Foresight News brings you a quick overview of this week's hot topics and recommended content:
01 Hot Topics
(Why, despite unchanged interest rate cut expectations, do Bitcoin and NVIDIA's market values reach new historical highs?)
(From release rules to sales purposes, the details of Pump.fun token sales are out)
(Kaito's Dilemma: When the airdrop distribution rights are handed over to the project party, what can maintain trust?)
(Binance Alpha star coin BR instantly halved, re-enacting ZKJ trend while Alpha mechanism faces renewed skepticism)
02 Tokenized Stocks
(In the wave of US stock tokenization, Hong Kong chose silence)
(Tokenized Stocks: A financial efficiency revolution in a new bottle)
03 Stablecoins
(Fortune Magazine: Why are tech giants flocking to stablecoins, what are they really betting on?)
(Romantic Turkey, the stablecoin under the pillow)
04 Industry Insights
(Vitalik's view on 'AI 2027': Will super AI really destroy humanity?)
(Vitalik: Why did I abandon permissive licenses to embrace copyleft when open source became mainstream?)
(From 'Bitcoin Jesus' to prisoner: a digital cage forged with 400,000 BTC)
(Liquidity cycle rerouted, are your assets keeping up?)
01 Hot Topics
In the following months, Bitcoin repeatedly set historical highs, and market sentiment soared, with many altcoins experiencing significant rebounds. As Bitcoin first broke through the 112,000 mark, NVIDIA also topped the US stock market in terms of market capitalization. Holding NVIDIA in one hand and Bitcoin in the other remains the best risk investment portfolio in this bull market. Recommended article:
(Despite unchanged interest rate cut expectations, why do Bitcoin and NVIDIA's market values reach new historical highs?)
Currently, companies listed in the US, UK, Europe, and Japan are no longer content with simply establishing so-called 'BTC strategic reserves,' but have instead viewed hoarding BTC as an arms race, continuously financing to purchase more BTC, many of which exceed 100 million dollars in financing.
Among them, the NYSE-listed company Genius Group is a typical example of 'having tasted sweetness.' Genius Group announced that it has increased its original goal of holding 1000 BTC in reserves by 10 times, planning to achieve a purchase goal of 10,000 BTC within 12-24 months. Between May 22, 2025, and July 4, 2025, the company has achieved a 74% return on BTC.
On the evening of July 9, Pump.fun officially announced that it would launch the PUMP token sale on July 12. This ICO, which the industry has long anticipated and has been labeled as 'the last cut,' has finally been finalized.
(From release rules to sales purposes, the details of Pump.fun token sales are out)
PUMP is the utility token for the Pump.fun token launch platform and exchange platform, and it will also consider utility mechanisms such as fee returns, token repurchases, or other incentives. The maximum supply of PUMP is 1 trillion tokens, with the following distribution:
-33% will be sold in the initial token offering
-24% allocated to community and ecosystem programs
-20% allocated to the team
-2.4% for the ecosystem fund
-2% for the foundation
-13% to existing investors
-3% allocated to live streaming
-2.6% for liquidity + exchanges
As Kaito of the InfoFi platform, driven by AI-powered Yap point mechanism, I incentivize high-quality content creation, building a healthy ecosystem of content and attention. However, recent airdrop controversies surrounding cooperative projects Eclipse and Humanity, along with Kaito's deep dilemmas regarding transparency, fairness, and community trust, have brought Kaito to the forefront. Recommended article:
(Kaito's Dilemma: When the airdrop distribution rights are handed over to the project party, what can maintain trust?)
Kaito's dilemma is a common issue faced in community building across the cryptocurrency sector. In a market characterized by extreme volatility and short-term speculation, project parties hope to attract users through airdrops while fearing being abandoned after being exploited by opportunists, leading to the emergence of various stringent screening mechanisms.
However, artificial intervention and subjective judgment also come with risks. Eclipse's 'death note' aims to eliminate speculators but could exclude genuine critics due to the team's subjective preferences; Humanity's palm print verification can filter out robots but also rejects some privacy-sensitive users. This approach of 'sacrificing fairness for fairness' highlights the industry's technical and mechanical limitations in identifying 'real contributions' and 'long-term beliefs.'
On July 9, another familiar flash crash occurred in the Binance Alpha project. In less than 10 minutes, the star token BR in the Binance Alpha project plummeted from a high of 0.129 USDT to 0.053 USDT, instantly halving in price. In fact, such operations had long been observable. Recommended article:
(Binance Alpha star coin BR instantly halved, re-enacting ZKJ trend while Alpha mechanism faces renewed skepticism)
The community's reaction to such events is also becoming increasingly intense. Crypto OG @BroLeonAus quickly pointed out in a post after BR's plunge that the risks of such 'volume brushing + liquidity sucking' models had long been visible. As early as when BR and AB were still in their initial stages, behaviors such as using linear K-lines, low transaction fees, and continuously guiding liquidity to join were observed, demonstrating a typical 'brushing points and sucking liquidity' tendency. Now both have almost simultaneously shown signs of flash crashes, proving the point.
In his view, the current point calculation rules used by Binance Alpha mechanism have obvious flaws, indirectly inducing project parties to create surface activity to gain platform exposure and rewards. Under such a design, it is enough to create an illusion of 'deep liquidity, stable trends, and low costs' on-chain to attract a large number of retail investors to participate as LPs, forming liquidity accumulation. The project parties only need to 'settle' and wait; once conditions are ripe, they can quickly withdraw liquidity and realize their exit, leaving ordinary users as the last ones holding the bag.
02 Tokenized Stocks
In July 2025, a wave of tokenization for US stocks surged, with giants like Robinhood joining in, and the SEC chairman also expressing support. However, Hong Kong's crypto companies remained collectively silent, even though this could be the next trillion-dollar market. Missed stablecoins a decade ago, will we miss stock tokenization a decade later? Recommended article:
(In the wave of US stock tokenization, Hong Kong chose silence)
In Hong Kong, the law clearly states that only exchanges recognized by the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission can legally operate in the stock trading market, granting the Hong Kong Stock Exchange an 'exclusive position' in Hong Kong stock trading. If stock tokenization is trialed, it would inevitably break the long-standing exclusive position of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
"The Hong Kong Stock Exchange has exclusive rights to Hong Kong stocks, and no one wants to take the first step to break that exclusivity and become a sinner in the history of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange."
"If you were the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, would you revolutionize yourself?" the executive asked.
The resistance is significant, and the Hong Kong regulators and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange itself may not have enough motivation to promote the tokenization of Hong Kong stocks, which may be the reason for Hong Kong's silence this time.
The situation in the US is different from that in Hong Kong. After Trump took office, US regulatory bodies have been very supportive of innovation in cryptocurrencies, whether it's dollar stablecoins or US stock tokenization, both enhancing the status of the dollar and US stocks, allowing global users to conveniently bypass regulations to purchase US assets.
The financial innovation ecosystem in the US is also more vibrant and powerful. Whether it’s the largest internet brokerage Robinhood, the largest cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, or the largest public chain Solana, they all consider themselves challengers to the traditional financial world, with some even targeting Nasdaq directly. They have also successfully promoted regulatory relaxation attempts regarding US stock tokenization.
This also distinguishes this round of stock tokenization from the previous round.
The ETF in the 1990s broke traditional investment models, and now blockchain technology is giving rise to tokenized stocks. Can this financial 'skin-changing' game replicate the myth of the S&P 500 ETF's comeback?
(Tokenized Stocks: A financial efficiency revolution in a new bottle)
For retail investors, whether they can participate is often the most important factor. From this perspective, tokenized stocks are not competing with traditional stocks but are competing in terms of 'ease of participation.' If investors can click a few times on an application holding stablecoins to gain exposure to NVIDIA's stock fluctuations, they might not care whether it's a synthetic product at all.
This preference has precedents. The SPY exchange-traded fund has proven that packaged products can become mainstream in the trading market, as have contracts for difference (CFD), futures, options, and other derivatives. Initially, they were merely tools for traders, but ultimately, they served a broader user base.
These derivatives often lead the movements of underlying assets, capturing emotions faster than the sluggish traditional markets amid market fluctuations, amplifying fear or greed.
Tokenized stocks may follow a similar path.
03 Stablecoins
In recent years, tech giants like Amazon and Apple have been exploring the stablecoin space. In June 2025, Uber's CEO announced consideration of using stablecoins as a method for global fund transfers. This article will explore the reasons behind tech giants flocking to stablecoins and the commercial logic and challenges behind it. Recommended article:
(Fortune Magazine: Why are tech giants flocking to stablecoins, what are they really betting on?)
Most notably, the regulatory environment in Washington D.C. has undergone a huge transformation. The Senate has passed a bill, currently under review by the House, that will clear obstacles for integrating stablecoins into the financial system.
Cryptocurrency supporters also state that the commercial prospects for stablecoins are increasingly broad. Unlike more volatile cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, stablecoins are expected to become a more efficient payment method, capable of sending digital dollars at near-instant speed and lower costs. This could fundamentally change how enterprises manage global funds, pay global employees and contractors, and handle various affairs.
However, since this technology is still in its early stages and the regulatory outlook remains unclear, analysts interviewed by Fortune Magazine expressed skepticism about whether Silicon Valley tech giants will widely adopt stablecoins in the near future.
In the context of high inflation and lira depreciation in Turkey, cryptocurrencies have become a choice for the public to hedge risks. In July 2025, the Turkish Capital Markets Board banned 46 crypto websites, but it was difficult to stop the trend of 'stablecoins under the pillow,' as the crypto focus remains on hedging fiat currency risks, with ongoing regulatory and demand games. Recommended article:
(Romantic Turkey, the stablecoin under the pillow)
On March 19, 2025, Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, a rival of President Erdogan, was arrested, triggering panic among local investors. The Turkish lira (TRY) plummeted by 10% around 4 PM, reaching a new historical low of 41:1 (TRY:USD). About an hour later, the crypto market saw a rush to avoid fiat currency, with BTC/TRY trading volume on Binance surging.
04 Industry Insights
Ethereum has stood up, but Vitalik seems more concerned about the super AI threat. Recommended article:
(Vitalik's view on 'AI 2027': Will super AI really destroy humanity?)
In April of this year, Daniel Kokotajlo, Scott Alexander, and others released a report (AI 2027) depicting 'our best guess about the impact of superhuman AI over the next five years.' They predict that by 2027, superhuman AI will be born, and the future of all human civilization will depend on the development outcomes of AI: by 2030, we will either usher in a utopia (from the American perspective) or head towards complete destruction (from a global human perspective).
In the following months, there were numerous varied responses regarding the possibility of this scenario. In critical responses, most focused on the issue of 'the timeline being too fast': will AI development really accelerate continuously as Kokotajlo and others suggest, or even become more intense? This debate has persisted in the AI field for several years, with many expressing skepticism that superhuman AI would arrive so quickly. In recent years, the duration of tasks AI can autonomously complete has roughly doubled every 7 months. If this trend continues, it will take until the mid-2030s for AI to autonomously complete tasks equivalent to an entire human career. While this progress is also rapid, it is far later than 2027.
Vitalik Buterin once favored permissive open-source licenses, but has now shifted to support copyleft. This change stems from open source becoming mainstream, the intensifying competition in the crypto space requiring strict constraints, and a shift in his philosophical views. He believes that copyleft is an effective mechanism for incentivizing the diffusion of technology. Recommended article:
(Vitalik: Why did I abandon permissive licenses to embrace copyleft when open source became mainstream?)
I transitioned from favoring permissive licenses to supporting copyleft, stemming from two major industry transformations and a philosophical shift.
Firstly, open source has become mainstream, making it more feasible for companies to embrace open source. Nowadays, many companies across various industries are embracing open source: tech giants like Google, Microsoft, and Huawei not only accept open source but also lead the development of open-source software; emerging fields like artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency rely on open source more than any previous industry.
Secondly, the competition in the crypto space is becoming increasingly fierce and profit-driven, making it no longer feasible to simply rely on goodwill for open source. Therefore, promoting open source cannot depend solely on moral appeals (such as 'please open the code'), but must also utilize copyleft's 'hard constraints,' granting code access only to developers who are also open source.
To visually present how these two forces enhance the relative value of copyleft, it is roughly as follows:
Roger Ver, once called the 'Bitcoin Jesus,' is now imprisoned in Spain, facing a 109-year sentence in the US. On July 4, 2025, the unusual movement of 80,000 Bitcoins sparked speculation about his liquidation of assets for freedom, revealing the conflict between crypto ideals and real-world rules. Recommended article:
(From 'Bitcoin Jesus' to prisoner: a digital cage forged with 400,000 BTC)
Vitalik: It is utterly absurd to be sentenced to life imprisonment for non-violent tax violations. The case against Roger Ver clearly carries strong political motives — just like the case of Ross Ulbricht, where too many people and businesses are accused of far more serious crimes yet face much lighter sentences than Roger Ver. Some argue that the reason he is targeted is due to his statements (his advocacy for freedom and refusal to acknowledge the legitimacy of coercive state power), which is quite persuasive. This matter deserves our opposition because using selective prosecution of irrelevant charges to bypass protections afforded by the First Amendment (in more authoritarian countries, even bypassing the most basic moral baseline of 'not punishing individuals for crimes committed by their family members') is a common tactic.
The US's 'citizenship-based taxation' system and its related refund policies are extremely strict: the former is hardly adopted by other countries, while the latter's tax rates are among the highest globally (for example, the UK only charges capital gains tax on funds returned within 5 years).
If the IRS indeed obtained confidential information by intimidating Roger Ver's lawyer, that would be a complete betrayal. The right to confidential consultation with a lawyer must be absolutely respected. For truly unintentional errors, the resolution should be to give the parties the opportunity to pay back taxes (if necessary) along with interest and penalties, rather than filing a lawsuit.
Wealth often emerges from the transition from tightening cycles to easing phases. Therefore, clearly identifying one's position in the liquidity cycle is key to accurately laying out assets. What stage are we in now? Recommended article:
(Liquidity cycle rerouted, are your assets keeping up?)
Signals to pay close attention to:
Signal 1: The inflation rate has dropped to 2% and policymakers have announced a risk balance.
Signal 2: Quantitative Tightening (QT) paused (with upper limits set at 0 or 100% reinvestment)
Signal 3: The three-month forward rate agreements and overnight index swap spreads (FRA-OIS) exceed 25 basis points, or the repo rate suddenly spikes.
Signal 4: The People's Bank of China (PBoC) has comprehensively lowered the deposit reserve ratio (RRR) by 25 basis points.
