MarsBit has published its Weekly Editor’s Picks for July 18 to July 24, bringing together the outlet’s featured reads across macro markets, investing and entrepreneurship, AI, prediction markets, policy and stablecoins, ecosystem developments, security, and a catch-up list of the week’s major headlines.
Macro markets
One of the lead pieces focused on the U.S. Treasury market. The roundup said Treasury yields climbed across the curve to multi-year highs as three pressures hit at once: rising tensions in the Middle East, oil moving above $100, and renewed inflation expectations. It added that the 30-year Treasury yield has logged its longest stretch at elevated levels since 2007, pushing the market to sharply rethink the likely path of Federal Reserve policy. In MarsBit’s summary, rate markets are already pricing how other investors may react to policy and are signaling dissatisfaction with whether a hawkish hold is enough.
Another article looked ahead to commodities in the second half of 2026 and described a period of “high-frequency black swans.” MarsBit said Citi’s tail-risk scenarios include a U.S.-Iran conflict shifting from a temporary shock into a multi-year disruption, a stockpiling race for critical minerals, gold falling 15% to 20% before doubling, extreme El Niño weather hitting agricultural products, and two-way volatility tied either to an AI bubble bursting or continuing to expand. The article’s point was that shocks of this scale could overwhelm traditional supply-and-demand frameworks.
The weekly selection also revisited South Korea’s recent deleveraging episode. Before June 23, MarsBit said, the market already had all the ingredients for a stampede. Double-leveraged single-stock products had pushed more capital into Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, the two names had grown to nearly “half of the KOSPI,” and a regulatory signal on June 22 became the turning point for confidence.
The unwind was broken into eight stages:
- Stage 1, June 23: prices fell first while debt did not decline.
- Stage 2, June 24 to 25: forced liquidations and renewed leverage took place at the same time.
- Stage 3, June 26 to 30: foreign investors pulled back, retail investors stepped in, and risk started shifting to households.
- Stage 4, July 1 to 3: global semiconductor trading reversed and ETFs began systematically selling low and buying high.
- Stage 5, July 6 to 8: good news stopped lifting prices, and the move shifted from a technical adjustment to worries about earnings durability.
- Stage 6, July 9 to 10: forced liquidation data rose sharply and leverage risk spread toward the U.S. and Hong Kong.
- Stage 7, July 13 to 15: several kinds of selling arrived together before a mechanical rebound pulled prices back.
- Stage 8, July 16: regulation, rates and semiconductors all added pressure at once, and deleveraging became institutionalized.
MarsBit said the process amounted to a negative feedback loop made up of foreign rebalancing, retail margin dip-buying, daily single-stock leveraged ETF rebalancing, forced selling, a reversal in industry expectations, tighter regulation and tighter monetary policy. The publication said it was not, at its core, a story of liquidity stress or major damage to fundamentals.
Investing and entrepreneurship
In the investing section, MarsBit featured a piece arguing that the next crypto bull market will be built around the merger of on-chain finance and traditional finance. The article said stablecoins, tokenized assets, 24/7 trading, instant settlement, and institutional DeFi growing into a market worth trillions of dollars will sit at the center of that theme. It pointed to Hyperliquid, whose token is HYPE, and Robinhood, traded under HOOD, as two notable examples pushing the industry toward that convergence from different directions.
Another featured article followed a well-timed BTC bear who covered shorts at $64,000 and flipped long. According to MarsBit’s summary, that trader acted while market sentiment was deeply pessimistic and retail traders were waiting for a “four-year cycle bottom” in the $40,000 to $50,000 range. The trader instead argued that the bottom would arrive earlier. The same article said bitcoin is now facing a structural shift, citing tokenization pilots involving BlackRock and Goldman Sachs, progress on the CLARITY Act, and faster institutional capital inflows as factors weakening the case for a much deeper crash. It also noted that the crypto bear market has already lasted nine months while equities have only recently topped, raising the possibility that capital leaving stocks could move into crypto if it appears undervalued.
MarsBit also included a report on SpaceX. The article said $116 billion worth of stock will enter circulation on August 6. Rather than use the standard 180-day post-IPO unlock model, SpaceX has designed a phased release schedule intended to expand the float while limiting abrupt supply-and-demand shocks. The piece framed this as a significant exit opportunity for early investors, while noting that bearish pressure has hurt sentiment in the IPO market.
Additional recommendations in this section were “Five historic indicators flash at once: has bitcoin’s bear market bottomed?”, “A 30% premium: decoding the boom and hidden risks in SK Hynix cross-market arbitrage,” and “Google’s earnings were strong, so why didn’t Wall Street buy it?”
AI
The AI section opened with a piece on Kimi K3. MarsBit said that even before the model has been open-sourced, overseas observers have started reassessing Chinese AI through a different lens. After Kimi K3 launched, the discussion moved away from raw model capability and toward Moonshot AI founder Yang Zhilin’s decision to return to China to build a company, as well as the broader question of U.S. talent attraction. Vinod Khosla pointed to U.S. immigration policy. Russ Salakhutdinov said Yang had a chance to stay in the United States and chose to return to China to start a business.
MarsBit said the significance of Kimi K3 is not that it proves China has comprehensively moved ahead in AI, nor that it proves the United States has lost the talent war. The more grounded question, the article argued, is that open models, startup conditions and talent choices are changing the benchmarks used to price global AI.
Another article examined TSMC’s expansion in the United States. MarsBit said TSMC’s second-quarter results and full-year guidance reinforced the demand picture for AI chips, and the company raised its full-year capital spending budget to between $60 billion and $64 billion. The market debate, the article said, is centered on the cost of building in the U.S., the ramp of 2-nanometer production, and long-term returns on capital. Strong demand does not mean margins are free of pressure.
A separate piece looked at the CXL ecosystem and said Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron have all decided not to continue in-house CXL controller development. The article’s argument was that an aggressive push into self-developed chips could eat into one of their most important revenue bases, the general-purpose DRAM module market. With the industry division of labor around CXL being reshaped, memory makers are expected to focus on manufacturing while control over design shifts to independent chip design firms. For capital markets, MarsBit said, this supports related chip designers and also suggests the three major memory makers are unlikely to enter a fresh competition around full CXL solutions in the near term. Their core profit model still centers on traditional DIMM products.
The section also recommended “OpenAI’s darkest week: Apple sues, Oracle downgrades, and the AI price war.”
Prediction markets
In prediction markets, MarsBit highlighted a piece asking whether Hyperliquid could threaten Polymarket through HIP-4. The article said HIP-4 will eventually support permissionless deployment, as HIP-3 does. The staking requirement for HIP-4 deployers is also 500,000 HYPE, locked for six months. Deployers will be able to set fee sharing of as much as 50% in the markets they launch. MarsBit said the feature will appear on testnet first and then move to mainnet.
The article noted that letting users create their own prediction market events borrows in part from HIP-3’s success. At the same time, the 500,000 HYPE staking threshold may sharply reduce the number of third-party competitors, and the timing missed the World Cup. MarsBit also recommended a related article titled “Data review: how much upside did prediction markets capture from one World Cup?”
Policy and stablecoins
The policy and stablecoin section centered on the CLARITY Act. MarsBit said the Trump administration has agreed to add an ethics provision to the digital asset market structure bill, and the related text has already been submitted to some Senate Republicans. That development could clear the way for an updated draft, which the article said is expected in the coming days, and help remove obstacles ahead of a Senate vote.
The roundup added that Patrick Witt, executive director of the White House Digital Asset Advisory Council and one of the officials involved in advancing the legislation, has confirmed he will remain in his role to help push the bill through its final stretch. At the same time, MarsBit noted that the U.S. Congress usually enters its August recess in mid-August, leaving the two parties only a little more than a dozen working days to coordinate text and move the bill toward Senate consideration.
The section also pointed readers to another article: “Revolving door dealings exposed: who is tailoring a U.S. stablecoin bill for Tether?”
Airdrop opportunities and interaction guides
This section mentioned a roundup of active tasks, including AllScale points missions and an application for the Skew waitlist dated July 22.
New ecosystem themes
In the ecosystem section, MarsBit featured a piece on Robinhood’s chain. The article said meme stocks are driving U.S. equity trading on Robinhood Chain and may represent the network’s next major narrative.
Security
The security section focused on a MetaMask contractor incident. MarsBit said media reports described a case in which MetaMask had inadvertently hired a North Korean hacker. Internal records showed the individual was not working on a peripheral project. Instead, the person had access to MetaMask’s core wallet code and took part in development work tied to wallet fiat on- and off-ramp functions.
According to the roundup, Consensys’ internal security team noticed anomalies one month after the person joined the company. Consensys later concluded that Tyler Knapp’s real identity was that of a North Korean hacker, cut off all internal access immediately, and contacted law enforcement. MarsBit said the incident did not result in any user asset or data loss.
Weekly headlines to catch up on
Policy and macro markets
- Donald Trump said he expects the U.S. federal government to face a shutdown in September.
- The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission agreed to pay $150,000 to settle a public-records lawsuit over the Ethereum investigation and will submit remaining files.
- Controversy around Trump’s crypto interests has weighed on the CLARITY Act and cooled expectations for passage this year.
- South Korea tightened access to single-stock leveraged ETFs. Starting July 31, retail investors must have KRW 30 million in cash.
- South Korea is planning an AI-based virtual asset regulatory system and has reported more than 30 crypto-related cases over two years as part of market manipulation enforcement.
- South Korea’s ETF market is seeing a rise in concentrated investing, with money flowing faster into market leaders.
Views and commentary
- Serenity said SK Hynix ADRs are trading at a 25% premium to the Korean shares and that the conversion window opening on July 29 could pressure the U.S.-listed stock.
- Dovey Wan said South Korea may be one of the clearest topping indicators in global risk assets.
- HSBC said AI’s direct inflation effect is more likely to show up in South Korea.
- The correlation between Korean equities and the Nasdaq has approached a two-year high, making Korea a barometer for global AI investment sentiment.
- Citi upgraded China to overweight and tactically downgraded South Korea.
- Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said the chip industry still needs to expand another five to ten times and that Chinese models benefit everyone.
- SemiAnalysis said Kimi K3’s KDA mechanism improves attention efficiency but will require more GPUs, HBM, DRAM and networking.
- A Hyperliquid co-founder said the crypto industry struggles to attract top startup talent.
Institutions, large companies and major projects
- Intel’s second-quarter results and guidance came in far above expectations, with AI demand driving the fastest growth in 15 years.
- Moonshot AI’s Kimi could pursue a Hong Kong listing in as little as six months.
- A BlackRock Korea ETF has allocated about 25% of its holdings to SK Hynix.
- Kalshi has applied to the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission to launch gold-linked perpetual futures.
- Polymarket was reported to have seen about $200 million in bets over half a year that showed signs of possible insider trading.
- BitMEX will officially shut down on Sept. 23, 2026.
- Movement Labs has filed for bankruptcy, while Movement Industrial and the foundation may emerge as the biggest winners.
- Bitcoin selling pressure may be easing, with realized losses down 56% from the peak, though demand recovery remains insufficient.
- More than 66% of addresses are underwater, and large gains in Polymarket’s World Cup winner market were concentrated among a small number of traders.
Security
- A White House teleprompter operator was accused of making more than $100,000 from predictions based on insider information.
The article ended by linking readers to the broader Weekly Editor’s Picks series and previewing the next edition.