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BlockBeats message: On August 16, following SpaceX’s listing on Nasdaq on June 12, its second-quarter 13F report marked the first time it had concentrated disclosures of its institutional holdings after the listing. A third-party 13F platform, Giantsight, statistics show that as of June 30, about 1,697 filing entities disclosed SpaceX positions, covering different types of capital including pre-IPO investors, venture capital, asset management firms, and pension funds.
SEC filings show that Google’s parent company, Alphabet, reported holdings of 551 million shares of SpaceX ($9.418 billion), the largest 13F position by size to date. Valor Management holds 503 million shares ($86.01 billion); FMR LLC holds 303 million shares ($51.66 billion); Gigafund Management holds 172 million shares ($29.36 billion); the Saudi Public Investment Fund holds 154 million shares ($26.34 billion); and BAMCO, a subsidiary of Baron, holds 146 million shares ($24.91 billion).

BlockBeats message: On August 16, according to the (San Francisco Standard) report, a 12-acre luxury estate in Hillsborough, California that sold for $70 million may have been purchased by Wu Yuhang, a 31-year-old co-founder of xAI. The deal is the highest-value residential transaction in the Bay Area so far this year.
Property records show that the buyer of the property at 3000 Larriston Avenue—whose main residence covers approximately 12,000 square feet—is “Daikon no Hana Capital LLC.” However, the broker handling the buyer’s transaction, Jia Xu, also represented Wu Yuhang last year in the purchase of a Los Altos Hills residence for $12 million. At the same time, the LLC’s managing attorney transferred Wu Yuhang’s existing home into a family trust about a week before this transaction was completed. Wu Yuhang may be the actual buyer of this deal.

BlockBeats message. On August 16, although the stock market rebounded significantly from panic triggered by the plunge in chip-related and artificial intelligence-related stocks, data shows that the short-selling scale is still rising. According to data released by the Korea Exchange on Sunday, as of this Tuesday, the outstanding short-selling balance in the Korean stock market was about 190 trillion won (about $13.4 billion), up 2.27 trillion won from 167.3 trillion won at the end of last month, an increase of 14%. At the end of February this year, the short-selling balance was 150 trillion won. In early March, it temporarily fell to 120 trillion won, and rose again to 230 trillion won at the beginning of June.

Original title: (After eight years of investment and a sudden turn: Why did Ethereum suddenly abandon Poseidon?)
Original author: ChandlerZ, Foresight News
On August 13, Ethereum researcher Justin Drake posted on X, saying that the Ethereum Foundation decided to abandon the SNARK-friendly hashing algorithm Poseidon on the L1 layer and instead adopt traditional hash functions such as SHA2 or BLAKE2.
Behind this decision is the accumulation of eight years of research and tens of millions of dollars in investment, as well as a major revision to the roadmap for post-quantum cryptography.
Since it was introduced in 2019, Poseidon has been regarded as an ideal hashing solution for applications such as zkRollups and zkVM. Its structure makes it cheaper and more efficient in SNARK circuits than traditional hash functions based on binary operations. However, when post-quantum security became a hard requirement for Ethereum, Poseidon’s limitations began to surface.

BlockBeats report: On August 16, Harvard University’s latest 13F filing for its endowment fund showed that, as of June 30, it still held 3.0446 million shares of BlackRock’s spot Bitcoin ETF, IBIT, with a value of approximately $101.4 million. The share count was exactly the same as at the end of Q1, ending the prior two consecutive quarters of selling. Harvard reduced its IBIT holdings by 21% in Q4 2025 and again by 43% in Q1 2026.
Currently, the $4.26 billion U.S. stock portfolio disclosed by Harvard’s endowment via IBIT accounts for about 2.4%. Its holdings in gold-related products are of higher value; as of the end of Q2, the combined value of iShares Gold Trust (IAU) and SPDR Gold Trust (GLD) was approximately $171.2 million. Harvard had previously liquidated its BlackRock spot Ethereum ETF holdings worth $86.8 million, and added no Ethereum-related positions in Q2.

BlockBeats report: On August 16, according to Bloomberg, the S&P 500 index’s constituent companies’ second-quarter earnings grew year over year by 31%, exceeding the prior forecast of 23%—the strongest increase since the post-major-recession recovery period, according to Bloomberg industry research data going back to 1992. More than 90% of S&P 500 constituent companies have already released their earnings reports, and overall first-half earnings performance is expected to be the best for the same period since 2021.
Analysts believe that the upside in earnings beyond expectations is due in part to the resilience of the US economy, and in part to improved profit margins brought about by AI. The net profit margin of S&P 500 constituent companies has risen from 14%, which was difficult to break through previously, to nearly 16%. Mark Hackett, chief market strategist at Nationwide, said that AI has mainly been a cost center over the past few years, but this year has reached an inflection point, beginning to shift toward becoming a profit center.

BlockBeats message. On August 16, the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson, Baghai, said on the 15th that the current situation in the Strait of Hormuz is the direct result of the U.S. and Israel’s “illegal actions.” In recent days, the two sides— the U.S. and Iran—have engaged in fierce exchanges over the issue of the Strait of Hormuz. Both sides have frequently made statements on this matter and have not given way to each other. In response, some analysts said that as the standoff between the two sides continues and the differences are hard to bridge, the situation may fall into a cycle; in the short term, the Strait of Hormuz is unlikely to achieve full navigation. Analysts believe that, at present, with the two sides continuing their standoff over the Strait of Hormuz, the likelihood of either side making any major concessions on this issue in the short term is low.