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According to INBi, consultant François Garcin, who assisted in building MARA's business in France, filed a lawsuit against MARA Holdings in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York on July 22, seeking over 11 million euros in compensation.Garcin claims that after MARA terminated the contract on March 6, 2026, it failed to pay 2.4 million euros in consulting fees and approximately 5.92 million euros in success commissions (based on 4% of the 148 million euro investment in Exaion). Exaion is a subsidiary of EDF, and this investment accounts for 64% of the capital for the relevant project.Garcin's previous tasks included recruiting former Engie CEO Gérard Mestrallet, obtaining an invitation to the Choose France summit, and arranging a meeting with former President François Hollande, among others.

Fang Xinghai, former member of the Party Committee and Vice Chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, is suspected of serious violations of discipline and law, and is currently undergoing disciplinary review and supervisory investigation by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and the National Supervisory Commission.

According to FinanceFeeds, the Indian Parliament's Standing Committee on Finance has recommended that the government establish a temporary regulatory mechanism led by recognized Self-Regulatory Organizations (SROs) to oversee the domestic cryptocurrency and virtual digital asset market. The committee warned that the lack of a clear legal framework exposes millions of retail investors to operational, custodial, and fraud risks.The SRO will implement standardized codes of conduct under the direct supervision of the Reserve Bank of India or the Securities and Exchange Board of India, covering consumer protection, platform transparency, and token disclosure standards, and will be responsible for auditing exchange reserves, mandating the segregation of customer funds from corporate funds, and establishing user complaint handling channels. The committee emphasized that the temporary SRO must operate under strict oversight from the central bank or the securities regulator to address macroeconomic risks such as cross-border capital flows, dollarization of stablecoins, tax evasion, and violations of foreign exchange management laws.

According to the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission, Victory Securities Limited has been reprimanded and fined HKD 1.7 million for violating regulatory requirements, and its responsible personnel's licenses have been temporarily revoked.Previously, Hong Kong Victory Securities announced in February this year that it would close all virtual currency trading functions for users with mainland Chinese identities, retaining only withdrawal permissions and no longer supporting deposits and new transactions. The platform's gradual tightening of services for mainland users includes previous measures such as prohibiting purchases and suspending new address verification, aimed at complying with the regulatory requirements of the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission and relevant policies in the mainland.

Nine financial institutions and Bitcoin companies announced the joint establishment of the Bitcoin Security Alliance, with founding members including Anchorage Digital, ARK Invest, BlackRock, Block, Blockstream, Coinbase, Fidelity, Galaxy, and Strategy, covering the entire chain of institutions such as custody, trading, infrastructure, payments, and asset management.The alliance commits to providing a total of $15 million in funding over the next three years to support developers and researchers in the field of Bitcoin security, including long-term work to prepare Bitcoin for the future era of quantum computing. Each member independently decides which developers, researchers, or organizations to direct their funding towards. The daily operations of the alliance are coordinated on a voluntary basis by Brink Executive Director Mike Schmidt, with Brink being a nonprofit organization that funds Bitcoin open-source developers.The alliance clearly states that it does not formulate or direct Bitcoin protocols, does not express opinions on specific protocol changes, and does not represent Bitcoin or its developers—Bitcoin development continues to be carried out by a globally decentralized community of contributors. Its positioning is to emulate the model of industry organizations that have long supported open-source software, providing resources and attention to developers without controlling the underlying work.Strategy CEO Phong Le stated, "As long-term holders, ensuring the security of Bitcoin for generations is our greatest incentive"; BlackRock's Global Head of Digital Assets Robert Mitchnick pointed out that the work of Bitcoin core developers is "extremely important," and this commitment will provide "significant additional funding" for Bitcoin's long-term security needs. The alliance will also serve as a reliable source of information for investors, the public, and the media in the field of Bitcoin security, with plans to publish and continuously update materials related to Bitcoin security in the coming months.

The South Korean Financial Services Commission stated that it will submit the government bill for the second phase of the "Basic Law on Digital Assets" as soon as possible, and will coordinate the release of guidelines for corporate cryptocurrency asset trading with the legislative process. At the same time, it plans to include digital asset custody under independent business regulation and holds a cautious attitude towards the mandatory separation of custody business from exchanges.In addition, South Korea will refer to the practices of the European Union to provide a more convenient access mechanism for traditional financial institutions applying for virtual asset service provider licenses. Regarding the market's concern about the separation of exchange custody business, the South Korean Financial Services Commission stated that there are currently few cases of mandatory separation overseas and prefers to prevent conflicts of interest through improved behavioral regulation rather than requiring exchanges to operate custody business independently.

According to The Block, Benchmark Equity Research raised Hut 8's target price from $165 to $195 on Wednesday. This is the second time this month that the agency has raised Hut 8's target price, mainly due to the full commercialization of its Beacon Point AI data center campus located in Texas.Hut 8 previously announced that it had signed a second 15-year lease agreement with existing tenants, with a total value of $9.8 billion, increasing the contracted capacity of the Beacon Point campus to 704 MW and raising the total contract value of this 1 GW campus to $19.6 billion. Benchmark stated that the latest target price still has about 75% upside potential compared to Hut 8's stock price of approximately $111 at that time.In addition, Benchmark's valuation of Hut 8 also includes its holding of 10,278 bitcoins, valued at nearly $680 million at current prices, as well as its 60% stake in American Bitcoin Company.

According to the SEC official website, Commissioner Hester M. Peirce issued a statement highlighting the intersection of cryptocurrency vaults and on-chain lending strategies with federal securities laws. Peirce pointed out that migrating activities to the blockchain does not automatically exempt them from the regulatory scope of securities laws. Cryptocurrency vaults allocate user assets to yield activities such as staking and lending through smart contracts, and if the managers are involved in selecting yield strategies or reallocating assets, it may trigger compliance obligations under securities laws; some vault structures may be deemed joint enterprises or fall under the regulation of investment companies.Regarding on-chain lending strategies, management actions such as interest rate setting, asset admission, and liquidation thresholds may also involve securities laws, and related loans may be classified as securities under certain conditions. Peirce stated that the SEC welcomes proactive communication from market participants in the vault and on-chain lending space and seeks input from all parties to explore whether there is a need to revise rules to protect investors while allowing space for innovation.

The decentralized stablecoin USDD announced that its TVL on JustLend DAO has surpassed $450 million, setting a new historical high. With the achievement of this milestone, the official has launched a community interaction reward activity. Users can participate in the lottery by retweeting the event tweet and tagging 2 friends. The event will randomly select 10 lucky users, each receiving 10 USDD, and will last until July 27.It is reported that the rapid growth of USDD on JustLend DAO is attributed to the ongoing TRON DeFi Summer event, where users are actively investing USDD into related DeFi markets, further enhancing the adoption and utility of USDD.

According to Jinshi reports, the prediction market platform Kalshi has applied to the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to launch perpetual futures linked to gold.

According to Decrypt, Galaxy Digital has officially launched the "Bitcoin Quantum Readiness Program," which has three core pillars: providing up to $5 million in post-quantum cryptography research grants to developers, publishing special research reports through Galaxy Research, and establishing a quantum advisory committee composed of scholars from several top universities.The program aims at "Q-Day"—the critical moment when quantum computers use Shor's algorithm to break Bitcoin's elliptic curve encryption, forge signatures, and steal wallet assets. Project Eleven predicts that quantum computers capable of cryptographic threats may appear as early as 2030, at which point approximately 6.9 million BTC will be at risk of exposure.The Coinbase Quantum Advisory Committee has also called for developers to immediately begin migration efforts. Meanwhile, Trump has signed an executive order setting the deadline for the U.S. federal government to complete its post-quantum cryptography migration by December 2031.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong posted on X in response to the recent controversy sparked by his profile picture change and the voices from the Base community feeling insufficiently supported. Armstrong made it clear that his personal X account should not be viewed as investment advice or a signal source for individual tokens; he simply shares content online that he finds interesting or funny, and he may not be aware of whether the content relates to a specific token or project. His posts and profile picture do not constitute endorsement or commitment.Armstrong pointed out that Base is committed to building financial services infrastructure, covering tokenized stocks, lending protocols, stablecoin payments, and even meme coin trading. He supports economic freedom and user freedom to trade, but treating his X account as a trading signal is a risk users must bear, which also goes against his own wishes. Regarding support from the Base team or Coinbase, Armstrong stated that many tokens cannot be listed on centralized exchanges due to compliance and regulatory reasons, "If you hope Jesse or I can help pump or call certain tokens, we will not do that."The ways Coinbase has committed to support include hosting offline Base Batches events, providing funding to promising developers, investing in quality projects through Coinbase Ventures and the Base ecosystem fund, and regularly integrating promising Base DeFi protocols into Coinbase products. Currently, the post has over 1.05 million views.

According to ChaoXiang Research, Morgan Stanley's stock strategy report on July 20 pointed out that AI-related stocks have faced fierce selling in recent weeks, with the South Korean stock market dropping 25% from its peak, and the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index falling 20%. Individual stocks like Samsung and Micron have seen declines between 20% and 50%. The report believes that the core driving force behind this round of decline is technical factors and position clearing, with no deterioration in fundamentals. The gap between relative prices and relative earnings trends in semiconductors continues to widen, but the supply-demand tight balance for DRAM and NAND is expected to last until 2028. DRAM spot prices remain high, and Micron has also raised its performance guidance, indicating that supply-demand tightness will last at least until 2027. The RSI of the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index is nearing the oversold zone, and the accumulated momentum gains for the year have basically been retraced.Morgan Stanley believes that once the oversold signal is confirmed, a rebound window will open, and it suggests that investors gradually position themselves in semiconductors during the summer. The proportion of second-quarter earnings reports exceeding expectations reached 97%, and companies in the S&P 500 that reported better-than-expected earnings outperformed the market by an average of 1.7 percentage points on the day of the report. In terms of allocation, Morgan Stanley has raised its equity allocation from 60% to 65%, increased its Eurozone allocation from 8.7% to 11%, and is overweight in sectors such as semiconductors, mining, capital goods, automotive, insurance, and banking, while underweighting software, business services, and media in the "AI erosion group." Regarding geopolitical conflicts, the report believes that the "buying on dips" strategy since the end of March remains effective.

On July 20, the King County Superior Court in Washington State approved the preliminary injunction motion against KalshiEX, LLC (Kalshi), ruling that Kalshi's activities constitute illegal actions in violation of Washington State's gambling laws, and determined that the federal Commodity Exchange Act does not take precedence over state gambling laws.This ruling is an important precedent in the jurisdictional dispute between state regulatory agencies and federal regulatory prediction market platforms, following accusations from the CFTC chairman of illegal enforcement actions by states against federally regulated exchanges. The court made the ruling after reviewing multiple materials, including the oral arguments from July 10. The case number is 26-2-10264-3 SEA.

According to official news, the ENS DAO has approved the proposal to activate a new security committee, with a term of two years. The committee consists of eight members and has veto power, allowing it to cancel proposals during the waiting period after malicious proposals are passed but before execution. The committee's authority is limited to canceling transactions within the time lock and cannot access treasury funds, submit proposals, or rewrite approved proposals.The committee can only exercise its power under emergency conditions specified in its charter. ENS points out that governance itself may become an attack surface—voting rights can be borrowed to initiate attacks, proposal codes can hide malicious behavior, and credential leaks can be used to push harmful transactions. The new committee adopts a 5-of-8 multi-signature, requiring at least five members' agreement to cancel a proposal, and must seek DAO voting for extension after the two-year term.

Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has signed an executive order to coordinate the regulation of virtual assets, strengthen cooperation among the country's financial, tax, and capital market institutions, and address the fragmentation of digital asset regulation. The executive order establishes a virtual asset committee composed of heads of Nigeria's main financial regulatory agencies, responsible for guiding relevant policies. The Nigerian tax authorities will update digital asset policies and provide more details on their impact on taxpayers.The President's Special Adviser Bayo Onanuga stated that the executive order does not establish new regulatory bodies nor transfer power between institutions; each agency retains its statutory responsibilities and independence, and registration requirements will be determined based on the nature of the activities and the assets involved. A report from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in June indicated that since 2019, Nigeria has accounted for about 60% of the stablecoin inflows to sub-Saharan Africa; from July 2023 to June 2024, the country's cryptocurrency inflows are estimated to be around $59 billion.

According to CoinDesk, the Cardano mainnet completed the "Van Rossem" hard fork on July 18, upgrading the protocol version to 11, primarily reducing the cost of smart contract execution and paving the way for subsequent scaling solutions.This upgrade was the first to be fully proposed, discussed, and voted on by the community through the on-chain governance process, rather than being directly led by the founding development company Input Output. On-chain data shows that the voting support rate was approximately 78.97%, all 7 members of the Constitutional Committee confirmed that the proposal complied with the "Cardano Constitution," about 53.02% of node operators voted in favor, and over approximately 93% of block production pledges have run the new version of the node.This upgrade prepares technically and procedurally for the scaling solution Ouroboros Leios, which is planned to go live in 2026.

According to official news, Tether Gold (XAU₮) has been recognized as a "qualified spot commodity" by the Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM).After approval, ADGM institutions holding the relevant licenses can provide XAU₮ related services to clients, provided they meet regulatory requirements.