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According to South Korean media Daily NK, North Korean authorities arrested an elite hacker group on July 12, which is suspected of infiltrating the internal networks of the North Korean central bank and foreign trade bank, stealing national trade funds and laundering money through cryptocurrency. Sources say the group's leader is a veteran from the cyber warfare unit under the North Korean Reconnaissance General Bureau, who recruited talented IT graduates from Kim Chaek University of Technology and Pyongyang University of Science and Technology, using encrypted communications and wireless devices to commit crimes.They split the stolen funds into small amounts and transferred them to overseas cryptocurrency wallets, exchanged them for cash through intermediaries, and then converted them into dollars and other currencies in border areas. Pyongyang officials launched an investigation after discovering anomalies in foreign currency payment approvals and records of overseas IP access, ultimately raiding a safe house and arresting suspects who were laundering money, seizing equipment worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. This case has caused a stir among the elite and military circles in Pyongyang, with senior officials in the Reconnaissance General Bureau and the science and education sector worried about being implicated. North Korea has long been accused of stealing billions of dollars in cryptocurrency assets through hacker organizations like the Lazarus Group, but this incident rarely shows that its own financial system has also become a target of internal attacks.

Onchain Lens stated on the X platform that in the first half of 2026, 224 publicly disclosed crypto hacking incidents resulted in approximately $1.32 billion in losses. The largest losses came from access control failures, phishing attacks, and oracle issues.In terms of attack type breakdown, access control failures involved compromised permissions and privileged access, driving several of the largest attacks, including Kelp DAO with a loss of $292 million, Drift Protocol with a loss of $280 million, Humanity Protocol with a loss of $31 million, Step Finance with a loss of $30 million, Truebit with a loss of $26.5 million, Resolv Labs with a loss of $25 million, AFX with a loss of $24.15 million, and BonkDAO with a loss of $21 million. In terms of phishing and social engineering attacks, social engineering attacks caused $282 million in losses. Regarding oracle issues, Ostium lost $24 million, Blend Protocol lost $10.86 million, and Bonzo lost $9 million. A small number of incidents accounted for the majority of the losses, with compromised permissions and privileged access driving several of the largest attacks.

According to Onchain Lens monitoring, trader James Wynn realized a profit of approximately $45 after partially closing his short position on the S&P 500 Index.Data shows that James Wynn opened 80.44 SP500 short positions yesterday, valued at approximately $599,000; today he closed 42.19 of them, valued at approximately $312,600.Currently, he still holds 115.68 SP500 short positions, with a position value of approximately $857,600, and an unrealized loss of about $192.

According to monitoring by Lookonchain, a giant whale obtained 557,902 HYPE (worth 32.87 million USD) from FalconX and deposited it into Hyperliquid for staking.

According to CoinDesk, institutional crypto trading platform LMAX Group is working with Morgan Stanley and investment bank KBW to evaluate strategic options, considering possibilities including a sale, SPAC merger, and IPO on Nasdaq or in Europe, with a potential valuation of up to $5 billion. Insiders say the company is not in a hurry to go public, as its foreign exchange business supports the weak crypto market.LMAX has accelerated its expansion in recent years, launching a 24/7 multi-asset exchange that supports foreign exchange, digital assets, commodities, and tokenized securities, and received a $150 million strategic investment from Ripple in January this year to promote institutional adoption of the RLUSD stablecoin through its trading and settlement network.

Web3 asset data platform RootData announced the completion of the stock perpetual contract leaderboard feature upgrade. This upgrade significantly enhances the weight ratio of trading volume and position amount, and adds dimensions of leverage multiples and market share for each exchange, aiming to provide more refined data references for the market.The latest data shows that Binance, Hyperliquid, OKX, MEXC, and Bitget rank among the top five exchanges in the stock perpetual contract market share, collectively accounting for 74.8%. RootData stated that the leaderboard currently includes data from nearly 30 exchanges, welcoming listed exchanges to supplement and完善 information, and also inviting unlisted exchanges to proactively submit data for inclusion in the ranking system.

Anthropic upgrades Claude's voice mode. Paid users can now choose Opus, Sonnet, and Haiku, no longer limited to the faster but less capable Haiku.Users can switch models during conversations and can also switch to text at any time. Claude defaults to the model selected in the last text chat and calls the fastest version in that series. The voice mode can also access Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, and Slack. Users can have Claude check emails, change schedules, or draft replies, and will request authorization before executing.The new version is now available for testing on mobile, desktop, and web. Free users can only use Haiku and one connection tool. Voice now supports multiple languages including English, Japanese, and Korean, but does not include Chinese at this time. This upgrade mainly enhances model reasoning and tool invocation capabilities. Anthropic has not changed the voice model, so the naturalness of speech and interruption experience may not show significant changes.

The cryptocurrency exchange BitMEX accelerated the delisting of 65 derivative contracts and spot trading pairs in July, far exceeding the 19 that were delisted in the first six months of this year. The platform attributed the delisting to "insufficient trading interest" and stated that this move is related to its decision to close the exchange. Previously, BitMEX announced that it would officially cease operations on September 23, but did not disclose the specific reason for the closure.Restructuring advisor Roshan Dharia stated that the shutdown of BitMEX reflects the structural pressures faced by mid-sized centralized exchanges: liquidity continues to concentrate on leading platforms, while compliance costs are continuously rising. Earlier, the on-chain analysis platform Bubblemaps revealed that 75% of the total supply of BitMEX tokens BMEX (originally intended for employee incentives, ecosystem growth, and long-term reserves) was never allocated as planned, with the only claim occurring in November 2022. After the shutdown announcement, the price of BMEX dropped by approximately 95%.

According to the Bitwise "Q3 2026 Staking Report," Q2 2026 presents a divergent pattern of "increased on-chain activity and decreased fee revenue," with the core driving factor being various protocols actively reducing block space costs.In terms of core data across chains, Ethereum's active staking volume reached a historic high of 40.2 million ETH (accounting for 33% of the total supply), while network revenue decreased by 51% year-on-year to $64 million, although it rebounded in ETH terms quarter-on-quarter; Solana's Q2 Real Economic Value (REV) dropped to $51 million, significantly down from the peak of $812 million in Q1 2025, but non-voting transaction volume reached 9.8 billion, maintaining resilience in on-chain activity; Hyperliquid's Q2 total protocol revenue was $174.8 million, with perpetual contract trading volume reaching $65.2 billion, and the proportion of non-crypto assets (commodities, stock indices, etc.) rose to 32%; Avalanche C chain's transaction volume grew approximately fourfold year-on-year to 236 million transactions, but network revenue plummeted due to a significant drop in fees, leaving only $330,000; NEAR saw a dramatic 75% drop in on-chain transaction volume to 77.7 million transactions due to the collapse of Kai-Ching application activity, but the Intents execution layer generated fees approximately 68 times that of the base chain.In terms of institutional adoption, BlackRock launched an Ethereum staking ETF (ETHB), Coinbase and Circle each staked 500,000 HYPE, and Bitwise, 21Shares, and Grayscale successively launched HYPE spot ETFs. Additionally, the stablecoin payment chain Tempo, incubated by Stripe and Paradigm, processed $386 million in transfers in its first quarter, while the global payroll platform Deel distributed approximately $30 million to 7,200 contractors through this chain.

According to Reuters, citing informed sources, due to the surge in demand for AI data centers leading to a tight supply of server CPUs, Intel and AMD are negotiating long-term procurement commitments with Chinese server customers. Agreements typically lock in a year's supply, with some discussions extending to two years or longer. Driven by the construction of AI computing power, CPU demand has expanded from AI accelerators to mainstream processors, with some server CPU products in the Chinese market experiencing a cumulative price increase of over 40% this year, with month-on-month increases exceeding 10% at times.Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan stated in April that Xeon server CPU demand "continues to exceed supply," and the company has signed multiple long-term contracts in the first quarter, including a multi-year agreement with Google. AMD has raised its forecast for the server CPU market to exceed $120 billion by 2030. The report notes that China, as one of the largest server markets in the world, is intensifying competition for Intel and AMD processors due to the rapid construction of data centers and AI computing clusters, even as Chinese buyers face U.S. export restrictions on advanced AI GPUs. Intel is set to announce its quarterly results on Thursday, with the CPU shortage expected to become a market focus.

As of July 23, according to the ranking data from RootData for stock derivatives exchanges, Binance, Bybit, and Bitget occupy the top three positions. This list is based on a comprehensive scoring of exchanges supporting stock derivatives trading, evaluated on dimensions such as trading volume, open interest, spreads, depth, trading costs, and data collectability, among which:Binance scored 92, supports 143 contracts, with an open interest of approximately $2.713 billion, a 24h trading volume of approximately $17.685 billion, and a funding rate of +0.0003%.Bybit scored 91.3, supports 131 contracts, with an open interest of approximately $95.9587 million, a 24h trading volume of approximately $920 million, and a funding rate of +0.0004%.Bitget scored 91.2, supports 252 contracts, with an open interest of approximately $757 million, a 24h trading volume of approximately $2.123 billion, and a funding rate of +0.0003%.It is worth noting that Bybit has entered the top two for the first time, but its open interest of approximately $95.9587 million is still the lowest among the top three exchanges, showing a significant gap compared to Binance and Bitget.

As the trading heat of the gold market continues to rise, the activity in the related derivatives market has further increased. According to CoinGlass data, the total open interest for gold (XAU) contracts across the network reached 880 million USD, with the Gate platform's open interest at approximately 238 million USD, ranking second among global exchanges. Meanwhile, the total open interest for Tether Gold (XAUT) contracts across the network reached 528 million USD, with the Gate platform's open interest at approximately 118 million USD, ranking third among global exchanges.

In response to the accusations from Michael Kratsios, the Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, regarding Moonshot AI (Kimi) referencing Anthropic's Fable while developing the K3 model and building a large-scale distillation platform, Moonshot AI team member Randy Xia stated that Fable was released on July 1 and K3 went live on July 15, which means that the model research, distillation, training, and release were completed in just 15 days. He joked, "We trained a brand new cutting-edge model in just 15 days; this is practically a Guinness World Record."Kratsios had previously stated that Moonshot AI established an internal platform capable of large-scale distillation for U.S. models, switching between various access methods to evade detection, and had procured GB300 servers and accessed related equipment in Thailand for training. The U.S. side expressed support for legitimate distillation but opposed the theft of technology through secret industrial distillation methods.

Web3 security company CertiK released the "2026 First Half Wrench Attack Report." The report shows that in the first half of 2026, a total of 52 publicly verified wrench attack incidents were recorded globally, an increase of 33.3% year-on-year; related losses amounted to approximately $124 million, an increase of about 11.8 times compared to the same period last year.The report points out that attackers are shifting from exploiting technical vulnerabilities to targeting asset holders and their real-world relationship networks, with home invasion incidents rising from 1 in the first half of 2025 to 20, accounting for 41% of the total incidents during the same period. Europe has become a high-frequency attack region, with 33 incidents occurring in France, accounting for 63.5% of global cases.CertiK states that as real-world risks become a significant challenge for digital asset security, businesses and high-value individuals need to establish a more comprehensive protection system. CertiK has launched operational security services to help identify risks related to the exposure of information such as identity, home, residence, and travel trajectory; at the same time, through CertiK Security Workspace, it correlates off-chain intelligence, on-chain transactions, and AML risk signals to support institutions in tracking and analyzing cybercrime activities.In addition, CertiK is strengthening cooperation with international law enforcement agencies such as Interpol and Europol to provide technical support for cross-border attack investigations and security policy research.

According to on-chain analyst Ai Yi (@ai_9684xtpa), address 0x9BF...4564a withdrew 4,819 ETH (approximately 9.35 million USD) from the exchange on February 8 at an average price of 1,941.25 USD, marking its first operation after being dormant for two years since March 2024.During the holding period, the account's unrealized loss once reached as high as 1.8 million USD. Half an hour ago, the address deposited 1,200 ETH to Gate exchange, and if sold at the current price, it would only incur a loss of about 20,000 USD, essentially close to breaking even.

According to a report by CryptoSlate, BitMine's Ethereum staking and validation business heavily relies on the third-party operator Ethereum Tower. According to the relevant management service agreement, Ethereum Tower holds an irrevocable interest of 2% in MAVAN, and the initial term of the agreement lasts for up to 10 years; if BitMine terminates the cooperation early under non-specific default circumstances, the other party can still choose to continue receiving revenue sharing for the remaining term or receive a one-time compensation according to a formula.Documents show that in the three months ending May 31, 2026, BitMine's staking and validation business revenue was $45.743 million, accounting for 98.3% of total revenue of $46.535 million. During the same period, the company held approximately 5.4169 million ETH, valued at about $10.856 billion, of which approximately 4.7187 million had been used for staking. The report suggests that this means BitMine's revenue performance is not only dependent on Ethereum staking returns but is also significantly constrained by third-party management relationships and potential termination costs.