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AI Economic Settlement Agreement AEON announced the latest data showing that its transaction volume in July exceeded 39 million USD, with a cumulative processing amount surpassing 514 million USD, and the user base has exceeded 2.3 million;Among them, QR payments and cryptocurrency payments settled through AEON saw month-on-month growth of 83.5% and 55%, respectively. As the AI economy accelerates, the demand for instant, borderless payment infrastructure by AI Agents continues to rise. AEON's QR code and cryptocurrency payment network will become an important infrastructure for machine-to-machine payments and AI payment scenarios.AEON is improving payment infrastructure around scenarios such as collaboration between Agents and autonomous consumption by Agents, facilitating the flow of funds between AI and offline commerce.

The largest bank by asset size in Latin America, Itaú, is collaborating with OpenAssets to participate in a tokenized fixed income and investment fund test led by the industry. Brazil has become a testing ground for placing bonds, credit, and other financial assets on the blockchain under a regulatory framework.

According to The Block, New York-listed fintech company Broadridge announced that its Distributed Ledger Repo (DLR) platform processed over $8 trillion in transactions in July, averaging about $365 billion per day, a year-on-year increase of 28%.DLR allows companies to use distributed ledger technology to settle repo transactions in existing trading and post-trading environments, enabling real-time financing and tokenized collateral liquidity. In addition, Broadridge also offers on-chain proxy voting and governance services, as well as digital asset infrastructure management.

Park Chang-min from Samsung Electronics Semiconductor Research Institute's Foundry Process Development Team stated at the "2026 Next Generation Lithography + Patterning Academic Conference" that the company plans to apply High-NA EUV technology starting from the 1-nanometer (A10) process, aiming for mass production around 2030. Samsung is currently still using the existing 0.33 NA EUV multiple patterning scheme for processes at 2 nanometers and below, with plans to achieve mass production of 1.4 nanometers by 2029, and then advance to 1 nanometer.High-NA EUV will increase the lens numerical aperture (NA) from 0.33 to 0.55, providing higher resolution, which can simplify ultra-fine processes that originally required multiple patterning into single patterning, helping to reduce manufacturing costs, improve production efficiency, and enhance design flexibility. However, this technology is highly challenging, equipment is expensive, and it requires simultaneous upgrades in supporting material technologies. Park Chang-min expects that the 1.4 nanometer and 1 nanometer processes will still primarily use 0.33 NA EUV multiple patterning, after which High-NA patterning will become the core technology of the new generation processes.

According to Sui monitoring, since the Hashi test network went live three weeks ago, it has processed over 1.1 million deposits and 165,000 withdrawals.In the past two weeks, over 50% of Bitcoin Signet transactions came from Hashi test activities.

According to Onchain Lens monitoring, BitMEX has transferred 367.65 bitcoins from its cold wallet to its hot wallet again, amounting to approximately 23.92 million USD at current prices.In the past week, the exchange has conducted similar transfers multiple times, possibly related to handling user withdrawal requests following its closure announcement last month.

Jiang Yi, Director of the Policy Research Office of the National Development and Reform Commission, stated at a press conference on July 31 that in the first half of the year, China's pace of independent innovation in artificial intelligence has accelerated. Domestic companies such as Deep Exploration and Dark Side of the Moon have successively released open-source large models with parameter scales reaching "trillion" levels, and the global download volume of domestic large models has surpassed 10 billion times. The next step will focus on strengthening research and development in cutting-edge areas such as the basic theory of large models, training and inference efficiency, multimodality, and intelligent agents, and accelerating the layout and construction of national artificial intelligence application pilot bases, while vigorously cultivating intelligent derivative enterprises.Jiang Yi pointed out that there will be a coordinated approach to high-quality development and high-level security, accelerating the legislative process of the "Artificial Intelligence Law", constructing a "development---regulation---security" closed-loop system, establishing and improving technical monitoring, risk warning, and emergency response mechanisms, and adhering to the development concept of "human-led, for human use, and benevolent to humanity," actively responding to the impact of artificial intelligence on economic operation and employment distribution.

Ten European financial institutions have jointly launched Regulated Layer One (RL1). This network has been established and is operational in Luxembourg as a European cooperative, targeting regulated financial markets and tokenized assets. The founding members of RL1 include ABN AMRO, Cecabank, Chartered Investment, Crédit Mutuel Alliance Fédérale, DekaBank, DZ BANK, LBBW, Natixis CIB, SC Ventures, and Seturion. RL1 indicates that each member has equal decision-making power in network governance and development.This private permissioned network is based on the infrastructure developed by the German fintech company Secure Worldwide Interbank Asset Transfer (SWIAT), which has transferred ownership of the network to the cooperative. SWIAT states that the platform has processed over 50 transactions amounting to more than 700 million euros during its three years of production use. The intended uses of RL1 include digital currencies, tokenized bonds, collateral, and blockchain-based settlement. RL1 will be led by former SWIAT Managing Director Henning Vollbehr, and KfW and L-Bank will continue to support the initiative. RL1 is in discussions with more institutions, including NatWest, about joining the network.

Binance UAE has adopted a policy to transfer most requests from foreign law enforcement agencies to the UAE and judicial assistance treaty process, resulting in slower access to user data.European investigators and U.S. prosecutors have stated that the relevant changes make it more difficult to track down fraudsters, combat money laundering, and quickly freeze or seize assets. Binance will still respond directly to cases involving child sexual abuse, terrorism, or imminent threats to life.Binance stated that it has not reduced cooperation with regulatory and law enforcement agencies and defined the new process as a stronger safeguard that meets regulatory standards. The company's compliance operations continue to face ongoing scrutiny.

Visa and the on-chain data analysis platform Artemis previously jointly released the report "Agentic Payments from the Ground Up," which quantifies the trends of AI agent payments based on real-time on-chain data. The report points out that intelligent commerce should be divided into macro transactions (AI agents completing bookings, subscriptions, etc., adapting to existing card systems) and micro payments (high-frequency small payments between machines, with individual transactions far below $1, which traditional payment structures struggle to support).The report focuses on two "machine-native payment" protocols: x402 (developed by Coinbase, Cloudflare, etc., launching in May 2025) with an adjusted transaction volume of approximately $15 million and 109.6 million transactions as of April 21, 2026, with 422,000 buyers and about 5,300 sellers, primarily concentrated on Base, Solana, and Polygon, settled in USDC; MPP (developed by Stripe and Tempo, with Visa's participation, launching in mid-March 2026) had a transaction volume of approximately $25,000 and 115,000 transactions within 33 days of launch, supporting both on-chain crypto payments and fiat settlements.The report believes that the leap in AI capabilities (with the release of Claude 4.5 and GPT Codex 5.2 in mid-2025) has created a demand for programmatic payments, combined with the decreasing costs of blockchain settlements, making micro payments in the range of 1 cent to 1 dollar economically viable for the first time. Currently, the boundaries between crypto-native protocols and card payment camps are gradually blurring, but agent payments still face trust challenges such as erroneous purchases, adversarial attacks, and liability attribution.

According to Onchain Lens monitoring, in the past 24 hours, BitMart has not processed any single withdrawal of altcoins, stablecoins, or Bitcoin exceeding $25,000, and on-chain data also does not show that retail investors, market makers, or project teams have made large withdrawals from BitMart.

According to Cointelegraph, Morgan Stanley's Ethereum Trust has received notification from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regarding the effectiveness of its registration, marking another step forward in the registration process.

According to a report by Nikkei Asia citing multiple informed sources, TSMC (TSM.N) plans to raise the foundry prices for advanced and mature process chips by up to 10% in 2027, in response to rising costs of materials, manufacturing equipment, and the construction of new overseas plants. TSMC has begun discussions with customers regarding the price increase, which involves 7-nanometer and more advanced processes. This segment contributed approximately 77% of TSMC's revenue in the quarter from April to June this year.Informed sources indicated that the basic price increase will range from 5% to 10%, depending on the customer and product. For new orders of high-performance computing (HPC) chips that exceed the customer's original forecast, TSMC plans to impose an additional premium of 10% to 15% on top of the basic price increase. As a result, the overall price increase for some advanced process chip orders may exceed 10%. In terms of mature processes (including 12-nanometer, 16-nanometer, 28-nanometer processes, and other traditional technologies), TSMC plans to raise prices by up to 10%, but some products will see increases below this level. The mature process business accounted for about 23% of the company's revenue in the last quarter. Informed sources stated that relevant negotiations began around June and were finalized in July, with the new prices set to take effect in early 2027.

Global chip foundry giant TSMC announced its financial report for the second quarter of 2026. Benefiting from the strong demand for advanced process chips driven by global AI infrastructure development, TSMC's performance this quarter significantly exceeded market expectations. During the period, it achieved revenue of NT$1.27 trillion (approximately US$40.2 billion), a year-on-year increase of 36%; net profit reached NT$706.6 billion (approximately US$22 billion), a year-on-year surge of 77.4%, far exceeding the market's previous estimate of NT$623.7 billion. In addition, the company's gross margin for the quarter reached 67.7%, and the operating margin was 60.3%, both better than expected.In terms of process structure, advanced processes (7 nanometers and below) contributed a total of 77% to the total wafer revenue this quarter. Among them, the 3-nanometer and 5-nanometer processes accounted for 30% and 33%, respectively, while the 7-nanometer process accounted for 11%. Notably, TSMC's newly shipped 2-nanometer advanced process recorded revenue for the first time, accounting for 3%.Looking ahead, TSMC confirmed that its capital expenditure for 2026 will approach a record US$56 billion and plans to invest approximately US$26.5 billion in its advanced manufacturing park in Arizona, USA. TSMC CEO C.C. Wei stated that the current pace of capacity expansion still lags behind demand, and the situation of supply not meeting demand is expected to continue for several years. Meanwhile, despite TSMC's strong performance, the market remains somewhat cautious and concerned about whether the massive AI investments by tech giants can translate into actual returns and the medium- to long-term competitive landscape.

Crypto journalist Eleanor Terrett posted on the X platform that Patrick Witt, the Executive Director of the White House Cryptocurrency Council, stated that this week will be a "critical week" in the advancement of the U.S. CLARITY Act. As the crypto industry prepares to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the GENIUS Act officially becoming law, the construction of the U.S. digital asset regulatory framework has once again become a focal point for the market.Patrick Witt mentioned that the current U.S. crypto policy is at an important stage, and the advancement of the CLARITY Act will have significant implications for the market structure of digital assets, the division of regulatory responsibilities, and the future development direction of the industry.Previously, the CLARITY Act was regarded as one of the important legislations for establishing comprehensive regulatory rules for the U.S. crypto market, aiming to clarify the classification of digital assets, the authority of regulatory agencies, and the compliance requirements for market participants.Market participants believe that if the bill makes substantial progress, it could further enhance regulatory certainty for the U.S. crypto industry and impact the future strategies of exchanges, stablecoin issuers, and blockchain companies.

According to The Information, the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) plans to showcase a real-time stock trading settlement process based on blockchain technology this Wednesday, focusing on verifying the feasibility of this technology in the clearing, settlement, and recording stages to enhance the operational efficiency of capital market infrastructure.

According to Jinshi reports, SK Hynix officially launched its marketing process for its U.S. stock listing this Monday, aiming to leverage investors' continued enthusiasm for the memory chip sector to advance its trading on U.S. exchanges.According to the filing documents, SK Hynix plans to issue approximately 17.79 million shares of common stock corresponding to American Depositary Receipts. Based on last Friday's closing price in the Korean market, the scale of this issuance is approximately $28 billion. As a leading supplier of HBM chips, SK Hynix's listing in the U.S. opens up efficient financing channels for the company.According to previously disclosed regulatory documents, SK Hynix expects its American Depositary Receipts to officially begin trading on July 10 (this Friday). Based on the current proposed issuance scale, this ADR sale will rank among the top three largest IPOs in history (the specific amount depends on the exchange rate), potentially rivaling the $29.4 billion IPO scale set by Saudi Aramco in 2019.

According to The Defiant, the defunct DeFi yield protocol Stream Finance has begun collecting potential creditor information through an online form in preparation for "potential global solutions." Stream first revealed its intention to liquidate in May. The debt structure is complex: direct holders of xUSD, xBTC, and xETH are one class of creditors, while institutional lenders (curators on Euler, Morpho, Silo, Gearbox) accepting Stream tokens as collateral are another.Research institution Yields and More estimates the direct debt exposure to be approximately $285 million, with the largest curator TelosC accounting for about $124 million and Elixir for about $68 million (which represents 65% of its deUSD stablecoin reserves). Stream has collected claims information but has not committed to a specific compensation plan, and the priority of creditors has yet to be determined. Stream is also involved in legal disputes with former operator Caleb McMeans.Last November, Stream disclosed that external fund managers had lost approximately $93 million in assets, leading to the de-pegging of xUSD and freezing about $160 million in deposits. xUSD is currently quoted at approximately $0.08, down about 92% from its pegged price.