News linked to both this project and an event.
: In an interview this week, Circle President Heath Tarbert responded to questions about the stock price falling from $260 to $62, stating that the company is focusing on long-term development. If it can fulfill its mission of building a full-stack internet platform infrastructure, the stock price will ultimately reflect that value in the long run. Addressing the new competition posed by the Open USD Alliance, which consists of 140 companies including Visa, Stripe, Mastercard, and Google, Heath Tarbert noted that USDC, as a stablecoin natively supporting 34 blockchains, has built a network effect with a circulating supply of $73 billion that is extremely difficult to replicate. Discussing the difference in market position compared to Tether, he stated that USDC is the world's largest regulated stablecoin and boasts the highest real transaction volume.
David Sacks, Chairman of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, stated on the X platform that using regulatory uncertainty as a competitive tool is "completely unacceptable," and regulatory decisions should be based on facts, logic, and evidence, rather than deliberately creating fear and uncertainty (FUD). He is unsure whether venture capitalist and AI policy researcher Dean Ball is admitting to a "regulatory capture" strategy or merely predicting its occurrence, but in any case, leveraging regulatory agencies to issue "soft law" warnings, creating market panic, and thereby forcing regulated companies to stay away from Chinese open-source models should not be tolerated.David Sacks pointed out that Dean Ball believes there is no need to directly ban Chinese open-source models; simply guiding regulators to issue relevant warnings can influence corporate decisions by generating enough doubt and uncertainty, and these reasons "don't even need to be very solid."In response, Sacks argued that any regulatory decision must be well-founded, rather than implementing policies in disguise through "manufactured doubt." He warned that bypassing public deliberation processes in this way would not only erode the foundation of the rule of law but could also open the door to future regulatory abuses targeting any enterprise or individual.Sacks further stated that AI policy is currently at a critical turning point. Major closed-source labs, which have already formed a duopoly in AI model revenue, are now attempting to use government power to eliminate open-source competitors.He called on other companies and developers in Silicon Valley that still support open competition to take a clear stance and jointly safeguard an open ecosystem in the AI field.
analyst KawzInvests stated that Moonshot AI's upcoming Kimi K3 could become a significant event in the open-source AI space, and the infrastructure demand behind it may drive growth for AI cloud service platforms. Kimi K3 has approximately 2.8 trillion parameters, making it one of the ultra-large-scale open-source models. According to Moonshot's official evaluation, the model's performance is only slightly behind frontier models like Claude Fable 5 and GPT 5.6 Sol, and the full model weights are expected to be released on July 27.KawzInvests pointed out that a model of this scale cannot run on an ordinary laptop or even a single server; users need a computing cluster composed of a large number of GPUs to complete model loading and inference. When top-tier open-source models are made available for free, the biggest beneficiaries might not be ordinary users, but rather platforms that offer model hosting and inference services. For example, $DOCN (DigitalOcean) already supports serverless inference services for models like Kimi K2.6. Developers do not need to deploy hardware; they can call the model via API and pay per Token. Additionally, the platform hosts over 70 models and covers GPU leasing, model fine-tuning, and AI Agent development tools.As more large-scale open-source models are released, developers' demand for low-barrier AI infrastructure will continue to increase. Model hosting, inference services, and GPU cloud platforms may become key beneficiaries in the open-source AI wave.
According to Xinhua News Agency, Beijing Moonshot AI Co., Ltd. officially released the new generation large model Kimi K3 on July 16, with a parameter scale reaching 2.8 trillion, becoming the largest open-source model by parameters globally at present. Kimi K3 natively supports visual understanding, features a 1 million token context window, and is optimized for complex task scenarios such as software engineering, knowledge work, deep research, and multimodal understanding, with a comprehensive intelligence level approaching global frontier closed-source models. The model is trained using a self-developed underlying architecture. Moonshot AI stated that nearly 3 trillion parameters mean the model can store more knowledge and patterns, achieving "knows more, thinks deeper, answers more accurately."
global payment giant Visa is accelerating its stablecoin infrastructure efforts by launching the Visa Stablecoin Platform, which helps banks and fintech companies integrate stablecoin payment capabilities into their existing payment and treasury management systems. It is reported that the platform aims to provide stablecoin service support to approximately 15,000 financial institutions and over 200 million merchants within Visa's network, enabling enterprises to use USD stablecoins for settlement, capital flow, and financial management within the traditional payment network.Visa currently processes approximately $15 trillion in payment transactions annually and has already processed tens of billions of dollars in stablecoin settlement volume. The company hopes to further expand the application scope of stablecoins through this new platform. Initially, the Visa Stablecoin Platform will support the new stablecoin OUSD, launched by the Open Standard alliance, while continuing to be compatible with stablecoins already supported by Visa, including USDC issued by Circle and USDG issued by Paxos. Visa believes that stablecoins are becoming an important part of the future financial infrastructure, with advantages including:Instant Settlement: Transactions no longer rely on traditional banking clearing cycles;Low-Cost Transfers: Reducing payment costs based on blockchain networks;Transparency and Traceability: On-chain transaction records provide higher verifiability.Visa has been consistently building its footprint in the stablecoin space. In 2020, Visa became the first global payment network to support USDC settlement; in 2025, the company launched a stablecoin settlement plan to further promote the entry of stablecoins into the mainstream payment system.Meanwhile, Visa's competitors are also accelerating their entry into the stablecoin market. Mastercard recently launched a stablecoin settlement solution and partnered with companies such as MoonPay and Paxos; American Express has also participated in the ecosystem development related to Open Standard.As traditional payment giants increasingly adopt stablecoins, they are transitioning from a payment tool within the crypto industry into a vital component of the global financial infrastructure. (Fortune)
hardware wallet company Ledger has launched the open-source toolkit Ledger Agent Stack, enabling AI agents to interact with crypto wallets by reading balances, preparing transactions, and suggesting actions, with all transactions requiring user approval on a Ledger hardware device. Ledger stated that this release is the first step in its AI roadmap, aiming to introduce hardware-based security mechanisms into AI-driven crypto applications and prevent autonomous agents from transferring funds or accessing sensitive credentials without human approval.
CoinShares stated that the stablecoin project Open USD, driven by a bank-backed consortium, may directly impact the distribution economic model and profit margins of Circle's USDC, as it plans to distribute reserve yields to participating partners rather than primarily retaining them for the issuer. The report suggests that this mechanism could increase the costs for USDC to maintain its circulation network and, after launching in the second half of 2026, exert more substantial competitive pressure on Circle.
: Digital asset management firm CoinShares stated that Open USD directly challenges Circle by distributing yield generated from stablecoin reserves to partners, thereby weakening USDC's distribution economic model. Open USD is composed of over 140 companies, including BlackRock, Coinbase, Mastercard, Stripe, and Visa. The stablecoin is expected to launch in the second half of 2026. CoinShares noted that while Open USD presents competitive pressure, USDC's existing liquidity and integration base may be difficult for new entrants to replicate.
a recent exchange report released by CoinDesk shows that global centralized exchange (CEX) spot trading volume in June ended a five-month consecutive decline, increasing by 15.3% month-over-month to $1.11 trillion. Among them, Gate's spot trading volume grew by 50.8% month-over-month to $66.1 billion, ranking first globally among centralized exchanges in spot trading volume growth. The report indicates that Gate's spot market share also increased by 1.55 percentage points to 5.95%, leading the world in growth and hitting a new high since October 2025. Driven by this strong growth, Gate has secured its position as one of the top three global spot trading platforms among AA-A rated top-tier exchanges.In the derivatives market, Gate's derivatives trading volume in June reached $369 billion, with its market share positively growing to 9.52%, solidifying its position as the fourth-largest derivatives trading platform globally. Additionally, in terms of Open Interest, Gate particularly stood out, ranking among the top three global retail derivatives exchanges with a 9.20% share. Considering the overall trading volume of its spot and derivatives markets, Gate ranks among the top four globally, further consolidating its status as a leading global trading platform.CoinDesk data shows that as market volatility revives trading demand, Gate has leveraged its strong growth in both the spot and derivatives markets to further enhance platform liquidity and multi-asset trading capabilities, continuously strengthening its global competitiveness.
Vitalik stated in a post on the X platform that AI 2040 and its critics hold incompatible worldviews regarding the speed and importance of AI progress. AI 2040 believes that, unless strong measures are taken to completely prevent it, various scenarios will lead to some form of superintelligence by 2040; critics argue that AI 2040 underestimates human coordination capabilities and threatens freedom, but do not view ASI itself as a centralization of power risk. Vitalik indicated that if he were convinced that AI in its current form is merely ordinary technology, he would lean closer to the critics' camp; if he were certain that superintelligence would arrive by default in 2030, he would align more with the AI 2040 camp. He stated that due to significant uncertainty, he remains open to a slowdown or pause, while also feeling uncomfortable with the stance advocated by some large AI companies and intellectuals that "open source is unfavorable, and the ideal outcome is one side holding global control and dominance." Vitalik said that a key reason he supports the d/acc platform is that areas such as formal verification, cryptography, secure and open hardware, pandemic resilience, defensive biotechnology, food and basic resource security, public epistemic systems, and non-centralized physical security are worth advancing under both worldviews. He also noted that the 2040 plan has become more supportive of open source and incorporates the concept of "mutually assured compute destruction," which represents an improvement over allowing a few participants to selectively strip the rights of those they deem undesirable. Vitalik stated that there is no way to avoid trade-offs on whether to slow down or pause; one can pre-set trigger conditions and, when sufficient conditions are met within a specific timeframe, maintain a more open attitude toward a slowdown or pause. He also mentioned that if he were Elon Musk or Zuck, he would more aggressively transform Twitter into a platform that helps identify and facilitate such large win-win agreements, allowing more people to participate in the discussion, but he believes this might also be naive. Currently, he sees no non-naive ASI transition response plan, so he tends to be somewhat lenient toward those who are giving it a try.
According to Circle's (@circle) official announcement, Circle Agent Stack is now open source, enabling developers to add wallets, USDC payments, and on-chain operation capabilities to AI agents. It currently supports the following mainstream frameworks: OpenAI Agents SDK, Claude AI Agent SDK, LangChain, Mastra, Vercel AI SDK, and Google AI ADK. Developers can directly clone the example code to get started quickly, and the project is hosted on GitHub. This move is regarded by the industry as a significant advancement in AI agent payment layer infrastructure, expected to accelerate the large-scale adoption of Agentic AI.
According to official news, Prime Intellect announced the completion of a $130 million Series A financing round, led by Radical Ventures with participation from NVIDIA, Intel Capital, Dell Capital, and existing investors. The company stated that it will utilize the funds to continue building its "Open Superintelligence Stack" to support users in training, deploying, and continuously optimizing their own models.
Sui posted on X platform, stating that this week's highlights include ensuring data privacy, expanding decentralized capital markets, and welcoming new teams into the network development pipeline. LoquaApp has launched a privacy-first AI agent messaging app on Sui, supporting users in sending messages, interacting with AI agents, and conducting peer-to-peer token transfers within chats; RipStationxyz has deployed a graded Pokémon card platform on Sui for on-chain trading and physical redemption; suidevelopers held a technical meeting, where kostascrypto and abhinavg6 analyzed the cryptography behind protocol-level confidential transfers; 0xfluid has chosen Hashi to build an institutional-grade Bitcoin credit market, enabling native BTC to be used as collateral through formally verified contracts on Sui; realtbook has partnered with paga to create a compliant financial bridge, offering tokenized real-world assets to African consumers and businesses; six early-stage development teams, including AssetoFinance, audricai, gendotpro, kash_bot, predikt_gg, and transact_sh, have completed the third cohort of the Sui Hydropower Fellowship; tradeonhudi announced the upcoming launch of 7×24 hour leveraged perpetual contracts on Asia-Pacific stocks, targeting markets in Korea, Japan, and Hong Kong; Turbos_finance released its Q2 2026 report, having launched its CLMM and once became the highest-volume AMM DEX with a single-day SUI-USDC trading volume exceeding $17 million. The upcoming Sui Tunnels experiment will be opened for system testing of the network's TPS limit under load.
Open Standard, the consortium behind Open USD, has been accused of listing companies such as Samsung Electronics as supporters of the OUSD stablecoin project without their consent.Tony Chung, Head of Blockmedia’s BD division, stated that Samsung Electronics said no formal discussions had taken place and that it was unclear what role it would play in the project.Shinhan, Dunamu, and K Bank stated that Open Standard had inquired about their interest in participating, and they merely indicated they would "consider" it, only to later find their names listed as consortium members.Tether advisor Gabor Gurbacs noted that some of the listed partners claimed they had never signed or agreed to anything.Circle co-founder and CEO Jeremy Allaire commented, "Integrity matters." OUSD is expected to launch later this year. (Bitcoin.com News).
Open Standard announced the launch of the USD stablecoin Open USD (OUSD) and plans to go live within the year, stating that over 140 financial and payment-related institutions are participating, including Visa, Mastercard, BlackRock, Samsung Electronics, Dunamu, Hanwha, and others. However, several South Korean companies stated that they had not previously conducted formal negotiations with the issuer; some institutions only responded that they could evaluate after the project matures, but were subsequently listed as alliance members.
according to a mid-year open letter from Bitget CEO Gracy Chen, the first half of 2026 witnessed significant structural changes in platform user behavior: the peak trading volume of non-crypto assets approached 40% of Bitget's overall trading volume; CFD daily trading volume exceeded $10 billion; 52% of users held both stocks and cryptocurrencies; and 35% held precious metals like gold. Cross-asset trading has become a mainstream habit.Gracy Chen pointed out that as a Universal Exchange (UEX), Bitget's core goal is not to build an "asset supermarket," but to reconstruct the underlying logic of how users participate in global markets around four core values: "asset efficiency, crypto-native experience, financial equality, and reducing burdens." On the business implementation front, Bitget has accelerated its layout through a dual-track approach combining tokenized stocks and direct stock connectivity, supporting 7×24 hour trading for multiple asset classes to break down the time zone and geographical barriers of traditional finance.Furthermore, as AI tools become more deeply integrated into execution, 51% of users utilized AI-driven trading tools in the first half of the year, and the number of AI trading users on the platform has exceeded one million.
after Open Standard announced the launch of its new stablecoin, Open USD (OUSD), Circle's stock price fell over 16% on Tuesday. The stablecoin is backed by over 140 companies, including Visa, Stripe, Mastercard, BlackRock, and Coinbase, raising market concerns that it could pose competitive pressure on Circle's USDC.However, William Blair analysts believe the sell-off was an overreaction and reiterated an "Outperform" rating on Circle's stock, suggesting the decline may present a buying opportunity. The firm believes that Circle holds a competitive advantage in the stablecoin space due to its first-mover status, deep liquidity, and mature payment infrastructure, positioning it well even against high-profile competitors like OUSD.Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire stated that the company welcomes competition and will continue to expand the USDC ecosystem. Analysts also noted that the overall stablecoin market is still rapidly expanding, and new entrants may not necessarily only eat into USDC's market share but could also drive broader industry adoption.
Circle co-founder and CEO Jeremy Allaire has seemingly responded to the launch of Open USD. He stated that stablecoins are reshaping the infrastructure for storing and transferring value on the internet, becoming one of the largest potential market opportunities globally, and emphasized his long-term strong bullish outlook on this sector.Circle will continue to expand the USDC ecosystem by integrating with more blockchain networks, enhancing cross-chain interoperability, and strengthening connections with the traditional financial system, including banks, payment companies, and capital market institutions. The goal is to further standardize stablecoin infrastructure. At the same time, the company welcomes continuous innovation and competition within the industry and will focus on building more robust stablecoin infrastructure while improving partners' ecological participation and economic incentive mechanisms. This is aimed at driving the development of a "stablecoin-native Internet financial system."Previously, it was reported that, potentially influenced by competitive news regarding Open USD, CRCL experienced a sharp intraday decline of nearly 9%.
Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, told lawmakers during a U.S. congressional hearing that the development of open-source artificial intelligence is entering a "very dangerous path." Once AI models with strong capabilities are released as open source, developers will lose effective oversight over how the models are used, including the ability to monitor misuse, revoke access permissions, or dynamically update security safeguards, thereby significantly increasing potential risks. Dario Amodei emphasized that, compared to closed-model systems, fully open models are more difficult to implement ongoing security governance controls, which could lead to irreversible risks of abuse. (BitcoinNews)
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