July 28 brought a broad set of market, semiconductor, AI, and crypto policy developments. CXMT’s trading debut dominated headlines in China’s equity market, domestic DUV lithography equipment moved into mass production according to a report cited by The Information, and digital asset regulation in the U.S. stayed in focus as the Senate delayed movement on the CLARITY Act.
CEX volume leaders and top gainers
The 10 most active CEX tokens by trading volume posted the following 24-hour moves:
- BTC: -2.97%
- ETH: -3.57%
- SOL: -4.11%
- BANK: -15.65%
- AERO: +0.82%
- XRP: -4.39%
- DEXE: -14.5%
- BNB: -1.39%
- ZEC: -5.77%
- SNDKB: -16.31%
According to OKX data, the top 24-hour gainers were:
- AEON: +84.28%
- DGB: +18.86%
- KAITO: +11.89%
- ZAMA: +11.28%
- ALLO: +6.32%
- XPLTR: +5.59%
- PROS: +4.52%
- CARDS: +4.47%
- VELODROME: +4.24%
- MMT: +4.10%
According to msx.com, the top 24-hour gainers among crypto-linked stocks were:
- NCTY: 37.38%
- SKDD: 17.06%
- CLS: 12.68%
- DJT: 11.8%
- DEFT: 10.26%
- RGTI: 10.18%
- NVDQ: 10.06%
- AMC: 9.91%
- LONQ: 9.53%
- BMNR: 9.44%
Trending on-chain meme tokens
GMGN data showed the most-discussed meme tokens on-chain were CATE and Nongwan on Solana, and 币有 and MarsCoin on BSC.
CXMT’s first day on the market
CXMT rose 465.82% on its first trading day, with full-day turnover above RMB 140 billion and total market value at RMB 3.28 trillion.
Odaily said the company set several A-share records within its first hour on the STAR Market:
- the first A-share technology stock to open with a market value above RMB 3 trillion, at roughly RMB 3.31 trillion;
- the largest listed company on the STAR Market by market capitalization, overtaking SMIC;
- the first A-share stock to surpass RMB 100 billion in single-day turnover, reaching that level within the first hour;
- the first IPO stock in A-shares to combine more than RMB 100 billion in turnover with turnover above 50% in a single day.
Domestic DUV equipment enters mass production
The Information, citing people familiar with the matter, reported that a Shanghai-based state-backed company has begun mass production of self-developed DUV lithography manufacturing equipment.
The report said the company plans to produce about five DUV lithography machines in 2026 and about 20 in 2027. For comparison, ASML delivered 131 immersion DUV lithography systems last year.
Sources said the domestic DUV equipment is slated for delivery to major Chinese chipmakers including Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC), Hua Hong Semiconductor, and memory maker CXMT. The report added that if the machines can run stably on the production lines of companies such as CXMT, reliance on overseas critical equipment in China’s memory supply chain would fall.
Yuliagsheng, SMIC, Hua Hong, and CXMT did not comment, according to the report.
Strategy carries out first STRC buyback
BitcoinTreasuries.NET said on X that Strategy MSTR completed its first repurchase of Stretch STRC shares under its digital credit securities buyback program, buying back 288,900 shares for $25 million. The funds came from common stock ATM issuance.
Semiconductor and AI updates
SK Hynix second-quarter expectations
Meritz Securities analyst Kim Sun-woo said SK Hynix is expected to post record second-quarter results, driven by one-off investment gains and higher semiconductor prices.
He estimated pretax profit for April through June at more than KRW 10 trillion, including KRW 6.01 trillion in operating profit and KRW 4.16 trillion in investment gains tied to a Bain Capital holding in Kioxia of Japan. That would exceed the company’s first-quarter operating profit record of KRW 5.88 trillion. He also said DRAM and NAND prices rose 30% and 49%, respectively, in the second quarter.
Earlier reporting said SK Hynix will release its second-quarter 2026 earnings on July 29, 2026.
Possible new headquarters in Seoul
Asia Economy reported that SK Group is moving ahead with the purchase of the former Le Méridien hotel site in Seoul’s Gangnam district and plans to build an SK Hynix headquarters tower there.
The site is about 1 kilometer from Samsung Town, the headquarters complex of Samsung Group. The report said SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won had asked for a building “5 meters taller than Samsung.” The final structure of the deal has not been determined and may involve a land acquisition, equity in a project company, or an advance purchase of office space.
Moonshot AI to open-source Kimi K3 weights
Moonshot AI said it will release the weights for Kimi K3, allowing developers to download the model, modify it for different use cases, and run it in their own data centers or in cloud environments.
Kimi K3 has 2.8 trillion parameters and a 1 million-token context window, according to the report, giving it the ability to process large document sets and code bases in a single pass. Moonshot AI said it plans to publish a technical report later covering model architecture, training methods, and performance evaluation.
Odaily said Moonshot AI’s daily revenue increased by at least sixfold after Kimi K3 was released. The company is also pursuing a new financing round at a $50 billion valuation and is considering a Hong Kong listing as early as this year.
Bloomberg Intelligence said that after the releases of Kimi K3 and Z.AI’s GLM-5.2, Chinese open-weight models accounted for 68% of overall token usage. AWS Bedrock, Microsoft Azure Foundry, and Google Vertex AI do not yet offer Kimi K3 or GLM-5.2, the report added.
AMD to build an AI research center in South Korea
AMD will establish an AI research center in South Korea and help build an open AI infrastructure ecosystem. South Korea’s Ministry of Science and ICT said on July 27 that it signed a memorandum of understanding with AMD in San Francisco on July 23 covering cooperation on the AI chip ecosystem.
AMD plans to set up an AI center of excellence in the country to support collaboration among Korean companies, universities, and research institutions on software development for AI chips, computing validation, and joint research. It also plans to work with local Korean AI chip companies.
The MOU includes plans for heterogeneous AI computing infrastructure linking AMD CPUs and GPUs with Korean companies’ NPU chips that are strong in inference. The two sides also want to build an open AI computing ecosystem spanning memory, networking, servers, and software, according to Yonhap.
Crypto industry and market developments
BlackRock backs the CLARITY Act
BlackRock has expressed support for the CLARITY Act. Samara Cohen, senior managing director and chief of global market development at BlackRock, said the bill is an important step toward a digital asset regulatory framework that puts investors first.
Cohen said the measure would help shape the next phase of U.S. market structure by supporting innovation while preserving transparency, resilience, and investor protection. Fidelity, Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon, and Charles Schwab had previously voiced support for related legislation or clearer digital asset rules.
Senate Republicans released an updated text of the CLARITY Act last week combining work from the Senate Banking Committee and Agriculture Committee. Senate Majority Leader John Thune said the Senate’s work on the issue could stretch beyond the August recess.
Crypto advocacy group Stand With Crypto said it has sent more than 925,000 emails to Congress in 2025 and has contacted lawmakers more than 1.1 million times since its founding. The group said every Senate vote on the CLARITY Act will be included in its public congressional scorecard.
Futu launches South Korea stock trading
Futu Holdings said South Korea stock trading is now live for eligible investors in Hong Kong and Singapore. The offering covers more than 2,700 stocks on the Korea Exchange’s KOSPI main board and KOSDAQ market, and also includes pre-open call auction trading, according to Jin10.
Kong Jianping’s indirect stake in CXMT
Public filings and related disclosure documents show that Kong Jianping holds an indirect stake of about 18.98 million shares in CXMT through the Yifang Changda Fund, for which he subscribed RMB 21.34 million.
Based on the opening price of RMB 49.5 on the day, the position was worth about RMB 940 million. By the cited calculation, that implies a return of roughly 44 times. Kong said that when he invested in CXMT in 2020, the company’s valuation was still below RMB 20 billion, and it has now surpassed RMB 3 trillion.
Hong Kong trader accused over leveraged SK Hynix ETF position
A 26-year-old male trader at Hong Kong company Chi Fu Management Services allegedly used HK$50 million of company funds without authorization as margin and bought CSOP’s 2x long SK Hynix ETF using financing leverage.
Because the position combined margin financing with a 2x leveraged ETF, paper losses reached about HK$150 million. The ETF had climbed to a record HK$193.65 in late June, then fell with the semiconductor sector and was down more than 72% to HK$52.58 as of July 20.
The trader has been arrested by police on suspicion of theft. Since the position has not yet been closed, the final loss will continue to move with the market, according to Tencent News.
Projects and on-chain data
Hyperliquid data around the CXMT IPO
On-chain data platform Allium said on X that it captured Hyperliquid trader positions 36 minutes before the CXMT IPO to track market behavior around the listing.
The data showed CXMT had been tradable for 12 days. One minute before the IPO, the deviation between perpetual futures pricing and the opening price was within 3%. Fifteen-minute volume jumped from $1 million the previous day to $14 million, and total pre-IPO trading volume reached $17.8 million. Smart-money traders had already built profitable short positions before the listing, and most continued to hold or even add to those shorts. Wallets from the U.S. and Hong Kong were the most long, while Korean wallets were the most short. Most long positions came from traders who had joined Hyperliquid over the previous weekend.
Triple-A losses rise to $11.8 million
Total reported losses from the Triple-A attack have increased to $11.8 million. Earlier, Triple-A’s hot wallet was suspected of being compromised, with more than $9.3 million stolen and bridged to Ethereum.
EPIK surges, creator addresses criticism
According to GMGN, the market capitalization of Solana meme token EPIK briefly rose above $23 million before standing at $22 million, with gains of more than 58x on the day.
Odaily noted that meme tokens can move sharply and that narrative momentum can shift quickly.
Responding to criticism from the community that “holding 50% of the tokens has no meaning,” EPIK creator Mando said he had spent three years supporting the project and had repurchased more than 50% of the token supply with personal funds rather than receiving a large allocation by airdrop.
Mando said he had jokingly created EPIK during a livestream and then committed a seven-figure sum to support the token over time. He added that he did not buy back tokens that day, but over the past three years had repurchased more than 50% of the supply and is considering distributing part of it in tranches to long-time community supporters and related users.
Deals and fundraising
Nvidia backs Ilya Sutskever’s AI lab
The Wall Street Journal reported that Nvidia is investing in an artificial intelligence lab founded by former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever. The long-term arrangement would expand the startup’s access to computing resources and also help Nvidia defend its position against rivals.
The report described Nvidia’s investment as “substantial,” though terms were not disclosed. Under the agreement, Sutskever’s Safe Superintelligence will receive access to a large amount of Nvidia’s flagship GPU hardware, enough to increase the company’s computing capacity by “an order of magnitude.” People familiar with the matter said the company had previously relied mainly on Google TPUs, according to Jin10.
Payward to acquire Magic Labs embedded wallet business
Kraken parent company Payward has agreed to acquire Magic Labs’ embedded wallet business through an asset sale, while both companies will remain independent entities.
Magic Labs has created more than 60 million wallets since 2018 and serves more than 200,000 developers. After the transaction closes, wallet customers will migrate to Payward Services. Magic Labs will rename itself Newton Labs and focus on building Newton Protocol, an on-chain financial authorization layer designed to apply compliance, security, and risk controls before transactions are posted on-chain.
Fanatics enters prediction markets
Sports merchandise and betting platform Fanatics will acquire a federally regulated exchange and clearinghouse from BGC in order to launch and settle its own prediction market products.
Fanatics and BGC also plan to develop new market data products that combine prediction market activity with traditional financial market data. The deal moves Fanatics into the prediction market business alongside platforms such as Kalshi and Polymarket, according to CoinDesk.
Metaplanet buys Siiibo Securities
Japanese listed company Metaplanet has acquired Siiibo Securities, which holds a Type I financial instruments business license, giving Metaplanet the ability to design and sell securities in Japan.
Research firm Benchmark said the roughly JPY 2.1 billion, or about $13 million, transaction has widely been viewed as a small expansion. But Metaplanet’s actual plan is to use the platform to issue bitcoin-backed bonds called Bitbonds with annual yields of about 4% to 6%, then move them on-chain later and settle them with stablecoins, gradually forming a secondary market.
Policy and regulation
Trump says talks with Iran are going well
U.S. President Donald Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on his way to Michigan on Monday that the United States is having “good talks” with Iran. He said he has “plenty of time” to deal with the Iran issue and added, when asked about a possible deal, that “there’s a good chance something will happen.”
Trump also said he would ask Russia whether it was providing satellite imagery to assist Iran. He added that once the war ends, prices will fall sharply, according to Jin10.
U.S. Senate pauses work on the CLARITY Act
Senate Majority Leader John Thune has temporarily set aside the CLARITY Act while the chamber prioritizes government nominations and a Russia sanctions bill. The Senate will also lose Tuesday and Wednesday this week because of funeral events for the late Senator Lindsey Graham.
Because of procedural limits, the Senate cannot handle a contentious bill at the same time as other business. The CLARITY Act may not reach the floor until next week at the earliest, in the final days before the August 8 recess. Democrats and Republicans are still trying to compromise on an ethics provision that would restrict federal officials, including President Trump, from participating in crypto projects. The White House said last week that Trump had agreed to accept the provision, but Democrats said it does not go far enough. Both sides agreed to continue negotiations. The report said failure to pass the bill this year would leave the industry facing regulatory uncertainty.
Japanese lawmaker calls for easing 2x leverage cap
Seiji Kihara, head of the Liberal Democratic Party’s task force on next-generation AI and on-chain finance, said Japan’s current 2x cap on crypto leverage trading is too strict and should be relaxed.
He said market development requires liquidity and price discovery, and that looser rules would help restore liquidity in Japan’s crypto market and attract capital back to the country.
Pennsylvania bill targets prediction market market-making by gambling firms
Bipartisan lawmakers in Pennsylvania introduced HB 2711, a bill that would bar sports betting and other gambling companies from acting as liquidity providers or market makers on prediction platforms. State Representative Tarik Khan introduced the bill on July 22, and it has been referred to the House Consumer Protection, Technology and Utilities Committee.
The bill would also prohibit prediction platforms from contracting with or sharing revenue with companies that typically engage in gambling activities. The restrictions would extend to parent companies, subsidiaries, affiliates, joint ventures, employees, and entities acting for another company’s financial benefit. DraftKings and Flutter have both moved into market-making. DraftKings recently launched the DKeX exchange after acquiring CFTC-registered company Railbird Technologies.
HB 2711 would set a minimum participation age of 21 and require platforms to block self-excluded users, company employees, settlement source employees, and people with inside information. It would also require commercially reasonable anti-fraud, anti-manipulation, and misuse-of-material-nonpublic-information controls, and would ban markets involving high school sports, sporting events involving minors, personal health conditions, and death.
The proposal does not create a licensing regime and would instead give enforcement authority to the state attorney general. A separate companion measure, HB 2497, would require platforms to obtain approval from the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board and would impose a combined 22% tax on prediction betting platform revenue. Neither bill has yet received a committee vote or hearing.
Views from analysts and institutions
Milk Road AI on CXMT and the DRAM market
A Milk Road AI analyst wrote on X that in less than a year, CXMT’s share of the global DRAM market has risen from below 4% to about 7.7% to 8%, while first-quarter revenue increased 719% year over year to RMB 50.8 billion.
The analyst said that growth was driven mainly by Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron shifting more capacity toward AI server memory, especially HBM, creating shortages in conventional DDR5 and LPDDR5 markets that allowed CXMT to fill part of the low- to mid-end DRAM demand gap.
The same post argued that CXMT’s current wafer capacity of roughly 290,000 to 320,000 wafers per month remains well below Samsung’s roughly 630,000 and SK Hynix’s roughly 500,000. U.S. export restrictions on advanced lithography equipment are also slowing CXMT’s expansion.
In that view, CXMT is still unlikely to enter the HBM market in the near term and therefore will not alter the global AI memory supply-demand structure. Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron would remain dominant in HBM, server DRAM, LPDDR5X, and other higher-margin products, while the global memory shortage cycle may continue.
Goldman Sachs on Korean equities
Goldman Sachs said in its latest Korea market weekly that the KOSPI fell about 2% last week even as foreign investors continued to buy and Alphabet raised its AI capital expenditure outlook, reinforcing the semiconductor demand narrative.
Goldman said foreign inflows have been concentrated in technology shares, but the Korean market still faces medium-term outflow pressure, with foreign ownership in semiconductors near historical lows. It also said 12-month forward EPS expectations for the KOSPI were cut by 0.4%, with autos facing the largest downward earnings revisions.
On leverage, margin balances held by Korean retail investors have dropped from a peak of $25 billion to $22 billion, while leveraged ETF assets have fallen from $53 billion to $26 billion. Goldman said AI spending remains the main support for Korean equities, but lower earnings expectations, light foreign positioning, and shifting risk appetite could continue to amplify short-term volatility in the index.