ARK Invest used the latest episode of its podcast The Brainstorm to argue that China is unlikely to be the decisive obstacle to a potential merger between Tesla and SpaceX, while also laying out an aggressive view on how quickly AI costs are collapsing. In the Aug. 7 episode, Brett Winton said Tesla’s Shanghai factory is no longer the core driver of the company’s future value because Robotaxi, not China manufacturing, sits at the center of Tesla’s next phase. He said Chinese assets could likely be ring-fenced to address national security concerns tied to SpaceX and added that a formal merger announcement could come before the end of 2026. The discussion also focused on AI economics. Winton said ARK’s data shows annualized cost declines of 99.99% on a harder agentic benchmark between February and July 31, up from a 99% annual drop cited in the firm’s Big Ideas report. He argued that the shift is not only about lower cost at a fixed level of performance, but also about higher performance ceilings, pointing to tasks that were unattainable earlier this year but can now be completed for 15 cents each. Nick Grous took a more cautious stance on who ultimately wins the market, citing examples such as Spotify, Robinhood, Block and Palantir to argue that model routing, open-source tools and application-layer strategies could still leave room for many players.

MetaMask on Thursday rolled out Agent Wallet, a self-custodial product built for AI agents that can execute crypto trades within user-defined limits. The wallet lets agents handle swaps, perpetuals, prediction-market wagers, and staking across Ethereum-compatible chains and Hyperliquid, but only after the user sets spending caps, chooses which protocols the agent may access, and selects a risk profile. Users can pick between Guard Mode, which requires pre-approval for addresses and protocols and pauses out-of-policy activity for 2FA confirmation, and Beast Mode, which removes the allowlist while keeping spending caps and a malicious-transaction 2FA backstop in place. MetaMask said each transaction goes through simulation, threat scanning, and MEV protection, and eligible trades can receive up to $10,000 per month in loss coverage. The product also integrates with Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, and OpenClaw, and can settle gas fees in the token being moved so the agent does not need to hold a chain’s native asset. The newsletter also noted broader market moves, ETF inflows, Robinhood Chain activity, and NFT trading data, while stating that the analysis and opinions in Morning Minute are those of author Tyler Warner, not necessarily Decrypt.

ARK Invest trading data showed that on July 31, the ARK Innovation ETF (ARKK) sold 18,855 shares of Snowflake (SNOW), a position worth about $5.5 million based on the latest closing price. The data also showed recent portfolio changes tied to Cathie Wood, including reductions in Shopify, 10x Genomics, Figma and Iridium Communications, while adding CoreWeave, Circle, Pony AI and Kodiak AI. As of July 31, Tesla remained ARKK’s largest holding at 9.42%. SpaceX ranked second at 4.92%, followed by Tempus AI at 4.81%. The rest of the fund’s top 10 holdings were CRISPR Therapeutics at 4.66%, Coinbase at 4.54%, Shopify at 4.54%, AMD at 3.96%, Circle at 3.82%, Robinhood at 3.54% and 10x Genomics at 3.43%. The holding data was cited by TheStreet and relayed in a newsflash from Odaily.

ARK Invest, led by Cathie Wood, cut positions in four crypto-linked stocks on July 29, selling more than 460,000 shares combined across Bullish, Bitmine, Robinhood, and Block. The trades were split between ARKK and ARKF, but the two funds were not doing the same thing. ARKF reduced nearly all of its holdings by roughly 1.37% to 1.38%, which points to a broad pro-rata trim rather than a call on crypto names specifically. ARKK, by contrast, cut the four stocks by different percentages, suggesting active stock selection, and it was buying elsewhere on the same day. ARKK added SpaceX and Nvidia, while ARK funds overall also increased positions in Kratos Defense, BWX Technologies, and Intuitive Machines. After the sales, ARK still held sizable positions in the four names, including about $336 million in Robinhood and $229 million in Block based on July 29 closing prices. The moves came a day before the Federal Reserve rate decision, with U.S. equities under pressure and the Dow Jones Industrial Average down 2.19%.

PANews’ July 25 daily roundup collected a broad set of crypto regulatory, market, project, funding, and data developments, led by two market signals: analysts said stablecoin inflows to exchanges have fallen to their lowest level of 2025, while U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded a combined net outflow of $240 million on July 24, with BlackRock’s IBIT accounting for $212 million of that figure. The report also covered a Hong Kong court sentencing Xiao Rui, son of former Wuhan supervisory official Xiao Jun, to six years and nine months in prison in a money-laundering case involving more than HK$64 million; Thailand’s SEC filing criminal complaints against Bitkub Online and two former directors over disclosures tied to a 2021 theft; and India’s move to ask GitHub to remove repositories for Bitchat, an offline messaging app backed by Jack Dorsey. On the project and corporate side, PANews highlighted Robinhood’s talks with Crypto.com on prediction markets, Across Protocol’s post-mortem on a relayer incident, LayerZero’s plan to wind down support for 20 low-activity chains, Phantom’s scheduled end of support for Monad, BlackRock’s transfer of about 3,126 BTC to Coinbase Prime, Circle’s mint of 250 million USDC, and World Foundation’s $52.5 million strategic WLD sale led by Pantera Capital. The roundup also included updates on Anduril, LMAX, B2C2, Capital Group, ARK, Kinetic Group, Bitcoin volatility, and Hyperliquid buybacks.

Cathie Wood's Ark Invest purchased $18.4 million worth of Coinbase shares across three ETFs while selling nearly $29 million in Robinhood stock. Coinbase recently launched tokenized stocks, an AI advisor, and unified liquidity system.

Despite a $3 trillion market rout, ARKK holds large stakes in Robinhood, Coinbase, Circle, Bullish, and BitMine. Robinhood surged over 3% after Goldman Sachs raised its price target. Wood reiterated Bitcoin targets of $730K to $1.5M by 2030.

ARK Invest added to Coinbase, Circle, Bullish and Robinhood as the four stocks fell. Cathie Wood also said inflation is cooling and policy could end up looser than markets expect.