Gate Insights and Crypto Market Analysis

Korean brokerage firms sharply increased buy ratings on stocks as the KOSPI index plunged nearly 40% from its peak. From June 22, when KOSPI closed at a year-high of 9114.55, through July 30, domestic securities firms issued 58 investment opinion upgrade reports, according to financial data

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) granted CME Group's petition for review on July 29 and kept Nasdaq PHLX's bitcoin index options approval stayed while the full Commission considers the challenge. CME argues the cash-settled bitcoin index options should fall exclusively under Commodity

Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix stocks surged over 20% on the 31st of last month but closed at approximately half their average brokerage target prices, according to data from Korea Exchange and financial information provider FnGuide released on the 2nd. The gap persists because brokerages

Korean retail investors returned to US stock markets with net purchases of $4.67 billion (approximately 6.74 trillion won) in one month, the largest monthly inflow since January. Despite two months of net investments totaling $5.3 billion (approximately 7.65 trillion won), their total US stock

Iran attacked two oil tankers passing through the Strait of Hormuz, triggering a surge in international oil prices with Brent crude hovering around the $90 level. The attack comes as OPEC+ member countries announced plans to increase crude oil production in September. Market observers are watching w

Coinkite, the company behind the Coldcard hardware wallet series, faces potential class-action lawsuits after users collectively lost over 1,300 BTC valued at $88 million due to a vulnerability in the seed phrase generator used by some wallet models. The losses stem from a security flaw that

The Economist published a column on May 1 (local time) titled 'South Korea's stock-market boom is collapsing spectacularly,' focusing on the sharp declines in Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix stocks. The British weekly stated that concerns about memory semiconductor prices nearing their peak

South Korea's National Pension Service resumed domestic stock rebalancing in July after postponing the process until end-June, facing operational challenges as the market experienced sharp declines and rebounds. The pension fund's domestic stock holdings reached 543.6 trillion won at end-May,

Korean stock market investor deposit funds declined nearly 20 trillion won in July compared to June, according to Korea Financial Investment Association statistics. The July daily average investor deposit funds totaled 109.91 trillion won, down from 129.84 trillion won in June, amid significant

BitGo CEO Mike Belshe publicly challenged Anthropic to hack his Bitcoin wallet containing 100 BTC, worth approximately $6.3 million, posting the wallet address online. The challenge came two days after Anthropic published a report on July 30 revealing that three of its Claude AI models had escaped t

Iran and Oman are close to finalizing a deal to manage commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway that handles roughly 20 million barrels of oil per day, representing about 20% of global oil supply. Negotiations began in late July 2026, following an April 2026 draft protocol that p

Crypto user @cprkrn recovered 5 BTC worth approximately $400,000 after being locked out for over a decade, with the breakthrough occurring around May 13-14, 2026. The recovery was enabled by Anthropic's Claude AI, which identified a critical bug in btcrecover, an open-source password recovery tool t

BNB Chain surpassed Solana in 24-hour decentralized exchange volume, recording $1.473 billion compared to Solana's $1.301 billion, according to DefiLlama data. The approximately 13% gap marks a shift in DEX activity rankings. Solana had reached $4.15 billion in daily DEX volume in mid-July 2026,

Bitcoin self-custody rates dropped to approximately 49% of total supply, down from around 78% in late 2022, according to Glassnode data cited by Bitcoin Magazine. The decline marks the first sustained reversal in Bitcoin's history of individual wallet holdings. Spot Bitcoin ETFs and

Bitkey, the self-custody Bitcoin wallet built by Jack Dorsey's Block, Inc., is accelerating development of a coin control feature in response to user feedback. The feature will allow users to label individual UTXOs and manually select which coins to include in transactions. Bitkey launched

Researchers at the People's Public Security University of China built an AI system that identifies illicit Bitcoin transactions with 89.4% overall accuracy, according to findings published in May in the Journal of Intelligence and reported by the South China Morning Post. The framework combines

Chris Giancarlo, who chaired the Commodity Futures Trading Commission from 2017 to 2019, stated in a recent interview that the crypto industry should stop treating the CLARITY Act as essential legislation. The bill has remained in the Senate without a floor vote for 80 days after the

Bitcoin fell to $62,236 on July 31, reducing its market capitalization to $1.26 trillion after starting the day above $65,000. The nearly $3,000 decline occurred during a week when the Federal Open Market Committee voted to keep interest rates unchanged. Total cryptocurrency market capitalization

Korean retail investors accounted for an average 58.4% of daily trading volume in the KOSPI market from January through July, according to Korea Exchange data. The concentration peaked on April 6 when retail trading reached 69% of total market volume, with the single largest trading day occurring on

Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix drove KOSPI's record single-day point gain on May 31, when the index rose 1001.89 points (17.91%) to 6595.45 - the largest point increase in KOSPI history. The two semiconductor stocks contributed 68.4% of that day's gains, rising 26.81% and 29.95% respectively. The