PANews on July 24 published a broad daily roundup spanning regulation, project updates, fundraising, market structure, and whale activity, with multiple large HYPE staking transactions leading the on-chain section.
Top developments of the day
The digest said new U.S. tariffs took effect today, adding 10% to 12.5% duties on dozens of countries and regions. U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune said the Clarity Act is expected to miss the window for passage before the summer recess. Stripe is also said to be in talks to acquire AI model aggregation platform OpenRouter, with the transaction potentially reaching $10 billion.
Time magazine’s latest cover focused on Unitree Robotics, carrying the line that a humanoid robot revolution is coming and that China’s Unitree is leading the wave. Poolin has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the United States and plans to sell its Texas mining sites for $52 million. BitMEX was hit with a class-action lawsuit on the same day it announced a shutdown, with plaintiffs seeking 622.66 BTC. BlackRock, Coinbase and seven other firms formed a Bitcoin security alliance that plans to provide $15 million in funding over three years. AI chip startup Etched closed a $300 million Series C round at a $10.3 billion post-money valuation.
Regulation and macro
Seoul High Court orders SK Group chairman to pay about $643 million in divorce case
The Seoul High Court on July 24 ruled that SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won must pay 944 billion won, or about $643 million, to former spouse Roh Soh-yeong in a divorce property division case. The parties can still appeal to the Supreme Court.
The dispute has dragged on since Chey filed for divorce mediation in 2017. A first-instance court in December 2022 ordered him to pay 100 million won in emotional damages and 66.5 billion won in property division. An appellate court in May 2024 raised that to 2 billion won in emotional damages and 1.3808 trillion won in divided assets, finding that Roh and her father, former President Roh Tae-woo, had provided financial support and made contributions to SK’s rise.
The Supreme Court, however, took a different view last October and sent the property division portion back for rehearing while allowing the divorce itself. The rehearing’s first argument session was held on Jan. 9, and the case moved to mediation on April 17. Mediation later collapsed after the two sides failed to narrow differences on the core disputes.
South Korea moves up stricter margin rules for single-stock leveraged products
South Korea’s Financial Services Commission said enhanced base margin rules for single-stock leveraged ETFs and ETNs will take effect on July 31, earlier than previously planned. From that date, retail investors who want to newly buy or add to positions in single-stock leveraged ETF and ETN products must hold at least 30 million won in cash in their accounts as base margin.
The rules apply to both domestic and overseas listed single-stock leveraged ETFs and ETNs. Market data cited in the digest showed the total market capitalization of the 16 products now trading rose from 4.4 trillion won on May 27 to 11.9 trillion won on July 15, while trading value increased from 10.4 trillion won to 13 trillion won.
Before the change, investors needed 10 million won in base margin, and convertible assets such as stocks, ETFs and bonds could be counted. Under the new regime, the threshold rises to 30 million won and only cash qualifies. The same cash requirement also applies when existing holders add to positions, while sell orders remain outside the margin restriction.
New U.S. tariffs take effect
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative said in a July 23 notice that it would impose additional tariffs of 10% to 12.5% on dozens of countries and regions under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, citing failures to prevent “forced labor.” The measures took effect on July 24 Eastern Time.
PANews said the tariffs cover 99% of U.S. trade volume. They will stack on top of tariff measures already in force, with exemptions available only for some agricultural goods, medicines, aviation parts, steel and aluminum, among a limited list of categories.
Clarity Act likely misses pre-recess passage window
Senate Majority Leader John Thune said the Clarity Act may not clear Congress before the Aug. 7 recess, though he wants at least to get Senate consideration started before lawmakers leave Washington. Thune said he hopes “at least to get Clarity started.”
He said next week’s Senate agenda will prioritize a Russia sanctions bill backed by the late Sen. Graham, and that Graham’s funeral will also take up floor time. White House crypto adviser Patrick Witt said he was “confused” by Thune’s comments and argued there is still time in the first week of August, adding that he would “not fully rule it out.”
Industry participants and lawmakers had previously been optimistic that the bill could clear a Senate vote within two weeks. Based on the latest timeline, PANews said the measure is now likely to slip to September, sharply reducing the odds of passage in 2026. Debate has intensified since the final working draft appeared this week, with Democrats objecting to ethics provisions for government officials and some Republicans raising concerns over stablecoin yield treatment and the wording of the ethics language. The bill needs 60 votes to advance. Even if Senate debate starts before recess, September would leave only a short window, and elections plus competing priorities would still crowd the schedule.
Goldman Sachs CEO backs the Clarity Act
Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon told Politico that he “very much” supports moving the Clarity Act forward and wants a market structure framework that can support innovation. He acknowledged the bill is “not perfect” but said its core value lies in creating a level playing field and improving market stability.
That position puts him at odds with JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon and some banking trade groups, which have for months opposed provisions tied to stablecoin yield. Their argument is that the bill could let crypto companies offer stablecoin rewards at rates above bank deposits, pulling funds away from the banking system. According to the digest, the Clarity Act would classify most crypto assets as non-securities, remove them from SEC oversight, and protect decentralized developers. The latest version adds ethics provisions limiting crypto involvement by a president and family members, but those provisions expire in 2029 and do not restrict Trump’s sons. Democrats have said the measures are too weak.
Project developments
Lien Finance exploited for about $542,000
Lien Finance lost about $542,000 in an attack tied to missing multi-set integrity checks in the exchangeEquivalentBonds function of the BondMakerCollateralizedEth contract. PANews said the attacker repeatedly reused a single exception bondID to consume the exception count and hide missing input exceptions, allowing the minting of new non-exception BondTokens without burning the corresponding input bonds. Those tokens were then sold into USDC, draining funds from pre-approved victim addresses.
Poolin files Chapter 11 and plans $52 million asset sale
Poolin, once the world’s largest bitcoin mining pool, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the United States and plans to wind down operations after selling Texas mining assets for $52 million. Poolin and two U.S. affiliates filed voluntary petitions on July 22 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of New Jersey.
The companies listed about $173 million in liabilities. Roughly $163.7 million of that amount consists of unsecured IOUs issued to Poolin wallet users after withdrawals were halted during the 2022 crypto downturn. About 11,700 wallet users have balances above $100. The two Texas mining sites stopped mining and hosting operations on July 10.
Poolin has signed an asset purchase agreement with Thor CALAP LLC. The Pyote facility is priced at $15 million, while power rights and equipment at the Tarbush site are priced at $37 million. Together, the $52 million package will serve as the stalking-horse bid. Poolin added that demand tied to AI infrastructure may support the value of mining-site power access and equipment. Final recoveries will depend on bidding, fees and court approval.
BitMEX sued the day it announced shutdown
BitMEX was sued in a class action the same day it said it would shut down. Plaintiffs BKX Services Inc. and David Namdar filed in federal court for the Southern District of New York, accusing the derivatives platform of fraudulently manipulating customer liquidations to seize users’ bitcoin collateral.
The complaint says the plaintiffs lost a combined 622.66 BTC in forced liquidations, including at least 305.81 BTC for BKX and more than 316.85 BTC for Namdar. The suit alleges BitMEX’s internal trading team had access to customers’ private information and continued trading while servers were frozen and ordinary users could not access accounts or close positions. The plaintiffs also say the platform profited from forced liquidations through its insurance fund.
They are seeking the return of the seized bitcoin, along with compensatory and punitive damages, on behalf of U.S. customers who purchased BTC swap products from July 23, 2018 onward. BitMEX separately said it will cease operations on Sept. 23, has already stopped new registrations, and will ban new positions starting Aug. 26.
Nine firms launch Bitcoin security alliance
BlackRock, Fidelity Digital Assets, Coinbase, Strategy, Anchorage Digital, Ark Invest, Block, Blockstream and Galaxy Digital have formed a Bitcoin security alliance and committed $15 million over three years to support open-source bitcoin developers.
Binance adds monitoring tags for ACX, LSK and STX
Binance said it will add monitoring tags on July 24, 2026 for Across Protocol (ACX), Lisk (LSK) and Stacks (STX). The exchange said tokens with monitoring tags may be more volatile and carry higher risk than other listed assets. They may also no longer meet listing standards and could face delisting. Binance said it will continue periodic reviews and decide whether to add or remove tags based on its latest findings.
Coinbase enables AI agent payments through x402
Coinbase said this week that business customers can now accept payments from AI agents through the x402 protocol, which the company developed and incubated. Coinbase Business users do not need extra setup to let agents pay in USDC, with the payment flow handled through Coinbase Payments.
The head of Coinbase Business said the company is trying to give the emerging online agent economy a payment experience closer to traditional commerce, where an agent can create a wallet and begin shopping while merchants provide an agent-friendly checkout flow. Coinbase also offers agent trading, letting users submit natural-language instructions that agents can use to monitor markets and execute trades in real time. Developers can add x402 payment acceptance for any API or web service in three lines of code through the new x402 SDK on Coinbase Developer Platform.
Arthur Hayes comments on BitMEX shutdown
Former BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes wrote on X: “Thank you to my partners, the employees of BitMEX, and most importantly: our customers. It has been an incredible journey. Together we built something extraordinary. I am immensely proud of all that we created together, and we will close the platform responsibly, on our own terms. Satoshi lives.”
Ondo Finance unit gets FINRA authorization
Ondo Finance said its SEC-registered broker-dealer subsidiary Oasis Pro Markets has received authorization from U.S. regulators to offer a regulated market and services for tokenized securities in the United States under SEC and FINRA oversight.
The authorization allows Oasis Pro Markets to conduct tokenized securities trading in the U.S. and to operate through over-the-counter trading, underwriting of primary issuance, private placements and related activities. The company will also run a compliant platform for U.S. issuers conducting primary issuance of tokenized securities and for institutional and retail investors trading those instruments in secondary markets.
Under that framework, Oasis Pro Markets can provide U.S. investors with access to NMS stocks, ETFs, mutual funds, index funds and securities issued through IPOs and traded in secondary markets. Settlement can be completed in fiat currency or supported stablecoins, including direct settlement between blockchain-based wallets.
Fundraising and M&A
Etched raises $300 million at a $10.3 billion valuation
AI chip startup Etched has raised $300 million in a Series C led by Sequoia, with Andreessen Horowitz, SK hynix, Jane Street and Diffusion Capital also participating. The post-money valuation reached $10.3 billion, more than double the $5 billion valuation reported in December last year.
Etched was founded in 2022 by three Harvard dropouts and builds chips specifically for AI models based on the Transformer architecture. The company said it has successfully manufactured its own chips, has customers testing them, and has already secured $1 billion in orders.
For inference, Etched said it built two new components: a prefill chip that improves speed and reduces heat by running at low voltage, and a decode chip that uses cluster-level memory technology to create shared memory pools across chips. The company now has 400 employees, operates a 2 MW data center, and has opened a new 80,000-square-foot, 10 MW facility in Milpitas.
Stripe said to be in talks to buy OpenRouter
According to people cited in the digest, Stripe is in talks to acquire AI model aggregation platform OpenRouter, and a deal could be reached soon. OpenRouter was previously valued at about $1.3 billion, but a sale could come in at roughly $10 billion.
Views and analysis
CryptoQuant: realized loss peak in this cycle is 19% above 2022
CryptoQuant analyst Axel Adler Jr. said bitcoin’s 30-day moving average of realized losses reached a record $1.37 billion on Feb. 20, which was 19% above the 2022 cycle peak of $1.15 billion. As of July 23, that figure had fallen 56.5% from the top to $597 million, suggesting a marked easing in sell-side pressure.
The 30-day moving average of realized profits, meanwhile, dropped from a Dec. 10, 2024 peak of $3.51 billion to $257 million, a decline of 92.7%. It has rebounded 34.7% from the June low, but the recovery has been much slower than the decline in realized losses. The current profit-loss ratio has risen from a cycle low of 0.26 to 0.43, though it remains well below the breakeven line of 1. For comparison, the ratio bottomed at 0.13 in the 2022 cycle, indicating that the current market’s relative stress is not as deep.
Adler said the acute phase of panic selling appears to have passed, but a market reversal has not yet been confirmed. He said traders should watch whether the profit-loss ratio can keep moving toward 1 and whether realized profits can recover sustainably above the $400 million to $500 million range. The main risk, he added, is that a break below bitcoin’s June low of $58,535 could trigger a fresh acceleration in losses.
Time magazine cover highlights Unitree Robotics
Unitree Robotics appeared on the latest cover of Time magazine. The cover line said a humanoid robot revolution is approaching and named Unitree as a Chinese company leading the trend.
AMD CEO projects a $2 trillion compute market by 2030
At AMD’s Advancing AI event, CEO Lisa Su said the AI accelerator market will reach $1.4 trillion by 2030, the data center CPU market will reach $220 billion by 2030, and the broader compute market will total $2 trillion by that year.
Matt Kalish mocks and questions Kalshi valuation
HARDSCOPE CEO and DraftKings co-founder Matt Kalish posted on X that Kalshi’s sudden CFO departure raised questions about its $22 billion valuation and financial credibility. He wrote: “You often see CFOs walking away from potentially life-changing equity right before a ‘$22 billion rocket ship’ goes public, with absolutely no explanation.”
He added: “Everything is normal, the numbers are all real, just pay attention to Polymarket and don’t look at us.”
BlackRock says crypto networks still hold the edge against quantum threats
BlackRock, in a report titled Quantum Computing and Blockchain, said upgrading existing cryptographic systems to quantum-resistant standards is technically feasible. The harder part is coordinating and implementing the transition on time, but that task is still easier than building a practical quantum computer capable of breaking the current cryptographic system.
The report said about 35% of bitcoin in circulation is exposed to potential attack because public keys have been revealed, and 11% to 19% could be permanently lost during migration. BlackRock said crypto networks still have the advantage in responding to quantum threats and wrote that “the advantage remains with the defenders.” It also noted that on Thursday it joined Coinbase, Fidelity Digital Assets and Block in forming the Bitcoin security alliance to fund developers working on open-source post-quantum proposals such as BIP-360. BlackRock described BIP-360 as credible and well designed, but did not call it a final solution.
Blockworks researcher says bitcoin may be near a cycle bottom
Blockworks researcher Luke Leasure said in a report that bitcoin may be at or near a cycle low. The report said BTC is down 50% from its all-time high, the bear market has lasted more than 40 weeks, and several higher-time-frame indicators have simultaneously reached historically rare levels. Bitcoin also posted its worst relative oversold reading against the Nasdaq on record this month, while February marked a record oversold print against gold.
Leasure said realized price, the on-chain average cost basis, is about $53,000, just 18% below spot, while every prior bear-market low traded below that level at a discount. Historically, bear-market cycles have tended to bottom around the 60th week after the all-time high, implying a possible low for this cycle before the end of November 2026. If the historical pattern holds, bitcoin would take about 120 weeks to reclaim its prior high, which would point to a new high before February 2028.
He added that as bitcoin matures, the marginal benefit of passive holding is declining, and outperforming will depend on spotting opportunistic windows for over- or under-allocation. The report said the period from now through December 2026 may offer an attractive long-term reaccumulation window because multiple conditional signals are simultaneously at rare historical levels, though sample sizes are small and structural changes such as ETFs, corporate holdings and derivatives could invalidate older patterns.
Key market data and whale activity
- One whale, described as one of the biggest HYPE holders after accumulating 2.94 million HYPE worth $172 million in September and October last year, staked 2.785 million HYPE worth about $164 million through 20 wallets over the past 11 hours. PANews said it may be a16z, though this has not been confirmed.
- U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs recorded net outflows of $225 million on July 23 Eastern Time, ending a seven-day inflow streak. Morgan Stanley’s MSBT had the largest daily inflow at $5.0108 million, bringing cumulative inflows to $400 million. BlackRock’s IBIT had the largest daily outflow at $202 million, though cumulative inflows still stood at $60.607 billion. As of publication, total net assets across spot bitcoin ETFs were $78.817 billion, the ETF net asset ratio was 6.03%, and cumulative historical net inflows reached $51.626 billion.
- A whale holding a 1.38 million HYPE long position has kept the trade open for 287 days. The position is now worth $80.71 million and is sitting on an unrealized gain of $27.34 million. The trader added 4.5 million USDC in margin, including 2 million yesterday and 2.5 million on July 17, to reduce liquidation risk. Entry was $38.67, current price was $58.49, liquidation stood at $52.37, and leverage was 5x.
- Driven by rising oil prices, loracle.hl (@loraclexyz) was fully liquidated on a 104,848-contract CL short position worth $9.68 million, taking a $680,000 loss. The account then opened a new 33,500-contract CL short position worth $3.07 million.
- A market report said total crypto exchange trading volume fell 8% quarter over quarter in Q2 2026 to $16.5 trillion, but the mix improved. Spot volume rose from $3.3 trillion to $4.5 trillion, while derivatives volume dropped from $14.6 trillion to $12.0 trillion, lowering the derivatives share from 82% to 73%. Binance’s total market share rose from 32.77% to 35.34%, the largest quarterly increase. In spot, Binance led with 32.26%, followed by Bybit at 9.19%, Gate at 8.01% and OKX at 7.08%. In derivatives, Binance had 36.48%, while OKX at 16.42%, Bybit at 10.05% and MEXC at 9.51% helped the top four control more than 70% of the segment. TradFi perpetuals were the fastest-growing niche in Q2, with monthly trading volume rising from $52 billion in January to $268 billion in June. Binance led with about 60% market share and $380 billion in quarterly volume, while Bitget and OKX followed at roughly $70 billion each. Stock perpetuals also saw a sharp reshuffle, with Binance’s share climbing to 63.0%, up 21.5 percentage points, and OKX moving into second after a 10.8-point gain.
- South Korea’s KOSPI fell 6% intraday, while SK hynix dropped 7.3% and Samsung Electronics fell 8.2%.
- The meme token CASHCAT on Robinhood Chain has more than 61,000 holders, but the top 1,000 addresses control 89.1% of supply, worth more than $40 million. Those addresses also hold PONS worth $2.84 million, TENDIES at $1.87 million, STONKBROKER at $1.10 million, Index at $1.07 million, WOOD at $409,000, SQUEEZE at $314,000, VIRTUAL at $308,000, JUGGERNAUT at $299,000, UP at $275,000, DEGEN at $247,000, KITSU at $229,000, SWOGE at $211,000 and VEX at $207,000.
- Jeff Huang (@machibigbrother) was liquidated again. To raise funds for a larger ETH long, he sold Bored Ape #6801 for 8.61 ETH two hours ago after buying it three years earlier for 23.5 ETH, realizing a loss of 14.89 ETH, or about $28,000.
- An address identified as belonging to an early MakerDAO team member or investor sold 1,050 MKR after holding the tokens for about 10 years and converted the proceeds to USDC. The address originally received the tokens in April 2016 and had held them since then except for the 2018 token upgrade migration. It ultimately sold them for 1.316 million USDC and transferred the funds to Kraken.
- Another whale deposited 2.93 million HYPE, worth about $172 million, into Hyperliquid through 19 wallets in the past 24 hours and staked the tokens. The position was accumulated nine months ago at an average cost of $44 and is now showing about $44.5 million in unrealized profit.
- Bitcoin treasury company KULR Technology transferred 145.8 BTC, worth $9.45 million, to Coinbase Prime five hours ago. After repeated reductions over nearly three months, its reserves have fallen from 1,021 BTC worth about $101 million to just 100 BTC worth about $6.47 million. Its average reserve cost basis was $98,923, while the average sale price was $74,368, for a realized loss of $22.62 million. PANews said the company appears to have abandoned its bitcoin treasury strategy.
- One entity staked 1.49 million HYPE worth about $88.2 million through eight wallets, with individual wallet stakes ranging from 115,700 to 390,400 HYPE. On-chain data showed all of the wallets withdrew HYPE from Bybit about nine months ago and had held the tokens ever since.