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U.S. investment bank Benchmark has raised its price target for Nasdaq-listed Bitcoin mining company Hut 8 (HUT) to $165 from $85. According to The Block, Benchmark analyst Mark Palmer explained that Hut 8 has signed two AI data center lease agreements, securing a value of $16.8 billion. This figure could increase to $42.8 billion if a five-year extension option is exercised. Palmer noted that the company is seen as having long-term growth potential.

Three U.S.-listed Bitcoin mining companies—CleanSpark, BitFuFu, and Canaan—all reported a decrease in their BTC production in June compared to May, despite a significant drop in network difficulty, according to The Block. CleanSpark's output fell to 614 BTC from 671 BTC, BitFuFu's dropped to 125 BTC from 177 BTC, and Canaan's declined to 64 BTC from 90 BTC. The report noted varied reasons for the decline: CleanSpark's average operating hashrate fell from 46 EH/s to around 43 EH/s; BitFuFu's total hashrate dropped from 19.5 EH/s to 15 EH/s due to a reduction in hosted capacity; and Canaan cited power grid maintenance. The production decrease came as Bitcoin's mining difficulty saw a downward adjustment of over 10% in mid-June, reaching its lowest level of 2026.

Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh said that higher inflation is unacceptable.

According to Santiment, daily crypto-related mentions on major social channels, including X (formerly Twitter), Reddit, and Telegram, have hit their second-lowest level since October 2024.

Global brokerage Interactive Brokers (IBKR) has added 12 new cryptocurrencies for trading through a partnership with Zerohash and Paxos. The new assets include AAVE, APT, CC, LDO, MON, NEAR, XPL, PAXG, and UNI. Additionally, IBKR has introduced a stablecoin withdrawal feature, enabling customers to convert their U.S. dollar balances to USDC, PYUSD, or RLUSD for transfer to external wallets.

U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh stated that the Fed is working around the clock to finalize detailed regulations for the GENIUS Act before this Saturday. The GENIUS Act (Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act) is the first federal law in the United States to define issuance requirements, asset collateral ratios, and consumer protection standards for dollar-pegged payment stablecoins. The legislation is currently in the rulemaking stage, where sub-regulations and specific rules are being established ahead of its full implementation.

An address suspected of belonging to the U.S. government has transferred 5,939 ETH, worth $11.15 million, to Coinbase Prime, Lookonchain reported.

Ripple has joined the Linux Foundation's x402 Foundation as a premier member, U.Today reported. Through this partnership, Ripple will integrate its cryptocurrency XRP and its RLUSD stablecoin into the open-source x402 payment protocol. The x402 standard enables AI agents and applications to make payments directly over HTTP. Ripple has already implemented x402 support on the XRP Ledger (XRPL) to facilitate autonomous transactions by AI agents. A Ripple official stated that the XRPL is optimized for machine-to-machine (M2M) payments, citing its fast transaction finality of three to five seconds and low fees. The foundation's members include 40 global companies such as Google, Amazon, and Mastercard, which are working to build out AI-powered financial infrastructure.

An address believed to belong to the U.S. government has transferred 296,710 USDT seized from the Bitfinex exchange hackers to Coinbase Prime, according to Onchain Lens. The move follows a deposit of $297 million worth of BTC and ETH from the same address to Coinbase Prime on July 14.

Crypto bank Anchorage Digital has launched a staking service for Tron (TRX) targeted at institutional investors, Cointelegraph reported. This allows institutions to stake their TRX held in custody at Anchorage and earn rewards without having to move the assets.

U.S. President Donald Trump announced on social media on July 14 that he will implement a full blockade on vessels traveling to or from Iranian ports or carrying Iran-related cargo. The Strait of Hormuz will remain open to all other ships. Trump criticized Iran's leadership, stating it is full of lies, violence, and malice and is leading the country to complete ruin. He also announced the withdrawal of a demand for a 20% U.S. compensation fee, which will be replaced by a trade and investment agreement with Gulf nations, emphasizing that the investment would be massive. He added that the era of Iran causing hundreds of thousands of deaths is over and that Iran will never possess nuclear weapons.

As of March 2026, decentralized derivatives exchanges (Perp DEXs) accounted for 10% of the total trading volume for perpetual contracts, Unfolded reported. This marks a significant increase from just 2% in early 2023. The market share for these exchanges grew steadily throughout last year, reaching a high of approximately 25% in late 2025 before stabilizing at the current 10% level.

Researchers from the Ethereum Foundation (EF) have launched EthSystems, a new for-profit company aimed at building confidentiality infrastructure for financial institutions on Ethereum. According to CoinDesk, the founders are institutional privacy researchers from the EF who are now commercializing technology developed within the foundation. They noted that confidentiality has been a major barrier preventing banks and asset managers from moving real-world financial transactions onto the Ethereum blockchain. The new firm plans to target the banking sector with its blockchain-based privacy solutions. EthSystems is one of several recent spin-offs from the EF following a reorganization, which also saw the creation of EthLabs and Ethereum Institutional.

U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh said his goal is to block political intervention within the central bank.

Mizuho Securities has lowered its price target for Circle Internet Group to $50 from $85 and downgraded its rating from Neutral to Underperform, The Block reported. The firm attributed the downgrade to what it described as "Looming pricing pressure," citing concerns that upcoming U.S. stablecoin legislation, such as the GENIUS bill, could intensify competition.

Coinbase has begun accepting registrations from users in China, BlockBeats reported. According to Wu Blockchain, the platform now allows identity verification with a Chinese ID card and a mainland China address. Previously, verification was limited to those with a Chinese passport and a Hong Kong address.

Giselle Lai, Director of Digital Assets Strategy for Asia Pacific at Fidelity International, has stated that the true role of tokenization for pension funds is balance-sheet management, rather than providing investment opportunities or liquidity. According to CoinDesk, she said the most compelling long-term use case for fund tokens is not 24-hour liquidity but the management of balance sheets for large global institutions. Lai explained that tokenized money market funds and other on-chain products could help pension funds, insurers, and corporations use cash more efficiently across distributed accounts and jurisdictions. However, she noted that despite this demand, the development of comprehensive balance-sheet management tools is expected to take time, comparing it to the nearly 20 years it took for the ETF industry to build a complete ecosystem.

Bitcoin mining firm Canaan announced it mined 64 BTC in June. The company holds 1,915 BTC and 3,952 ETH.

Tokenized capital market infrastructure firm Doppler Finance has announced a strategic partnership with SBI Digital Finance to develop XRP-based financial infrastructure for institutional investors in Japan. The two companies plan to develop solutions for XRP and other tokenized assets and promote the expansion of tokenized financial infrastructure in the Japanese market.

The three major U.S. stock indices opened mixed today. - S&P 500: +0.19% - Nasdaq: +0.53% - Dow Jones: -0.26%

Tether has announced that it led a $7 million Series A funding round for stablecoin infrastructure company Pact Labs. Blockchange Ventures and Lasagna also participated in the round. Pact Labs intends to build infrastructure to utilize its stablecoin, USAT, for payroll, earned wage access, credit, and daily payments. Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said that while USDT has already been filling payroll gaps in emerging markets, the company now aims to provide the same function in the U.S. through USAT.

EtherSystems has officially launched after securing initial investment from Bitmine and SharpLink. The company is developing privacy technology that allows regulated financial institutions, such as banks and asset managers, to process financial transactions on Ethereum without disclosing transaction details or customer information. EtherSystems was founded by the team that previously led the Ethereum Foundation's institutional privacy task force. The new venture builds on a year of open-source development and a collaborative network established with central banks, regulatory bodies, and global financial institutions. EtherSystems plans to work alongside EtherLabs and Ethereum Institutional, two other recent spinoffs from the Ethereum Foundation, to build out an Ethereum ecosystem for institutional use.

According to CoinNess market monitoring, BTC has risen above $64,000. BTC is trading at $64,002.9 on the Binance USDT market.

Humanity Protocol founder Terence Kwok stated that the project is significantly strengthening its operational security following a $36 million hack, according to an interview with Cointelegraph. Kwok explained that the root cause of the incident was an operational mistake made during last year's mainnet launch. He said several production keys, including an admin hot wallet key and a quorum of multisig owner keys, were accidentally backed up on a hacked employee's laptop. Kwok noted that the biggest lesson learned from the incident is that operational security is as important as smart transaction security, adding that the team is now completely rebuilding its system.

Whale Alert reported that 268,000,000 USDC has been transferred from Coinbase Institutional to Coinbase. The transaction is valued at about $268 million.