Australian crypto exchange Swyftx said in its second-quarter industry report that the global gig and freelance payments market could reach $2.1 trillion by 2033, with AI-native workers accounting for $775 billion of that total. Using a base-case assumption of roughly 33% adoption, the firm projected that $262 billion of those flows would be settled in stablecoins. Swyftx chief market analyst Pav Hundal said microbusinesses with fewer than five staff are becoming the fastest adopters of AI, creating a growing group of independent entrepreneurs that operate across borders and invoice frequently. The report estimates that this cohort now numbers about 6 million to 10 million worldwide and could rise to 17 million over the next decade. The report also argues that traditional cross-border payment rails remain expensive and can take days to settle, while stablecoin transfers on Ethereum Layer 2 networks can cut fees by 80% to 90%. If the forecast holds, Swyftx said the institutional settlement layer serving these payments through OTC liquidity, custody and yield services could capture as much as $1.3 billion in new revenue by 2033. It added that stablecoin market capitalization has doubled over the past two years, and June trading volume hit a record $1.79 trillion.

AXON Finance, a high-performance AI-native PayFi Layer 1 blockchain, said it has completed a new institutional funding round totaling $2 million. Infinite Alliance led the round with a $1 million investment, while UZ Capital and Bluemount Foundation contributed the remaining $1 million. The company said the proceeds will be used to speed up construction of AXON’s L1 infrastructure and support the launch of its first open ecosystem product, described as a U.S. stock copy-trading engine. According to the announcement, AXON will provide L1 settlement and account abstraction infrastructure for the product and open access to prediction platform ecosystems. The company said this setup is designed to create a closed loop in which prediction platforms bring user traffic while AXON captures stablecoin yield activity, helping it accumulate on-chain traffic and total value locked, or TVL.

SK Hynix, once the clearest AI hardware winner in Korea’s equity market, has fallen 33% from its June 25 record high in just three weeks, as a mix of valuation pressure, record fundraising, and leveraged retail positioning hit Seoul stocks. On July 13, the Korea Exchange triggered a circuit breaker after the KOSPI’s intraday loss widened to 6%, while SK Hynix dropped as much as 12%, briefly falling below KRW 2 million. A Hong Kong-listed 2x long Hynix ETF fell more than 22% in a single day. The selloff followed a sharp reversal in sentiment around AI infrastructure spending. Early July reports that Meta planned to sell AI computing capacity raised concerns about overbuilt supply, and Morgan Stanley’s chief U.S. equity strategist then advised cutting semiconductor exposure. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index has fallen more than 13% this month. At the same time, SK Hynix’s Nasdaq ADR debut on July 10 raised $26.5 billion at $149 a share, setting a record for a foreign issuer listing in the U.S. The deal was a success in New York, but in Seoul investors were left weighing dilution from 17.79 million new shares and potential FX pressure as the company plans to convert more than $20 billion of proceeds back into won, according to Reuters.

Galaxy Digital research head Alex Thorn said on July 13 that four on-chain metrics tied to Bitcoin long-term holders all reached all-time highs on the same day, pointing to unprecedented accumulation by older holders. The data cited in his X post showed that coins untouched for more than 10 years now account for 17.7% of total supply, while long-term holders — defined as wallets holding for more than 155 days — control 16.75 million BTC. Their realized cap has climbed to $836.4 billion, and their realized price has moved above $50,000. Thorn said the combination is unusual because these indicators do not normally peak together, with supply metrics often moving first and realized price following later. At the same time, demand-side signals remained soft. The Coinbase premium index stayed negative for 55 straight days, the longest such streak since the metric was introduced. CryptoQuant analyst Axel Adler also warned in a weekly report that short-term buying had cooled and that ETFs had posted eight consecutive weeks of net outflows. Separately, an early Bitcoin holder inactive for seven years moved 2,931 BTC, worth about $188 million, to a new wallet.

Bitcoin mining company BitFuFu has sold 184 BTC, reducing its total bitcoin holdings to 1,671 BTC. The update was shared through a post linked to BTCtreasuries on X. Foresight categorized the item under market analysis. No additional details were provided in the source material about the timing of the sale beyond the publication timestamp, the reason for the disposal, or whether the transaction was part of a broader treasury management plan. The reported figures in the source were limited to the amount sold and the company’s remaining bitcoin holdings. As provided, the brief points to a change in BitFuFu’s treasury position rather than a wider operational update.

Binance recorded a net inflow of 57.4493 million USDT over the past hour, according to data cited by ChainCatcher from Coinglass. The item was published as a 7x24 news flash and did not include additional details on transaction breakdowns, counterparties, or broader market context. No further figures or explanations were provided in the source beyond the one-hour net inflow reading for the exchange.

China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and three other government departments have issued guidance on improving the quality of internet basic resources, according to Jinshi. The document calls for stronger planning in internet science and technology innovation and for advancing related national key R&D programs and major national science and technology projects. It also stresses original technology innovation and names blockchain, artificial intelligence, and distributed identifiers as areas for joint research with internet basic resources. The guidance says efforts should target breakthroughs in network dynamic optimization, intelligent resource scheduling, and secure data interaction. It also lists several other priorities: innovation in the IPv6 technology system, fixes for protocol compatibility and high-performance transmission, breakthroughs in satellite internet mega-constellation networking, fast route switching and reliable anti-interference transmission, as well as key technologies for large-scale deployment and application of resource public key infrastructure.

Singapore-listed bitcoin mining company BitFuFu has sold 184 BTC, according to a post by BitcoinTreasuries.NET on X cited by Odaily. After the sale, the company holds 1,671 BTC in total. BitcoinTreasuries.NET also said BitFuFu ranks No. 35 on the Bitcoin 100 list. The update focuses on the company’s latest disclosed bitcoin holdings and its current position in the ranking.