SK Hynix led a sharp selloff in Asian equities on Monday, falling 15.4% for its biggest drop on record, while Samsung Electronics slid nearly 11% and the Kospi closed down 8.9%. The trigger was a Korea Investment & Securities forecast that projected SK Hynix’s second-quarter operating profit at 8% below market expectations, combined with profit-taking after the company’s ADR debut. The broader pressure on memory names spread to U.S. premarket trading, where Micron, Seagate, Western Digital and SanDisk all fell. At the same time, markets were hit by a geopolitical shock after U.S. Central Command said the U.S. began a new round of strikes on Iran at 5 p.m. Eastern Time on July 12. Oil prices jumped, with Brent crude rising more than 3% to $78.50 a barrel and WTI up 4.2% to $74.40. Treasury yields climbed as traders priced in nearly 40 basis points of Federal Reserve tightening by December, up from about 15 basis points in early June. Gold, silver and cryptocurrencies weakened as the dollar strengthened. Spot gold fell to around $4,073 an ounce, while bitcoin dropped more than 2% at one point to about $62,700 before trimming losses. Investors are now looking ahead to U.S. inflation data, earnings from Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan on Tuesday, and upcoming policy signals from Fed Chair Kevin Warsh.

Lawson, the Japanese convenience store operator, plans to begin testing yen-denominated stablecoin payments in August at its Lawson Takanawa Gateway City store in Tokyo, according to a report cited by BlockBeats from Cointelegraph. The pilot will be carried out under an agreement involving HashPort, Lawson, and KDDI. Participants will use HashPort’s non-custodial wallet, while the store will process transactions through HashPort’s checkout system, meaning merchants do not need to open or manage a crypto wallet. Separately, Japanese payments company Netstars has launched Stablecoin Pay and is accepting applications from merchants that want to take multiple stablecoins. At launch, the service supports USDC, USDT, and the yen-denominated stablecoin JPYC on the Solana and Polygon networks. MetaMask is listed as the supported wallet, and the merchant payment fee is set at 0.98%. The update points to a broader push to bring stablecoin-based payments into retail and merchant checkout flows in Japan through existing payment infrastructure rather than direct wallet management by stores.

SBI Holdings said it will enter a strategic partnership with the Solana Foundation to support the buildout of Japan’s domestic on-chain financial market, according to an official announcement cited by ChainCatcher. As part of the arrangement, the Solana Foundation will join SBI R3 Japan, which plans to rename itself SBI Solana Global. The company will work with shareholders SBI Holdings and Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group (SMFG) on related growth plans. The announcement said SBI Solana Global will use the Solana network as its foundation and focus on several areas. These include support for the issuance and circulation of stablecoins such as JPYSC, the creation and circulation of tokenized real-world assets including corporate bonds, commercial paper, funds and real estate, the development of cross-border payment infrastructure, on-chain financial services for institutional investors, and next-generation payment infrastructure aimed at the AI Agent era.

Lawson will begin a proof-of-concept test for JPYC stablecoin payments in early August at the Takanawa Gateway City store operated by KDDI, in partnership with HashPort, according to Techub News, citing CoinPost. Shoppers will pay by scanning a barcode from a mobile wallet at the point of sale. CoinPost said the trial marks the first time in Japan that a stablecoin has been linked directly with a POS system for in-store payments. The test is designed to check how well the POS integration works and how efficient the payment flow is in a retail setting. KDDI entered into a capital alliance with HashPort in October 2025 and holds more than a 20% stake. JPYC has previously been tested in settings including restaurants. Separately, three major banks including Mitsubishi UFJ are planning a joint stablecoin issuance in fiscal 2026.

Foresight cited a view that the token narrative era has ended and that real-world economic activity moving onchain is likely to be built on Ethereum’s Layer 1 and Layer 2 stack. The core claim is straightforward: as traditional business use cases enter blockchain rails, Ethereum’s base layer plus scaling network structure stands out as the preferred setup for onchain operations. The source did not provide additional data, examples, or a longer argument in the excerpt, and no extra details on timing or specific projects were disclosed. The statement was published by Foresight in its homepage headline section and linked to a post on X.

Robinhood Chain has posted nearly $4 billion in cumulative DEX volume less than two weeks after its mainnet launch, putting the new network among the busiest chains by trading activity. Data cited by PANews shows the chain ranked second in 24-hour DEX volume behind Solana, while daily transactions, active addresses and Ethereum data availability usage climbed quickly enough to challenge or surpass Base on several metrics. Much of that momentum has come from meme coin trading, which accounted for 54.3% of on-chain volume on July 10, according to Dune. The boom has lifted ecosystem names including Uniswap, Morpho, Ethena, NOXA.fun, Arbitrum and Arcus. At the same time, risks are surfacing. Relay Protocol warned of honeypot scam tokens on the network, community users pointed to a suspected wallet compromise and trading manipulation tied to the meme token $1, and Bubblemaps flagged concentrated ownership in ArrowFinance’s ARROW token. The chain’s early growth is clear, but whether that traffic turns into durable users and capital remains an open question.

Webull EU has obtained a MiCA license from the Dutch regulator, according to a report by Finance Magnates cited by ChainCatcher. The approval is one of the first notable crypto licensing cases to emerge after the July 1 end of the transition period under the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets framework. Webull said it plans to use the license to roll out crypto trading and custody services in Europe by the end of 2026. Andries van Luijk, CEO of Webull Securities (Europe), said the approval marks a key milestone in the company’s European expansion and will allow it to offer what he described as “safe and compliant digital asset services” under the EU’s unified regulatory framework. The report also said the number of licensed crypto firms in Europe is now close to 200 following MiCA’s implementation.

South Korea’s SK Hynix fell 15.4% on July 13, marking its biggest single-day drop on record, according to a report cited by TechFlow via CLS. The move hit leveraged products tied to the stock, with the CSOP 2x Long Hynix ETF plunging 33% in the same session. The ETF is now down 69.07% from its June 25 record high in trading price. Earlier, its assets had climbed past HK$130 billion in late June. Eastmoney data shows the fund’s latest assets have dropped to HK$69.3 billion, close to half of the previous peak. Another CSOP product linked to Korean chip stocks also posted steep losses. The CSOP 2x Long Samsung Electronics ETF fell more than 20% on the day and is down 63.33% from its June 3 record high.