Institutional capital continues to favor tokenization and expansion
Institutional tokenization remained one of the clearest themes over the past 24 hours. NYSE-listed Securitize said it plans to deploy more than $400 million to acquire complementary businesses and expand its institutional tokenization platform, rather than buying direct competitors. The company previously went public through a merger with a Cantor-backed SPAC, retaining roughly 70% of the trust and raising more than $400 million in total. Since its 2017 launch, Securitize has issued about $4.4 billion in tokenized assets, including BlackRock’s $2.2 billion U.S. Treasury money market fund BUIDL and nearly $300 million in Securitize’s own tokenized equity offerings.
CEO Carlos Domingo said the company sees a major opportunity in bringing stocks and ETFs on-chain. His argument is straightforward: if only 2% of the roughly $140 trillion global equity market were tokenized, the addressable opportunity would still amount to around $3 trillion. That framing reinforces why tokenized securities and real-world assets continue attracting both capital and infrastructure investment even as broader crypto markets remain uneven.
Binance Research said total RWA value reached about $31.7 billion as of June 2026, with private credit showing the strongest monthly growth at roughly $883 million. The report pointed to Centrifuge’s $200 million JAAA issuance on Solana as an example of renewed institutional interest in tokenized private credit. It also highlighted Binance’s bStocks product, which converts real U.S. equity exposure into tokens on BNB Chain and enables 24/7 on-chain trading. According to the report, 80% of tokenized stock trading came from emerging markets, 93% of trades were fractional, and median trade size was just $18.81, suggesting on-chain equities are being adopted in a very different pattern from traditional brokerage distribution.
Equity issuance, semiconductors, and AI infrastructure drive broader markets
Outside crypto-native markets, capital formation around semiconductors and AI infrastructure remained a major focus. SK hynix formally launched its U.S. listing marketing process on Monday. According to its filing, the company plans to offer American depositary shares representing about 17.79 million common shares. Based on Friday’s Korean market close, the issuance is worth roughly $28 billion. If completed near that level, the offering would rank among the three largest IPO-related equity sales on record and approach the scale of Saudi Aramco’s 2019 $29.4 billion listing. SK hynix expects its ADRs to begin trading on July 10.
The timing is notable. As a leading supplier of HBM chips, SK hynix is entering the U.S. market while investor demand for AI memory exposure remains elevated. Goldman Sachs said in a recent note that the rally in Korean equities could broaden in the second half of the year from AI memory leaders such as Samsung Electronics and SK hynix into sectors including energy, materials, and industrials. Goldman kept its 12-month KOSPI 12000 target, implying more than 20% upside from current levels, while also warning that volatility may increase.
Capital is also flowing aggressively into data center infrastructure. Csquare, a data center operator, filed for a NYSE listing under the ticker CSQR. The company plans to sell 50 million shares at $23 to $27 each, raising as much as $1.35 billion and implying a valuation of about $4.18 billion at the top of the range. The deal is landing in a market that has increasingly rewarded companies tied to AI compute capacity, power availability, and digital infrastructure expansion.
Bitcoin miners pursuing AI conversion strategies also remained in focus. TeraWulf signed a 20-year lease with Anthropic to build an approximately 401 MW AI data center campus at the Justified Data site in Hawesville, Kentucky. The company said the arrangement could generate roughly $19 billion in revenue. Phase one is expected to come online in the second half of 2027 and reach full utilization in early 2028. TeraWulf also said the lease is expected to be supported by investment-grade credit. After the announcement, TeraWulf shares jumped nearly 14% intraday, while IREN, Hut 8, and Cipher Digital also posted gains of more than 10%.
Reuters separately reported that Samsung Electronics is expected to post second-quarter operating profit of about KRW 86 trillion, or roughly $56.35 billion, up around 18-fold year over year. Analysts said not only HBM demand but also broader uptake of agentic AI and other complex workloads has tightened DRAM and NAND supply. That said, some analysts warned that provisions tied to special employee bonuses in Samsung’s semiconductor unit could cause reported profit to come in below headline expectations.
Trading behavior shows split flows across stocks, crypto, and stablecoins
Binance Research’s monthly market insight showed that more than 700 of the roughly 7,000 stocks and ETFs available for trading on Binance have already seen activity, indicating early user participation in the platform’s stock product lineup. Portfolio allocation within those stock holdings remains heavily concentrated in technology: about 71% is allocated to tech names, and about 48% specifically to semiconductors. The report said semiconductor trading volume was about 23 times larger than other categories. By theme, 25% of allocations went to AI infrastructure and compute, while 22% went to quantum computing.
Even so, stocks remain only one piece of user portfolios. Across Binance stock holders’ broader asset allocations, 41% sits in crypto assets, 37% in stablecoins, and only 22% in stocks. That suggests equity exposure on crypto platforms is still acting more as a complement than a replacement for core crypto positioning.
Stablecoin usage continued to accelerate despite softer price action across major tokens. Visa data showed adjusted stablecoin transaction volume reached a record $1.79 trillion in June, up 63% from $1.1 trillion in May and above the previous high of $1.78 trillion recorded in February. USDC led with $1.21 trillion in volume, representing about 67% of the total, while USDT accounted for $576 billion, or about 32%. By network, Base ranked first at $565 billion, followed closely by Ethereum at $562 billion, with Tron in third at $320 billion. The figures reinforced the view that stablecoins are increasingly used for payments, DeFi activity, and cross-border value transfer even during a weaker spot market backdrop.
Prediction markets also posted strong gains. DefiLlama data showed Kalshi reached nearly $9.4 billion in trading volume in June, a record high and a large increase from about $5.3 billion in May. Polymarket International rose from roughly $3.5 billion to around $4.3 billion over the same period. The primary catalyst was the 2026 FIFA World Cup, which began on June 11 and expanded to 48 teams for the first time. During the knockout stage, trading intensified sharply. As of publication, Canada versus Morocco in the round of 16 generated more than $48 million in volume on Kalshi and over $26.8 million on Polymarket.
That growth is still colliding with regulation. More than a dozen U.S. states have taken action involving Kalshi and Polymarket, while CFTC Chair Selig criticized those efforts as unlawful enforcement against federally regulated exchanges. In Europe, ESMA warned that many event contracts may already fall under existing restrictions governing binary options.
ETF outflows and liquidations keep pressure on crypto markets
Fund flow data remained one of the clearest signs of caution in the market. According to SoSoValue, spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded $527 million in net outflows during the trading week from June 29 to July 2, extending the streak to eight straight weeks of net redemptions. BlackRock’s IBIT led weekly outflows at $773 million, while Grayscale’s GBTC saw $27.69 million in net outflows. The strongest weekly inflow went to ARKB at $102 million. As of publication, total net asset value across spot Bitcoin ETFs stood at $74.37 billion, with cumulative historical net inflows of $51.08 billion.
Spot Ether ETFs also remained in negative territory for an eighth straight week. Weekly net outflows totaled $13.67 million. BlackRock’s ETHB saw the largest weekly outflow at $39.22 million, followed by Grayscale’s ETH mini trust at $24.18 million. The largest inflow went to BlackRock’s ETHA at $44.65 million. Total net assets for spot Ether ETFs stood at $9.02 billion, and cumulative historical net inflows reached $10.89 billion.
Derivatives markets reflected the same stress. Coinglass data showed total crypto liquidations of $172 million over the past 24 hours, including $63.24 million in long liquidations and $109 million in short liquidations. Bitcoin accounted for $13.87 million in long liquidations and $48.35 million in short liquidations, while Ether saw $14.53 million in long liquidations and $27.32 million in short liquidations. A total of 56,722 traders were liquidated during the period. The largest single liquidation order occurred on Binance in SOLUSD_PERP and was worth $2.6482 million.
Market breadth also remained weak on a 90-day basis. CoinMarketCap data showed that among the top 100 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, 35 tokens rose while 65 fell. Only six names gained more than 150%, while 43 dropped more than 10% and 19 fell more than 20%. Among major assets, BTC fell 8.20%, ETH fell 15.88%, BNB fell 2.78%, XRP fell 13.22%, and SOL rose 0.93%.
Bitcoin capital efficiency declines as public company positioning shifts
CryptoQuant argued that Bitcoin’s capital efficiency has deteriorated significantly across successive bull cycles. Its data showed that in the 2011 cycle, about $2.8 billion in net inflows generated roughly 55,000% upside. In 2015, around $69 billion supported nearly 10,000% gains. In 2018, roughly $365 billion drove about 2,000% upside. In the current cycle since 2022, however, approximately $697 billion in inflows has produced only 689% returns. Founder Ki Young Ju estimated that in 2011 just $5 million of new capital was enough to double Bitcoin’s price, whereas this cycle requires about $101 billion.
Based on that trend, he suggested that the next parabolic Bitcoin move may require more than $1 trillion in new inflows and would likely depend on Bitcoin being treated as a macro core asset rather than primarily a retail- and ETF-driven trade. But there is an obvious challenge to that thesis: U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs have posted record outflows over the past month, Bitcoin finished the first half of the year in the red, and there is little evidence yet of accelerating institutional adoption sufficient to fill that funding gap.
Public company treasury data underscored that mixed picture. SoSoValue said global listed companies excluding miners recorded net Bitcoin purchases of $10.57 million for the week ending 8 a.m. ET on July 6, down 27.85% from the previous week. Strategy, formerly MicroStrategy, sold 1,363 BTC on June 30 for about $80.8 million at an average price of $59,256, then sold another 2,225 BTC on July 5 for about $135 million at an average price of $60,773. Its holdings fell to 843,775 BTC. By contrast, Japan-listed Metaplanet made its first purchase in 10 weeks, spending $225 million to buy 2,823 BTC at $79,664 and increasing its holdings to 40,177 BTC.
On the Ether side, BitMine said it added 42,197 ETH last week, bringing total holdings to 5,742,237 ETH as of June 28, equivalent to about 4.8% of total Ether supply. Of that amount, 4,879,157 ETH, or 85%, had been staked as of July 5. The company estimated its annualized staking income at roughly $235 million.
Security losses, compliance moves, and policy milestones stay in focus
Security firm CertiK released its Hack3D report for the first half of 2026, stating that the Web3 ecosystem suffered 344 security incidents and about $1.32 billion in losses. While that figure was down 46.8% year over year, CertiK said the picture changes materially if the previous year’s $1.45 billion Bybit incident is excluded. On that basis, first-half losses in 2026 were actually up around 28%, suggesting the broader security environment has not meaningfully improved.
The report said wallet compromises were the largest source of losses at about $450 million. Phishing incidents declined by more than 50% in count, but the value lost fell only 10.8%, implying attackers are shifting toward fewer but higher-value targets, including wealthy individuals and institutions. Code vulnerabilities remained the most frequent attack vector at 204 incidents. CertiK said older smart contracts that have been running for long periods without re-audits are becoming particularly attractive targets.
In China, the Cyberspace Administration announced first-phase results from its “Clear and Bright” campaign targeting AI application disorder. Since the program began in April 2026, authorities said they had handled more than 14,000 non-compliant AI products including websites, apps, and AI agents, cleared more than 6 million illegal or non-compliant content items, penalized more than 26,000 violating accounts, and removed more than 1,300 non-compliant AI products and nine non-compliant open-source datasets from shelves. Regulators said the next phase will focus on AI-generated misinformation, vulgar content, impersonation, harm to minors, and online astroturfing.
Hong Kong’s securities and futures professional body also reported progress after discussions with the Financial Services and the Treasury Bureau and the SFC. According to the group, the SFC agreed to move forward with splitting the CVAP examination from coursework, optimizing study materials, and reducing exam fees. The association said it will continue discussions on practical issues including self-custody guidance for private funds, the boundary between technology services and regulated activities, and the regulatory framework for VA payment services.
In the United States, the Clarity Act was not signed into law by July 4 as some market observers had hoped. People following the process told CoinDesk they remain optimistic the bill could still pass this year, but staff are still reconciling versions between the Senate Agriculture Committee and the Banking Committee. The next key date is August 7, 2026, the Senate’s last session day before summer recess and campaign season. If the bill does not advance before the midterm election window closes, its prospects could become much more uncertain.
Elsewhere, Russia’s largest bank, Sberbank, said it aims to launch compliant crypto wallet and custody services before December, assuming the country’s digital currency and digital rights legislation takes effect in September. The offering would be integrated into Sberbank Online and SberInvestments, giving customers access to authorized crypto assets within the banking system. The proposed legal framework would establish licensing for trading, custody, fiat conversion, and cross-border settlement, while limiting non-qualified investors to around 300,000 rubles in annual trading volume.
Additional developments across fintech, product risk, and rates
Figure Technology Solutions, the Nasdaq-listed blockchain finance platform, announced a proposed $600 million senior secured notes offering. The proceeds are intended primarily to fund the cash consideration for its acquisition of AI real estate lending platform Kiavi, with additional use for general corporate purposes and related costs. Figure previously said it would acquire Kiavi for $717 million and expects the deal to add more than $7 billion in annual transaction volume. Kiavi CEO Arvind Mohan is expected to join Figure as chief business officer after completion.
Swedish payments giant Klarna also made a notable regulatory move by applying for a U.S. banking license. The company plans to establish Klarna Bank USA in Utah as an FDIC-insured bank subsidiary, enabling it to offer lending, deposits, and broader financial services through its own banking structure. Reports also said Klarna launched the stablecoin KlarnaUSD late last year and has been working with Privy, the wallet infrastructure platform owned by Stripe, on a crypto wallet aimed at mainstream users.
AI-related product risk surfaced in a different way at Coinbase. The company mistakenly pushed a breaking-news notification to users claiming Norway had beaten Brazil 3-2 in a World Cup knockout match before the game had even started. The erroneous alert also said Erling Haaland had scored twice, while Coinbase’s own prediction market page at the time still showed the match delayed due to weather. CEO Brian Armstrong later said the team was investigating, and consumer and business product lead Max Branzburg said the issue had been corrected and safeguards were being updated to reduce the chance of similar errors in the future.
On macro policy, CME FedWatch showed a 77% probability that the Federal Reserve will leave rates unchanged in July, with a 23% probability of a cumulative 25 basis-point hike. By September, the probability of no change falls to 41.9%, while the probability of a cumulative 25 basis-point hike rises to 47.6% and a cumulative 50 basis-point hike stands at 10.5%. Fed Governor Christopher Waller separately said forward guidance that is too hardline or rigid can become an obstacle to effective policy implementation.