加密城市 Crypto City

QTS Realty Trust, a real estate investment trust under Blackstone, recently sold its equity interests in three data centers in Northern Virginia for $3.5 billion. It immediately then pulled out of a planned development project for what would be the world’s largest data center campus. As a major data center developer with related assets totaling more than $150 billion, two consecutive withdrawal signals have left the market wondering whether the AI infrastructure boom is cooling down?
Blackstone steadily exits the AI data center market: sells assets, withdraws from development
Bloomberg reported that Blackstone is pulling out of the US data center market. The group recently sold its equity interests in three data centers in Northern Virginia to Digital Realty Trust for $3.5 billion. The transaction structure includes $1.2 billion in cash and $2.3 billion in Digital Realty stock. The three facilities are two 96 MW data centers in Manassas (with Blackstone holding an 80% stake) and one 96 MW data center in Sterling (with a 50% stake). All are assets Blackstone acquired less than three years ago.

The protagonist prototype of the blockbuster short-selling film The Big Short, investor Michael Burry, has revealed on his personal Substack platform that he has officially established a short position in Micron Technology (NASDAQ: MU), a memory chip manufacturer. Burry said the recent surge in this memory company’s stock price has been driven mainly by market speculation frenzy and fear of missing out; he warned that it may face a sharp pullback and correction in the future.
Micron stock price divergence from the 200-day moving average has reached its highest level
According to the investment information Burry released, on July 1 he shorted Micron at a price of $1,051.87 per share. He believes this wave of Micron’s rally is driven by the Greater Fool Theory and public commitment bias. Past historical data show that Micron exhibits strong cyclical volatility characteristics, with 34 instances of sudden declines exceeding 30% within 42 years. In addition, the extent to which Micron’s stock price has deviated from its 200-day moving average has reached the highest level since 1984, even surpassing the extreme value during the 2000 dot-com bubble period.

Tether CEO warns: four major mismatches behind the AI capex frenzy
We’ve heard talk of AI bubbles, but what are the real risks? Recently, Paolo Ardoino, CEO of Tether—the stablecoin issuer of USDT—pointed to a risk signal: AI tech giants are subsidizing compute to acquire users and spending big on hardware that can be depreciated away in just 3 to 5 years.
He warns that this wave of AI capex frenzy hides four mismatches: token prices fail to reflect true costs, the mismatch between early investment and profit timelines, the mismatch between capital expiration and short hardware lifespans, and open-source AI steadily eating into an increasing share of revenue. What could possibly go wrong?

Vitalik Unveils the “Lean Ethereum” Blueprint, Launching a New Round of Fundamental Restructuring for the Ethereum Network
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has unveiled a new long-term development blueprint, “Lean Ethereum,” and said this will be the most important protocol restructuring for Ethereum after The Merge, marking the network’s third major stage of development. The plan is expected to be rolled out in phases, taking about 3 to 4 years to complete, and will cover key core infrastructure such as the consensus mechanism, state management, the virtual machine, security, privacy, and scalability. Nearly all underlying protocols will undergo changes.

Claude Fable 5 is back and fully reopened, but users report that it has become dumber?
Claude Fable 5, which had previously been flagged by the U.S. government for security vulnerabilities and was once restricted from export, was fully reopened on July 1. But over the past few days, users have reported that after its revival, Fable 5 seems dumber—did it suddenly become less intelligent?
According to a report by Bleepingcomputer, Fable 5’s weekly usage quota is limited—users can use at most 50% of their quota. After July 7, it will completely switch to a top-up, pay-as-you-go model. On the U.S. forum Reddit, many users have also complained that the reactivated model performs worse than the original, and some say they trigger the safety review mechanisms more frequently.

K Wave Media, a K-pop entertainment company that once loudly called for “hoarding 10,000 bitcoins” (Nasdaq: KWM), has ultimately come to an end. According to documents the company filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Tuesday, it has completely abandoned its “bitcoin reserve” plan: not only has it sold all the bitcoins it held, but it also intends to raise USD 250 million from investors and fully pivot to the field of artificial intelligence (AI).
According to a filing submitted on June 30, K Wave Media has applied for a maximum of USD 250 million for a “shelf registration,” which will allow the company to register a certain amount of securities in advance and then issue stocks, bonds, and other financial instruments gradually to raise capital depending on market conditions.

Bought at the peak, absorbing a massive loss—Dave Portnoy decides to keep holding
American sports media Barstool Sports founder and well-known entrepreneur Dave Portnoy recently revealed that he entered the market when the price of Bitcoin ($BTC) was close to $100,000. As of now, he is reportedly down by several million dollars on paper. However, he said he does not plan to sell his Bitcoin holdings—even if the price drops to zero, he will hold on all the way.
Image source: (FOX Business)
In an interview on the (FOX Business) program, Portnoy said that over the years he has repeatedly misjudged the timing of buying and selling Bitcoin. Every time he sold, the price often kept rising; every time he bought back in, the market started to fall.

In-stock spot ETF ends consecutive outflows; single-day inflows attract $222 million
The flow of funds into U.S. Bitcoin ($BTC) spot ETFs has shown a reversal. According to data from Farside Investors, on July 2, U.S.-listed Bitcoin spot ETFs recorded net inflows of about $222 million. This ended the previous streak of net outflows over 10 consecutive trading days and also marked the strongest single-day inflow performance since early May. Market participants view this return of capital as an important signal that institutional buying is beginning to test the bottom of Bitcoin’s price.
Image source: Farside Investors
Among the various ETFs, Fidelity’s FBTC was the largest source of buying, attracting about $166 million in a single day. ARK 21Shares’ ARKB recorded net inflows of about $91.8 million. However, BlackRock’s IBIT still saw net outflows of about $40.4 million on the day, indicating that while funds are starting to move back in, institutional sentiment has not fully turned bullish yet and the market remains in a recovery phase.

Is Trump’s coin cutting power really that impressive? Data shows that one million wallets are bleeding a staggering $3.8 billion.
The U.S. government has recently released the Trump administration’s 2025 financial disclosure documents. In his first year back in the White House, Trump reported at least $2.24 billion in total income, including more than $1.4 billion related to cryptocurrency (including the value of holdings). This has sparked questions from the public about potential conflicts of interest.
Although Trump later claimed in an interview with (CNBC) that “everything is legal,” the latest on-chain data investigation shows that the Trump coin ($TRUMP), which fueled a speculative boom in 2025, has caused many investors to lose money.

Japan’s financial giant SBI Group’s cryptocurrency subsidiary, SBI Crypto, has announced that it will officially shut down its Bitcoin mining pool on July 31, ending the service it launched in 2021. According to Hashrate Index data, the pool currently accounts for about 2% of Bitcoin’s total network hashrate.
SBI Crypto said the pool will stop accepting miners’ submissions of “hashrate shares (Shares, performance contribution records used to calculate mining rewards)” on July 31, meaning miners must transfer their hashrate to other mining pools within less than a month.
However, SBI Crypto also promises that before it officially shuts down on July 31, the pool’s system will remain in normal operation. The company also urges customers to continue mining until the last day to ensure that eligible hashrate shares can be included in the final revenue settlement.

OpenUSD announces a large alliance; multiple South Korean companies step forward to clarify
The USD stablecoin OpenUSD (OUSD), driven by Open Standard, has recently announced the formation of a global stablecoin alliance and released a list of more than 140 partner organizations, including Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, Google, BlackRock, and several major South Korean companies such as Samsung Electronics, Dunamu, Shinhan Financial Group, and K Bank.
Open Standard said it hopes to promote the development of OUSD through the alliance model, combining payments, finance, blockchain, and enterprise ecosystems to build a more open stablecoin infrastructure. It also plans to launch related products later this year.

In the traditional business world, brand equity is a company’s lifeline. Frequent rebranding is almost equivalent to actively destroying the moat.
Nvidia won’t change its name every few years. Apple won’t give up “Apple” just because a business pivots. And Nike won’t tear down its brand just because market cycles are sluggish.
But in the cryptocurrency world, the rules are often reversed. According to RootData statistics, over 16% of crypto projects have changed their names at some point, and many top-tier, well-known projects have seen widespread rebranding.
Just yesterday, the on-chain IP ecosystem Story Protocol announced a rebrand to DATA, with the IP tokens migrating to the new DATA token on a 1:1 basis. In the past few months, Xion changed its name to Verona, Matrixport rebranded as BIT, and the TON token symbol was changed to GRAM. Earlier than that, a number of well-known projects such as Klaytn, EOS, Fantom, MakerDAO, Elrond, and Matic Network also changed their names.

Developers plead hardship: The whole public is obsessed with stocks, making real estate into orphans
Is Taiwan’s housing market affected by the stock-trading frenzy? Wang Ruiqi, chairman of the Taiwan Real Estate Brokers Association, recently said that the market is showing a “whole public is crazy about stocks” phenomenon. Because of the AI boom, funds are flowing heavily into the stock market, while real estate has been marginalized instead.
According to reports from Vision Magazine and United Daily News, Wang Ruiqi stated that many people develop a need for purchasing a second home due to job transfers, children’s schooling, or caring for elderly relatives. However, they are constrained by credit controls and are politely rejected by banks even before submitting applications. The loan ratio for switching homes under a contract was cut from 10% to 4.8%.

In the early 1980s, Wall Street invented something called “portfolio insurance,” claiming it could automatically sell stocks when the market fell, locking in losses.
In theory, it was perfect.
The problem is that everyone bought the same insurance. When the market started to drop, the programs triggered sell orders at the same time—selling pushed prices down, and the lower prices triggered even more selling. The Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 22.6% in a day, a disaster later known as “Black Monday.”
That crash left a lesson: when everyone uses the same set of hedging tools, those tools themselves become the biggest source of risk.

OpenAI reportedly today put forward a proposal to the U.S. government, offering to cede 5% equity in the company in exchange for political protection from the White House. According to a report by the Financial Times, the proposal involves not just OpenAI, but also the future of equity structures across the entire U.S. AI industry, including Anthropic, Google, Meta, and others. It also has the potential to become another “national credit” shot in the arm that fuels a new wave of AI investment enthusiasm.
U.S. government takes a stake in OpenAI: does Sam Altman want equity in exchange for political protection?
Citing two people familiar with the matter, the Financial Times reported on Thursday that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has proposed to the Trump administration an idea to give up 5% of the company’s equity. He argues that allowing the public to directly hold the financial interests of AI companies is the most direct way to share in the windfall of AI development. Based on the company’s valuation after its recent $852 billion funding round, the value of this equity stake is approximately $42.6 billion.

Vitalik publishes a long-form research paper exploring the most challenging technical hurdles in cryptography
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin recently released a technical article of over ten thousand words, delving into “Indistinguishability Obfuscation (iO)” technology.
He describes this technology as the “ultimate boss” of modern cryptography, and if it can truly mature in the future, it could redefine the development directions of blockchain, privacy computing, and information security.
Vitalik points out that the core idea behind indistinguishability obfuscation is to transform a piece of code into another form that has exactly the same function, yet is almost impossible to analyze the internal logic of. Users can still run the program normally and obtain the same results, but they cannot derive the algorithm, business logic, or sensitive information from the program contents. For this reason, it has long been regarded as one of the most difficult and most research-worthy fields in cryptography.

Apple is reportedly pushing the White House to approve the purchase of chips from China’s memory manufacturer CXMT (ChangXin Memory Technologies), which has been blacklisted due to ties with the U.S. military. The move aims to ease an unprecedented memory shortage wave. However, TF Securities analyst Tong Ming-chi admits that even if the deal goes through, it will not be enough to fill the gap. The DRAM supply chain is currently facing a shortage of 150 to 200 kwpm, and consumer electronics makers’ allocations are further squeezed out by the long-term supply contracts of cloud giants. This article will start from Apple’s position and break down the true scale of the DRAM shortfall.
Apple lobbies the White House to clear the way for CXMT, as the memory crisis spreads to consumer products

The FIFA World Cup continues to heat up in 2026, with players on the pitch playing at full throttle. Off the field, the so-called “prediction markets” are also seeing a surge of hot money. Thanks to a strong boost from the World Cup, the two major prediction-market platforms Kalshi and Polymarket both experienced explosive growth in trading volume last month.
According to data from The Block, Kalshi, Polymarket’s main site, and Polymarket US—set up specifically for U.S. users—combined for $44.8 billion in trading volume in June this year, up 75% from $25.66 billion in May.
Among the three major platforms, Kalshi showed the most striking growth. Its monthly trading volume rose from $16.81 billion to $31.5 billion, an 87.4% jump. Meanwhile, Polymarket’s main site—focused on non-U.S. markets—was no less impressive. Last month, its trading volume reached $10.26 billion, up 45% from $7.08 billion in May.

In today’s AI frenzy, GPUs have become the real “digital oil.” However, the underlying resource that powers a $33 billion AI industry is still being traded in the barbaric age of “private backroom negotiations.” Some companies are beginning to try to make this business openly transparent.
Recently, Ornn announced it has completed a $33 million seed round, led by a16z Crypto. Galaxy Ventures, Nordstar, and SV Angel also participated, while Vine Ventures, Crucible Capital, Link Ventures, and Box Group continued to join as follow-on investors.
And the company, founded in 2025 by two MIT graduates, Kush Bavaria and Wayne Nelms, was able to attract substantial early investments from multiple venture capital firms—not only because of the founders’ elite educational backgrounds, but also because they rode the wave of rapid expansion in AI infrastructure, turning their attention to an even more foundational layer: building a marketplace around compute power for trading.

The three major industry associations jointly sent a letter calling on Congress to retain the tax amendment provisions.
The three largest U.S. crypto industry organizations recently (6/21) jointly sent a letter to Congress urging lawmakers, when considering the latest tax bill, to fully retain the tax amendment provisions related to cryptocurrency mining and staking—without deleting or modifying any relevant content. They believe this will help establish a more reasonable framework for taxing digital assets.
Source: X/@DigitalChamber. The three largest U.S. crypto industry organizations jointly sent a letter to Congress urging lawmakers, when considering the latest tax bill, to fully retain the tax amendment provisions related to cryptocurrency mining and staking.