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According to CoinDesk, stablecoin issuer Circle and Japanese financial giant Nomura Holdings have announced a partnership, with plans to launch corporate digital asset payment settlement services in Japan as early as 2027.Under the cooperation agreement, Japanese companies can use the platform to exchange yen for USDC for scenarios such as cross-border supplier payments, fund transfers between overseas affiliates, and foreign exchange settlements. The average daily trading volume in Japan's foreign exchange market reaches up to $440 billion, while traditional bank wire transfers typically take 2 to 3 business days to settle, and blockchain solutions are expected to significantly shorten this time.Previously, the Financial Services Agency of Japan approved the use of USDC among Japanese companies under updated payment regulations, making it the first globally recognized dollar stablecoin authorized to conduct corporate business locally. Circle will operate the related network through its local branch Circle Japan, which has previously collaborated with SBI Holdings to carry out USDC distribution business.

According to The Block, a survey by CoinShares of 261 wealth management professionals in Europe shows that 52% of UK wealth advisors indicate that most of their clients' crypto asset exposure is outside their management scope (with a management gap exceeding 50%), while the overall percentage in Europe is one-quarter.The report points out that this "management blind spot" is primarily driven by company policies rather than a lack of advisor knowledge or client demand. In companies with explicit restrictions or a lack of internal guidance, the proportion of advisors actively recommending crypto assets is only 1%, while the management gap reaches 34%; in contrast, in companies with clear support, the recommendation rate is 48%, and the management gap is only 4%.The survey also found that the changes advisors most want to see are regulatory recognition of digital assets as a mainstream asset class (45%) and access to exchange-traded products (ETPs) (43%), rather than purely educational training.Currently, the UK's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has proposed allowing authorized funds to hold up to 10% in crypto ETPs, and the European regulatory environment is gradually shifting towards support, which may help narrow this management gap.

According to PR Newswire, the AI Agent infrastructure project Orthogonal announced the completion of a $4.3 million seed round financing, led by Pantera Capital, with participation from Y Combinator, Pioneer Fund, Decasonic, Blast, Outbound, Surreal, and others.Orthogonal positions itself as the underlying infrastructure for internet discovery, orchestration, and payment aimed at AI agents, providing a full suite of capabilities for service retrieval, cross-tool task automation, and on-chain instant payments.It is reported that the funds raised in this round will be used for core platform iterative development, expanding the engineering and marketing teams, continuously increasing the scale of platform developers, and improving the interconnectivity ecosystem for AI agents.

According to PR Newswire, AI infrastructure company Neurometric AI announced the completion of a $4 million financing round, with participation from Betaworks, ex-Ante, Everywhere.vc, and others.The company disclosed that it has officially launched an automated Token engineering platform to optimize the cost and performance management of AI Agent workloads, and the new funds will be used to expand the engineering and AI research teams.

The Nasdaq-listed Ethereum treasury company Sharplink announced that it has signed a securities purchase agreement to sell 10,013,400 shares of common stock and corresponding warrants for 10,013,400 shares of common stock, raising approximately $75 million in total. The funds will be used for working capital, to continue accumulating ETH assets, and to repurchase company shares under the stock repurchase plan.Sharplink also disclosed that as of June 16, the company held a total of 875,776 ETH.

According to Jinshi reports, the USD/JPY briefly touched 161.941, then quickly fell back 20 points, currently reported at 161.84.

According to Jinshi reports, SpaceX's pre-market gains have expanded, with the latest increase of 2.4%.

According to The Block, Kraken has partnered with the on-chain institutional lending platform Maple to launch an on-chain storage facility for digital asset collateralized loans. This facility will provide USDC liquidity to Kraken's over-the-counter lending clients, allowing borrowers to use crypto assets such as BTC and ETH as collateral.

Amazon announced plans to invest an additional $13 billion to expand its AI and cloud computing infrastructure in India. Combined with its previously announced $35 billion investment plan in 2025, Amazon's total investment in India will reach $48 billion from 2026 to 2030.It is reported that the new funding will focus on expanding the capacity of AWS data centers located in Mumbai and Hyderabad, providing customized AI chips, AI hosting services, and reliable cloud technology support for local startups, enterprises, and government agencies. In addition, Amazon plans to add more than 20 operational centers and over 100 distribution stations across India this year to deepen its e-commerce and logistics business layout. It is expected that by 2030, Amazon's cumulative total investment in India will exceed $88 billion.

According to Nikkei News, SBI Group announced the acquisition of the Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Bitbank for 46.7 billion yen (approximately 289 million USD). Through this acquisition, SBI's cryptocurrency custody balance is expected to exceed 1 trillion yen (about 6.2 billion USD), making it the largest cryptocurrency business in Japan. A subsidiary of SBI Holdings will acquire shares of Bitbank from individual shareholders, including the founders, in August, and then Bitbank will acquire shares held by existing shareholders Mixi and Ceres by the end of October. Combining the account data from SBI VC Trade (as of April), the total number of accounts after the merger is approximately 2.92 million, with total managed assets of about 1.1 trillion yen. SBI Holdings disclosed in May that it is negotiating capital business cooperation for the subsidiary status of Bitbank.

The Hurun Research Institute today released the "2026 Global Unicorn List." Driven by the AI wave, the total value of global unicorns surged by 43% to $8 trillion. Among them, the AI sector accounts for 36% of the total value, with Anthropic ($965 billion), OpenAI ($852 billion), and ByteDance ($480 billion) taking the top three spots on the global list; Chinese company DeepSeek entered the top 15 with a valuation of $50 billion, becoming the highest-ranked new unicorn.In the cryptocurrency and blockchain sector, there are currently 67 existing unicorn companies worldwide. Among them, the cryptocurrency exchange platform Binance saw its valuation increase by $35 billion this year, reaching a total valuation of $70 billion, marking its first entry into the global top ten (ranked 8th). Additionally, the report noted that cryptocurrency companies such as Circle, BitGo, Gemini, and HashKey have exited the unicorn sequence through successful IPOs in the past year.

The Chief Information Security Officer of Slow Fog, 23pds, stated that researchers have exposed a high-risk vulnerability in CI/CD called Cordyceps, affecting the open-source repositories of major companies such as Microsoft, Google, Apache, and Cloudflare. Attackers do not need corporate accounts or any system permissions; they can simply register a free GitHub account, submit a malicious PR, and leave a comment to forge approvals, steal server keys, and push malicious code, completely taking control of the corporate code repository.

Previously, a certain whale opened a long position of 27.9 million XRP with 20x leverage and held a long position of 809.9 BTC with 20x leverage, with a total position value of about 81 million dollars. Currently, its BTC long position has an unrealized loss of about 2.8 million dollars, with a liquidation price of 56,960 dollars; its XRP long position has an unrealized loss of 1.17 million dollars, with a liquidation price of 0.948 dollars.

AI company Mirendil announced the completion of a $200 million seed round financing, led by a16z and Kleiner Perkins, with participation from institutions like NVIDIA.The founding team consists of 20 researchers and engineers from leading institutions such as Anthropic, xAI, Google DeepMind, and OpenAI. a16z stated that Mirendil is building a system that can assist anyone in AI research and development, training models with expertise in cutting-edge AI research fields, and creating products around it to form a self-sustaining system that can autonomously address engineering problems and continuously advance without human intervention.

Baton Corporation, the UK-based development company behind Pump.fun, is hiring a Chief Legal Officer (CLO) with a base salary range of $1 million to $5 million, co-founder Alon Cohen announced on X on Wednesday. This salary level is among the top in the crypto industry, with the $5 million cap comparable to the compensation of executives at large American investment banks.According to the job listing, the CLO will be responsible for U.S. digital asset regulatory affairs (covering SEC, CFTC, FinCEN, and OFAC), product and commercial legal matters, corporate governance across Baton’s UK parent company and overseas subsidiaries, as well as cross-border compliance covering the UK FCA, EU MiCA, and the Asia-Pacific region, while overseeing AML/KYC projects and litigation management.The job listing reveals that Pump.fun has a daily trading volume exceeding $300 million and generated over $500 million in profit last year with a team of fewer than 100 people. This recruitment aims to add a legal infrastructure layer to the previously streamlined team operations of the platform.

According to official news, Ripple and SBI Holdings announced that the RLUSD stablecoin has officially launched in Japan and received approval from the Financial Services Agency of Japan, opening up to institutional and retail users through the VCTRADE platform of SBI VC Trade. RLUSD is classified as a new type of electronic payment tool under Japan's Payment Services Act, designed to meet the safety and regulatory standards for foreign-issued stablecoins. Jack McDonald, Senior Vice President of Ripple's stablecoin division, stated that this launch is an important step in expanding access to regulated US dollar stablecoins for Japanese financial institutions and businesses, with RLUSD serving as a bridge for payments, tokenization, and collateral management.

On Wednesday, the U.S. House Financial Services Committee held a hearing to discuss the changing roles of banks and fintech companies, with one focus being the "streamlined master account" proposal that the Federal Reserve is considering, which would allow certain crypto banks and fintech companies limited direct access to the Federal Reserve's payment system. A Federal Reserve master account allows financial institutions to directly use the Federal Reserve payment network and gain the most direct access to the U.S. dollar monetary system. Institutions without this account typically need to rely on partner banks that have master accounts to provide services.The so-called "streamlined account" is a limited-function version intended to provide limited access for new financial institutions. Republican Congressman Dan Meuser stated at the hearing that access to the Federal Reserve payment system is no small matter, and the core issue is which institutions should be allowed to directly use these critical payment channels. Traditional institutions like community banks are concerned that crypto and fintech companies are not subject to equally stringent regulation, and direct access could pose risks to security and stability. The crypto industry generally supports the proposal, arguing that direct access to the Federal Reserve payment system should have been opened long ago, as it would help reduce reliance on intermediary banks and promote innovation.In May of this year, Trump also signed an executive order requiring the Federal Reserve to assess policies for opening central bank payment channels to fintech companies, including crypto companies. Previously, the Kansas City Federal Reserve had approved Kraken's parent company Payward for a "limited purpose account" in March, sparking discussions in the market about the extent to which crypto and fintech companies should have direct access to Federal Reserve services. A representative from Anchorage Digital stated at the hearing that if the U.S. wants to continue as a global financial center, it needs to allow for innovative federal and state regulatory frameworks.

On-chain yield infrastructure startup Ground announced the completion of a $3.6 million Pre-seed financing round, led by Bain Capital Crypto and ParaFi, with participation from Nascent, Robot Ventures, Chapter One, Consonant Ventures, and others.It is reported that Ground primarily provides APIs for fintech companies and asset management institutions, enabling them to integrate on-chain yield products into existing applications without the need to build blockchain integration themselves. Its target customers include fintech platforms, digital banks, wealth management institutions, exchanges, and asset management companies for building yield, savings, and investment products.

Blockchain data infrastructure startup Cambrian has completed a $6 million seed round financing, led by Franklin Templeton and Polychain Capital, with participation from Flow Traders, Selini Capital, Paper Ventures, Nomad Capital, and others.Cambrian also previously secured $5.9 million in pre-seed financing led by a16z Crypto Startup Accelerator, bringing the total funding to $11.9 million. It is reported that Cambrian was established in 2024 and currently provides APIs for institutions and AI Agents, covering real-time and historical on-chain data such as yield, risk, lending rates, trading activity, liquidity positions, and market sentiment, helping users allocate capital on-chain.The company plans to expand its existing APIs into a verifiable blockchain data oracle network, serving institutional financial clients, AI Agent builders, and protocols that need reliable data to control the flow of funds. Unlike traditional oracles that mainly provide price data, Cambrian aims to aggregate lending protocol data, DEX liquidity, social sentiment, developer activity, and historical market data.According to Cambrian, its platform has processed millions of API calls, currently indexing approximately $4.5 billion TVL across four major lending protocols, tracking 1,789 vaults under 895 curators, and monitoring over 320,000 DEX liquidity pools on Base and Solana. The company also plans to expand trading data support, adding Hyperliquid and richer perpetual contract data.