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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 reportedly opened registration to users in China, according to BlockBeats.

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.

Major exchanges have seen $109 million worth of futures liquidated in the past hour. In the past 24 hours, $385 million worth of futures have been liquidated.

An anonymous whale address beginning with 0x4553 has swapped its entire holdings of 30,139 ETH for 859 BTC, valued at approximately $54.09 million, according to a report from EmberCN. The swap occurred as the ETH/BTC ratio stands at 0.0285. EmberCN suggested the move indicates the whale anticipates ETH will underperform BTC, with plans to repurchase a larger amount of ETH if the ratio declines further.

California-based fintech company Flex has secured $70 million in a Series B1 funding round led by Halo Fund, Forbes reported. The company operates Flex Global, a stablecoin-based cross-border financial platform that offers multi-currency accounts supporting 32 currencies across 170 countries.

According to CoinNess market monitoring, BTC has risen above $63,000. BTC is trading at $63,002 on the Binance USDT market.

Rezaie, a military adviser to Iran's Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, said on July 14 that the memorandum of understanding (MOU) between Iran and the U.S. no longer exists and that the U.S. has formally entered a state of war, according to Iranian media.

Onchain Lens reported, citing Arkham data, that BlackRock transferred 2,990 BTC, worth $187.3 million, to Coinbase Prime about an hour ago. The deposit is likely part of the operational process for its spot Bitcoin ETF, possibly to settle redemptions following fund outflows. This follows approximately $185.5 million in outflows from BlackRock's IBIT on July 13.

London-based startup Velocity has raised $38 million in a Series A funding round, Fortune reported. The round was led by Dragonfly, with participation from Coinbase, Capital One Ventures, and Wintermute. Velocity focuses on providing stablecoin payment solutions to corporations, payment service providers, fintech companies, and financial institutions, helping them optimize cross-border payments, fund settlements, and treasury management processes using dollar-pegged tokens.

Traditional financial institutions are actively adopting blockchain, but this does not signify a merger with decentralized finance (DeFi), according to a16z Crypto, the cryptocurrency arm of global venture capital firm a16z. The firm explained that while the market anticipates a convergence, institutions are primarily interested in blockchain's practical benefits—such as cost reduction, improved payment efficiency, expanded distribution channels, and enhanced customer management—rather than its decentralized philosophy. Due to regulatory and internal control requirements, traditional finance struggles to embrace core DeFi principles like openness and anonymity. a16z Crypto noted that programmable financial infrastructure tailored to institutional needs is likely to become the new standard. The firm cited JPMorgan's institutional blockchain and the tokenized funds from BlackRock and Franklin Templeton as examples of using blockchain to streamline existing financial services, not as instances of direct participation in DeFi.

Decentralized cryptocurrency exchange (DEX) Aster (ASTER) has announced a "Grid-to-Earn Challenge," offering a total of $10,000 in ASTER rewards to users who trade ANSEM, CASHCAT, and CARDS using its grid trading feature. The event runs from 10:00 a.m. UTC on July 14 to 10:00 a.m. UTC on July 21. The eligible trading pairs are ANSEM/USDT, CASHCAT/USDT, and CARDS/USDT. Rewards will be distributed to participants based on their individual grid trading volume as a percentage of the total volume from all participants. However, any reward amount less than one ASTER will not be paid out. The challenge is open to both new and existing users, but market makers are excluded. Only trades executed directly through the Aster grid trading feature will be considered valid. Participants found engaging in wash trading, self-trading, or using multiple accounts will be disqualified.

The European Central Bank (ECB) has selected 36 payment service providers (PSPs) to participate in its digital euro pilot, Cointelegraph reported. Participants include fintech firms Stripe and Revolut, alongside traditional banks such as Deutsche Bank and UniCredit. By country, Italy leads with seven participants, followed by Germany with five, and Portugal and Greece with three each. The pilot is scheduled to begin in the second half of 2027 and will involve the ECB and the central banks of 19 eurozone countries, including Belgium, Germany, and France.

Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP) 110, which aimed to restrict the recording of images and text in transactions, has been effectively rejected after garnering only 0.7% support from miners, CoinDesk reported. According to the report, the proposal failed to win backing from mining pools and institutional investors, and several prominent developers voiced their opposition. BIP-110 was intended to temporarily tighten consensus rules on transaction data for approximately one year to block the inscription method. The 2021 Taproot upgrade enabled the addition of images and text to transactions, leading to the emergence of Ordinals and Runes. Supporters view this as a legitimate use of Bitcoin's block space, while opponents argue that non-financial data unnecessarily bloats the blockchain and undermines decentralization. The proposal also sparked controversy by attempting to revive the "user-activated" method, where nodes enforce rules without miner consensus. Opponents warned that implementing rules without broad agreement could lead to a chain split.

Crypto market maker Wintermute has assessed that while Bitcoin has held the $62,000 support line despite negative factors like U.S.-Iran geopolitical conflict and Strategy's BTC sales, a full recovery is not yet confirmed. The firm noted that the eight-week streak of outflows from spot BTC ETFs has finally reversed into inflows. According to Wintermute, the market had been watching for two preconditions for a recovery: a stable market structure that avoids cascading liquidations amid bad news, and an improvement in spot ETF flows, both of which have now been met. The fact that Strategy's BTC sales had almost no impact on the market is also seen as a positive sign. However, Wintermute believes that while the downtrend has halted, it is difficult to say the market has entered a recovery phase. Key variables to watch include the U.S. Consumer Price Index (CPI), whether BTC ETF inflows continue, and the situation regarding the Strait of Hormuz. A genuine recovery could be triggered by a low CPI, sustained ETF inflows, and progress on the Clarity for Payment Stablecoins Act. Conversely, a higher-than-expected CPI could put the $62,000 and subsequently $60,000 support levels to the test again. Wintermute concluded that the most important change compared to the last two months is that the crypto market has begun to react to improvements in its own conditions, rather than being solely driven by macroeconomic variables.

Prediction market platforms have emerged as a new force in the U.S. sports betting market, driven by this year's FIFA World Cup, CoinDesk reported. Kalshi saw its notional trading volume in June surge by more than 70% from the previous month to $31 billion, with approximately 85% of the trades stemming from sports-related contracts. The company explained that World Cup-related trades alone accounted for $22.42 billion. Polymarket also set a new record with a monthly trading volume of $10.8 billion on its overseas platform, while its U.S. platform showed sharp growth with $3.5 billion in volume.

Bitcoin is expected to remain in a trading range during the third quarter as long as U.S. real interest rates remain high, according to a report from QCP Capital. The firm noted that when investors can earn real returns from cash and short-term government bonds, there is less incentive to hold non-yielding assets like BTC purely as a store of value. QCP Capital diagnosed that Bitcoin is currently caught between defensive assets like precious metals and high-beta assets such as AI and semiconductor stocks, failing to act as a hedge or join the AI rally. The report suggested that a decline in real rates, increased ETF inflows, and regulatory progress could trigger a rally. However, it also warned that if AI-driven stocks weaken before crypto-native demand recovers, BTC could be sold off like a liquidity-sensitive risk asset. QCP Capital added that continued net purchases by publicly traded companies like Strategy and stable ETF inflows could serve as a buffer in the third quarter. Conversely, a slowdown in corporate buying, a shrinking mNAV premium, or declining cash reserves would be early signs of stress.