HTX DAO said its token burn for the second quarter of 2026 was completed on July 15, according to an official announcement cited by BlockBeats on July 16. On-chain data showed that 7,474,935,439,560 HTX were burned in the latest round, with a value of more than $13.6 million. Following the latest burn, the cumulative amount of HTX burned and donated has reached 117.79 trillion tokens. The organization also said that combined burns across the first two quarters of this year were worth more than $32.82 million. HTX DAO added that, despite intensifying liquidity competition across the broader market this year, HTX has continued to carry out quarterly burns worth tens of millions of dollars.

Global stablecoin payment infrastructure platform WasabiCard and WIDTH co-hosted the CCO Leadership Edition in Hong Kong, bringing together executives and specialists from digital assets, payments, fintech, and regulatory compliance. The discussion centered on changes in global regulation, the development of stablecoin payments, and how companies are handling compliance in practice. The event came as Hong Kong’s Web3 ecosystem continues to develop and its digital asset regulatory framework becomes more defined. Topics highlighted in the discussion included the Hong Kong Monetary Authority’s stablecoin licensing regime, the Travel Rule, anti-money laundering requirements, and KYT. According to the event summary, companies are placing more attention on building payment infrastructure that combines global payment reach, risk controls, and compliance capabilities to support stablecoin payments at scale. WasabiCard said future competition in stablecoin payments will depend less on payment speed alone and more on whether firms can build infrastructure that covers global compliance, risk management, and cross-border payment networks.

CoinGlass data shows that total Ethereum (ETH) derivatives trading volume across the market fell 4.19% over the past 24 hours, with aggregate volume standing at $42.961 billion. Among exchanges, Binance recorded $11.25 billion in derivatives volume, followed by OKX at $8.41 billion and Gate at $5.314 billion. At the same time, total ETH derivatives open interest across the market was დაახლოებით $27.493 billion. Binance accounted for $6.84 billion of that figure, while Gate held $2.55 billion. In spot trading, ETH posted $2.078 billion in 24-hour volume across the market. Binance contributed $598 million of spot volume, and Gate recorded $288 million. The figures offer a snapshot of current ETH trading activity across derivatives and spot markets, based on CoinGlass data cited by ChainCatcher.

Bitmine Immersion Technologies reported that staking and validator services generated $45.7 million in revenue in its latest quarter ended May 31, accounting for 98% of total revenue. The company said total quarterly revenue reached $46.5 million, up sharply from $2.05 million a year earlier, as its business mix shifted away from bitcoin mining and mining machine leasing toward institutional Ethereum staking. The transition followed Bitmine’s acquisition of Ethereum validator node operator Pier Two and the launch of its MAVAN platform, which serves digital asset custodians, institutional investors and other ecosystem participants seeking ETH staking infrastructure. Chairman Tom Lee said earlier this week that if all of the company’s ETH holdings were staked through MAVAN and its partners, annualized staking yield could reach $284 million. Even with the revenue jump, Bitmine posted a net loss of $82.2 million for the quarter, compared with a loss of about $480,000 a year earlier. The company attributed the result mainly to $92.1 million in derivative contract losses and $15.4 million in unrealized losses on digital assets, partly offset by a $16.5 million gain tied to warrant liabilities and $5.3 million in interest income.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) reported its financial results for the second quarter of 2026, with both revenue and earnings per share hitting record highs. The company said quarterly revenue reached NT$1.27 trillion, marking a new historical high. Net profit after tax came in at NT$706.56 billion. The chipmaker also reported a gross margin of 67.7% and an operating margin of 60.3% for the quarter. Earnings per share after tax rose to NT$27.25, which also set a new record for the company. Measured in U.S. dollars, TSMC’s second-quarter revenue totaled $40.2 billion. That figure was up 33.7% from a year earlier and 12.0% higher than the previous quarter, according to the figures released in the earnings report.

Japan’s AI industry is moving to reduce its reliance on Nvidia GPU servers, according to a Nikkei Asia report, and one of the clearest examples is Penguin Solutions’ plan to introduce its MemoryAI KV cache server in Japan in the fourth quarter of 2026. The product is designed to expand memory capacity for large language model inference by offloading KV cache from GPU-based high-bandwidth memory to external DDR5 memory through CXL, or Compute Express Link. Nikkei Asia said the system can be configured with up to 11 TB and may cut per-GB memory expansion costs to between one-third and one-seventh of a GPU expansion approach, while running 10 times faster than NVMe-based alternatives. The report also pointed to a second track in the same “de-Nvidia” shift: lower-power inference systems built around NPUs. Toyotsu Device has signed an MOU with South Korean AI startup Rebellions and is now conducting a proof of concept in Japan with local AI company Tomorrow Net using servers equipped with Rebellions NPUs. Nikkei Asia argued that these changes could affect demand for high-bandwidth memory, a market where Counterpoint data puts SK hynix at 58%, Samsung at 21%, and Micron at 21% by revenue. As AI workloads move from training toward inference, the report said, memory-optimized and lower-power architectures may emerge as a longer-term challenge to GPU-centered infrastructure.

Avalanche’s tokenized real-world asset market has climbed to $2.1 billion, up more than 60% from a month earlier, even as AVAX continues to struggle in a weak crypto market. Data cited from RWA.xyz shows the network has moved into the top five public chains by RWA scale, with BlackRock’s BUIDL fund serving as the clearest driver of recent growth. On Avalanche alone, BUIDL expanded from $464 million to more than $900 million in one week, a 105% jump, with weekly net inflows of $436 million. The report says Avalanche now holds more than one-third of BUIDL’s nearly $2.87 billion total assets under management, making it the fund’s second-largest distribution network after Ethereum. In the Avalanche RWA ecosystem, BUIDL accounts for 43% of total value. The article also points to a broader wave of adoption in Japan and South Korea. Japan’s Progmat migrated more than JPY 452 billion, roughly $2.7 billion, in tokenized assets from a Corda 5 permissioned chain to Avalanche. TIS, Hyundai Motor, NHN KCP, KB Kookmin Card and NongHyup Bank are also cited as examples of payment, treasury and consumer-facing projects built on Avalanche or AvaCloud. Still, the expansion has not translated into stronger value capture for AVAX. The report argues that enterprises often use stablecoins or tokenized deposits rather than AVAX to pay gas on dedicated Avalanche L1s, leaving the network with growing institutional activity but limited direct benefit for the native token.

Aleo, a privacy-focused Layer1 blockchain, said it will host the Aleo Shanghai Community Event on July 26 together with open-source developer community OpenBuild in Shanghai. The event is positioned as an important stop in Aleo’s Asia-Pacific ecosystem buildout and will bring together developers, founders, Web3 practitioners and AI enthusiasts to discuss zero-knowledge proof technology, programmable privacy and the intersection of AI and privacy computing. Organizers said the program will emphasize hands-on participation rather than a standard talk-only format, with attendees able to try Aleo’s privacy infrastructure, complete on-chain interactions and speak directly with the Aleo team about product feedback. Aleo also plans to present its latest ecosystem updates during the event and for the first time disclose details of an upcoming APAC Hackathon, including the competition structure, prize setup, mentor support and team formation. The agenda will also feature a themed discussion around AI × Programmable Privacy and a roundtable titled “Do Agents Need Privacy by Default?” focused on data security, identity privacy and trusted interaction in future AI agent use cases.