PA Daily | Stablecoin inflows to exchanges have fallen to the lowest level since 2025; Bitcoin spot ETFs saw net outflows of $240 million yesterday

Today’s News Brief:

Analyst: Stablecoin inflows to exchanges hit the lowest level since 2025, highlighting weak demand and lack of investor interest

Bitcoin spot ETFs saw a net outflow of $240 million yesterday; BlackRock’s IBIT led with a net outflow of $212 million

Son of a former member of Wuhan’s supervisory commission laundered over HK$64 million in Hong Kong, sentenced to 6 years and 9 months

Robinhood is in talks with Crypto.com on a partnership for prediction markets

Worldcoin Foundation sells 217 million WLD to institutions including Pantera Capital at a 36% discount; worth about $52.5 million

World Foundation raises $52.5 million by selling WLD; Pantera Capital leads the round

Bitcoin’s one-year realized volatility falls to 42%, nearing multi-year lows

LayerZero will gradually stop supporting 20 active but extremely low-activity chains, including Moonbeam and Taiko

Regulation & Macro

Son of a former member of Wuhan’s supervisory commission launders over HK$64 million in Hong Kong, sentenced to 6 years and 9 months

Xiao Jun, son of a former member of the Wuhan Municipal Supervisory Commission, Lau “Xiao Rui” laundered more than HK$64 million through underground money-changer channels in Hong Kong, while also obtaining Hong Kong residency rights using false materials. On July 23, the Hong Kong Regional Court handed down its verdict. At age 37, Xiao Rui was found guilty of all counts—four charges of “money laundering” and one count of “using a copy of false documents”—and was sentenced to 6 years and 9 months in prison. Xiao Rui argued that the large sum involved came from business gains legally made by his mother and also that it was income from his sale of Bitcoin. The judge rejected this, saying that when Xiao Rui went to Hong Kong years ago to apply for the “Capital Investor Entry Scheme,” it was impossible he didn’t know about the threshold for assets in the tens of millions. During questioning by prosecutors, Xiao Rui admitted that his mother had been working as a nurse and office staff in a hospital, and the explanation that he earned income from selling Bitcoin was also rejected by the court because there was no record of any transactions.

State Administration for Market Regulation issues administrative penalty to Trip.com for abuse of market dominance position; penalties total 5.18B yuan

The State Administration for Market Regulation, in accordance with law, issued an administrative penalty for monopoly conduct to Trip.com Group Co., Ltd. for abusing its position of dominance in the market. Penalties and confiscations total 5.18B yuan. Upon investigation, since 2020, Trip.com has abused its position of dominance in the market for online hotel reservation platform services within China, using a traffic allocation mechanism at its core. It carried out two types of monopoly conduct by using platform rules and technical means: First, it required operators of “featured/special brand” (“特牌”) hotels to carry out exclusive cooperation to be incentivized with the most traffic tilting and rights and benefits support, inducing high transaction-volume and strong service-quality hotel operators with greater user appeal to choose “featured/special brand” hotels, and requiring them not to cooperate with competitive platforms. Second, it forced operators of “gold” (“金牌”) and “non-licensed” (“无牌”) hotels to offer the “lowest price across the entire web,” requiring hotels operating across platforms to have the lowest prices on the Trip.com platform and allowing Trip.com to adjust prices directly. If it found that a hotel’s price was higher than that on a competitive platform, Trip.com would reduce the price using technical tools such as “price adjustment assistant” (“调价助手”) and “listing clearance channel” (“挂牌通”), along with manual measures. Trip.com also used technical means to monitor the implementation of exclusive cooperation and “lowest price across the web,” and ensured the implementation of the conduct with punitive measures such as restricting traffic, “removing listings” (“摘牌”), and deducting order reserve funds. Pursuant to Article 57 and Article 59 of the Anti-Monopoly Law, and considering comprehensively factors such as the nature, severity, and duration of Trip.com’s monopoly conduct, the State Administration for Market Regulation made an administrative penalty decision according to law: order Trip.com to stop the illegal conduct and refund in full the order reserve funds forcibly deducted from hotel operators of 122 million yuan; confiscate illegal gains of 1.66B yuan; and impose a fine of 7.5% of its 2025 China domestic sales revenue of 46.96B yuan, totaling 3.52B yuan. Trip.com said in a public announcement that it sincerely accepts and will firmly comply, and will strictly align with regulatory requirements to推进 step-by-step and systematically implement all rectification work, ensuring all measures are carried out properly. Trip.com will publicly disclose specific rectification measures to the public, proactively accept oversight from all sectors of society, and ensure the rectification work produces tangible results.

Thailand SEC files criminal charges against Bitkub and former executives, alleging concealment of a massive 2021 theft incident

The Thailand Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has filed criminal charges with the Office of the Anti-Corruption and Economic Crimes Suppression under the Ministry of Justice against Bitkub Online and former directors Sakolkorn Sakavee and Thaweesap Rawan. The SEC alleges that after a theft incident in 2021 involving about 1.7 billion Thai baht and 16 types of digital assets, they made false or omitted declarations in the daily net capital report Form DA 1, violating relevant provisions of the Emergency Decree on Digital Asset Businesses. The SEC said the two former directors bear equal responsibility for the false reporting, and the case will move into police investigation, prosecution review, and court proceedings. Bitkub responded that the company and customer assets are currently safe and intact; at the time, the equal amount of assets had been repurchased by advancing funds from the co-founder, and customers did not suffer losses.

India asks GitHub to take down Jack Dorsey’s Bitcoin offline messaging app Bitchat code

An internet crime agency under India’s Ministry of Home Affairs has, under Article 79(3)(b) of the IT Act, asked GitHub to remove three code repositories for the offline messaging app Bitchat supported by Jack Dorsey within 3 hours. The notice states that Bitchat does not require phone numbers or registration to transmit encrypted messages and Bitcoin transactions via a decentralized Bluetooth mesh network, and it does not log centralized logs, severely obstructing lawful monitoring and traceability by law-enforcement agencies. During this period, Delhi student demonstrators from “Cockroach Janta Party” used Bluetooth-mesh apps such as Bitchat to maintain communications amid repeated internet shutdowns. Currently, Bitchat can still be downloaded from Google and Apple app stores, and its open-source code is generally mirrored on multiple platforms, making it difficult for a single-platform takedown to fully delete it.

Project Updates

TRUMP team unlocks and transfers out 10.83 million tokens, worth $16.91 million

The $TRUMP team token address unlocked 10.837 million $TRUMP (worth $16.91 million) for transfer 45 minutes ago. Based on the previous two unlocks, these tokens will subsequently be transferred into BitGo and then flow into CEXs such as OKX.

Robinhood is in talks with Crypto.com on prediction market partnership

Robinhood is in talks with Crypto.com for a partnership on prediction market business. If the deal is reached, the prediction market provided by Crypto.com will be integrated into Robinhood, and users can participate in Crypto.com’s prediction markets via Robinhood. Previously, Robinhood mainly relied on partners such as Kalshi and Interactive Brokers’ ForecastEx and Rothera to provide contracts; this move could make Robinhood compete more directly with Kalshi.

Across publishes post-incident report on security event: net loss below $4 million; user funds unaffected

Cross-chain protocol Across Protocol released a post-incident report on the Relayer security event. On July 17, attackers exploited a vulnerability in the software that reads events on the Risk Labs Solana chain, forging 1,627 fake top-up events with a total nominal value of about $41.7 million. The Relayer completed settlement for 581 of them before pausing Solana services, involving about $4.5 million of its own funds; of that, about $500k of the attacker’s funds were stuck inside the protocol, with a net loss of below $4 million. The remaining about $37 million in fake top-ups had already been invalidated. Across emphasized that user funds were never lost or at risk at any time. All user transfers were completed or fully refunded on the day, and all losses were reduced to the minimum extent relative to the Risk Labs relayer’s own loss. In addition, no smart contracts were exploited. The Solana program and all EVM contracts ran as expected. The vulnerability resided in the Risk Labs relayer codebase. Currently, Solana order flow has been changed to route entirely through CCTP, the acquisition of ACX tokens is unaffected, and operations continue as planned.

LayerZero will gradually stop supporting 20 active but extremely low-activity chains, including Moonbeam and Taiko

LayerZero announced that it will gradually stop supporting 20 chains with extremely low activity levels. This means LayerZero’s DVN and Executor services will no longer apply to these chains. Botanix will stop support on July 30; Moonriver, Moonbeam, Nexera, and Canto will stop support on July 31; EDU Chain, Meter, Shimmer, Cyber, Silicon, Sophon, Bitlayer, DFK Chain, Arbitrum Nova, and DOS Chain will stop support on August 28; Aurora, Taiko, BounceBit, Japan Open Chain, and LightLink will stop support on September 30. Additionally, Stargate v2 will gradually stop support for Botanix, EDU Chain, Aurora, Taiko, and LightLink. Users holding related Stargate Pool or Stargate Hydra assets should bridge their assets to networks that are still supported before the effective dates, otherwise they may lose access to their funds.

Phantom wallet will stop supporting Monad on August 12

Monad posted on X that Phantom wallet will stop supporting Monad on August 12 and advised users to migrate funds to other EVM wallets. The alternative wallets listed by Monad include MetaMask, Rabby, Backpack, OKX Wallet, Trust Wallet, and Uniswap Wallet. Phantom previously integrated with the network when the Monad mainnet went live in November 2025.

X product lead Nikita Bier: removed 42k accounts that use chatbots for auto-replies

X product lead Nikita Bier wrote that they found 42k accounts using chatbots to automatically reply to users and removed them from the platform. “The core value of X is to truly reflect human nature, and using AI to interact with users in a programmatic manner without human intervention runs counter to our mission.”

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang is allegedly onboarded on the X platform

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang is allegedly registered an individual account on X, “@JensenHuang”. The bio shows that he is the founder and CEO of NVIDIA, located in Santa Clara. NVIDIA’s official account NVIDIA AI follows this account, but so far the account has not posted any content.

BlackRock to transfer more than 3,126 BTC to Coinbase Prime, about $203 million

BlackRock will move about 3,126 BTC (about $203 million) from its IBIT spot Bitcoin ETF wallet into Coinbase Prime. On-chain data shows that the transfer was completed via multiple transactions, including multiple transfers of 300 BTC in each transaction and one transfer of 126.168 BTC; the funds all came from the same ETF custody address.

Circle adds minting of 250 million USDC stablecoins

USDC issuer Circle has added minting of 250 million USDC via the USDC Treasury.

Fundraising & Investment News

Capital Group increases holdings of $5.52 million in Bitcoin treasury company Strive stock

SMALLCAP World Fund, a unit under Capital Group—an investment management firm with assets under management of $3.3 trillion—recently disclosed that it increased its holdings of 481,772 shares of Bitcoin treasury company Strive ($ASST), worth $5.52 million. It now holds 2.93 million shares, worth $33.62 million in total.

Worldcoin Foundation sells 217 million WLD to institutions including Pantera Capital at a 36% discount; worth about $52.5 million

Worldcoin Foundation sold 217 million WLD to Pantera Capital and other institutions about 8 hours ago, worth about $52.5 million. While the sale price was not disclosed, chain transfers were conducted after the announcement: the team wallet distributed 217.4 million WLD to multiple addresses. Based on the token amount and the fundraising figure, the sale price was about $0.24, which is a 36% discount versus the current WLD price. These WLD must be locked for 1 year, or this discount is one of the reasons.

World Foundation raises $52.5 million by selling WLD; Pantera Capital leads the round

World Foundation, the foundation behind the World project, raised $52.5 million by strategically selling WLD tokens. All tokens are locked for one year. The first “initial settlement” of this round is led by Pantera Capital. Bain Capital Crypto, Eightco Holdings (NASDAQ code: ORBS), Selini Capital, Susquehanna Crypto, and others also participated. The foundation said the WLD sold in this transaction is only for internal use within the World Network and does not represent equity or profit rights in Tools for Humanity. The funds will be used to expand World ID technology for enterprises, individuals, and AI agents. World ID has already been integrated with platforms including Zoom, DocuSign, Okta, Vercel, and Tinder, with more than 39 million people joining the network so far, including more than 18 million completing Orb human verification. The current price of WLD is about $0.37, and its total market cap is about $1.31 billion.

US defense technology company Anduril is in talks for funding at a $100 billion valuation

US defense technology company Anduril is in talks for funding at an estimated valuation of about $100 billion. No decision has yet been made regarding future financing. It is understood the company may require investors to commit to participate in the subsequent second round at a higher valuation.

“Woodstock” Ark fund buys about $83.1k worth of BMNR stock

“Woodstock” Ark’s fund released its trading records for July 24: the ARKK ETF bought 5,264 shares of Bitmine (BMNR) stock, for about $83,118.

Kinetic Group plans to acquire up to 10% of the $FLUID token supply

Kinetic Group plans to acquire up to 10% of the $FLUID token supply through purchases in the open market and OTC trades.

LMAX seeks to sell or go public, valuation may be up to $5 billion

Institutional crypto trading platform LMAX Group is working with Morgan Stanley and investment bank KBW to evaluate strategic options, considering a potential sale, a SPAC merger, and a Nasdaq or European IPO, with a potential valuation as high as about $5 billion. Insiders say the company is not in a rush to list, and that its FX business supports the weak crypto market. In recent years, LMAX has accelerated expansion, launching a 24/7 multi-asset exchange supporting FX, digital assets, commodities, and tokenized securities. In January this year, it received Ripple’s strategic investment of $150 million to drive institutional adoption of the RLUSD stablecoin through its trading and settlement network.

B2C2 plans to sell equity at a valuation of over $1 billion, but valuation is too high and becomes a deal obstacle

SBI Holdings of Japan, which owns 90%, crypto market maker B2C2 has held talks over the past 18 months with multiple potential buyers regarding selling part or all of its equity, but the transaction has been constrained by valuation disagreements. Insiders say B2C2 is seeking a valuation above $1 billion, making it difficult to reach a deal in the current crypto market environment. Founded in 2015, B2C2 is headquartered in London. It provides crypto market making and liquidity services for banks, exchanges, broker-dealers, hedge funds, and asset management institutions. Its business covers spot, derivatives, structured products, and OTC. Its performance is not separately disclosed; instead, it is included in SBI’s crypto assets segment. For the most recent fiscal year, that segment had revenue of about $550 million and profit before tax of 2.12 billion yen. Recently, SBI also agreed to acquire the crypto exchange Bitbank for about $289 million.

Opinions & Analysis

Elon Musk openly supports Jensen Huang, backing the open model stance

Musk reposted on X saying “I fully support this; Jensen is right,” openly backing Jensen Huang, NVIDIA CEO, for an open letter he previously signed and championed emphasizing the importance of open models.

Jensen Huang speaks on X for the first time: openly supports open-weight AI models

NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang shared, in his first post on X, an open letter co-signed by NVIDIA, emphasizing the importance of open-weight model approaches to the AI industry. The letter states that AI will reshape all industries and empower national economies; open models help strengthen safety and cybersecurity, accelerate the diffusion of innovation, and maintain sovereignty. The statement emphasizes that relying on a small number of closed models creates single points of failure and concentrates power. Open-weight models can improve overall AI security through more transparent safety testing and red-team offense/defense exercises, while also urging governments to increase investment in foundational infrastructure such as compute power, data sets, and evaluation tools, and avoid imposing overly early or overly strict restrictions on open models to prevent innovation from being pushed overseas.

Key Data

Analyst: Stablecoin inflows to exchanges fall to the lowest level since 2025, highlighting weak demand and lack of investor interest

Since 2025, the amount of funds flowing into exchanges via stablecoins has continued to decline, reaching the lowest level since that period. At present, the monthly average inflow of stablecoins (USDT, USDC) is about $2.3 billion, while the annual average inflow is about $3.7 billion. When Bitcoin prices reached their all-time highs, the monthly average inflow was $5.6 billion and the annual average inflow was $4.3 billion. This dynamic clearly indicates current weakness in demand and lack of investor interest. However, it should be noted that when stablecoin inflows reach their peaks, it is often a lagging signal. When some investors accelerate profit-taking, exchanges increase stablecoin supply, while the latest investors continue to bet that Bitcoin prices will keep rising. At present, market demand still needs to improve.

Bitcoin spot ETFs saw a net outflow of $240 million yesterday; BlackRock’s IBIT led with a net outflow of $212 million

Yesterday (July 24, Eastern Time), Bitcoin spot ETFs had a total net outflow of $240 million. The ETF with the largest single-day net outflow was BlackRock ETF IBIT, with a net outflow of $212 million; its historical total net inflow has reached $10.84M. Next was Fidelity ETF FBTC, with a net outflow of $27.9116 million and historical total net inflows of $500k. As of the time of writing, the total net asset value of Bitcoin spot ETFs is $42k, and the ETF net asset ratio is 6.05%. Historical cumulative net inflows are $42k.

Bitcoin one-year realized volatility falls to 42%, nearing multi-year lows

Bitcoin’s one-year realized volatility is approaching about 42% at the end of Q2. Although the price has been weak, it remains close to multi-year lows. This suggests the asset is becoming mature or volatility is being suppressed; low volatility often indicates that once catalysts appear, volatility will spike.

Hyperliquid repurchased and destroyed about 130k HYPE tokens in the past 7 days

In the past 7 days, derivatives trading platform Hyperliquid repurchased and destroyed about 130,870 HYPE tokens, involving around $7.65 million, with an average repurchase price of about $58.45. The total amount of HYPE removed from circulation this week is 130,870 tokens.