A JPMorgan buy-side survey dated Aug. 3 points to a gap between weak price action in semiconductor stocks and still-firm earnings expectations heading into results. The most closely watched name is ON Semiconductor, where investors remain sharply split over the SYNA deal. Some see the transaction as dilutive to the high-voltage data center narrative and at odds with prior management messaging around exiting non-core operations. Even so, positioning has shifted over the past month, with new longs and short covering increasing as ON moved from net short to slightly net short after roughly a 25% share-price pullback. Survey responses cited by TechFlowPost show buy-side estimates for ON’s second-quarter revenue, gross margin, EPS, third-quarter outlook and fiscal 2027 EPS all above company guidance. About 60% of respondents also expect ON to modestly raise its 2026 AI revenue target from the current roughly $500 million level, though expectations remain low. JPMorgan published similar survey results for Applied Materials, AMD, Arista, Coherent, Cisco, Lumentum, Sandisk and Western Digital. Across most of those names, average buy-side forecasts for revenue, gross margin and earnings per share came in above management guidance. The report’s central message is that investor earnings expectations across the semiconductor group remain stronger than the recent selloff might suggest.

Real-world asset markets kept expanding in the week covering July 24 to July 31, 2026, even as stablecoin settlement activity remained weak. Data from RWA.xyz showed on-chain RWA market capitalization reached $36.82 billion as of July 31, up 2.43% from a month earlier, while the number of holders climbed to 1.4469 million, a 40.81% monthly increase and the largest monthly gain on record. In stablecoins, total market capitalization was largely unchanged at $296.63 billion, but monthly transfer volume dropped 29.29% to $5.07 trillion, extending a sharp slowdown in on-chain settlement demand. Regulation also moved across several jurisdictions. South Korea advanced work on a comprehensive digital asset bill that would cover stablecoin issuance and exchange standards, while lawmakers are also set to review an opposition proposal to scrap a crypto tax scheduled for 2027. Kenya lowered the minimum paid-up capital requirement for stablecoin issuers by 40% to about $2.32 million, and Zimbabwe approved seven crypto and tokenization projects for its regulatory sandbox. On the industry side, the Bank for International Settlements-led Project Agorá completed a live cross-border payment test worth about $1 million across six currencies with five central banks and 28 commercial banks. In Europe, 10 financial institutions formed the Regulated Layer One cooperative, or RL1, to build tokenized asset infrastructure for regulated markets. Ondo Finance also introduced Ondo Network, a new execution layer that replaces the prior Ondo Chain direction.

Martin Shkreli used a July 30 episode of TBPN Podcast to reconstruct the liquidity crisis at Situational Awareness, or SALP, framing it as one of the more notable hedge fund blowups driven by leverage and forced selling. His core point was simple: if a fund is running at roughly 4x leverage, a 25% decline in the book can wipe out equity fast enough for prime brokers to step in and seize control of the portfolio. Shkreli argued that the market had likely started trading against the fund as early as Monday or Tuesday, selling overlapping names and shorting positions SALP was known or believed to own. He said this is standard game theory on Wall Street once counterparties believe a fund must liquidate. In his reconstruction, the fund’s capital base included roughly $35 billion of equity plus about $10 billion of Anthropic private shares, against a total gross book near $120 billion. He said Jane Street, Millennium and Citadel were the three major bidders for the assets, with Citadel ultimately winning. Shkreli’s view was that Citadel could have captured an immediate paper gain of $3 billion to $4 billion if it can absorb the positions cleanly. He also rejected war, oil and other macro narratives as the main cause, saying the real driver was the buying and selling pressure of the marginal 5% of traders, especially when that capital is levered.

POSCO International is working with LG CNS and Injective on a blockchain-based trade finance pilot that tokenizes real accounts receivable on-chain. The South Korean trading company said the test showed the technology can be used in live trade scenarios, and it plans to move the system into production later this year. The platform is designed to create a shared ledger for buyers, sellers, and financing institutions, replacing fragmented invoice records and cutting repeated checks in cross-border trade. The tokens in the pilot represent debt claims tied to unpaid receivables rather than equity in the company. POSCO International has not disclosed the volume processed in the test or any data on cost savings.

Bitget UEX’s latest market note said easing tensions between the United States and Iran helped push crude prices sharply lower, cooling some of the inflation and rate-hike concerns that had built up during the previous oil rally. The report said the shift improved risk appetite across markets, with crypto recovering alongside other risk assets. BTC traded around $65,195 and ETH around $1,974, while total crypto market capitalization rose to roughly $2.31 trillion. In liquidation data, 24-hour liquidations reached about $213 million, including $160 million in short liquidations. The note also reviewed a mixed close in US equities last Friday. The Dow and S&P 500 ended slightly higher, while the Nasdaq slipped, reflecting continued pressure on technology shares. Apple rose 3.53%, while Nvidia, Amazon, Meta and Tesla fell. Sector performance was uneven as semiconductor, memory and optical communications names sold off, while some software stocks outperformed. Looking ahead, the report highlighted this week’s major macro events, including the Federal Reserve’s rate decision, US core PCE and GDP data, along with earnings from Apple, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, Qualcomm and SK Hynix.

POSCO International, one of South Korea’s major trading companies, has started a pilot project with LG CNS to test the tokenization of trade receivables on the Injective blockchain. The trial uses real trade data from POSCO International’s overseas business and brings issuance, transfer and settlement of receivables onto a shared ledger. The companies say the setup is designed to cut the time spent on reconciliation and verification in cross-border trade, where buyers, sellers and financial institutions typically keep separate records. According to the report, POSCO International generated $22.2 billion in annual revenue and operates across steel, energy and battery materials. A company spokesperson said the pilot is meaningful because it is built on real trade databases and processes, and because it tests the applicability of combining artificial intelligence with blockchain. The plan is to move the project into a live production environment after the pilot is completed this year. The article also places the project in the broader RWA tokenization trend. It cites a current market size of $35 billion and a Citi estimate that the market could reach $5.5 trillion by 2030, while noting that tokenization is expanding from funds and equities into trade finance.

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PANews’ July 24 daily roundup pulled together a wide set of crypto, macro, legal, and market developments, with whale activity around HYPE standing out across several on-chain updates. One large holder staked 2.785 million HYPE worth about $164 million through 20 wallets over 11 hours, while another whale moved 2.93 million HYPE, worth roughly $172 million, into Hyperliquid for staking. A separate entity also staked 1.49 million HYPE valued at around $88.2 million. PANews noted that one of the larger staking clusters may be tied to a16z, though that remains unconfirmed. Elsewhere, former bitcoin mining heavyweight Poolin filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the U.S. and plans to sell its Texas mining assets for $52 million. BitMEX, on the same day it announced it would shut down operations on Sept. 23, was hit with a class-action lawsuit seeking 622.66 BTC in damages over alleged fraudulent liquidations. In corporate and funding news, Stripe is reportedly in talks to acquire AI model aggregation platform OpenRouter in a deal that could reach $10 billion, while AI chip startup Etched closed a $300 million Series C at a $10.3 billion post-money valuation. BlackRock, Coinbase and seven other firms also launched a Bitcoin security alliance with a three-year, $15 million funding commitment for open-source developers.