律动BlockBeats

BlockBeats message: On August 17, the Chinese domestically produced abstract animated film (Cow Comes) became wildly popular, capturing widespread attention. During the Sunday market trading-closure window, it drove A-share stocks with the character “cow” up onto the Hang Seng? app Tonghuashun Hot Stocks leaderboard, landing in the top five. Golden Cow Chemical, Bull Group, and Copper Cow Information were all listed, with Golden Cow Chemical firmly in first place. In the stock forums for these companies, some netizens shouted that these are “concept stocks” for the film (Cow Comes), while others posted their movie tickets as real-world support. However, some also reminded investors to be mindful of risks: the (Cow Comes) “concept stocks” are purely a mood-driven speculative play.

BlockBeats message: On August 16, the U.S. Treasury’s reliance on short-term debt is rising. Currently, U.S. Treasury bills account for 21% of the market for marketable U.S. Treasury securities—nearing the highest level since 2020. At the time, U.S. federal government borrowing surged in response to the pandemic. This figure is far higher than the 10–15% range observed between 2012 and 2019. By comparison, during the 2008 financial crisis, this proportion reached about 34%.
Meanwhile, the U.S. government is increasingly relying on short-term Treasury bills to meet its growing borrowing needs, rather than long-term bonds. If the U.S. Treasury continues issuing long-term debt at the current pace before fiscal year 2027, Treasuries would account for 25% of total debt—its highest level since 2004. However, this approach increases the risk that the government will face volatility in short-term interest rates. If rates keep rising, or rise again, the cost of servicing debt would become harder to bear. The U.S. debt crisis is fully unfolding.

BlockBeats message, August 16: Over the past week, global financial markets’ risk appetite rebounded overall. The US stock indexes S&P 500 and the Nasdaq both hit new stage highs. Trading themes shifted from defense and hedging back to rate-cut expectations and the realization of AI earnings. Tech and semiconductor stocks led the rally. South Korea’s KOSPI rose 11.5% cumulatively, ending seven consecutive weeks of decline and returning to a technical bull market. The US dollar index was nearly flat for the week. Improved inflation data led to a downgrade in Federal Reserve rate-hike expectations, and on Friday, an unexpected contraction in retail sales accelerated the dollar’s decline.
Next week’s focus will center on three key variables:

BlockBeats message: On August 16, citing three insiders, AXIOS reported that in mid-May, when U.S. negotiators tried to reach an agreement with Iran to end the war, they ran into a problem—they could not determine whether the Iranian representative across the negotiating table truly represented the powerful influence of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Therefore, Trump administration officials took an unusual approach—bypassing Iran’s negotiating representatives and directly contacting the senior leadership of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
The U.S. has chosen Nechirvan Barzani, the chairman of the Iraqi Kurdistan Region, to be responsible for this secret communication channel. He has an extremely rare advantage: he enjoys the trust of both the U.S. and the leadership of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. One important reason the negotiations between the U.S. and Iran have been so difficult is that Washington cannot determine who truly holds decision-making power in Iran. Although the U.S. and Iran ultimately did reach a memorandum of understanding, it quickly fell apart.

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.