Major news and information from last night to this morning (July 15–July 16)

BNB Chain completes its 36th quarterly BNB burn, destroying 1.6058 million BNB worth about $932 million

BNB Foundation announced the completion of its 36th quarterly BNB burn. This round destroyed 1,615,827.795 BNB in total, worth about $932 million at the time’s prices. The burn transaction has been publicly recorded on-chain. The official said BNB advances its deflationary goals through a dual mechanism: the Auto-Burn mechanism and real-time burns based on gas fees. The long-term plan is to gradually reduce the total BNB supply from the current ~133 million BNB to 100 million BNB.

Revolut gets Dubai preliminary license, plans to provide crypto brokerage and trading services in the UAE

Fintech company Revolut has received “in-principle approval” from Dubai’s Virtual Asset Regulatory Authority (VARA), allowing it to operate crypto-asset brokerage and proprietary trading, investment, and exchanges in the UAE. Revolut plans to offer crypto services to local users through its retail app and the standalone trading platform Revolut X. However, the above business still requires final regulatory approval before going live.

Elon Musk: X will fully open-source its codebase after completing security review

Elon Musk posted that after completing security vulnerability audits, X will open-source the platform’s complete code library for “no exceptions,” and will invite third parties to audit the live system online to verify that the production-environment code matches the open-source code exactly. Musk said this move aims to build user trust through verifiable system transparency.

BlackRock digital assets AUM falls to $48.8 billion, despite net inflows of $15.1 billion during the period

BlackRock disclosed that assets under management for its digital asset products fell from $79.6 billion a year ago to $48.8 billion. The decline is close to 39%. Although it recorded net inflows of about $15.1 billion during the period, it was offset by market depreciation of $45.8 billion. Net outflows of $3.1 billion occurred in the second quarter for this business. In the same period, BlackRock’s overall AUM hit a record high of $153k. In this earnings report, BlackRock set a crypto business annual revenue target of about $500 million by 2030, more than 10 times higher than current base fees of about $40 million and securities lending income. The company said it will expand around existing spot Bitcoin ETF (IBIT), spot Ethereum ETF (ETHA), and option-strategy products BITY, aiming to become a native asset manager for stablecoin reserves and digital wallets.

DTCC with JPMorgan, BlackRock, Goldman Sachs and nearly 40 other institutions advances tokenization of stocks and US Treasuries

The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) is advancing a Wall Street asset tokenization plan, tokenizing assets including Microsoft (Microsoft), SPY, QQQ, and U.S. Treasuries. Participating institutions include JPMorgan, BlackRock, and Goldman Sachs. The institutions plan to use tokenized assets for collateral transfers, repo (repurchase agreement) transactions, and stock trading. The goal is to improve capital efficiency, optimize settlement processes, and push traditional financial infrastructure onto the blockchain.

Cyclops completes $20 million Series A financing to drive stablecoin payment settlement

Cyclops, a Miami-based payment infrastructure startup, has completed a $20 million Series A round to help payment companies use stablecoins to accelerate fund settlement. The company optimizes cross-border and traditional payment flows using stablecoins to improve settlement efficiency, reduce costs, and promote the use of stablecoins in enterprise payments and financial infrastructure.

Indian AI coding platform Emergent raises $130 million Series C, valuation reaches $1.5 billion

Indian AI coding startup Emergent completed a $130 million Series C financing round, with a post-investment valuation of about $1.5 billion, roughly 5 times higher than its $300 million valuation earlier this January. The round is led by private investment firm Creaegis, with participation from MNI Ventures-Claypond, Sentinel Global, as well as Khosla Ventures, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Lightspeed, and Y Combinator. Total funding reached $230 million. Emergent focuses on an “engineering team as a service” AI coding platform for small and mid-sized businesses and entrepreneurs. Its annualized revenue is currently about $120 million, up about 70% over the past four months. It has more than 200k paying users, with customers across logistics, manufacturing, construction, and property management.

Kalshi self-certifies CFTC-regulated flight cancellation event contract

Kalshi has self-certified a CFTC-regulated flight cancellation event contract that allows investors to trade based on whether the number of cancellations at a specific airport during a given period exceeds a set threshold. The contract will settle based on actual cancellation data, providing standardized hedging tools for risks related to flight operations while bringing flight disruption into a contract-based trading market.

Coinbase to stop supporting USDC deposits and withdrawals on the Noble network on August 17

Coinbase will stop supporting USDC deposits and withdrawals on the Noble network on August 17, 2026. At that time, users will be unable to send or receive USDC on that network.

Fed Chair Waller: AI over the next 12 months is expected to lift observable price levels

Fed Chair Waller testified at the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs “Federal Reserve Semiannual Monetary Policy Report” hearing. He said recent inflation data cannot perfectly reflect underlying inflation. When the data moves in the right direction, any central bank would be pleased. In the near term, he believes AI investment is good for employment. During this period, AI will bring disruptive changes. AI investment could be very beneficial for jobs because we are building infrastructure. Without facts, it is inappropriate to judge what a meeting will cover in advance. I strictly adhere to and exceed the ethical agreements, selling or fully planning to sell the assets I held before serving as Fed Chair. I have converted my investments into cash equivalents and short-term Treasuries. Over the next 12 months, AI is expected to raise observable price levels. Whether AI causes inflation depends on the Fed. I believe AI is a long-term job creator and may bring disruptive effects. Regarding the short-term impact of AI, I cannot guarantee it will not cause job disruption, nor can I make people feel reassured about employment issues. The price spikes caused by AI are real, and I do not want to downplay that. I would rather see companies invest than repurchase stock. Corporate capital investment’s contribution to GDP is huge, and I expect this trend to continue.

Guardrails: Trump to attend a key meeting on the ethics provisions of the “Clarity Act” at the White House on Thursday

Ethical issues will be the core topic of a meeting on Thursday afternoon with President Trump, a small group of lawmakers, and White House staff, as lawmakers try to resolve the ethics provisions in the “Clarity Act.” Kristin Smith, president of the Solana Policy Research Institute, said the meeting will be held at 2:30 p.m. local time Thursday. Attendees include Republican Senators Bernie Moreno and Cynthia Lummis, senior White House crypto adviser Patrick Witt, and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles. The meeting comes as lawmakers have been negotiating the ethics provisions to address lawmakers’ concerns about Trump and his family’s crypto businesses. Smith said the meeting is “crucial” for the passage of the “Clarity Act,” and that they hope to get Trump’s approval of the ethics provisions. Crypto industry sources said progress depends on the meeting on Thursday—Trump’s personal attendance is a big deal. Senate Majority Leader Thune hopes to have the bill brought to a full vote before the August recess, with an updated text expected to be released this week.

BlackRock CFO: The long-term goal is to make crypto assets and various traditional assets natively available inside digital wallets

BlackRock CFO Martin Small outlined a vision for the convergence of crypto and traditional finance in an earnings call. He said the long-term goal is for BlackRock products to be natively available in places where investors hold digital assets—so investors can efficiently allocate to crypto assets, stablecoins, and long-term stocks and bonds without leaving the digital wallet. The company also seeks to ultimately offer tokenized U.S. Treasury funds, iShares ETFs, and private market products, saying tokenization and crypto are “purely endogenous growth opportunities.” Despite second-quarter crypto AUM falling to $49 billion due to a weak market (down about 40% year over year), BlackRock reiterated its 2030 revenue target of $500 million for its crypto-related business. The company’s stock rose more than 7% in the early trading after the earnings release. BlackRock manages the largest spot Bitcoin ETF globally, with AUM of about $60 billion.

A whale buys and withdraws 21.3k ETH from Fidelity custody, about $40.95 million

Another whale is accumulating ETH, buying and withdrawing 21.3k ETH (about $40.95 million) from Fidelity custody to a new wallet.

Tether invests $20 million in Argentina digital bank Ualá, expanding in Latin America

Tether is investing $20 million in Argentina’s digital bank Ualá as part of Ualá’s $197 million funding round announced in March. Ualá plans to use the funds to accelerate expansion in Argentina, Mexico, and Colombia. Ualá founder and CEO Pierpaolo Barbieri said that due to the regulatory environment in Argentina and Mexico, USDT stablecoins will not be integrated into the platform in the near term, and Tether is participating only as a financial investor. Ualá has 11 million customers. After this round, the company’s valuation is $3.2 billion, and it plans to accelerate expansion in Mexico.

ORANGE JUICE completes $40 million financing to build a permanent capital holding company backed by Bitcoin reserves

ORANGE JUICE announced it has completed $40 million in financing to establish a permanent capital holding company backed by Bitcoin reserves. The company was co-founded by partners of Bitcoin venture capital firm ego death capital, including Jeff Booth, Lyn Alden, Nico Lechuga, and Andi Pitt, with Ricardo Salinas, founder of Mexico’s Grupo Salinas, participating as an anchor investor. ORANGE JUICE is not constrained by fund cycles or resale pressure, allowing it to focus on the long-term development of the companies it invests in and to seek a public listing in the future. The company will first acquire stable cash-flow businesses generating $1 million to $10 million in annual cash flow. The acquired parties will retain their brand identities, and the founders can choose to retire, stay on, or gradually transition. Cash generated by the business will be reinvested into acquisitions or Bitcoin reserves.

A whale withdraws 30k ETH from Coinbase Prime and distributes it to three new wallets, about $57.66 million

A whale withdrew 30k ETH ($57.66 million) from Coinbase Prime and distributed it to three new wallets.

Stanford research: Polymarket five-minute Bitcoin betting market shows signs of manipulation

Researchers at Stanford University found signs of manipulation in Polymarket’s five-minute Bitcoin betting market. The study analyzed contract data over roughly two months and found repeated one-way trading bursts on Binance that temporarily affected the Bitcoin price a few seconds before bets ended, benefiting those whose positions aligned. The researchers call this pattern “temporary manipulation to lift spot prices” and point out a structural vulnerability in such contracts—participants can influence outcomes by trading the underlying asset that determines wins and losses. A Polymarket spokesperson said the platform uses multiple independent price oracles to ensure accuracy, and plans to transition some markets to settlement using longer time windows next year to enhance market integrity. The study estimates that suspected manipulators profited about $8.2 million over two months, mainly from losses incurred by retail traders. Similar patterns were not as evident in 15-minute markets, and longer time windows make it harder to affect outcomes.

Aave V4 goes live on the Avalanche network, first expanding beyond Ethereum

The decentralized lending protocol Aave Labs announced that Aave V4 has officially launched on the Avalanche network, marking the first expansion of this version since its deployment on the Ethereum blockchain. The deployment is part of a plan by Aave founder Stani Kulechov to introduce tokenized RWA into the protocol. V4 uses a “core-branch” architecture that isolates risk across different liquidity hubs. On Avalanche, the deployment runs a core liquidity hub and three independent markets: the main market, AVAX-related markets (built around liquid staking), and a foreign exchange market.

NYDIG: Bitcoin is set to underperform this year; if it replicates the 2022 pattern or falls to $38k–$39k

NYDIG’s report shows Bitcoin is down nearly 30% year-to-date, the worst among various asset classes, underperforming U.S. Treasuries, silver, and the Swiss franc, among others. The report says the current weakness is driven by the supply mechanism rather than risk sentiment. It also notes that the timing and structure of its 2025–2026 drawdowns are increasingly similar to adjustment years in 2014, 2018, and 2022. If it fully replicates the 2022 pattern, the cycle low could be around $38,000–$39,000. However, Bitcoin had its lowest volatility year in history in 2025, and some analysts think this year’s pullback may be shallower than in prior bear markets. In 2026 Q2, the rolling correlation between Bitcoin and gold is rising. Both assets faced selloffs, and the “devaluation trade” lost momentum. Bitwise said last week that although Bitcoin is in the deepest and longest low period since the last bear market, fundamentals have set the stage for a rapid recovery. NYDIG said the “CLARITY Act” is the “most important forward-looking catalyst” for the digital asset industry.

A whale again pulls 50 WBTC from Binance; its total holdings of ETH and WBTC have exceeded $100 million

The whale or entity that has accumulated nearly $100 million in ETH and WBTC since July withdrew 50 WBTC from Binance about 8 hours ago. It currently holds 49.41k ETH and 300 WBTC, with total value of more than $103 million. Its average cost is about $1,705 and $63,027.58, with an unrealized profit of $1.5B.

BlackRock CEO: Bullish on the next 12 months; the crypto market is more stable after leverage clears

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink said in a CNBC interview that he is “very optimistic” about the market over the next 12 months, believing that a technological revolution will drive more companies to achieve better profit margins. Fink pointed out that the leverage level in the current financial system is far lower than during the 2008–2009 financial crisis, and that overall risk exposure is limited, though he warned that there are still localized risks. Regarding Bitcoin, Fink said there were too many leveraged participants in the previous crypto cycle, and after multiple rounds of liquidations, the Bitcoin and crypto markets are now more stable. Over the past 12 months, BlackRock benefited from a 260-basis-point improvement in profit margins from technology applications and added $1 trillion in assets without adding employees.

AI already knows

Curated AI news from the past 24 hours that’s most worth your attention—helping you filter AI noise. Source: PANews AI Watch Room

Thinking Machines Lab releases its first general-purpose multimodal model, Inkling

Thinking Machines Lab released its first AI model, Inkling, an open-weight model that supports text, image, and audio inputs. The model has 975B total parameters and 41B active parameters, supports a 1 million token context window, and uses a MoE architecture.

xAI formally open-sources the AI coding tool Grok Build

xAI has officially open-sourced Grok Build on GitHub, a terminal-native AI programming agent. Previously, the tool sparked privacy controversy after uploading users’ entire directory contents, and xAI quickly responded and fully opened up the code.

OpenAI releases super-hacker tool GPT-Red for model security testing

OpenAI announced an automated red-teaming system called GPT-Red, using self-play to improve a model’s robustness against prompt injection and network attacks. OpenAI claims the system was used in training for the newly released GPT-5.6, making it the most robust version to date.