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Ronald Keung, the head of Asian Internet Research at Goldman Sachs, stated that as the global usage of Chinese AI models surges, developers may begin to charge commercial licensing fees to cloud platforms for hosting their open-weight models. Currently, most Chinese models are released under permissive licenses such as the MIT License, allowing any user to use, modify, and host them for free, including for commercial purposes.Keung pointed out that Chinese AI models like Kimi K3 from the Dark Side of the Moon and GLM-5.2 from Zhiyu AI have performance levels that are close to those of leading models in the United States. The adoption rate among small and medium-sized enterprises, both domestically and globally, is very fast, and even large enterprises are beginning to consider using Chinese models. Goldman Sachs believes that model developers can convert the growing use of open-source into actual revenue by requiring third-party service providers to purchase commercial licenses to run model inference on their own infrastructure.

According to PRNewswire, Nasdaq-listed company Canton Strategic Holdings announced that it has completed the sale of its biotechnology research and development department, Gravitas Life Sciences, to Gravitas Collective Corp. The transaction was unanimously approved by the company's board of directors and was officially completed on July 17, 2026.This sale marks the company's further transformation into an operational enterprise focused on driving the digitization of traditional financial markets around the Canton Network, promoting asset tokenization and the digitization process of financial markets, as well as financial infrastructure business.

Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) latest forecast shows that by 2035, electricity consumption by data centers in the United States will account for about 20% of the nation's total electricity consumption, a significant increase from the current level of about 5.9%. The agency has raised its forecast for data center electricity demand in 2035 to 106 GW, which is 36% higher than the 78 GW predicted in April this year. Currently, the operating capacity of data centers in the U.S. is about 40 GW, accounting for approximately 3.5%-4% of the national electricity demand, while under BNEF's baseline scenario, this proportion is expected to reach 8.6% by 2035. The high-growth model from the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) indicates that if the combined effects of cryptocurrency mining and AI computing power are taken into account, the upper limit of this proportion also points to 20%.In response to the explosive growth in AI computing power demand, Bitcoin mining companies are actively transforming. Companies like Core Scientific and Riot Platforms have partnered with tech giants such as AWS and Google to convert their existing mining sites into AI data centers. Currently, Bitcoin mining companies have secured about 6 GW of electricity capacity, which is expected to expand to 12 GW by 2027, with some analysts estimating that about 20% of mining companies' computing power capacity will shift towards AI workloads by then. Data from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) shows that data centers now account for about 90% of local large load applications, with many sites originally used for cryptocurrency mining being repurposed as AI computing facilities. This trend is also directly reflected in the capital markets, as Core Scientific has seen a significant rebound in its stock price after emerging from bankruptcy and partnering with AI cloud service provider CoreWeave.

According to CoinDesk, cryptocurrency wallet company Exodus Movement (EXOD) announced that it will cut about 25% of its global workforce to reduce operating costs and shift its business towards stablecoin payments and card payment infrastructure.Exodus stated in regulatory filings that this restructuring is part of the company's strategy to build a full-stack payment platform. The company has been continuously integrating the acquired electronic money institution Monavate and cryptocurrency payment company Baanx to expand its payment capabilities and global business layout.Exodus expects that this round of layoffs will result in pre-tax restructuring costs of $2.5 million to $3.5 million, mainly for employee severance and related costs. Affected employees will receive severance compensation, benefits continuation, and transitional support.The company anticipates that after the restructuring is completed, it can reduce cash operating expenses by $10 million to $13 million annually, with related savings fully realized by 2027.In the market, EXOD rose about 2.2% in pre-market trading on Monday, but its cumulative decline over the past year is still close to 85%. This adjustment reflects that cryptocurrency companies are accelerating their transformation towards stablecoin payments, financial infrastructure, and other business directions.

Tom Lee stated that as AI "bottleneck" related stocks adjust, AI downstream assets are strengthening, including SMH, DRAM, MAGS, IGV, as well as AI downstream related ETHA and Ethereum ETH.He pointed out that over the past month, Ethereum has outperformed DRAM by about 5,500 basis points, or 55%.

Coinbase co-founder and CEO Brian Armstrong posted on the X platform, publicly acknowledging that the creator coin previously promoted by the Base chain has not succeeded and that a strategic adjustment was completed earlier this year.Armstrong stated that Base's current core focus areas are trading, payments, and AI agents, which are interconnected—payments require foreign exchange trading, and AI agents will also involve a large number of trading and payment scenarios. Currently, most resources have been concentrated on the trading track.

According to The Defiant, the Web3 gaming guild Yield Guild Games (YGG) will shut down its game publishing department YGG Play, affecting 35 positions.Co-founder Gabby Dizon stated that the YGG Play platform and games such as LOL Land and Waifu Sweeper will operate until they go offline after July 31. YGG stated that this adjustment is "market-driven, not product-driven," mainly influenced by the macro environment. In the future, YGG will return to a smaller team and community-driven model and explore a new business of selling player-generated training data to AI labs.

According to CryptoSlate, South Korea's Bitcoin treasury company Bitplanet has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Nasdaq-listed company Antalpha and its partners, planning to introduce 15 billion Korean won worth of Bitcoin mining equipment and to launch full-scale mining operations this month. The Bitcoin mined in the future will be recognized as operating income and managed as a long-term financial asset.The plan indicates that the first phase of equipment is expected to produce over 7 BTC per month, with an annual output of more than 80 BTC (subject to equipment utilization and electricity prices). The mining equipment will be deployed in overseas regions with competitive electricity costs, including Oman and Paraguay, and will adopt an overseas custody and joint operation model.

According to BBX data, yesterday, publicly listed companies in multiple countries around the world experienced extreme differentiation in their digital asset treasury strategies, with some engaging in "hardcore accumulation" and others opting for "complete liquidation." The latest movements in real asset balance sheet adjustments are as follows:Metaplanet spent $220 million to aggressively accumulate: Metaplanet Inc. (TSE: $3350) officially submitted documents to the Tokyo Stock Exchange yesterday, revealing that the company purchased a total of 2,823 bitcoins in the second quarter of 2026, paying approximately 3.589 billion yen (about $22.3 million), with an average price of about $78,835 per coin. This accumulation increased the company's total bitcoin holdings to 43,000 coins, with a total cost of approximately 659.26 billion yen (about $4.08 billion). CoinDesk confirmed on the same day that it recorded "bitcoin revenue generation" revenue in Q2, but due to a decline in coin prices, it dropped about 41% compared to the previous quarter.KWAV strategically reversed and completely liquidated: K Wave Media (NASDAQ: $KWAV) submitted a suspended registration document to the SEC on June 30, indicating that the company has completely exited the previously high-profile bitcoin treasury plan, liquidating all its bitcoin holdings. The company plans to redirect the maximum $250 million originally intended for purchasing bitcoins entirely towards AI data centers and GPU computing infrastructure. Along with the liquidation, K Wave Media announced plans to change its name to Talivar Technologies, fully abandoning the label that was once seen by the market as Asia's "bitcoin follower." Due to the significant drop in bitcoin from its peak of $126,000, which triggered a chain reaction, the company is currently considering executing a reverse stock split to meet Nasdaq's minimum listing maintenance requirements, hastily entering the capital-intensive AI sector.

According to The Block, Humanity Protocol founder Terence Kwok publicly responded for the first time after the project suffered an attack of approximately $36 million, stating that the team will reduce its focus on blockchain and decentralized identity projects and shift towards enterprise-level AI products and services.Kwok stated that the attack originated from the developer's device being compromised, rather than a smart contract vulnerability; the probability of recovering the stolen funds is low, and the current focus will be on token migration, claims and compensation processes, as well as subsequent business reconstruction.

Blockchain company Saga announced the establishment of Saga AI Labs, focusing on developing AI consumer platforms and autonomous digital characters, and announced the sale of its cryptocurrency business, transferring the blockchain network operation management rights to Alapin Holdings, a subsidiary of dao5.Saga AI Labs has launched AI character projects in collaboration with several gaming partners and plans to extend its business into consumer brands, sports, and other fields in the future.

ZetaChain announced that as it transforms into an AI-oriented private memory layer, it will gradually shut down the old cross-chain infrastructure and focus on new directions such as Anuma, user-owned memory, identity, permissions, payments, and agency.According to the plan, ZetaChain has closed platform recharges as of June 1, 2026, and opened the final withdrawal window. Previously, on April 27, ZetaChain was attacked by exploiting a vulnerability in the cross-chain messaging system, resulting in the theft of $333,868 from three internal team wallets.

According to The Bitcoin Historian (@pete_rizzo_), the $2 billion lending giant Ledn has removed cryptocurrencies from all its products and fully shifted to a pure Bitcoin strategy. Ledn stated that this adjustment is a strategic transformation aimed at aligning with the core principles of Bitcoin.

The Kobeissi Letter analysis points out that since April, the cumulative net outflow from U.S. gold and Bitcoin-related ETFs has been about $12 billion, while during the same period, semiconductor ETFs recorded a net inflow of about $20 billion, with funds clearly concentrating in the technology growth sector.This trend accelerated further in mid-May: the outflow from gold and Bitcoin ETFs increased more than threefold, while the inflow into semiconductor ETFs doubled. In terms of market performance, the world's largest gold ETF GLD has fallen about 13% since early April, and the Bitcoin ETF IBIT has dropped about 12% during the same period; in contrast, semiconductor ETFs SOXX and SMH have risen approximately 81% and 60%, respectively.Analysis suggests that the current market shows a clear "risk preference switch," with retail funds accelerating their shift from safe-haven assets and crypto assets to high-growth semiconductor and AI-related sectors, driving the market in unprecedented ways.

According to Cointelegraph, cryptocurrency infrastructure company BitGo Holdings announced layoffs of about 15%. BitGo co-founder and CEO Mike Belshe stated that this move aims to optimize team structure and focus resources on core areas such as security, trading, stablecoins, settlement, and AI-driven infrastructure.According to data disclosed in BitGo's annual report (with a total of 603 full-time employees by the end of 2025), this round of layoffs may involve about 90 people. Belshe described this as a "one-time adjustment" and does not expect further job cuts in the future. Affected by related news and the overall downturn in the cryptocurrency market, BitGo's stock price (BTGO) fell 4.67% to $4.80 on Thursday, down nearly 73% from its issuance price of $18 when it went public in January this year.

Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, stated that the Ethereum Foundation (EF) has announced a budget cut of approximately 40% this year as part of its financial transformation plan.According to the funding management policy released last year, EF is gradually transitioning from an "expenditure-based organization" to an "endowment-based model," aiming to reduce the annual expenditure ratio from about 15% to approximately 5% after 2030. In this process, the foundation emphasizes that it will accept inevitable personnel and resource adjustments and acknowledges the loss of some capabilities and experience.In this round of restructuring, EF has reduced approximately 54 employees, accounting for about 20% of the overall team. Vitalik stated that many of these departing members may continue to participate in the Ethereum ecosystem in external forms in the future. Meanwhile, the foundation will shift its strategic focus to a more "lightweight" protocol governance and development path, including advancing the "Strawmap" long-term roadmap, covering core protocol upgrades such as consensus mechanisms, privacy technologies, account models, and state structures, and promoting Ethereum's evolution into its third phase.In terms of specific structural adjustments, EF will weaken the "multi-client redundancy priority" model and shift towards a development approach based more on specialized division of labor and AI-assisted formal verification; the privacy and scalability research team PSE will be restructured, transitioning from exploratory R&D to more focused engineering implementation; the scale of ecosystem activities such as Devcon will also gradually be reduced.In addition, EF will reduce investments in large cross-domain projects in the future, placing greater emphasis on protocol security and high-value improvements, while encouraging more innovative work to be completed externally. Although the path is more streamlined, Ethereum will continue to strengthen its core positioning as a highly censorship-resistant and long-term stable protocol.

The "contract whale" first set 10 major targets and posted on social media to close a short position of 3,173.608 BTC, making a profit of over 9,460,000 USD. Subsequently, the whale shifted to a long position, opening a long position of 999.121 BTC at an opening price of 62,682.17 USD.

The development company behind zkSync, Matter Labs, announced layoffs on Tuesday and is fully transitioning the entire organization to the institutional-grade on-chain privacy infrastructure platform Prividium. CEO Alex Gluchowski defined this move on X as a skills restructuring rather than a cost-cutting measure, stating that the products built for regulated financial institutions since 2024 have evolved into Prividium, aiming to provide on-chain infrastructure that combines transaction confidentiality with compliance auditing capabilities for regulated entities such as banks and asset management companies.Gluchowski mentioned that this transformation is based on specific product feedback from institutional clients, but did not disclose the number of layoffs. According to CoinGecko data, the market capitalization of the zkSync token is approximately $115 million, having risen 4.3% in the past 24 hours. This transformation reflects a broader trend in the Layer 2 market, as ZK and L2 projects like Hyli and Botanix have shut down, and general-purpose horizontal platforms are facing pressure to find defenses in vertical fields. As of the time of publication, Matter Labs has not made any statements regarding the future of the zkSync network and ZK tokens.