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According to CNBC, Situational Awareness, an AI-themed hedge fund founded by former OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner, sold its entire publicly traded stock portfolio in a single transaction to another hedge fund before the market opened on Thursday, with the buyer undisclosed. The fund also sold a significant stake in Anthropic. The fund manages approximately $20 billion to $24 billion, and as of the end of June, it had a net return of 439%, making it one of the best-performing hedge funds this year.According to insiders, this liquidation was due to significant losses in recent weeks. The fund had long positions in AI infrastructure and semiconductor stocks such as SK Hynix, Nvidia, Micron, and CoreWeave, most of which fell over 35% this month, while its short positions in software stocks like Adobe also experienced significant reverse volatility. According to its 13F filing submitted on March 31, about 62% of its $13.68 billion holdings were bearish options betting on declines in semiconductor and tech stocks. It is reported that major brokers such as Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan are assisting the fund in meeting margin calls or orderly reducing positions, and Aschenbrenner has sought new capital from existing investors and lenders.

The Binance research report shows that in the first half of 2026, the on-chain market contracted overall rather than experiencing capital rotation. The total locked value in DeFi across the entire chain decreased by $43.4 billion, a decline of 38%; the total market capitalization of the six major mainstream Layer 1 public chains covered in the report decreased by $246.5 billion, a decline of 42%. The Ethereum spot ETF holdings dropped from over 6 million ETH to 5.2 million, while the holdings of digital asset reserve companies increased from 6 million to 7.7 million, indicating a change in marginal holding structure.The report also pointed out that after the increase in Ethereum's Gas limit, the average Gas price decreased by 75% compared to 2025, and the number of transactions grew by about 50%, but the annual on-chain revenue is still expected to decline by 53%. User activity on Layer 2 general networks significantly weakened, with user operations dropping by about 77% from January to June 2026. The Solana network's REV fell from $40 million in January to $14 million in June.On the other hand, BNB Chain performed outstandingly in the field of tokenized stocks and tokenized real-world assets, with the market share of on-chain tokenized RWA increasing from 9.8% to 13.5% in the first half of the year. The report also mentioned that prediction markets, DEX, lending, and tokenized RWA remain among the few major directions that maintain activity.

According to Gate market data, after the US stock market opened, Microsoft's gains expanded to over 15%, expected to create the largest single-day increase since March 2020.On Wednesday, after the US stock market closed, Microsoft announced its financial report for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2026, with revenue of $90 billion, an 18% year-on-year increase. The growth rate of Azure and other cloud services rose from 40% in the previous quarter to 43%. CEO Satya Nadella stated that Azure's full-year revenue "exceeded $100 billion," growing by 41%, marking the first time this business has crossed the $100 billion threshold.

According to the Financial Times, Situational Awareness, an AI-themed hedge fund founded by 25-year-old former OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner, is seeking new funding following significant losses due to a sharp correction in AI-related stocks.In recent communications, Aschenbrenner acknowledged the increased market volatility, describing it as a new investment opportunity and encouraging investors to inject new capital. The fund's heavy investments in AI data centers, power, storage, and GPU cloud-related assets have seen significant declines during this round of AI capital expenditure deal pullback.

According to exclusive reports from Titanium Media, ByteDance released an internal email on July 30, announcing the integration of the Feishu product team and the Doubao product team to form a new Doubao product team, which will be unified under the leadership of Doubao head Zhao Qi, while Feishu head Xie Xin will report to Zhao Qi. In terms of the GTM system, the Feishu GTM team will integrate with the Volcano Engine team to establish a new ToB GTM organization called the "Creativity Service Platform," which will be responsible for the marketing, sales, and customer service of ByteDance's MaaS and SaaS cloud services, led by Volcano Engine head Tan Dai, with Feishu sales head Lin Chan and Feishu strategy and marketing head Shi Zhijun reporting to Tan Dai.This integration is the largest adjustment to ByteDance's ToB business since it implemented business segmentation in 2021. After the reorganization, Feishu's products and services will remain unchanged, and Feishu will collaborate more deeply with Doubao on productivity scenarios. The Doubao enterprise version, developed with deep involvement from the Feishu product team, has already begun internal testing among some Feishu clients. Feishu currently covers over 10 million enterprise users, and this integration will further enhance the integrated collaborative capabilities of the ToB business.

According to Jinshi reports, OpenAI announced that it will provide free access to cutting-edge models for 100,000 researchers.

According to Fortune, the prediction market platform Polymarket has established the Polymarket Institute, a new organization dedicated to researching prediction market information discovery and forecasting mechanisms, fully funded by Polymarket but without disclosing the specific amount.The institute will set up a "Scientific Scholarship" program to fund doctoral researchers conducting research in related fields, initially recruiting 12 researchers, each of whom will receive a one-time grant of $10,000. To ensure research independence, researchers are prohibited from trading on platforms like Polymarket during their tenure and retain the unconditional right to publish any research findings (even if unfavorable to Polymarket). The funding will adopt a university donation model rather than commissioned research to avoid Polymarket having editorial influence over the results.Polymarket's Chief Data Officer Kai Brusch will serve as the Managing Director of the institute, and Carnegie Mellon University Assistant Professor of Economics and Technology Brian Jabarian will serve as the Scientific Director. To avoid conflicts of interest, Jabarian will not receive personal compensation for this role.

The on-chain spot exchange Rialto has launched the Robinhood Chain token issuance platform Varo. Varo adopts a contract architecture based on Uniswap V3, with no binding curve or graduation fees. Tokens can be traded instantly through the Uniswap liquidity pool at the time of issuance and can be integrated with platforms such as Uniswap, GMGN, LI.FI, BasedBot, and Definitive.Each token issued on Varo has a fixed supply of 100 million tokens, and the initial market value is set by Varo (for example, 60,000 USDG or 30 WETH). There are no reserved shares for teams or developers, and liquidity positions are permanently locked in the contract. The trading fee is 1%, of which 30% belongs to Rialto.The project team also stated that a "one code corresponds to one token" mechanism is used to prevent confusion with tokens of the same name and that the higher initial market value setting aims to reduce the economic incentive for sniper bots to accumulate tokens at low cost.

According to VentureBeat, the Model Context Protocol (MCP) has received its largest update since its launch in November 2024, managed by the Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF) under the Linux Foundation. This update completes the transition to a fully stateless architecture, allowing MCP servers to be deployed behind standard load balancers without relying on "sticky routing" or shared session state, thereby simplifying large-scale cloud-native and Kubernetes deployments.In terms of security, the new version of MCP enforces validation of the issuer (iss) parameter for OAuth and OpenID Connect to prevent mix-up attacks and introduces enterprise-hosted authorization extensions to support unified identity governance for enterprises. The protocol also establishes a formal deprecation policy, ensuring that features are announced for deprecation at least 12 months before their earliest removal. MCP Apps and MCP Tasks have also been upgraded to official extensions, supporting servers in providing interactive interfaces to AI clients and executing interruptible, resumable long-running asynchronous tasks through persistent task handles. According to MCP co-creator David Soria Parra, the related SDK's weekly download volume has reached approximately 250 million, doubling in the past six months.

According to a report by Sifted, ETH Zurich spin-off startup ZuriQ announced the completion of a $25.5 million seed round financing.The company is dedicated to developing a new type of quantum chip architecture, which is said to have stronger scalability compared to existing solutions and is expected to accelerate the scaling process in the field of quantum computing.

According to a report by South Korea's Digital Asset, as of 8 AM on July 28, the OKX exchange app has resumed normal search, new installation, and update functions in the South Korean Google Play Store, about four days after it was found to be unsearchable on July 24.Previously, other overseas exchange apps such as Binance and Bitget were not affected. However, the Bybit app, which has been restricted from search and installation in the South Korean Google Play since July 10, remains under restriction as of the morning of the 28th. In January of this year, the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) of South Korea classified overseas virtual asset service providers that had not registered in South Korea as unregistered operators under the Specific Financial Information Act, leading Google Play to implement policies restricting the download and update of related exchange apps. However, the actual enforcement of the blocking measures varied after the scheduled implementation date.

Ondo Finance announced the launch of the new Ondo Network, positioned as a high-performance execution layer, aimed at combining the trading speed of centralized exchanges (CEX) with the non-custodial and secure settlement capabilities of blockchain. Ondo CEO Ian De Bode stated that the Ondo Network is an "evolutionary version" of the previous Ondo Chain plan, and the company will not operate two networks simultaneously, but will adjust its original plan of building a complete blockchain to focus on the execution layer architecture.According to reports, Ondo initially planned to fully bring real-world assets on-chain through Ondo Chain, but after developing the Ondo Perps perpetual contract trading platform and communicating with users, it was found that the current market's core bottleneck is not asset settlement, but trading execution efficiency. The Ondo Network adopts a separated architecture for execution, validation, and settlement, using secure hardware to isolate the execution environment, which enhances trading speed while maintaining user asset self-custody, verifiable transactions, and permissionless blockchain characteristics.Currently, Ondo Perps has become the first application built on this network, supporting 24-hour trading of stock and commodity perpetual contracts, and allowing the use of tokenized real assets as collateral. Ondo stated that in the future, the network will also support applications requiring high performance, privacy protection, and verifiable execution, such as spot trading, lending, and structured products. In addition, the launch of the Ondo Network will not change the positioning of the ONDO token. The CEO stated that ONDO will still serve as the governance and incentive token for the Ondo RWA ecosystem and market infrastructure, and as the network gradually decentralizes, ONDO will be used to coordinate the incentive mechanisms for validation nodes, observers, and ecosystem participants.

The joint assessment by the UK Institute for AI Safety and the US Center for AI Standards and Innovation shows that Moonshot AI's Kimi K3 can assist in the development of exploit vulnerabilities and simulate cyber attacks without substantial hindrance, but its overall cybersecurity capabilities still lag significantly behind leading models in the United States.

The "Whale" stated in its post "Set 10 Major Goals" that after closing short positions, it quickly re-established long positions because its long-term bullish view on Bitcoin has not changed. It believes that the important boundary of the last bull market was around $60,000, and the current mainstream mining cost of Bitcoin is concentrated between $50,000 and $60,000; after Bitcoin dipped to $58,000 last month, it quickly recovered, further validating the support capacity of that area.In the past month, Bitcoin has fully oscillated and exchanged hands in the range of $58,000 to $63,000, and after a pullback, it has re-stabilized around $66,000. In the absence of systemic risks or significant fundamental changes, the risk-reward ratio of continuing to short at the current position is not high, and the market may see a surge and break through $72,000; if the market structure does not change significantly, Bitcoin has a high probability of challenging $100,000 again around March next year. Currently, U.S. stocks, especially in the artificial intelligence sector, are overall valued at relatively high levels, and future volatility may significantly increase.The correlation between Bitcoin and U.S. stocks has significantly decreased compared to previous cycles, and Bitcoin is gradually emerging as an independent market. It has set a trading invalidation range for the current position; if the market falls back to $61,500 to $64,000, and the trend proves the judgment to be incorrect, it will immediately close positions to control losses. It emphasizes: "Views can change, but discipline cannot change." In addition, the latest publicly available data shows that the "Whale" has set its Binance contract real account "Jason leo133" position to private status.

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.

Nine financial institutions and Bitcoin companies announced the joint establishment of the Bitcoin Security Alliance, with founding members including Anchorage Digital, ARK Invest, BlackRock, Block, Blockstream, Coinbase, Fidelity, Galaxy, and Strategy, covering the entire chain of institutions such as custody, trading, infrastructure, payments, and asset management.The alliance commits to providing a total of $15 million in funding over the next three years to support developers and researchers in the field of Bitcoin security, including long-term work to prepare Bitcoin for the future era of quantum computing. Each member independently decides which developers, researchers, or organizations to direct their funding towards. The daily operations of the alliance are coordinated on a voluntary basis by Brink Executive Director Mike Schmidt, with Brink being a nonprofit organization that funds Bitcoin open-source developers.The alliance clearly states that it does not formulate or direct Bitcoin protocols, does not express opinions on specific protocol changes, and does not represent Bitcoin or its developers—Bitcoin development continues to be carried out by a globally decentralized community of contributors. Its positioning is to emulate the model of industry organizations that have long supported open-source software, providing resources and attention to developers without controlling the underlying work.Strategy CEO Phong Le stated, "As long-term holders, ensuring the security of Bitcoin for generations is our greatest incentive"; BlackRock's Global Head of Digital Assets Robert Mitchnick pointed out that the work of Bitcoin core developers is "extremely important," and this commitment will provide "significant additional funding" for Bitcoin's long-term security needs. The alliance will also serve as a reliable source of information for investors, the public, and the media in the field of Bitcoin security, with plans to publish and continuously update materials related to Bitcoin security in the coming months.

Cryptocurrency financial services company Galaxy Digital announced the establishment of a $5 million Bitcoin Quantum Readiness Initiative, funding developers to research solutions to address future quantum computing threats. The program is open for applications starting today, with funding directions including quantum-resistant signature algorithms, wallet migration tools, and security audits.Galaxy stated that it hopes to attract more institutions to jointly invest and research, accelerating Bitcoin's transition to quantum-resistant cryptography. According to CryptoQuant data, if future quantum computers have the capability to crack Bitcoin's existing cryptographic algorithms, approximately 6.9 million BTC (equivalent to about $46.1 billion at current prices) may face the risk of theft. Although the industry generally believes that quantum computing does not pose an immediate threat to the Bitcoin network, related preparations should be initiated as early as possible due to the need for long-term collaboration among developers, wallets, exchanges, and users for protocol upgrades.

Hazeflow founder Pavel Paramonov announced the closure of his crypto research institution @hazeflow_xyz on X. Paramonov stated that such decisions are usually made under duress, "You don't just wake up one day and decide to shut down a business that generates income." He mentioned that several talented researchers and designers on the team are looking for new jobs and welcome institutions in need to contact them via private message. Paramonov said he will temporarily leave the crypto industry for at least a month before considering the next steps, "Currently, I am somewhat disappointed with the crypto industry."

According to The Block, Arcus has officially launched 24/7 trading functionality and introduced over 95 stock tokens on the Robinhood Chain, offering zero-fee trading. Meanwhile, Arcus has also launched a beta version of its perpetual contract market through its self-custody decentralized trading platform.Arcus stated in a press release that this launch allows eligible traders to invest in leading companies' stocks covering fields such as artificial intelligence, semiconductors, space exploration, and quantum computing, including large-cap companies like Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft, Tesla, Meta, Alphabet, and Amazon.In addition, Arcus has launched a testing phase for its perpetual futures trading market, with the number of people on the waiting list exceeding 75,000. The platform supports perpetual contract products covering U.S. stocks, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), commodities, and cryptocurrencies, including trading varieties related to SPY ETF, QQQ ETF, GLD ETF, USO ETF, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and XRP.Arcus was founded by Eddie Zhang, and its development team comes from the core team behind dYdX.