generation

Binance Research data shows that Generation Z investors are gradually shifting towards long-term asset allocation tools such as ETFs. Compared to Millennials, Generation X, and Baby Boomers, their trading frequency is lower, and their preference for leverage is also weaker.Data indicates that at the beginning of August, ETFs accounted for 25% of the stock trading volume among Generation Z users. In July, the proportion of net inflows into stocks from ETFs for Generation Z reached 21.9%, up from 18.5% in June; during the same period, the proportion of individual stock investments decreased from 77% to 74.2%.Binance Research analyzed trading behaviors in direct stocks, tokenized stocks, and traditional financial perpetual contracts. The data shows that Generation Z's trading activity in all three asset classes is lower than that of other working-age groups.Among them, Generation Z's traditional financial perpetual contract accounts traded an average of 13 times per month, lower than the 17 times of Millennials and 16.5 times of Generation X. In direct stock accounts, 22% of Generation Z users have never sold stocks, higher than the 19% of Generation X and 9% of Baby Boomers.Among Generation Z accounts that bought but did not sell, the assets with the highest cumulative purchase amounts include Broadcom, Tesla, and Charles Schwab U.S. High Dividend Stock ETF.In terms of leveraged products, Generation Z shows a lower risk appetite. Data indicates that 88.2% of Generation Z's traditional financial perpetual contract accounts have never traded leveraged or inverse ETFs, higher than the 84.5% of Millennials and 85.9% of Generation X.Additionally, the tokenized stock market continues to expand. Data shows that Binance's bStocks recently briefly surpassed Kraken's xStocks, becoming the second-largest tokenized stock issuance platform globally. As of the latest data, Ondo Finance ranks first with approximately $972 million in tokenized stock value, while xStocks and bStocks are approximately $611 million and $580 million, respectively.

According to Fortune, Bank of America announced a $250 billion infrastructure investment plan on Wednesday, committing to invest in key infrastructure areas in the United States over the next year. The investment scope covers multiple fields including data centers and computing power, renewable energy generation, energy storage, natural gas, transmission networks, and critical minerals and mining, with the goal of supporting energy security, job growth, and economic competitiveness.

Bitcoin News posted on the X platform that Bitcoin developers have launched a new visualization tool to explain how entropy works and how to generate randomness for Bitcoin private keys.The tool covers true random number generators (TRNG), pseudo-random number generators (PRNG), rolling dice, and flipping coins.

Grayscale Research Director Zach Pandl stated that the global alternative asset market has grown nearly 7 times since the 2008 financial crisis, with the share of private equity, private credit, hedge funds, physical assets, and cryptocurrency in global portfolios continuing to rise. According to the data he cited, within alternative assets, private equity accounts for about 29%, hedge funds about 23%, and cryptocurrency about 13%.Zach Pandl mentioned that differences in intergenerational allocation preferences may further strengthen this trend. According to a Bank of America survey of high-net-worth individuals, investors aged 21 to 43 allocate about 53% of their assets outside of traditional stocks and bonds, while the proportion for those aged 44 and above is 26%. With over $100 trillion in wealth expected to transfer to younger generations in the coming years, their stronger preference for alternative assets may provide ongoing tailwinds for cryptocurrency.He added that the lowering of entry barriers to alternative assets is one of the reasons for this shift, with cryptocurrency developing along similar paths; regulated products like Bitcoin ETPs and institutional-grade market infrastructure provide more convenient access to exposure.

Bitcoin mining company MARA has completed two loans, obtaining $600 million in new debt after pledging 18,750 bitcoins to expand its power generation and AI infrastructure business. The collateral was valued at approximately $1.2 billion at the time of the transaction. The total principal of the two loans is $750 million, with Coinbase Credit providing $450 million, which includes refinancing of the existing $150 million credit line and an additional $300 million; Two Prime Lending provides another $300 million, and both loans have been fully drawn.The interest rate on the Coinbase loan is the midpoint of the Federal Reserve's target rate range plus 3.875 percentage points, maturing on August 4, 2028; the Two Prime loan has a fixed interest rate of 7.65%, maturing on August 3, 2028. If the principal remains unchanged, the annual interest expense for both loans is approximately $56.7 million. MARA stated that the loan funds will be used for general corporate purposes, including paying part of the cash consideration for the acquisition of Long Ridge Energy & Power LLC. The enterprise value of the transaction is approximately $1.5 billion, and Long Ridge owns a 505-megawatt gas power plant and over 1,600 acres of industrial land, which MARA plans to use for power generation, bitcoin mining, and potential AI and high-performance computing parks.

The Volcano Engine officially launched the Seedance 2.5 API. Compared to Seedance 2, the new version has significantly improved in areas such as instruction adherence, long narratives, character consistency, realism, lighting and shadow quality, and sound effects. It natively supports 30-second video output, a maximum of 50 multimodal material references, and is compatible with more than a dozen languages.

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.

According to TechRepublic, Elon Musk recently acquired the mobile power generation company APR Energy, with the deal valued at least around $1 billion. According to regulatory documents, Duos Technologies sold its 5% non-voting shares in New APR Energy, gaining a net profit of $50.4 million, which implies the company's overall valuation exceeds $1 billion.APR Energy is headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida, USA, and specializes in rapidly deployable gas and diesel generator sets, providing temporary or supplemental power for scenarios such as data centers. Its total power generation capacity exceeds 1 GW and can complete some project deployments within 15 to 30 days. Analysts suggest that this move may provide options for xAI to expand its computing power infrastructure and reduce reliance on local power grids, but it will also bring trade-offs in emissions, compliance, and costs.

According to Xinhua News Agency, as the 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference and the High-Level Meeting on Global Governance of Artificial Intelligence are about to be held, the new generation model Kimi K3 was released on the 16th, with a parameter scale of 28 trillion. This is currently the largest open-source model in the world by parameters, marking a new step in the development of artificial intelligence models in our country.Beijing Moon's Dark Side Technology Co., Ltd., which released the model, introduced that Kimi K3 natively supports visual understanding, has a context window of 1 million tokens, and is optimized for complex task scenarios such as software engineering, knowledge work, deep research, and multimodal understanding, further enhancing the processing capability of large models for complex tasks. It is understood that in evaluations, Kimi K3's comprehensive intelligence level is close to that of the world's leading closed-source models. A relevant person in charge of Moon's Dark Side stated that in the process of training the new generation foundational model Kimi K3, they used a self-developed underlying model architecture and accumulated a complete set of scientific model training methods.

Global stablecoin payment infrastructure service provider WasabiCard today announced its participation as an official sponsor at WebX 2026, the top Web3 event in Asia, to be held on July 13-14 at the Prince Park Tower Hotel in Tokyo. As an industry flagship summit hosted by Japan's largest crypto media CoinPost, this year's WebX is expected to attract over 15,000 attendees to discuss the deep integration of Web3 and traditional finance.With the explosive growth of stablecoin applications in global commerce, WasabiCard is committed to connecting stablecoin liquidity with the traditional financial system, providing efficient and compliant cross-border payment channels for global enterprises. At booth S26, WasabiCard will focus on showcasing its core B2B solutions for enterprise-level scenarios, covering global corporate card issuance, real-time settlement of stablecoins and fiat currencies, as well as cross-border issuance capabilities that span over 200 countries and regions and support more than 30 fiat currencies.During the exhibition, WasabiCard's core executive team will be stationed at the booth to discuss customized white-label card issuance and global expansion plans with partners worldwide.

Hyperliquid founder Jeff posted on platform X that VALR, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in Africa, will directly utilize Hyperliquid's on-chain liquidity to support its core perpetual contract products. This is a significant milestone that will redefine the way the next generation of financial applications are built.The breakthrough in cloud computing lies in the ability for any startup to quickly test its ideas and rest assured that the infrastructure will scale as the business grows. As the most liquid global venue for assets like BTC, Hyperliquid will play the same role in the global economy. By leveraging the deepest on-chain liquidity, builders can shift their focus back to their products and users. Heartfelt congratulations to the VALR team. We are honored that they chose to build on Hyperliquid. Looking forward to expanding together.

According to official news, the perpetual contract trading platform Drift announced today that it has officially changed its name to Velocity, stating that this brand upgrade aims to reflect the new generation trading platform architecture it is building.The team pointed out that in the perpetual contract market, execution speed and directional judgment are crucial. The name "Velocity" aims to embody trading speed and market momentum, while marking the platform's entry into a reboot phase.The official statement indicated that this renaming also represents a clear boundary in the product roadmap: the new platform will adopt a clearer system architecture, stronger security infrastructure, and a more defined product positioning. Currently, Velocity is advancing its reconstruction work and plans to open a private testing version to some partners and traders in the coming days to validate the stability and performance of the new generation Solana-based perpetual contract trading system.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has publicly solicited opinions on exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that invest in new asset classes or adopt new investment strategies, to assess whether existing regulatory rules are still applicable and whether adjustments to the registration process for new products are necessary. The public comment period will be open for 60 days after publication in the Federal Register.The SEC pointed out that in recent years, the global ETF assets under management have surged from $4 trillion in 2019 to over $12 trillion by the end of 2025. Meanwhile, ETF issuers in the crypto space are moving beyond simple spot tracking to launch increasingly complex strategy products, including those involving crypto asset staking (such as Grayscale's recently launched Hyperliquid Staking ETP), stablecoin reserves, Bitcoin yield products that combine covered call options (such as proposals from BlackRock and Goldman Sachs), and hybrid funds that combine traditional stock dividend reinvestment with Bitcoin exposure. The SEC aims to explore how to effectively regulate such emerging and highly specialized ETF structures through this consultation.

According to official news, OpenAI has officially launched the preview version of the next-generation GPT-5.6 series models, including the flagship model Sol, the balanced model Terra, and the fast low-cost model Luna. GPT-5.6 introduces a brand new maximum reasoning effort and features a super strong mode that accelerates complex tasks through sub-agents.The flagship model Sol introduces the Ultra mode, which combines maximum reasoning intensity with sub-agent collaboration. In the Terminal-Bench 2.1 command line workflow test, Sol achieved a score of 88.8%, which increased to 91.9% in Ultra mode, surpassing GPT-5.5's 83.4% and Claude Fable 5's 88.0%. The mid-range model Terra performs close to GPT-5.5 while being priced at half, and the lightest model Luna is designed specifically for everyday automation tasks. Sol is priced at $5 per million input tokens and $30 for output, and it supports reducing secondary call costs by utilizing prompt caching.In terms of security, the security assessment confirmed that Sol did not exceed the critical thresholds of the Preparedness Framework cybersecurity. OpenAI has invested over 700,000 A100 equivalent GPU hours in automated red team exercises, equipping the entire series of models with a defense stack that includes rejection mechanisms, real-time abuse classifiers, and account-level audits. Although the current limited release follows the U.S. government's security framework, OpenAI emphasizes that it does not want a government-led access mechanism to become the long-term default model, as it would limit defenders' access to cutting-edge tools.