Block, Inc. (NASDAQ:SQ)is a technology company focused on financial services and digital payments. The company was founded in 2009, formerly known as Square, Inc., and was renamed Block in 2021 to reflect its expanding product portfolio. The company operates Square merchant payment solutions, Cash App (provides peer-to-peer payments and Bitcoin transactions), Afterpay (provides buy-to-pay-after-pay), TIDAL (provides music streaming services), Bitkey (provides self-hosted Bitcoin wallets), and Proto (provides Bitcoin mining services).
: Bitcoin financial product platform Lombard Finance has announced the launch of the Bitcoin Onchain Credit Strategy, with global trading firm Flow Traders as the first pilot partner. Under this solution, Flow Traders can borrow stablecoins for market making without providing on-chain collateral. Its collateral security is provided by Bitcoin deposited in the Lombard Bitcoin Earn yield product, and underwriting is completed through the Cap private credit platform. (The Block)
According to The Block, Shuyao Kong, a core team member of Ethereum scaling project MegaETH, announced on July 16 the official closure of the flagship accelerator program Mega Mafia, which operated for two years across two cohorts. The project incubated approximately 20 teams in total, cumulatively helping them raise about $80 million in financing (covering Pre-Seed to Series A), but Kong admitted "the project was built on assumptions that no longer hold true," and most successfully incubated applications are no longer building on MegaETH. Among them, flagship project GTE chose to build its own public chain, Noise shifted to Base, HelloTrade shifted to Monad, and some projects such as Avon and Valhalla have closed. Notably, MegaETH did not hold equity or governance rights in any project during the incubation process. Kong stated that MegaETH will shift resources to "first-party application" development in the future, directly establishing relationships with end users, focusing on "OMEGA"-level consumer applications that can only be realized on MegaETH.
According to The Block, crypto liquidation platform Glacis Labs announced the completion of a $6.8 million seed funding round led by Lightspeed Faction, with participation from Franklin Templeton, Coinbase Ventures, A.GAIN (formerly IDC Ventures), Protein Capital, and Techni Ventures. The financing was completed in the form of equity with token warrants.
The U.S. Department of the Treasury and the UK's His Majesty's Treasury have issued a joint statement and recommendations as part of the "Transatlantic Working Group for Future Markets." The working group recommends that the Bank of England, the FCA, along with the U.S. CFTC and SEC, develop regulatory frameworks for tokenized assets while requiring the FCA and SEC to explore measures to facilitate cross-border financing. In terms of specific recommendations, both the U.S. and UK propose: supporting the development of stablecoins, tokenized deposits, and similar digital assets; promoting market competition and innovation; and establishing higher standards for asset custody, reserve segregation, and consumer protection. (The Block)
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 The Block, Japanese financial group SBI Holdings has recently made a series of aggressive moves, completing multiple major crypto investments in succession: exclusively investing $125 million in Gauntlet's Series C, $76 million in EDX Markets' Series C, spending approximately $289 million to acquire Japanese crypto exchange Bitbank, and taking a stake in Singaporean exchange Coinhako. In addition, SBI also participated in Digital Asset's $355 million financing, Morpho's $175 million token round, and Circle's $222 million token presale, and launched Japan's first trust bank-backed yen stablecoin, JPYSC. SBI stated that the company is driving the group's overall on-chain transformation, aiming to provide end-to-end services across exchanges, asset tokenization, market platforms, and other segments, to position itself ahead of the upcoming "token economy" era. Analysts point out that SBI is building Asia's first scaled on-chain asset management business; its strategic core is not purchasing crypto exposure, but controlling the infrastructure of the next-generation financial system. On the regulatory front, the Japanese parliament is advancing legislation to include cryptocurrencies as regulated financial instruments, and plans to significantly reduce the capital gains tax on crypto assets from 55% to 20% by 2028, aligning it with stocks and bonds, providing policy support for institutional entry.
Odaily News, according to Bitcoin News monitoring, Chainalysis analysis of the Coldcard exploit involving over $38 million shows that the attacker deliberately targeted the highest-value wallets first, including one holding $1.8 million, indicating that victims had already been profiled before asset transfers began. Approximately $30 million was stolen in the initial 10 minutes, followed by around 500 wallets being drained within 25 minutes. Block's Clay Garrett stated that investigators also confirmed the attacker used a paid account with a well-known blockchain service provider to query victim addresses during the operation. The provider's internal logs match the request timestamps and sequence, but Block stated that no evidence was found suggesting the company knowingly assisted in the theft. Relevant information has been shared with authorities.
According to The Block, the JPMorgan analyst team (led by Managing Director Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou) released a report on July 30 stating that the probability of the "Clarity Act" (Crypto Market Structure Act) passing in the US Senate within the year has dropped to a historic low. The Kalshi prediction market shows a passing probability of only 37%, while Polymarket is even lower at 26%. Analysts pointed out that disagreements on core issues such as ethical provisions, enforcement standards, stablecoin yields, decentralized finance, and illicit finance remain unresolved. Voting is expected to be difficult to complete before the Senate summer recess, and may be postponed until after senators return in mid-September.
According to The Block, bipartisan Senators Thom Tillis (Republican) and Ruben Gallego (Democrat) submitted a new ethics compromise proposal to the White House on Thursday morning local time, attempting to break the deadlock in advancing the Clarity Act cryptocurrency legislation. Currently, there is less than a week left until the Senate recesses on August 7, but the bill still has not obtained the 60 votes required for passage. Democrats insist on adding stricter ethics provisions to constrain the Trump family's crypto interests, including the Meme coins they issued and the World Liberty Financial project in which the family participates, while some Republican senators have objections to the stablecoin interest provisions, worrying that it will divert deposits from traditional banks to the crypto sector. Although the draft leaked last week prohibited public officials and their spouses from issuing digital assets, it did not cover other family members, and included a "sunset clause" expiring in January 2029, which critics believe essentially nullifies the entire ethics provision. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent subsequently blamed the Democrats on X, stating that they "chose political gaming on the verge of a major victory". The Crypto Innovation Committee (CCI) warned that if the bill fails to pass, the US will hand over its global leadership position in the field of crypto regulation.
data center operator Core Scientific disclosed in its second-quarter regulatory filing that it paid $41.9 million to terminate the Bitcoin mining machine contract with Block and its Proto division, with related losses amounting to $41.9 million. Both the agreement and future equipment deliveries have been canceled. The agreement, announced in July 2024, originally called for Proto to supply 3nm mining chips, corresponding to approximately 15 EH/s in hashrate, and included options for additional purchases. Core Scientific stated that it will no longer invest in new mining machines to maintain or expand hashrate, will generate cash flow from existing mining machines, and will sell or retire machines as appropriate. Core Scientific's second-quarter hosting revenue increased from $10.6 million in the same period last year to $137 million, accounting for 83% of total revenue; self-mining revenue fell 66% year-over-year to $21.5 million, representing 13% of total revenue. The company stated that quarterly Bitcoin production decreased by 53% year-over-year, and it continues to shift power from mining equipment to high-density computing systems such as GPUs.
the token is issued by Anchorage Digital Bank, can be natively minted and redeemed on Celo, and can be directly used to pay on-chain gas fees via Celo's fee abstraction mechanism. USAT went live in January this year and currently has a market cap of approximately $185 million.
According to The Block, 44 state attorneys general led by Ohio Attorney General Andy Wilson jointly submitted a public comment letter to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), stating that the CFTC's proposed rules exceed the authority granted by the Commodity Exchange Act and requesting them to redraft new rules compliant with the Constitution. The letter emphasized that sports betting has historically fallen under state-level regulatory jurisdiction, and the federal government has never intervened. Meanwhile, the NFL also wrote to CFTC Chairman Michael Selig, requesting to curb the expansion of sports prediction markets, arguing that the current proposed rules are insufficient to protect the integrity of events. Currently, the legal battle between states and the CFTC continues to intensify: a Minnesota court ruled to suspend the enforcement of the state's prediction market ban, allowing Kalshi and Polymarket to continue operations; however, a New York federal judge again refused to block New York State from enforcing gambling laws against Kalshi, and Michigan and Washington states have also issued temporary injunctions restricting Kalshi from conducting sports event contract business locally.
According to The Block, the JPMorgan analyst team (led by Managing Director Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou) released a report on July 30 stating that the probability of the "Clarity Act" (Crypto Market Structure Act) passing in the US Senate within the year has dropped to a historic low. The Kalshi prediction market shows a passing probability of only 37%, while Polymarket is even lower at 26%. Analysts pointed out that disagreements on core issues such as ethical provisions, enforcement standards, stablecoin yields, decentralized finance, and illicit finance remain unresolved. Voting is expected to be difficult to complete before the Senate summer recess, and may be postponed until after senators return in mid-September.
According to The Block, bipartisan Senators Thom Tillis (Republican) and Ruben Gallego (Democrat) submitted a new ethics compromise proposal to the White House on Thursday morning local time, attempting to break the deadlock in advancing the Clarity Act cryptocurrency legislation. Currently, there is less than a week left until the Senate recesses on August 7, but the bill still has not obtained the 60 votes required for passage. Democrats insist on adding stricter ethics provisions to constrain the Trump family's crypto interests, including the Meme coins they issued and the World Liberty Financial project in which the family participates, while some Republican senators have objections to the stablecoin interest provisions, worrying that it will divert deposits from traditional banks to the crypto sector. Although the draft leaked last week prohibited public officials and their spouses from issuing digital assets, it did not cover other family members, and included a "sunset clause" expiring in January 2029, which critics believe essentially nullifies the entire ethics provision. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent subsequently blamed the Democrats on X, stating that they "chose political gaming on the verge of a major victory". The Crypto Innovation Committee (CCI) warned that if the bill fails to pass, the US will hand over its global leadership position in the field of crypto regulation.
According to The Block, Bernstein analyst Gautam Chhugani lowered Circle (CRCL)'s price target from $190 to $140, but maintained an "Outperform" rating, implying approximately 118% upside potential compared to the current stock price of $64.32. Bernstein expects Circle's Q2 performance to be essentially flat, with USDC supply decreasing from $77 billion at the end of Q1 to $73 billion. Regarding market concerns over the competitive threat from the Open USD alliance, Bernstein believes its cohesion is insufficient; Visa also stated it will maintain a multi-currency, multi-chain strategy and will not bet on a single winner. Additionally, the profit-sharing agreement between Circle and Hyperliquid is expected to transfer approximately $190 million in reserve yield annually to the latter, with the full impact to be reflected in Q3. Bernstein also lowered its end-of-2026 USDC supply forecast by 37% to $83 billion, but remains long-term bullish on Circle capturing approximately 30% share of the global stablecoin market by 2035.
According to The Block, Alex Svanevik, CEO of on-chain data platform Nansen, stated that AI trading agents are expected to surpass human traders within the next two years. To this end, Nansen is expanding its platform from on-chain data analysis to direct trade execution, aiming to achieve "all-asset on-chain trading via agents." He mentioned that the platform has launched relevant trading features, with cumulative trading volume exceeding $500 million.
According to The Block, Bitcoin rose above $65,800 on July 22, hitting a new high in over a month, with a monthly gain of approximately 2%. Spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded net inflows for the sixth consecutive day, with single-day net inflows of $203 million on Tuesday. Spot Ethereum ETFs recorded net inflows of $37.5 million on the same day, marking three consecutive days of positive inflows. Analysts have identified the next key resistance level near $68,000 — this price level represents the convergence zone of the short-term holder cost basis and the Q2 opening price, where a large number of trapped buyers will break even, and the first touch is expected to trigger massive selling pressure.
Odaily data shows that Solana and Hyperliquid ETF trading volumes together account for nearly 80% of all non-BTC and non-ETH ETF trading volume. The Solana ETF currently has an assets under management (AUM) of $904 million, while Hyperliquid-related funds have accumulated a net inflow of $350 million since their launch two months ago. The combined ETF sizes of both represent approximately 2% of their respective tokens' market capitalizations. (The Block)
Odaily News, according to Bitcoin News monitoring, Chainalysis analysis of the Coldcard exploit involving over $38 million shows that the attacker deliberately targeted the highest-value wallets first, including one holding $1.8 million, indicating that victims had already been profiled before asset transfers began. Approximately $30 million was stolen in the initial 10 minutes, followed by around 500 wallets being drained within 25 minutes. Block's Clay Garrett stated that investigators also confirmed the attacker used a paid account with a well-known blockchain service provider to query victim addresses during the operation. The provider's internal logs match the request timestamps and sequence, but Block stated that no evidence was found suggesting the company knowingly assisted in the theft. Relevant information has been shared with authorities.
According to The Block, Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev's X account was hacked at approximately 17:24 UTC on July 23. Hackers posted claiming to launch "Vladhood ($VLAD)" as the "official mascot of Robinhood Chain," and attached a contract address. The Robinhood Chain blockchain explorer has labeled the token as a "potential scam," and the token has generated approximately 1,868 transactions since deployment. Robinhood officially confirmed later that the account was compromised, the relevant posts have been deleted, and the company is working with the X platform to restore account access.
According to The Block, Ledger's security research team Donjon disclosed a security vulnerability in Tangem hardware wallet cards. After obtaining the physical card, attackers can use laser fault injection equipment to bypass recovery state verification in the firmware and reset the password, thereby controlling the wallet and initiating transactions. The research states that this vulnerability affects all Tangem cards currently in circulation, and since the product does not support firmware updates, it cannot be fixed via patches.
According to The Block, the Securities and Futures Commission of Hong Kong (SFC) issued a circular requiring licensed virtual asset trading platforms and internet brokers to stop using one-time passwords (OTP) for user login and device binding within 12 months, and instead adopt stronger authentication methods such as passkeys (Passkey) and device binding. This move stems from deception attacks accounting for up to 57% of Hong Kong cybersecurity incidents in 2025. The SFC also requires all institutions to establish monitoring systems for suspicious logins, transactions, and withdrawals, and promptly notify customers of unusual account activity; large brokers must implement the new authentication measures immediately. The SFC emphasized that if internal control deficiencies within an institution lead to customer losses, relevant parties will be held accountable.
According to The Block, BNB Chain is building a new Layer 1 blockchain designed specifically for agent trading, targeting transaction pre-confirmation in under 50 milliseconds, and suppressing MEV behaviors such as sandwich attacks by eliminating the public mempool (adopting the TxStream mechanism). The new chain will also reserve block space for oracles, liquidations, and cross-chain bridges via PriorityLane, with a designed throughput target exceeding 100,000 TPS, and supporting sub-second block finality. This chain will become the fourth chain in the BNB Chain ecosystem, connected to BNB Smart Chain via a native bridge, with BSC serving as the settlement hub. The testnet is planned to launch at the end of 2026, and the mainnet is expected to deploy in early 2027.
BNB Chain is developing a new Layer 1 blockchain designed for Agentic Trading, releasing the first detailed architectural information after months of research and development. According to BNB Chain's disclosed technical roadmap for the second half of 2026, the new chain will run in parallel with the existing BNB Chain ecosystem, targeting transaction preconfirmation times of less than 50 milliseconds. The goal is to deliver an execution experience close to that of centralized exchanges (CEX) while retaining the advantages of on-chain self-custody and transparency.In terms of technical architecture, the new chain will remove the traditional public mempool and introduce a transaction transmission mechanism called "TxStream," which directly sends transactions to block producers to reduce latency and minimize MEV extraction behaviors such as sandwich attacks. (The Block)
According to The Block, the JPMorgan analyst team (led by Managing Director Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou) released a report on July 30 stating that the probability of the "Clarity Act" (Crypto Market Structure Act) passing in the US Senate within the year has dropped to a historic low. The Kalshi prediction market shows a passing probability of only 37%, while Polymarket is even lower at 26%. Analysts pointed out that disagreements on core issues such as ethical provisions, enforcement standards, stablecoin yields, decentralized finance, and illicit finance remain unresolved. Voting is expected to be difficult to complete before the Senate summer recess, and may be postponed until after senators return in mid-September.
According to The Block, bipartisan Senators Thom Tillis (Republican) and Ruben Gallego (Democrat) submitted a new ethics compromise proposal to the White House on Thursday morning local time, attempting to break the deadlock in advancing the Clarity Act cryptocurrency legislation. Currently, there is less than a week left until the Senate recesses on August 7, but the bill still has not obtained the 60 votes required for passage. Democrats insist on adding stricter ethics provisions to constrain the Trump family's crypto interests, including the Meme coins they issued and the World Liberty Financial project in which the family participates, while some Republican senators have objections to the stablecoin interest provisions, worrying that it will divert deposits from traditional banks to the crypto sector. Although the draft leaked last week prohibited public officials and their spouses from issuing digital assets, it did not cover other family members, and included a "sunset clause" expiring in January 2029, which critics believe essentially nullifies the entire ethics provision. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent subsequently blamed the Democrats on X, stating that they "chose political gaming on the verge of a major victory". The Crypto Innovation Committee (CCI) warned that if the bill fails to pass, the US will hand over its global leadership position in the field of crypto regulation.
According to The Block, Aave founder Stani Kulechov announced on July 30, 2026, that Aave proposed to delist 50 low-adoption asset reserves and 21 expired Pendle PTs, and completely shut down six small deployments: Sonic, Scroll, zkSync, Metis, Soneium, and Aptos, involving a total of approximately $98.1 million in supplied assets and $15.6 million in outstanding debt. The proposal was drafted by risk service provider LlamaRisk and executed under Aave's new risk framework, aimed at streamlining operational overhead and reducing maintenance costs for oracle and liquidation infrastructure. Affected reserves will have new activities frozen and supply and borrow caps reduced, while reserve factors for deployments pending closure will be increased to 99% to encourage users to actively close positions.
According to The Block, following the launch of Pump.fun's new default launch mechanism BOOST, the platform's token graduation rate has significantly increased. Last Friday, the graduation rate reached 6.7%, approximately 8 times the average level in June; the average for the preceding four days also remained at 4.7%, higher than the 2.5% of the previous week. The BOOST mechanism targets the approximately 20% of migrated liquidity previously permanently locked in the PumpSwap pool, automatically executing market buys and burning the acquired tokens within the first five minutes after token migration, incentivizing traders to participate more actively in bidding for tokens before bonding by ensuring immediate buy pressure and supply burn. It is worth noting that BOOST only takes effect after a token completes bonding and does not directly increase the proportion of tokens reaching the bonding threshold.
According to The Block, SoFi's crypto trading revenue in the second quarter increased 10% quarter-over-quarter, reaching $134.3 million, with net income of approximately $1.2 million after deducting $133.1 million in transaction costs. Meanwhile, SoFi's stablecoin SoFiUSD has begun processing 24/7 business payments through its business banking platform Big Business Banking, and went live for retail users in May, supporting buying, selling, holding, and exchanging on Ethereum and Solana.
the token is issued by Anchorage Digital Bank, can be natively minted and redeemed on Celo, and can be directly used to pay on-chain gas fees via Celo's fee abstraction mechanism. USAT went live in January this year and currently has a market cap of approximately $185 million.
Odaily News, according to Bitcoin News monitoring, Chainalysis analysis of the Coldcard exploit involving over $38 million shows that the attacker deliberately targeted the highest-value wallets first, including one holding $1.8 million, indicating that victims had already been profiled before asset transfers began. Approximately $30 million was stolen in the initial 10 minutes, followed by around 500 wallets being drained within 25 minutes. Block's Clay Garrett stated that investigators also confirmed the attacker used a paid account with a well-known blockchain service provider to query victim addresses during the operation. The provider's internal logs match the request timestamps and sequence, but Block stated that no evidence was found suggesting the company knowingly assisted in the theft. Relevant information has been shared with authorities.
Odaily News: The FTX bankruptcy estate management team will initiate a fifth round of creditor distributions,预计向符合条件的债权人发放约 9 亿美元。截至目前,FTX 破产财产管理团队已向债权人分配近 100 亿美元。(The Block)
According to The Block, the New York Attorney General has filed a lawsuit against Kalshi, alleging that it operated an illegal gambling business through prediction market platforms, and is seeking at least $36 billion in compensatory damages.
According to The Block, the JPMorgan analyst team (led by Managing Director Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou) released a report on July 30 stating that the probability of the "Clarity Act" (Crypto Market Structure Act) passing in the US Senate within the year has dropped to a historic low. The Kalshi prediction market shows a passing probability of only 37%, while Polymarket is even lower at 26%. Analysts pointed out that disagreements on core issues such as ethical provisions, enforcement standards, stablecoin yields, decentralized finance, and illicit finance remain unresolved. Voting is expected to be difficult to complete before the Senate summer recess, and may be postponed until after senators return in mid-September.
According to The Block, bipartisan Senators Thom Tillis (Republican) and Ruben Gallego (Democrat) submitted a new ethics compromise proposal to the White House on Thursday morning local time, attempting to break the deadlock in advancing the Clarity Act cryptocurrency legislation. Currently, there is less than a week left until the Senate recesses on August 7, but the bill still has not obtained the 60 votes required for passage. Democrats insist on adding stricter ethics provisions to constrain the Trump family's crypto interests, including the Meme coins they issued and the World Liberty Financial project in which the family participates, while some Republican senators have objections to the stablecoin interest provisions, worrying that it will divert deposits from traditional banks to the crypto sector. Although the draft leaked last week prohibited public officials and their spouses from issuing digital assets, it did not cover other family members, and included a "sunset clause" expiring in January 2029, which critics believe essentially nullifies the entire ethics provision. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent subsequently blamed the Democrats on X, stating that they "chose political gaming on the verge of a major victory". The Crypto Innovation Committee (CCI) warned that if the bill fails to pass, the US will hand over its global leadership position in the field of crypto regulation.
According to The Block, Cathie Wood's Ark Invest sold several crypto-related stocks from its ARKK ETF on Wednesday amid falling share prices, including Bitmine (120,665 shares, approximately $2 million), Block Inc. (13,403 shares, approximately $1.1 million), Robinhood (12,561 shares, approximately $1.1 million), and Bullish (11,314 shares, approximately $247,000). Meanwhile, Ark bought approximately 128,932 shares of SpaceX across its multiple ETFs, valued at approximately $14.5 million.