betting

A giant whale placed a limit short sale order of approximately $203 million on the tokenized aerospace company SpaceX stock SPCX, with a price range of $141.93 to $142.9, betting on a price decline of the token.At the beginning of August, the two-day trading volume of SPCX on the tokenized trading platform Gate reached about $700 million, with a single-day transaction of $332 million on August 4, as the market traded around the 911.5 million shares that were unlocked on August 6. After the unlocking, SPCX rose by 6.1%, closing at $114.92.Documents from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) show that Elon Musk holds a 48.4% beneficial interest in SpaceX, corresponding to over 6.4 billion shares, valued at over $900 billion at current prices; the related Class B shares give him over 82% of the total voting rights in SpaceX.

According to Bloomberg, as a large number of high-growth startups emerge in fields such as artificial intelligence and biotechnology, private equity and Pre-IPO investment tools aimed at ordinary investors are rapidly increasing. Billionaire investor Bill Ackman's investment firm Pershing Square is preparing to launch a new fund to provide investors with the opportunity to participate in high-growth companies that are not yet publicly listed.Currently, Pershing Square has initiated the process to establish "Pershing Square Ventures." This fund will adopt a "permanent capital" model, allowing for long-term holding of investment targets and continuing to hold shares after the invested companies go public.Ackman and Pershing Square Chief Investment Officer Ryan Israel stated in a letter to shareholders that the new fund aims to capture investment opportunities in Pre-IPO companies and expand the company's investment scope beyond the public markets. At present, Pershing Square has not disclosed the target size of the fund, investment strategy details, or specific fundraising timeline.

On July 29, the U.S. Department of Commerce signed letters of intent with seven companies, totaling up to $874 million, to support seven "post-GPU era" underlying technology routes such as CPO, ferroelectric memory, and 3D packaging in the form of equity investments. This marks a shift in the U.S. chip strategy from "capacity reshoring" to "technology route selection."The seven companies and their technology directions include: GlobalFoundries (CPO silicon photonic integration, $300 million), Kepler Computing (ferroelectric 3D memory, $245 million), Multibeam (multi-electron beam direct-write lithography and advanced packaging, $140 million), Extropic (thermodynamic sampling unit TSU, $75 million), Thintronics (ultra-low loss dielectric materials, $50 million), Aeluma (large-size phosphorus-free optoelectronic device substrates, $30 million), and OBSIDIA (hardware zero-trust chip anti-counterfeiting, $34 million). All companies are required to provide non-controlling minority equity to the U.S. government.This move shows that the funding usage of the CHIPS Act is shifting from subsidizing wafer fabs to directly holding equity in cutting-edge technology companies with national capital, in order to secure rule-making authority in the post-Moore era.

On-chain analyst Ai Yi posted on the X platform, stating that a trader from @GreeksLive has cumulatively sold $173 million worth of BTC call options, believing that BTC will not rise more than 9.5% within 52 days.If BTC does not exceed $70,000 by expiration, the trader will receive $3.03 million in premiums.

According to Sifted, the renowned European venture capital firm Index Ventures recently announced the completion of a new fundraising round of $2 billion, increasing its total investable assets to $3.5 billion. This round of fundraising consists of three parts: a $400 million seed fund, a $900 million early-stage venture fund, and an additional $700 million to the existing growth fund (which has expanded from $1.5 billion to $2.2 billion).Index Ventures stated that the new funds will continue to support founders "from the first round of financing to IPO and beyond," covering the markets in Europe, Israel, and the United States. In the context of this fundraising, AI is its core betting direction, and the firm has successively invested in Mistral, Cohere, and Ineffable Intelligence, founded by former DeepMind researcher David Silver. Previously, Wiz, part of the Index portfolio, was acquired by Google for $32 billion, Figma completed its IPO, and Revolut completed a secondary market share sale (valued at $115 billion), all of which provided strong endorsement for this round of fundraising.

Galaxy Research Research Director Alex Thorn tweeted that among a Coldcard attack victim holding nearly 30 BTC, 17 BTC were split and converted to ETH via THORChain, and then deposited into the offshore betting platform Duel.com.Upon tracking, this portion of funds corresponds to approximately 229.72 ETH (worth about $445,000). The victim and the research team have emailed all known addresses of Duel.com, providing all transaction and deposit information and requesting to freeze the funds, but the response stated that the victim should have the police contact them, even though the platform's anti-money laundering policy claims it implements KYC and complies with relevant laws.Thorn stated that this response is unacceptable, and most of the Western regions have passed midnight, meaning the police report cannot be advanced until at least Monday; he believes that if the platform refuses to freeze the funds after receiving notification that they originated from an ongoing cyber attack, it constitutes complicity in theft.Since Duel.com's X account has been banned, Thorn turned to @ several individuals associated with the platform, urging them to push the platform to take the correct actions, and stated that if the funds are not frozen, the platform will face significant legal action.

According to Bloomberg, Thailand's True Internet Data Center is seeking approximately $2 billion in equivalent loans to build new data center facilities to help Thailand develop into a regional AI and cloud services hub.In terms of financing structure, the loan will be divided into three parts, with about $1.8 billion denominated in US dollars, and the other two parts denominated in Thai baht. Sources familiar with the matter requested anonymity as the details of the transaction have not yet been publicly disclosed.

According to a report by Reuters, one of the world's largest multi-strategy hedge funds, Millennium Management, is negotiating to raise approximately $20 billion in new capital, significantly higher than the initial plan, which is expected to set a record for the largest fundraising in the company's history.The report states that this fundraising will be conducted in two phases, while Millennium also plans to swap capital managed by external fund managers, with the work overseen by President Ajay Nagpal. Reuters cited a Goldman Sachs report stating that, driven by the AI boom, the hedge fund industry is expected to welcome another strong year. In the first half of 2026, all major hedge fund strategies achieved net inflows for the first time in five years, with quantitative funds and multi-strategy funds attracting particularly strong capital. Millennium's return rate reached 10.5% in 2025, and it currently manages assets exceeding $92 billion.

On July 22, Pennsylvania State Representative Tarik Khan introduced HB 2711, co-sponsored by 24 bipartisan legislators (20 Democrats and 4 Republicans), which has been submitted to the House Consumer Protection, Technology, and Utilities Committee. The bill aims to prohibit the provision of prediction market services to Pennsylvania residents while engaging in gambling activities in the regular business of liquidity providers or market makers, extending the restrictions to parent companies, subsidiaries, affiliates, and joint ventures, and prohibits prediction platforms from sharing revenue with gambling companies.This move could impact sports betting groups like DraftKings (which has acquired CFTC-registered Railbird Technologies and launched its own DKeX exchange) and Flutter, which are entering the prediction market-making field. The bill also sets a minimum age limit of 21, prohibits contracts involving high school sports, events with minor participation, and death markets, and requires platforms to establish anti-fraud and insider information abuse protection mechanisms.The bill does not establish a licensing system, and enforcement authority is granted to the state Attorney General. Previously, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2:1 in April that the federal Commodity Exchange Act takes precedence over state gambling laws, but Pennsylvania has joined a coalition of 40 states advocating for sports contracts to be subject to state-level regulation.

Mango Labs founder @dov_wo expressed market views stating, "I have gone long on Changxin Technology. In my opinion, Changxin presents a rare 1:5 betting opportunity with a 20% downside and a 100% upside, risking one to gain five."@dov_wo listed the reasons for being bullish as follows: low circulation ratio, regulatory intervention, and institutions optimistic about its investment opportunities below a market value of 3 trillion. The suggested strategy is "if it opens high tomorrow, directly close the position to take profit; if it opens low and rises, patiently wait, and resolve the battle within 3 days."

According to a report by Reuters, the French National Gaming Authority (ANJ) has stated that it has requested French internet service providers to block the prediction market platform Polymarket, citing that it promotes illegal betting services, which may lead to significant losses for users, and that some bets may be subject to manipulation risks.Polymarket will remain blocked until it complies with French betting regulations.

According to CNBC, the American prediction market platform Kalshi stated that a teleprompter operator is under investigation by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission for allegedly trading prediction contracts related to public speeches by President Trump.

According to Bloomberg, researchers at Stanford University have found signs of manipulation in the Polymarket five-minute Bitcoin betting market. The study analyzed contract data over approximately two months and discovered repeated one-way trading pulses on the Binance exchange that briefly affected Bitcoin prices just seconds before the betting ended, benefiting those with aligned positions. The researchers referred to this pattern as "temporary manipulation to drive up spot prices" and pointed out that such contracts have structural vulnerabilities—participants can influence the outcome by trading the underlying asset itself that determines win or loss.A Polymarket spokesperson stated that the platform uses multiple independent price oracles to ensure accuracy and plans to transition some markets to a settlement method using longer time windows next year to enhance market integrity. The study estimates that suspected manipulators profited about $8.2 million over two months, primarily from losses incurred by retail traders. Similar patterns are not evident in the 15-minute market, where longer time windows make it more difficult to influence outcomes.

According to CNBC, Kraken plans to launch a trading feature centered around AI agents (agentic trading) in its app, allowing users to automatically monitor the market, discover opportunities, and execute trades through natural language commands. This feature utilizes AI during the account opening process to assess users' risk preferences, sources of funds, and financial status, generating a portfolio for users to adjust and confirm. It will subsequently provide portfolio-related information and rebalancing suggestions. Kraken stated that AI agents will help non-professional users participate in the market in a manner close to high-frequency and professional traders, and will be part of its strategy to extend into broader financial services such as payments, banking, and lending, integrating stablecoins and asset tokenization.

According to Bloomberg, the venture capital firm Paradigm, focused on the cryptocurrency sector, has raised approximately $1.2 billion and plans to increase its investment in artificial intelligence (AI) related projects.According to informed sources, this fundraising will focus on AI infrastructure, AI Agents, and the integration of AI with blockchain technology. Paradigm hopes to capture the next wave of technological innovation through the new fund and expand its investment footprint in emerging technology sectors.Founded in 2018 by Matt Huang and Fred Ehrsam, Paradigm is one of the leading cryptocurrency venture capital firms in the industry, having invested in several blockchain projects including Coinbase and Uniswap.This fundraising indicates that after experiencing previous market cycle adjustments, crypto capital is refocusing on the intersection of AI and blockchain. With the rapid development of AI agents, decentralized computing, on-chain data infrastructure, and other areas, more and more crypto investment firms are beginning to see AI as an important growth opportunity for the next stage.

According to Bloomberg, Micron officially broke ground on its factory expansion project in Higashi-Hiroshima City, Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan on Saturday. The total investment for the project is approximately 1.5 trillion yen (about 9.3 billion USD), aimed at producing advanced memory chips for the AI era.The new production line will focus on key chips such as high-bandwidth memory (HBM), which are core components supporting the performance of AI processors like those from Nvidia. The related chips are expected to start shipping as early as the summer of 2028.The Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry has provided up to 500 billion yen in subsidy support for the project to strengthen domestic semiconductor manufacturing capabilities and enhance supply chain resilience.This expansion project is seen as an important step for Japan to strengthen its semiconductor manufacturing layout in the global AI chip competition.

According to informed sources, U.S. regulators are investigating allegations made by Susquehanna International Group. The allegations claim that unknown insider traders profited $100 million through options bets before recent regulatory crackdowns on cross-border brokers Futu and Tiger Brokers in China. Susquehanna publicly disclosed these allegations in a lawsuit filed on June 29 in Manhattan federal court. Sources indicate that the U.S. SEC is reviewing the trades described in the market maker's complaint.Susquehanna claims in the lawsuit that it lost over $70 million as the counterparty to most of the alleged insider trading. The lawsuit states that traders purchased U.S. exchange-traded options from Chinese securities firms, which subsequently became targets of the regulatory crackdown on May 22. The scope and stage of the SEC investigation remain unclear. A U.S. judge approved Susquehanna's request to freeze related accounts on June 29. The Chinese government stated that Futu and Tiger Brokers provided unlicensed trading services to mainland residents. Following the announcement on May 22, the stock prices of both companies fell. Futu was fined 1.85 billion yuan in regulatory penalties, and founder Leaf Li's wealth decreased by $1.7 billion in a single day.

A Massachusetts judge approved a revised complaint submitted by the state attorney general against the prediction market platform Kalshi on Tuesday. The new complaint accuses Kalshi of illegally offering sports betting without the permission of the state's betting commission and allegedly attracting users under the age of 21 to participate in betting through marketing on college campuses.The state had previously issued a preliminary injunction against Kalshi, suspending its sports event contract business. However, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) had previously submitted a brief to the court supporting Kalshi, arguing that federal agencies have exclusive jurisdiction over prediction markets and are not subject to state-level regulation. Additionally, several traditional betting organizations in the U.S. are lobbying Congress to explicitly prohibit such sports-related event contracts in the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act (CLARITY Act).

According to The Block, the public chain MANTRA, focused on the tokenization of RWA assets, will be fully acquired by its strategic investor Inveniam Capital Partners, with the transaction expected to be completed in the third quarter of this year. Inveniam had previously invested $20 million in MANTRA before its restructuring in 2025.MANTRA holds a VASP license issued by the Dubai Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA), allowing it to operate a digital asset exchange and provide services such as brokerage, proprietary management, and investment. The Layer2 network NVNM Chain, jointly developed by both parties, is positioned to register identities and limit permissions for autonomous AI agents in compliant scenarios, as well as to record on-chain evidence that can be independently verified by regulators and counterparties.