律动BlockBeats

Original title: (Once-hot Web3 enters the wave of layoffs)
Original author: Jia Liu
“AI is our primary reason for laying people off.” This is almost the go-to line used by companies when conducting layoffs today.
In the first half of 2026, the U.S. technology sector laid off nearly 140,000 people. Amazon cut 9% of its employees, and Meta cut 10%. The reasons they gave for the layoffs are almost identical: AI is changing everything, and the company needs to streamline.
In fact, by 2026, more than 56% of layoff events have clearly identified AI, automation, or machine learning as the reason. AI has already become the top rationale cited for layoffs by U.S. companies for four straight months. But ironically, nearly 60% of companies admit that they package layoffs or hiring slowdowns as “AI-driven,” while the real cause is financial pressure.

Original title: Coldcard‘s $89M wallet bug triggers the biggest Bitcoin movement since FTX and completely distorts market signals
Original source: CryptoSlate
Original compilation: Saoirse, Foresight News
The Coldcard wallet crisis dealt a heavy blow to market sentiment around Bitcoin, obscuring various on-chain reference indicators, while also exposing long-standing weaknesses in the AI-assisted network defense system.
On July 30, hardware vendor Coinkite issued a risk warning to users: wallets generated under the influence of a specific version of Coldcard firmware have a risk of asset theft, rooted in a software malfunction that makes the randomness of recovery phrase generation far lower than the design standard.

BlockBeats message: On August 3, the Viction Foundation posted on social media stating that, as part of Binance’s routine review cycle, VIC will be delisted according to its internal standards. This decision does not reflect any changes in the project’s fundamentals or operations. Viction’s mainnet has been running stably for 8 years; the network is still functioning normally, the team continues its development efforts, and network upgrades are also on the way—none of this will be changed by the exchange’s decision.
The team is maintaining close communication with existing exchange partners to ensure a smooth trading experience; at the same time, it is actively expanding to more exchange platforms, strengthening liquidity across multiple channels, and reducing reliance on a single exchange. The development roadmap is progressing as planned and is not affected. Exchanges are only distribution channels and do not define the protocol itself—more updates are expected to be announced soon.

BlockBeats, August 3, reported by Yonhap News Agency: A poll released on Monday shows that, amid controversies such as the stock market’s plunge, South Korean President Lee Jae-myung’s approval rating has fallen to its lowest level since his inauguration last June.
The poll, conducted by Realmeter and commissioned by the media EKN, shows that public sentiment toward Lee Jae-myung’s performance has decreased by 0.4 percentage points to 45.9% from the previous week, marking a third consecutive week of decline. Public negative sentiment toward Lee Jae-myung increased by 1 percentage point to 50.5%, the first time it has crossed the 50% threshold.
Another poll conducted by the same polling organization shows that the ruling party, the Democratic Party of Korea, has a approval rating of 45.1%, up 3.8 percentage points from the previous week. Meanwhile, the approval rating of the main opposition People Power Party has fallen by 2.9 percentage points to 37.7%.

BlockBeats message, August 3: Strategists said the U.S. Treasury may use euros instead of dollars to fund its yen purchasing program, in order to avoid the depreciation of its own currency and to avoid raising questions about its strong-dollar policy.
Two people familiar with the matter said the New York Federal Reserve Bank asked at least two large U.S. banks last Friday to check the yen-to-euro exchange rate. “The U.S. likely does not want to be seen by the outside world as selling off dollars.” David Forrester, a senior strategist at Société Générale in Singapore, said. He said, “The U.S. maintains a strong-dollar policy. They don’t want to be seen as trying to gain a competitive advantage by weakening their own currency, because that would go against the G20’s consensus on foreign exchange policy. If the U.S. Treasury were to sell dollars, it would not look good in terms of image, so it chooses to use euros.” A currency strategist at a bank in Wellington, New Zealand, Jason Wang, said.

When we talk about AI nowadays, everyone already understands the upstream and downstream industries. If you're investing in storage, you know to look at optical modules, materials, and equipment; if you're investing in compute power, you know to look at Nvidia, power supply, and cooling.
But the moment you talk about robots, most people's understanding is still stuck at those humanoid robots on the Spring Festival Gala that can take a couple of steps. They think it's cool, but beyond that, they can't clearly say what the upstream and downstream players in the robotics ecosystem are, what the robotics industry's “perilla leaf” is, or what most of the key components are.
In fact, the robotics industry also has its own supply chain, and it’s increasingly branching into more and more specialized segments. Some people build the hardware, and some build the models, but there’s one crucial link that very few ordinary people notice—yet it may determine the upper limit of a robot’s capabilities: data. More precisely, data that gives robots “hands-on experience” for production.

BlockBeats news, August 3, Robinhood’s prediction market revenue for the second quarter surpassed its cryptocurrency and stock trading revenue, driving its total transaction-related revenue up 44% year over year to $776 million.
The trading platform said that event contracts generated $156 million in revenue, while cryptocurrency trading revenue was $100 million, down 38% year over year. Stock trading revenue was $129 million.
“We achieved record revenue and set new highs in stock, options, and event contract trading volumes, while continuing to gain market share,” Robinhood’s Chief Financial Officer Shiv Verma said in a statement.

Original title: («Backstabbing» or «Win-Win»? How likely is it that TradeXYZ could break away from Hyperliquid and go solo?)
Original author: Golem, Odaily Planet Daily
As TradeXYZ’s business scale continues to expand and it has held more than 90% of the Hyperliquid HIP-3 market for the long term, discussions within the community about whether TradeXYZ might break away from Hyperliquid and build an independent trading platform have heated up recently.
Former Messari researcher Sam said on X that investors who are bullish on HYPE due to the explosion of the RWA perpetual contracts market should ask themselves three questions: first, if TradeXYZ leaves Hyperliquid and launches its own trading platform, where would users trade; second, if TradeXYZ launches its own stocks/tokens, how would that affect the valuation of HYPE; and third, how likely are the two scenarios above to happen.

Original title: (Interview with Creader founder Tim: Let AI remember the world, and leave the stories to the authors)
Original author: Insight Beating
July 23, Higashino Keigo passed away at the age of 68.
Over the past four decades, he has written 106 books. (The White Night)(Malice)(The Devotion of Suspect X)(The Miracles of the Namiya General Store), together forming a vast parallel universe.
Many readers are not unfamiliar with the world within those pages. They know that Kaga Kyoichiro will continue to track the case along the streets of Tokyo, that Yukawa Manabu will always be able to see the hidden truth in physical phenomena, and that beyond the crime itself, there are families trapped in debt, students weighed down by the pressure to get into higher education, and ordinary people who can’t escape the past.

TL;DR
· The United States and Japan rarely jointly intervened in the yen; USD/JPY fell back from above 163 to around 156.
· The market’s disagreement lies in whether coordinated action can outweigh the U.S.-Japan interest-rate differential, fiscal expansion, and the Bank of Japan’s rate-hike timetable.
· Underlying related instruments: USD/JPY, JPY cross pairs, the U.S. Dollar Index, the Nikkei 225, Japanese government bonds, and risk assets.
According to an AP report on August 3, U.S. President Trump and Japan’s Finance Minister Mayukawa confirmed that both sides have intervened in the foreign exchange market. USD/JPY had previously risen to above 163; the yen had strengthened to near a 40-year low against the U.S. dollar, before falling back to around 156.34 in early trading on Monday.

BlockBeats news. On August 3, the well-known tech journalist Gurman posted that iPhone is expected to increase in price by $100 to $200 (about RMB 675 to RMB 1,350).
Gurman says that Apple will definitely raise prices this year, for many reasons. First, it is facing shortages of memory chips and main device processors. In addition, the cost of the new camera system used in the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max is also higher, not to mention the even more expensive design of the first foldable iPhone. Therefore, the only question is how Apple will implement this round of price increases.