Top 10 News of the Week

1. Within three days of launch, 9 spot ETH ETFs had a total outflow of $179 million link

Ethereum spot ETF was launched on Tuesday this week. On the first day of launch, the total inflow of 9 spot ETH ETFs reached 107 million US dollars, and the total trading volume exceeded 1.1 billion US dollars. Among them, BlackRock ETHA ranked first with an inflow of 266.5 million US dollars, followed by Bitwise ETHW with an inflow of 204 million US dollars, and Fidellity FETH with an inflow of 71.3 million US dollars. Grayscale ETHE had an outflow of 484 million US dollars. Despite the excellent performance on the first day of launch, Ethereum spot ETF has continued to show outflows since Wednesday. Ethereum spot ETF had a total net outflow of 133 million US dollars on Wednesday and a total net outflow of 152 million US dollars on Thursday. As of press time, the total net asset value of Ethereum spot ETF was 8.969 billion US dollars, and the ETF net asset ratio (market value to Ethereum's total market value) reached 2.36%, and the historical cumulative net outflow has reached 179 million US dollars.

Wintermute, a large market maker, expects Ethereum ETFs to receive a maximum of $4 billion in inflows from investors over the next year. This is lower than the $4.5 billion to $6.5 billion expected by most analysts, and the latter is about 62% less than the $17 billion raised by Bitcoin ETFs since they began trading in the United States six months ago. Wintermute expects that Ethereum prices will rise 24% in the next 12 months driven by these inflows.

2. US GDP in the second quarter significantly exceeded expectations link

The U.S. announced that the second quarter real GDP annualized quarterly rate was 2.8%, significantly exceeding expectations, with an expected rate of 2.00% and a previous rate of 1.40%. The second quarter core PCE price index annualized quarterly rate was 2.9%, with an expected rate of 2.70% and a previous rate of 3.70%. Analysts pointed out that the U.S. economy grew faster than expected in the second quarter, but inflation fell, and the Fed's expectations of a rate cut in September were not affected.

3. US presidential candidate Robert Kennedy Jr.: Hopes Bitcoin holdings will match the country's gold reserves link

US presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said that if elected, he would urge the federal government to buy Bitcoin until its Bitcoin holdings match the size of the country's gold reserves. The US government is the world's largest gold owner, with 8,134 tons of gold. At current prices, this gold is worth $615 billion. Previously, Kennedy revealed at the 2024 Consensus Conference that he bought 21 Bitcoins during the campaign and bought three for each of his children. He also said that his goal is to make cryptocurrency a trading currency and advocate not to impose capital gains tax on it.

4. Jersey City Pension Fund in New Jersey, USA will invest in Bitcoin ETF link

Steven Fulop, the mayor of Jersey City, New Jersey, tweeted that the pension fund of Jersey City is submitting an application to the US SEC to invest part of the city's pension fund in a Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF), similar to the practice of the Wisconsin pension fund (2%). The mayor expects the process to be completed by the end of the summer. Earlier in May, Wisconsin reported an investment of $164 million in spot Bitcoin ETFs.

5. Seven U.S. states jointly oppose SEC regulation of cryptocurrencies link

A coalition of seven states led by Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird filed an amicus brief on July 10 opposing the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) attempts to regulate cryptocurrencies. The coalition includes Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, and Oklahoma. The Iowa Attorney General’s Office stressed that the SEC’s actions to circumvent the new powers Congress gave itself were illegal. The brief also explained that the SEC violated the Administrative Procedure Act and the Significant Issues Doctrine and called on the court to prevent the SEC from exceeding its authority. The seven-state coalition believes that typical cryptocurrencies do not qualify as investment contracts under the Securities Act of 1934.

6. Russian State Duma: Legalize Bitcoin mining and allow cryptocurrency to be used for international trade link

The Russian State Duma has passed a bill that legalizes Bitcoin mining and allows the use of cryptocurrencies in international trade. The bill is expected to take effect on September 1 and is subject to final approval by the Russian Federation. The vote was 404 in favor, accounting for 89.8% of the total. The bill stipulates that Bitcoin mining activities will be regulated by the government and the Central Bank of Russia, and compliance will be ensured by Russian federal agencies. In addition, the bill allows the sale of mined cryptocurrencies, but prohibits their use for domestic payments and prohibits cryptocurrency advertising.

7. JD.com will issue Hong Kong dollar stablecoin link

JD.com will issue a cryptocurrency stablecoin in Hong Kong that is pegged to the Hong Kong dollar at a 1:1 ratio. It will be issued on a public blockchain, and its reserves will consist of highly liquid and credible assets that are securely stored in separate accounts of licensed financial institutions. Previously, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority announced the list of participants in the "sandbox" for stablecoin issuers, with JD.com CoinChain Technology (Hong Kong) ranked first. Liu Peng, CEO of JD.com CoinChain Technology, is currently the vice president of JD.com Technology.

8. Worldcoin investors and team tokens will enter the unlocking cycle starting from Wednesday link

The tokens of Worldcoin (WLD) investors and team began to enter the unlocking cycle on July 24. A total of 2.38 billion WLD (US$5.545 billion) will be unlocked linearly over the next four years (approximately 1.63 million per day). On Tuesday, Worldcoin transferred 990 million WLD to 0x2E3…8e5, and then distributed 494 million WLD to 222 addresses in preparation for future unlocking.

9. Mt. Gox creditors have received their assets returned link

On Wednesday, Kraken CEO Dave Ripley posted on X that Kraken has successfully distributed BTC and BCH from the Mt.Gox trust to creditors. It has been nearly ten years since Kraken was selected to assist in the investigation and return of customer funds. Dave Ripley said that despite being hindered by some unnecessary lawsuits, thanks to the trust for preserving the vast majority of BTC during this period and maintaining its value, which undoubtedly benefits all creditors.

On Thursday, Mt. Gox creditors received their returned assets in their Bitstamp accounts.

Mt. Gox officially released a document stating that, following July 5 and July 16, on July 24, the bankruptcy trustee had repaid Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash to some creditors through some designated cryptocurrency exchanges in accordance with the reorganization plan. So far, more than 17,000 creditors have been repaid through Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash. Regarding the repayment to other creditors, the authorities will confirm the validity of the creditors' registered accounts, etc., and verify the designated crypto transactions. Creditors need to wait for a while.

10. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin published an article titled "Exploring circle STARKs" link

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin published an article titled "Exploring circle STARKs", which pointed out that Starkware was able to prove 620,000 Poseidon2 hashes per second on an M3 notebook, which means that if we are willing to trust Poseidon2 as a hash function, one of the hardest parts of making an efficient ZK-EVM has actually been solved. Vitalik believes that the combination of Mersenne31, BabyBear, and binary domain technologies like Binius feels like it is approaching the efficiency limit of the STARKs "base layer"; it is expected that the forefront of STARK optimization will shift to the most efficient arithmetic of primitives such as hash functions and signatures (and optimize these primitives themselves to achieve this purpose), making recursive structures to achieve more parallelization, arithmeticizing virtual machines to improve developer experience, and other higher-level tasks.

Key financing events

• Binance Labs invests in Catizen’s issuance platform Pluto Studio link

• ​aPriori, a liquidity staking platform on the Monad blockchain, completes $8 million in seed round funding link

• Ethereum Scaling Solution Platform Caldera Completes $15 Million Series A Funding link

• Igloo, the parent company of Pudgy Penguins, announced the completion of $11 million financing, led by Founders Fund link

• Bitcoin L2 project Bitlayer Labs announces completion of $11 million Series A funding link

• Base Ecosystem GameFi Developer NPC Labs Completes $18 Million in Financing link

• L2 project Zircuit announces completion of mainnet round financing, with participation from Mirana Ventures and others link

• DePIN project Network3 announces $5 million in pre-seed and seed funding link

• DAOBase announces $6 million in funding link

• Decentralized AI platform Redpill announces completion of $5 million seed round of financing link

• Web3 community platform OpenSocial Protocol completes $6 million in strategic financing link

• Liquidity staking protocol Kintsu announces $4 million seed round of financing link

• Tokenization platform Etherfuse announces $3 million seed round link

• Blockchain cloud computing company Nirvana Labs completes $4 million seed round of financing link

• ​Web3 AI platform Assisterr completes $1.7 million seed round link

• On-chain order book exchange Kuru announces $2 million seed round link

• Multiple Network announces $2 million seed round link

For more industry funding events, please visit crypto-fundraising.info.