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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.

According to CoinDesk, B2C2, a crypto market maker in which SBI Holdings holds a 90% stake, has been in acquisition negotiations with several potential buyers over the past 18 months.The negotiations have been affected by valuation differences. B2C2 is seeking a transaction price of over $1 billion, and a source indicated that this price is difficult to achieve in the current crypto market environment.Founded in 2015, B2C2 provides deep liquidity for spot, derivatives, structured products, and OTC trading for banks, exchanges, brokerages, hedge funds, and asset management companies. SBI acquired a 90% stake in B2C2 in 2020. B2C2's financial data has not been disclosed separately and is included in SBI's crypto business segment.

According to on-chain analyst Yu Jin (@EmberCN), an address belonging to the initial team/investors of MakerDAO sold all 1,050 MKR, which had been held for nearly 10 years, 20 minutes ago, exchanging it for 1.316 million USDC before transferring it to Kraken exchange. This address originally received the aforementioned MKR in April 2016 and had not moved any of it for 10 years, except for a migration operation during the token upgrade in 2018.

According to informed sources, Stripe is in talks to acquire OpenRouter. OpenRouter is a popular startup dedicated to helping developers choose between various artificial intelligence models. The sources indicated that the deal could be announced soon, but there is also a possibility of negotiations breaking down or other bidders emerging. It is currently unclear what the specific negotiation price is, but reports suggest that the company's sale valuation could be around $10 billion. The sources added that several large tech companies had previously shown interest in acquiring OpenRouter. Founded in 2023, OpenRouter sells software that allows customers easy access to AI models developed by OpenAI and Anthropic, as well as "open-weight" models that anyone can download and run for free. Acquiring OpenRouter would enable Stripe to capitalize on a hot growth area in the AI market.

According to Jinshi, the number of initial jobless claims in the United States for the week ending July 18 was 187,000, the lowest since the week of September 24, 2022, with an expectation of 212,000, and the previous value revised from 208,000 to 209,000.

Libbitcoin developer @evoskuil stated that the latest version of Libbitcoin Server can complete the initial block download of a Bitcoin full node in 55 minutes and perform full verification. This speed improvement comes from a new GPU-based signature verification system that runs in parallel with conventional script verification, rather than as a separate step.The software does not pause execution to verify each ECDSA and Schnorr signature; instead, it captures signature checks, batches them, and processes them via GPU while the remaining verification continues. @evoskuil indicated that this method achieves about a 99.5% signature capture rate without blocking verification, thus eliminating the need for a second verification. If a batch signature check fails, the software traces it back to the corresponding block and marks that block as invalid. He also mentioned that this design can batch process an almost arbitrary number of signatures, keeping the GPU ahead of the remaining verification process and significantly shortening the full node synchronization time.

Fireworks AI released an evaluation report comparing the open-source model Kimi K3 and the closed-source model Fable 5 across approximately 1030 agent tasks (covering scenarios such as SWE, terminal operations, algorithms, multilingual coding, and legal matters). The results showed that the accuracy rates for the two models on the SWE benchmark were 92.4% and 92.6%, respectively, indicating similar overall performance, but each model has its strengths in specific areas: K3 leads in symbolic mathematics and development tools, while Fable excels in web and data visualization; in long-cycle terminal tasks, K3 independently tackled 11 tasks that Fable could not solve.The report pointed out that adopting a task-level routing strategy can dynamically allocate between the two, achieving an accuracy rate of 93%, surpassing either single model. Additionally, due to K3's significant cost advantage on the Fireworks platform, costs for long-cycle agent tasks can be up to 50 times lower than Fable. The report recommends using the open-source model as the default option and continuously learning the optimal match between tasks and models through routers to balance quality and cost.

Insiders reveal that Samsung is in talks to participate in a new round of financing for the artificial intelligence startup Mistral, which could value Mistral at around 20 billion euros. This move will help the French company become a major alternative to American tech giants.One insider stated that Samsung had previously supported the company through its venture capital division and may invest about 1 billion euros in this new round of financing. This discussion reflects that AI developers are widely seeking to establish partnerships with semiconductor suppliers to address the situation where the demand for computing power in the industry far exceeds supply. Following the Trump administration's ban last month on foreign users accessing Anthropic's latest Mythos and Fable models, interest from European and Asian companies and governments in alternatives to leading American AI models has been steadily increasing. Since its establishment, Mistral has focused on developing open-source AI models that allow customers customization and control, meaning that no company or government can shut down these models.

According to Gate Ventures' latest weekly report, influenced by the escalation of geopolitical risks and changes in the AI competitive landscape, all three major U.S. stock indices fell last week, energy prices rose significantly, and the trends of safe-haven assets like gold and U.S. Treasuries diverged. The cryptocurrency market continued its structural trend, with Bitcoin and Ethereum rising by 1.5% and 3.6%, respectively, while both spot BTC and ETH ETFs maintained net inflows.In terms of industry development, regulation and real-world applications continued to be the focus this week. Japanese convenience store giant Lawson, in collaboration with Netstars, is advancing a stablecoin payment pilot, further promoting the use of stablecoins in everyday consumption scenarios; South Korea plans to officially incorporate digital assets into its national asset management framework and explore the tokenization of government bonds and state-owned assets, with the construction of RWA infrastructure continuing to accelerate. In Europe, after the transition period of MiCA ended, the total number of licensed institutions increased to 294, although the number of new licenses has slowed down, institutional participation remains strong.In terms of investment and financing, the cryptocurrency industry recorded a total of 16 financing events last week, highly concentrated in the infrastructure sector: among them, Alpaca completed a $135 million financing to enhance tokenized securities and AI financial infrastructure; Flex completed a $70 million financing to further expand its stablecoin cross-border payment network, continuously confirming the capital market's long-term optimism towards digital financial infrastructure. Gate Ventures believes that as the global regulatory framework gradually improves and the integration of traditional finance and blockchain deepens, the digital asset ecosystem is expected to enter a more mature and diverse development stage.

According to Bitcoin Magazine, the head of Coinbase Canada stated that the company is pushing to expand its business footprint in Canada, aiming to create a comprehensive exchange covering crypto assets, tokenized stocks, and prediction markets.The plan intends to leverage blockchain technology to provide a more efficient, round-the-clock trading experience, and Coinbase is currently coordinating with Canadian regulators regarding the launch of related products.

According to market news, the U.S. Congress is engaged in bipartisan discussions on ethical issues. Negotiators are also discussing DeFi provisions, but ethical issues remain the main obstacle.When asked about the ethical proposal, Sen Lummis's spokesperson stated that the dialogue with the White House last week "went smoothly," and the ethical text to be released in the coming days will reflect this productive conversation.

According to Jinshi Market news, Dark Side of the Moon is reportedly negotiating Pre-IPO financing with a valuation of 50 billion dollars.

According to official news, Grayscale announced the appointment of Sebastian Pulido as the head of on-chain asset management, responsible for leading the company's on-chain product strategy.Sebastian has worked at Aave Labs, Goldman Sachs, and the Kinexys team at JPMorgan, possessing extensive experience in institutional finance and the digital asset sector.

According to The Block, the London Stock Exchange is planning to launch an overnight trading platform independent of the main market to extend trading hours and meet investors' demand for longer market access. The platform is expected to go live in the first half of 2027, while the regular trading hours of the main market will remain unchanged from 8:00 AM to 4:30 PM. The new platform is proposed to operate from 5:00 PM to 7:50 AM the next morning, with a 30-minute pause from 6:30 PM to 7:00 PM for end-of-day processing.The report states that the platform will initially focus on trading exchange-traded products (ETPs), including funds that track the UK and US stock markets. Julia Hoggett, CEO of the London Stock Exchange, stated that this move is primarily aimed at meeting the needs of retail investors, especially international investors; the London Stock Exchange hopes to extend trading coverage to over 2,600 ETPs listed in the future.

Bitget announced the launch of the MINIMAX Quanto perpetual contract MINIMAXHKDUSDT, supporting up to 20 times leverage and 24/7 trading. As the industry's first TradFi Quanto perpetual contract, this product allows users to trade Hong Kong stocks and other overseas stocks priced in currencies other than the US dollar directly using USDT, without the need to exchange foreign currency throughout the process. The contract itself is quoted in Hong Kong dollars, while margin deposits and profit and loss settlements are completed in USDT, effectively avoiding the additional risks brought by exchange rate fluctuations while simplifying the trading process.According to the TokenInsight Q2 2026 report, TradFi perpetual contracts have become the fastest-growing sector, with monthly trading volume surging from approximately $52 billion in January to $268 billion in June, an increase of 5 times. Against this backdrop, Bitget's Q2 TradFi contract trading volume was approximately $69 billion, ranking second in the industry with an 11.01% market share.

According to Edaily, the South Korean government will hold a forum hosted by Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy and Finance Choi Sang-mok to officially launch the legislative discussion on the "Basic Law on Digital Assets (Phase Two)," focusing on the regulation of stablecoins. This forum is the first stablecoin legislative forum organized and hosted by the government. The South Korean government and the ruling Democratic Party plan to push for the passage of the bill within this year.In the economic growth strategy announced on July 14, 2026, the authorities stated that they plan to advance the legislation of the "Basic Law on Digital Assets" in the second half of the year, segment the digital asset industry, establish a regulatory framework for business conduct, and lay a legal foundation for the regulation of stablecoins.

According to Bloomberg, as prediction markets like Polymarket and Kalshi expand, the issue of betting using non-public information or informational advantages is receiving more scrutiny. Bloomberg Businessweek analyzed approximately 34,000 potential insider trading cases flagged by Polysights between August 2025 and June 2026; these related trades exhibited characteristics such as newly created accounts, low probability entries, large bets, or high trading concentration, but it cannot be determined that traders violated rules based on this.Data shows that from January 1 to June 30 of this year, the amount of suspicious trades flagged on Polymarket was approximately $200 million, with geopolitical and war-related markets driving a significant increase in abnormal trading volume. The profits from potential insider trading are highly concentrated, with the top 1% of accounts in profit wallets earning more than half of the gains, and 57% of related wallets created less than 24 hours before the trades. Some traders are reducing the likelihood of being discovered by using multiple associated wallets and splitting orders. For example, 38 associated addresses placed bets in 90 geopolitical markets related to Iran and Venezuela, achieving a win rate of 98%, with total profits of $1.6 million, and withdrew funds using the same Coinbase deposit address.Polymarket stated that it will monitor insider trading and other illegal activities, and has so far referred nearly 100 wallets to law enforcement agencies. Kalshi has also strengthened identity and employment information checks, and restricted participation in related markets by political candidates, athletes, and others who may influence outcomes.

According to Cointelegraph, Japanese logistics company AZ-COM Maruwa Holdings plans to use the JPYC stablecoin to make payments to approximately 2,300 business partners, potentially becoming the first large-scale enterprise in Japan to use the yen stablecoin JPYC. This stablecoin will be used to pay transportation contractors (including truck drivers) fees and compensation.Since JPYC does not charge transfer fees, using the stablecoin allows for faster and more frequent payments. AZ-COM Maruwa is also considering establishing a partnership with JPYC and plans to invest over 1 billion yen (approximately 6.2 million USD). AZ-COM Maruwa is a medium-sized Japanese logistics company, with major clients including Amazon Japan.