News linked to both this project and an event.
Ethereum Institutional (@ethereuminsti) posted that Open Standard's stablecoin project Open USD will be deployed on Ethereum on its first day of launch, having already attracted over 140 enterprises to join, including Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, BlackRock, BNY, and others. All reserve yields will flow to partners driving its growth. Open Standard stated that shared assets require neutral infrastructure, and Ethereum is the deployment platform it has chosen.
According to the announcement on the CFTC official website, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) on July 30 to solicit public comments on amendments to Parts 37, 38, and 39 of the regulations and sections 1.52 and 1.55, with a comment period of 60 days after publication in the Federal Register. This revision targets the increasingly common affiliations among CFTC-regulated entities, covering market participants including Derivative Clearing Organizations, Designated Contract Markets, Swap Execution Facilities, Futures Commission Merchants, and market makers, with a focus on resolving potential conflicts of interest within vertically integrated market structures. CFTC Chairman Michael S. Selig stated that the proposed rule will establish a principles-based regulatory framework for vertically integrated market structures, maintaining market integrity while avoiding stifling innovative market structures or imposing excessive compliance burdens on registered entities.
Visa CEO Ryan McInerney stated during the earnings call that Visa's role in the stablecoin space is not to pick winners, but to help clients securely and scalably connect to the stablecoin ecosystem.Last month, Visa joined forces with over 140 companies, including Stripe, Mastercard, BlackRock, and Coinbase, to support Open Standard, which plans to launch the stablecoin Open USD (OUSD) later this year. Following the announcement, market speculation arose that OUSD could challenge Tether's USDT and Circle's USDC.When asked whether Visa views OUSD as a competitor to USDT and USDC, McInerney said that Visa will maintain a "multi-currency, multi-chain" strategy going forward and will not bet on a single stablecoin, network, or infrastructure.He stated that Visa's goal is to support clients in accessing the stablecoin ecosystem, regardless of which stablecoin, network, or underlying infrastructure is ultimately adopted.Ark Invest analyzed that Visa is clearly interested in Open USD, but this does not necessarily mean it views OUSD as an exclusive strategic bet. Overall, Visa appears to be keeping its participation open at the stablecoin infrastructure level, rather than directly aligning with a specific stablecoin issuer.
Moonshot AI launches open-source model Kimi K3, scoring 57 points on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, becoming the third highest-scoring model, second only to Anthropic's Claude Opus 5 (61 points), Claude Fable 5 (60 points), and OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol (59 points). The index shows that the gap between leading closed-source models and open-weight models has narrowed to 4 points, the smallest gap since the release of GLM-5 in February. This signifies that open-source models are rapidly catching up to closed-source models in performance.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has responded to the controversy over open-weight models, stating that the company has never advocated for a total ban on open models. Previously, companies including OpenAI, Google, and SpaceX joined the open-source coalition, while Anthropic was the only major frontier model company not to sign on.Amodei acknowledged that open-weight models can lower costs, promote competition, and support customer self-deployment. He stated that open models without dangerous capabilities can be considered a "public good."However, he believes that open models are not necessarily safer, nor do defenders necessarily gain more advantages over attackers. Once model weights are made public, security restrictions may be removed and cannot be revoked.Anthropic proposed three alternative measures, including restricting the flow of advanced chips and manufacturing equipment to China, cracking down on industrial-scale model distillation, and requiring all models that reach a certain capability threshold—whether open-source or closed-source—to undergo testing for cyber attacks, biological risks, and alignment.
Moonshot AI released the open-weights model Kimi K3 on Hugging Face. The model is a native multimodal agent model with a total parameter size of 2.8T, adopting a MoE architecture with approximately 104B activated parameters, supporting text and image input, and featuring a 1 million Token context window.
Chinese AI startup Moonshot AI will release the model weights of its high-performance model, Kimi K3. Developers can download the model, modify it for various purposes, and run it in their own data centers or cloud environments.Kimi K3 boasts 2.8 trillion parameters and a 1 million token context window, enabling it to process large-scale documents and codebases in a single pass. Moonshot AI plans to later publish a technical report detailing the model's architecture, training methodology, and performance evaluation results.Following the release of Kimi K3, Moonshot AI's daily revenue is reported to have increased by at least 6 times. The company is reportedly advancing a new round of fundraising at a $50 billion valuation and is considering a Hong Kong listing as early as this year.According to Bloomberg Intelligence, following the release of Kimi K3 and Z.AI's GLM-5.2, the share of Chinese open-weight models in overall token usage has risen to 68%. Services like AWS Bedrock, Microsoft Azure Foundry, and Google Vertex AI currently do not offer Chinese open-weight models such as Kimi K3 and GLM-5.2.
NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang has published his first post on X, sharing an open letter titled "Open Weight and American AI Leadership," jointly signed by more than 20 technology companies and institutions, including NVIDIA.The open letter argues that open-weight models can expand economic access to AI, enhance market competition, and grant users more control. Signatories include Meta, Microsoft, Andreessen Horowitz, Hugging Face, IBM, Mistral AI, Palantir, Perplexity, Mozilla, Y Combinator, among others.The letter states that while open-weight models carry risks, they should not be restricted through bans. Instead, openness should be leveraged to advance AI safety and cybersecurity capabilities. Huang noted: "The world needs cutting-edge closed-source models, and it also needs cutting-edge open models."
Nick Timiraos, the “Fed Whisperer,” stated on July 23 local time that the Fed’s July policy meeting would become the most unpredictable session in recent years. The resurgence in oil prices, increasing risks associated with US tariff policies, and some officials shifting towards supporting rate hikes have challenged the consensus to keep interest rates unchanged.The market widely expects the Fed to maintain the policy rate at the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting on July 28-29, keeping the current rate range at 3.50% to 3.75%. However, the outcome of this meeting does not signify an end to internal disagreements, as some officials are already paving the way for further rate hikes later this year.During previous meetings, there was a clear divide among the Fed’s 18 officials over whether a rate hike was needed this year, with half predicting a hike and the other half seeing no need for adjustment. Jonathan Pingle, chief US economist at UBS, stated that Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh could emerge as a key figure in determining the direction of policy.
According to official announcements, Ondo Perps has now launched a dual reward mechanism: on one hand, traders can share a portion of the USDC reward pool by inviting new users, and their own trading volume also counts towards this reward pool; on the other hand, every trade will also simultaneously earn Ondo Points based on trading volume and Open Interest.
Mizuho analysts stated that if the U.S. crypto market structure bill, the "Clarity Act," is passed, while it may generally benefit the digital asset industry, the long-term impact on Circle could be negative. The reason is that regulatory clarity will attract more large institutions into the stablecoin market, further accelerating stablecoin commodification and eroding the revenue potential of Circle's USDC.Mizuho believes that the primary pressure Circle faces in the near term comes from Open USD. This stablecoin project is backed by a coalition of over 140 financial, technology, and crypto companies, with members including Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, BlackRock, and Coinbase. Unlike Circle's model, which retains approximately 38% of USDC reserve yields, Open USD employs a "pass-through" model, distributing nearly all reserve yields to distribution partners while retaining only a small management fee.Analysts also noted that Coinbase, as the largest distributor of USDC, also supports Open USD. This could give Coinbase stronger bargaining power when renegotiating its revenue-sharing agreement with Circle in the future. The distribution agreement between the two parties could be up for renegotiation as early as next month.
According to Decrypt, Jack Dorsey's payment company Block has officially launched the open-source collaboration platform Buzz, built on the Nostr protocol, enabling employees and AI agents to collaborate within the same workspace. Buzz integrates team chat, code repositories, and automated workflows, where each user and AI agent possesses an independent encrypted identity, supporting mainstream model frameworks such as Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, and Block's self-developed goose, with the code released open-source under the Apache 2.0 license. Jack Dorsey stated that the platform aims to reduce the company's reliance on Slack and GitHub; the current version is 0.4.21, already supporting macOS, Windows, and Linux desktops, while the mobile version is still under development.
AVE has now fully integrated Hyperliquid on-chain contract trading across its mobile app, TG Bot, and PC client, providing users with a more convenient and multi-scenario on-chain contract trading experience.On the occasion of this feature upgrade, AVE is launching the "AVE x Hyperliquid Contract Upgrade Benefits" event, inviting all users to actively participate and share in rewards of up to 12,000U.Event Period: July 16, 2026, 18:00 – July 26, 2026, 23:59 (UTC+8)Two Core Rewards:Open Orders to Share Up to 4,000UUsers who deposit and have a cumulative margin of at least 20 USDT for opening positions will share a 2,000U prize pool. If the number of eligible users exceeds 500, the prize pool doubles to 4,000U.Trading Leaderboard to Share Up to 8,000UUsers with a cumulative trading volume of 20,000U are eligible to participate in the ranking. The top 100 will share the prize pool according to the rules. The base prize pool is 3,000U, increasing with the total trading volume of the event, up to a maximum of 8,000U.Eligible trades will be automatically included in the statistics. Both rewards can be earned simultaneously.Welcome all users to participate in Hyperliquid on-chain contract trading. Trade more, earn more rewards, and collectively unlock a bigger prize pool.Note: This event is subject to the final interpretation rights of Ave.ai. All trading records are uploaded to the blockchain in real-time, ensuring the ranking data is tamper-proof.
: In an interview this week, Circle President Heath Tarbert responded to questions about the stock price falling from $260 to $62, stating that the company is focusing on long-term development. If it can fulfill its mission of building a full-stack internet platform infrastructure, the stock price will ultimately reflect that value in the long run. Addressing the new competition posed by the Open USD Alliance, which consists of 140 companies including Visa, Stripe, Mastercard, and Google, Heath Tarbert noted that USDC, as a stablecoin natively supporting 34 blockchains, has built a network effect with a circulating supply of $73 billion that is extremely difficult to replicate. Discussing the difference in market position compared to Tether, he stated that USDC is the world's largest regulated stablecoin and boasts the highest real transaction volume.
David Sacks, Chairman of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, stated on the X platform that using regulatory uncertainty as a competitive tool is "completely unacceptable," and regulatory decisions should be based on facts, logic, and evidence, rather than deliberately creating fear and uncertainty (FUD). He is unsure whether venture capitalist and AI policy researcher Dean Ball is admitting to a "regulatory capture" strategy or merely predicting its occurrence, but in any case, leveraging regulatory agencies to issue "soft law" warnings, creating market panic, and thereby forcing regulated companies to stay away from Chinese open-source models should not be tolerated.David Sacks pointed out that Dean Ball believes there is no need to directly ban Chinese open-source models; simply guiding regulators to issue relevant warnings can influence corporate decisions by generating enough doubt and uncertainty, and these reasons "don't even need to be very solid."In response, Sacks argued that any regulatory decision must be well-founded, rather than implementing policies in disguise through "manufactured doubt." He warned that bypassing public deliberation processes in this way would not only erode the foundation of the rule of law but could also open the door to future regulatory abuses targeting any enterprise or individual.Sacks further stated that AI policy is currently at a critical turning point. Major closed-source labs, which have already formed a duopoly in AI model revenue, are now attempting to use government power to eliminate open-source competitors.He called on other companies and developers in Silicon Valley that still support open competition to take a clear stance and jointly safeguard an open ecosystem in the AI field.
analyst KawzInvests stated that Moonshot AI's upcoming Kimi K3 could become a significant event in the open-source AI space, and the infrastructure demand behind it may drive growth for AI cloud service platforms. Kimi K3 has approximately 2.8 trillion parameters, making it one of the ultra-large-scale open-source models. According to Moonshot's official evaluation, the model's performance is only slightly behind frontier models like Claude Fable 5 and GPT 5.6 Sol, and the full model weights are expected to be released on July 27.KawzInvests pointed out that a model of this scale cannot run on an ordinary laptop or even a single server; users need a computing cluster composed of a large number of GPUs to complete model loading and inference. When top-tier open-source models are made available for free, the biggest beneficiaries might not be ordinary users, but rather platforms that offer model hosting and inference services. For example, $DOCN (DigitalOcean) already supports serverless inference services for models like Kimi K2.6. Developers do not need to deploy hardware; they can call the model via API and pay per Token. Additionally, the platform hosts over 70 models and covers GPU leasing, model fine-tuning, and AI Agent development tools.As more large-scale open-source models are released, developers' demand for low-barrier AI infrastructure will continue to increase. Model hosting, inference services, and GPU cloud platforms may become key beneficiaries in the open-source AI wave.
According to Xinhua News Agency, Beijing Moonshot AI Co., Ltd. officially released the new generation large model Kimi K3 on July 16, with a parameter scale reaching 2.8 trillion, becoming the largest open-source model by parameters globally at present. Kimi K3 natively supports visual understanding, features a 1 million token context window, and is optimized for complex task scenarios such as software engineering, knowledge work, deep research, and multimodal understanding, with a comprehensive intelligence level approaching global frontier closed-source models. The model is trained using a self-developed underlying architecture. Moonshot AI stated that nearly 3 trillion parameters mean the model can store more knowledge and patterns, achieving "knows more, thinks deeper, answers more accurately."
global payment giant Visa is accelerating its stablecoin infrastructure efforts by launching the Visa Stablecoin Platform, which helps banks and fintech companies integrate stablecoin payment capabilities into their existing payment and treasury management systems. It is reported that the platform aims to provide stablecoin service support to approximately 15,000 financial institutions and over 200 million merchants within Visa's network, enabling enterprises to use USD stablecoins for settlement, capital flow, and financial management within the traditional payment network.Visa currently processes approximately $15 trillion in payment transactions annually and has already processed tens of billions of dollars in stablecoin settlement volume. The company hopes to further expand the application scope of stablecoins through this new platform. Initially, the Visa Stablecoin Platform will support the new stablecoin OUSD, launched by the Open Standard alliance, while continuing to be compatible with stablecoins already supported by Visa, including USDC issued by Circle and USDG issued by Paxos. Visa believes that stablecoins are becoming an important part of the future financial infrastructure, with advantages including:Instant Settlement: Transactions no longer rely on traditional banking clearing cycles;Low-Cost Transfers: Reducing payment costs based on blockchain networks;Transparency and Traceability: On-chain transaction records provide higher verifiability.Visa has been consistently building its footprint in the stablecoin space. In 2020, Visa became the first global payment network to support USDC settlement; in 2025, the company launched a stablecoin settlement plan to further promote the entry of stablecoins into the mainstream payment system.Meanwhile, Visa's competitors are also accelerating their entry into the stablecoin market. Mastercard recently launched a stablecoin settlement solution and partnered with companies such as MoonPay and Paxos; American Express has also participated in the ecosystem development related to Open Standard.As traditional payment giants increasingly adopt stablecoins, they are transitioning from a payment tool within the crypto industry into a vital component of the global financial infrastructure. (Fortune)
hardware wallet company Ledger has launched the open-source toolkit Ledger Agent Stack, enabling AI agents to interact with crypto wallets by reading balances, preparing transactions, and suggesting actions, with all transactions requiring user approval on a Ledger hardware device. Ledger stated that this release is the first step in its AI roadmap, aiming to introduce hardware-based security mechanisms into AI-driven crypto applications and prevent autonomous agents from transferring funds or accessing sensitive credentials without human approval.
CoinShares stated that the stablecoin project Open USD, driven by a bank-backed consortium, may directly impact the distribution economic model and profit margins of Circle's USDC, as it plans to distribute reserve yields to participating partners rather than primarily retaining them for the issuer. The report suggests that this mechanism could increase the costs for USDC to maintain its circulation network and, after launching in the second half of 2026, exert more substantial competitive pressure on Circle.