Four mining pools — Foundry Digital, AntPool, ViaBTC and F2Pool — together controlled more than 70% of the Bitcoin network’s hashrate as of June 23, 2026, according to a ChainCatcher report. Their individual shares were about 31%, 18%, 13% and 10%, respectively, pointing to a high level of concentration in block production. The report also noted that Foundry Digital is a U.S.-based mining pool backed by Digital Currency Group and mainly serves large institutions and publicly listed mining companies. Separately, D-Central put Bitcoin’s Nakamoto coefficient at 3 in the first half of 2026, meaning only three mining pools would be needed to exceed half of block production. ChainCatcher added that ViaBTC faced tighter regulatory scrutiny in 2026, and that some miners had already shifted to alternative pools such as EMCD.

Forward Deployed Engineering, or FDE, is becoming one of the most closely watched roles in AI, according to Jove Zhong, head of FDE at AI call-center company Cresta. In a podcast conversation released on July 17, Zhong said the role has changed sharply in the AI Agent era: instead of acting like a traditional on-site engineer or outsourced technical resource, an FDE now sits at the intersection of customer delivery, product feedback, and business trust. Cresta’s team has grown from only a few people to 30, with a goal of reaching 100 this year through global hiring. Zhong described AI Agent FDEs as people who must understand implementation details such as hallucination handling, RAG latency, VAD tuning, model upgrades, testing, and evaluation, while also being able to work directly with customer executives and technical leads. He said that at Cresta, FDE is treated as part of product engineering rather than customer success or professional services, because the job is not only to make deployments work but also to feed lessons back into APIs, microservices, UI, CLI, and documentation. He also argued that enterprise AI, especially voice AI and AI agents, is one of the three most important AI application tracks alongside coding tools and multimedia generation. In his view, the strongest FDE candidates are experienced engineers who have actually built AI agents, can communicate with customers, and are able to take responsibility for outcomes rather than just model access.

South Korean crypto exchange Bithumb has placed AZIT, CUDIS, FANC, TEMCO, EGG and STAT under a trading caution designation starting today. The exchange said the move was based on the tokens failing to meet its standards for combined market capitalization and trading volume across domestic and overseas exchanges. Bithumb will suspend deposits for the six tokens from 16:00 on July 16. A follow-up notice on whether the designation will be extended, lifted, or lead to trading termination is expected in the third week of October. The update was reported by Odaily.

Chainalysis says Hydra is Eastern Europe’s sixth-largest crypto service by volume and has built a highly sophisticated, contactless drug delivery model, helping it surpass Western darknet markets in both scale and operational complexity.

Einsteinium (EMC2) stands out for its nonprofit and scientific funding mission. Public data shows an all-time high of 2.88, circulating supply of 223,574,593, and a max supply of 245,465,283.

Einsteinium (EMC2) is presented as a cryptocurrency backed by a nonprofit foundation focused on scientific research and charitable missions. Public data shows its all-time high was $2.88, with about 223.57 million tokens in circulation and a max supply of 245.47 million.

Einsteinium (EMC2) is positioned as a cryptocurrency backed by a nonprofit foundation focused on scientific research and charitable missions. Its all-time high is $2.88, with 223.57 million tokens in circulation out of a 245.47 million maximum supply.