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Digital asset company Tether announced that it has completed a full independent audit conducted by KPMG U.S. on the financial statements of Tether International, S.A. de C.V. as of December 31, 2025. KPMG U.S. issued an unqualified audit opinion.The audit covered transactions, systems, ownership records, valuations, counterparties, and financial statement evidence, and reviewed the balance sheet, income statement, statement of changes in equity, and cash flow statement. KPMG U.S. also physically counted and inspected each gold bar held by Tether. Tether's Chief Financial Officer Simon McWilliams stated that the audited financial statements for 2025 show that its reserve assets exceed liabilities by $6.814 billion. Tether stated that this audit is an important step in fulfilling its long-term commitment to financial transparency.

Tom Lee, Chairman of Bitmine and Co-founder of Fundstrat, stated that the blockchain project Robinhood Chain launched by Robinhood has become the "biggest success story" in the crypto industry for 2026, being a groundbreaking project in terms of cumulative trading volume, total value locked (TVL), and potential market size.Lee pointed out that the biggest advantage of Robinhood Chain lies in its massive user base. Robinhood (HOOD) is opening this service to its approximately 27 million users, which itself constitutes a huge potential market. Ethereum (ETH) has also been continuously developing in recent years, although its growth has been relatively low-key, gradually expanding its application scope mainly through stablecoin settlements and crypto payments and asset purchases on platforms like Shopify.He believes that directly connecting 27 million Robinhood users to the Ethereum economic system will have a significant impact on the crypto industry, likely further promoting the expansion of blockchain applications from native crypto users to mainstream financial users. The success of Robinhood Chain is not only reflected in its technological aspects but, more importantly, in its ability to connect traditional financial users, trading platforms, and the Ethereum ecosystem, potentially becoming an important case for the mainstream adoption of crypto assets.

According to La Tribuna, the body of a Chinese man was found outside the Jade Park high-rise apartment in the Trinidad district of Asunción, Paraguay. Preliminary identification confirmed the identity as Harry Chun Tak Yeh, the founder and managing partner of Quantum Fintech Group. The police stated that he is suspected to have fallen from the 30th floor of the building, and his body was found completely naked and covered with a black plastic bag. Investigators found the apartment door on the 30th floor ajar, with the interior in disarray, and confirmed that he also owned another apartment on the 27th floor of the same building. Criminal technicians have collected evidence outside the building and from both apartments, and relevant physical evidence has been handed over to the prosecution. The prosecution is currently investigating multiple possibilities, including accident, suspected suicide, and homicide, while the judicial department will determine the specific cause of death and the circumstances through an autopsy.It is reported that Chinese-American cryptocurrency investor Harry Yeh entered the Bitcoin market in 2013 when the BTC trading price was $60. He launched his first fund with $250,000, and his investment network claims to manage over $2.4 billion in assets, closely linked with Fantom, Tomb Finance, Lif3, ZooCoin, L3 USD, and L3 Reserve.

According to BeInCrypto, since November 2025, Bitcoin's 30-day average hash rate has decreased by 19%, dropping from 1,108 EH/s to 898 EH/s. Glassnode data shows that this nine-month decline is the longest in the network's history.This decline coincides with the largest capital migration in mining companies' history, with mining firms holding over $70 billion in AI contracts, and some of the power capacity originally used for Bitcoin mining has shifted to AI hosting, which may be difficult to return.

According to a report by Jinshi, a report from Goldman Sachs shows that hedge funds focused on the Asian market are facing the largest single-month drawdown on record, due to a widespread sell-off of AI concept stocks, which has erased most of the gains previously concentrated in this sector. As of July 28, these funds have averaged a decline of 18.6% this month. Goldman Sachs pointed out that since the year-to-date return peaked at 40% on July 22, these funds have given back 21 percentage points of their year-to-date gains.

According to Business Insider, Alexandr Wang, founder of Scale AI and current head of Meta's Superintelligence Lab, stated at a Y Combinator event that AI has significantly narrowed the power gap between startups and giants. He recalled that when he founded Scale AI in 2016, "startups faced giants like David against Goliath, needing to find market entry points more intelligently"; however, with the development of AI agent technology, "it now feels more like Goliath against Goliath," and as long as startups apply AI agents in "the most ambitious way," it is not difficult to defeat large companies that already have an advantage.Scale AI, founded by Wang, is one of the earliest data annotation companies, employing thousands of contractors worldwide to train models for large AI labs. Last June, Meta reached a $14.3 billion deal with Scale AI, and Wang subsequently joined Meta. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman also stated at the same event that "there has never been a better time to start a business."

On July 18, 2026, at 21:44:51 UTC, Cardano activated the Van Rossem hard fork, upgrading the network to protocol version 11, with no reported downtime. This upgrade is part of the changes within the Conway ledger era, aimed at reducing the operating costs of Plutus smart contracts, enhancing ledger security, and introducing new cryptographic tools.Van Rossem includes 5 Cardano Improvement Proposals, involving BLS12-381 multi-scalar multiplication, on-chain array types, optimization of multi-asset value processing, acceleration of list operations, and built-in modular exponentiation. Staking pools are now prohibited from reusing the same verifiable random function key across the entire network; each pool must hold a unique key bound to its identity.This upgrade was completed through the Cardano on-chain governance process, with the proposal to activation advanced by on-chain voting. Delegated representatives passed the proposal with a support rate of 77.63%, while the support rate among staking pool operators was 52.7%, and the constitutional committee's voting result was 6-0-0-1. Wallets holding between 100,000 and 100 million ADA saw their total balance rise to the highest level since 2023, currently controlling over a quarter of the circulating supply of ADA. Cardano will subsequently advance Ouroboros Leios and plans to achieve a target of over 1,000 transactions per second during the testing period in 2026.

The United States, the European Union, and the United Kingdom jointly announced sanctions against a group involving state-level hacker organizations, cybercrime gangs, and their infrastructure providers. The targets are accused of causing billions of dollars in losses to global businesses, critical infrastructure, and government agencies. Among the most notable is the EU's sanction against the Russian cybercriminal Vitaly Nikolayevich Kovalev (alias "Stern").The EU has identified Stern as one of the core managers of the notorious Trickbot Group ransomware organization, which includes several high-risk ransomware variants such as Conti ransomware and Ryuk. On-chain analysis shows that wallet addresses associated with Stern have received over $300 million in ransom payments, potentially making him the "largest confirmed ransomware operator" to date. According to analysis, the $300 million only represents the profits obtained by Stern personally, and the overall illegal income of the Trickbot group may be much higher.On-chain fund flows indicate that Stern has had transactional connections with multiple ransomware ecosystems, including Ryuk, Conti, Diavol, Karakurt, Royal, and Quantum. Investigations show that Stern plays a role similar to "CEO" within the Trickbot organization, responsible for budget management, personnel recruitment, infrastructure procurement, and attack planning.

According to SoSoValue data, last week's trading days (Eastern Time from June 22 to June 26) saw a net outflow of $1.79 billion from Bitcoin spot ETFs.The Bitcoin spot ETF with the highest net outflow last week was the Blackrock ETF IBIT, with a weekly net outflow of $1.303 billion, and the historical total net inflow for IBIT currently stands at $60.77 billion. Following that was the Fidelity ETF FBTC, with a weekly net outflow of $315 million, and the historical total net inflow for FBTC currently stands at $10.14 billion. The Bitcoin spot ETF with the highest net inflow last week was the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust BTC, with a weekly net inflow of $71.71 million, and the historical total net inflow for BTC currently stands at $2.38 billion.As of the time of writing, the total net asset value of Bitcoin spot ETFs is $72.82 billion, with an ETF net asset ratio (market value compared to total Bitcoin market value) of 6.08%, and the historical cumulative net inflow has reached $51.61 billion.

As of the week ending June 26, the net outflow of the U.S. spot Bitcoin ETF was $1.79 billion, setting the second-largest single-week net outflow record in history, with the number of consecutive weeks of net outflows extending to seven weeks.

According to The Block, Story, which focuses on on-chain intellectual property infrastructure, has been renamed DATA Foundation, shifting its business focus to AI training data and launching the on-chain data registration and auditing platform Trace. The native IP token of Story will be migrated to the new DATA token at a 1:1 ratio, and holders do not need to take any action; specific timing and guidance will be announced later.DATA also announced a deep integration with the AI training data marketplace Kled, bringing over 1.5 billion pieces of user-contributed data into the DATA network. Through Trace, each data contribution will generate an on-chain receipt, recording the data source, authorization method, contributor consent, and payment information, supporting settlement to contributors in stablecoins or fiat currency.

According to data from The Kobeissi Letter, the net outflow of the U.S. Bitcoin spot ETF over the past 30 days has reached $6.4 billion, marking the largest single-month outflow in history. Last week alone saw a net outflow of $233 million.Overall, cryptocurrency funds also recorded a net outflow of $116 million last week, marking the fifth consecutive week of capital outflow. This has reduced the cumulative net inflow of crypto funds over the past 12 months to $5 billion, the lowest level since August 2025, and a significant decline from the peak of $10 billion in October 2025.In terms of the proportion of assets under management (AUM), the cumulative inflow over the past 12 months has dropped to about 7%, the lowest since July 2025, indicating that negative market sentiment continues to dominate capital flows.