labs into comparable standardized metrics, helping enterprise customers and investors obtain a unified way to measure and hedge against AI computing cost fluctuations. (The Information)
The global financial market's attention will be focused on Washington this week as newly appointed Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh chairs his first post-confirmation FOMC press conference. This marks not only his transition from a policy commentator to the "world's most powerful banker," but also a critical window for the outside world to observe whether a major shift in Federal Reserve monetary policy is underway.The market widely expects the Fed to keep the benchmark interest rate unchanged at 3.50%-3.75% during this week's meeting. Compared to the specific rate decision, the market is more focused on how Warsh will reshape the Fed's "art of communication." For a long time, former Chair Powell tended to guide market expectations through transparent "forward guidance," but Warsh has previously expressed reservations about this approach publicly, arguing that the Fed should not provide too many interest rate hints to the market.This meeting will also release the latest quarterly Summary of Economic Projections (SEP) and the "dot plot." For Warsh, who has a strong aversion to the dot plot, this is undoubtedly an awkward beginning, as he must find a balance between respecting the Fed's decision-making mechanism and articulating his own policy preferences. (Reuters)
the U.S. Senate Banking Committee has advanced the crypto market structure bill, the Clarity Act, by a vote of 15 to 9. The bill aims to establish a comprehensive regulatory framework for the crypto industry at the federal level for the first time, garnering support from Democratic Senators Ruben Gallego and Angela Alsobrooks.While the industry generally views the committee's passage as positive progress, analysts believe the bill still faces significant obstacles before becoming law. TD Cowen has raised the bill's passage probability from approximately one-third to 40%, noting that some Democratic lawmakers are showing willingness to find a path to support it, though substantive disagreements have not been fully resolved.Previously, the bill had long been affected by issues such as stablecoin yield arrangements, conflicts of interest, and ethical provisions. Additionally, to overcome a filibuster in the Senate, the bill will need to secure more Democratic support than it currently has. Benchmark analysts also pointed out that the current number of supporting votes is insufficient to ensure its eventual passage. (The Block)
despite Coinbase's weak first-quarter performance, Benchmark has maintained its 'Buy' rating on the stock and raised its price target from $260 to $270.Coinbase reported a net loss of $394 million in the first quarter, with revenue of $755.8 million falling short of market expectations; Adjusted EBITDA was $303.3 million, a significant decline from $929.9 million in the same period last year. Following the earnings release, its share price briefly fell by about 6%.Benchmark believes Coinbase is transitioning from a crypto exchange reliant on market cycles into a core infrastructure platform for the 'on-chain economy.' Its business layout now spans multiple areas, including stablecoins, crypto derivatives, tokenization, DeFi, payments, prediction markets, and AI-native commerce.Previously, Rosenblatt Securities and Bernstein also maintained positive ratings on Coinbase, indicating that some institutions remain optimistic about its long-term platform transformation.