加密城市 Crypto City

UNDP expands adoption of Stellar as blockchain payments move from pilot to full rollout
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) announced that it will expand its cooperation with the Stellar Development Foundation to advance the previous humanitarian aid blockchain payments pilot program to a full operational stage. Going forward, it will establish standardized processes so that UNDP offices in different countries can apply the Stellar blockchain payment mechanism to more aid projects. This also means that blockchain payments are beginning to be integrated into the United Nations’ humanitarian aid infrastructure, and the scale of application will continue to grow.
Image source: X/@UNDP The United Nations Development Programme will expand cooperation with the Stellar Development Foundation to advance the previous humanitarian aid blockchain payments pilot program to a full operational stage

Trump publicly throws his support behind cryptocurrencies, boosting market sentiment
At an event under the “Trump Accounts” program, U.S. President Donald Trump said that he is now “a big crypto guy,” and revealed that he is considering adding Bitcoin ($BTC) to the investment options for Trump Accounts (newborn investment accounts). After the news was announced, market sentiment warmed up: Bitcoin moved back above $63,000 and at one point surpassed $64,000, recovering some of its earlier losses. As of the time of writing, the price of Bitcoin is $63,466.

Strategy sells Bitcoin for the first time, ending years of a “buy-only, never-sell” strategy
Public company Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy), which holds the most Bitcoin (BTC) globally, has reportedly sold a portion of its Bitcoin for the first time in recent days, drawing intense market attention. According to disclosures from the company, Strategy sold 3,588 Bitcoins, raising approximately $216 million, mainly to pay preferred stock dividends. This marks the first official sale of Bitcoin after Michael Saylor’s years-long insistence on a “buy-only, never-sell” strategy.
Strategy said that this sale is part of a capital allocation arrangement. Its purpose is to fulfill the company’s obligation to pay cash dividends to preferred stock investors, and it does not change the core strategy of holding Bitcoin long term. After the transaction is completed, the company will still hold more than 680,000 Bitcoins, remaining the publicly listed company with the largest Bitcoin holdings in the world.

U.S. Bitcoin strategic reserve faces setbacks as inter-agency power struggle over management rights continues
The U.S. Bitcoin strategic reserve plan—once eagerly anticipated by people in the crypto community—has now stalled. According to a report by Bloomberg, the main reason for the deadlock is that two U.S. government agencies are vying for management control, and there are questions about the legal authorization.
Insiders reveal that Trump had originally planned to store the assets in the Treasury Department, but later internal officials questioned whether the Treasury has the legal authority to do so. With tensions between the Treasury Department and the Department of Commerce due to internal competition, the Department of Justice is working on possible solutions.

Fueled by the AI frenzy, US stocks are repeatedly setting new highs, and tech shares are surging aggressively. By contrast, Bitcoin’s performance this year has been lackluster. Currently hovering around $63,000, it has fallen by nearly 50% from its all-time high in October last year. Unable to regain upward momentum for a long time, this strange phenomenon of “stocks and coins decoupling” has left many investors perplexed.
In response, asset management giants Hashdex and Charles Schwab released reports that agree the divergence is only a temporary phenomenon. However, the two firms cite entirely different reasons, yet both are confident that Bitcoin will ultimately once again reflect its fundamental value.

Strategy Chairman Michael Saylor announced on X at 12:03 UTC on July 6 that the company sold 3,588 bitcoins for approximately $216 million, which will be used to pay dividends and interest on its Digital Credit series of securities. This is the first execution of the BTC monetization plan since Strategy launched the Digital Credit Capital Framework on June 29. As of July 5, the company’s bitcoin reserves still stood at 843,775 BTC, and its USD reserves were $2.55 billion.
First launch of the 6/29 framework: $125 million relative to the $1.25 billion authorization equals 17%
This sale of coins is the first actual execution of Strategy “BTC Monetization Program.” The plan was announced in a June 29 8-K filing, authorizing the company to sell up to $1.25 billion worth of Bitcoin when needed. Proceeds will be fully deposited into the USD Reserve to pay preferred stock dividends, repurchase Digital Credit securities, and for general operating purposes. The $216 million sold this time is about 17% of the total available authorization. The average price works out to approximately $60,200 per BTC, close to the market price in early July.

Trump discloses more than $1.4 billion in crypto income, sparking an ethics controversy in Congress
A newly released financial disclosure by U.S. President Donald Trump shows that since 2025, his income from businesses related to cryptocurrency has exceeded $1.4 billion. This includes revenue from the sale of World Liberty Financial tokens, bitcoin investments, and multiple other businesses such as meme coins, making him a focus of public attention. Among these, the single meme coin project Trump Coin ($TRUMP) generated about $636 million in revenue, making it one of Trump’s largest income sources.
When facing external questions about whether he is involved in a conflict of interest, Trump said he has not been continuously tracking the relevant income and does not know how much profit cryptocurrency memes have actually brought him. He said that if he holds stock in a company and the company’s share price rises, he would not calculate every day how much his assets have increased, and he believes that outside criticism of his cryptocurrency income has been exaggerated.

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%.