Point of View: The Federal Reserve Has Over-Eased, with a 65% Chance of Stagflation in the United States

According to Iran's Tasnim News Agency, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said its Navy and Aerospace Forces had jointly carried out missile and drone operations against Kuwait and Bahrain in response to recent U.S. strikes on Iran. The IRGC also warned that any violation of the ceasefire agreement would breach the deal between the two sides and could lead to a complete halt of all ongoing related processes. The IRGC stated it would respond to future violations of the agreement with harsher measures, and any "hostile aggression" would face a "devastating response". Additionally, the IRGC accused the U.S. of attacking five Iranian coastal outposts under the pretext that the IRGC Navy had intercepted vessels violating Iran's territorial waters. U.S. President Donald Trump previously posted that the U.S. military had just struck Iran's missile and drone storage sites and coastal radar stations, claiming Iran had again violated the ceasefire agreement. Trump also threatened: "There will come a time when we will no longer exercise restraint and be forced to complete the operations we have already successfully initiated by military means. If that day comes, the Islamic Republic of Iran will cease to exist!"

Fidelity Digital Assets recently released a research report addressing concerns that Bitcoin’s halving will long-term weaken the network’s security. The report’s author, Fidelity research analyst Daniel Gray, noted that Bitcoin network security does not solely depend on block rewards; transaction fees, market incentives, and other economic forces also continuously motivate miners to maintain network security, making sustained attacks prohibitively costly. On the data front, Gray pointed out that while block subsidies have continued to decline, the rise in Bitcoin’s price has largely offset this impact. Miners’ average daily revenue has surged from roughly $26,300 during Bitcoin’s first halving cycle to over $40.2 million today. He wrote: “Despite the decline in issuance, miner incentives—and by extension, network security—have historically strengthened alongside Bitcoin’s price growth.” Since Bitcoin’s fourth halving in April 2024, miners’ per-block subsidy has dropped from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC. However, the report’s optimistic conclusion stands in sharp contrast to the reality of publicly traded mining companies. Multiple industry analysts have described the current period as one of the most challenging mining environments on record, driven by concurrent declines in block rewards, rising operating costs, and intensifying competition. In response, several mining firms have begun transitioning to AI and high-performance computing sectors, leveraging their existing power infrastructure to meet AI computing demand. VanEck estimates that public mining companies may need to raise up to $50 billion in additional capital to fully transition to AI infrastructure, though AI data centers have far higher requirements for facility standards, cooling, power redundancy, and networks than traditional Bitcoin mines, making the transition’s difficulty non-negligible.

According to CNBC, a tanker in the Strait of Hormuz was hit by gunfire on Saturday, the latest sign of renewed tensions between the U.S. and Iran. The two sides had previously reached a temporary agreement aimed at ending hostilities in the region. The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) said a vessel in the strait was struck by an "unidentified flying object", suffering hull damage, though the crew was reported unharmed. Bahrain also condemned an Iranian drone attack on Saturday, labeling it a "flagrant violation" of its sovereignty. The new attacks unfold as the U.S. and Iran were supposed to be in 60-day ceasefire talks negotiating an end to the conflict, but both nations have accused each other of breaching the agreement’s terms.

U.S. President Trump said local time on the 27th that the U.S. military had just struck Iran’s missile and drone storage sites and coastal radar stations, as Iran had once again violated the ceasefire agreement. Trump also threatened: “There will come a time when we will no longer exercise restraint and be forced to use military means to complete the operations we have already successfully initiated. If that day comes, the Islamic Republic of Iran will cease to exist!” U.S. Central Command released a statement on social media on the 27th, noting that the U.S. military carried out a new round of strikes on multiple targets inside Iran that day. The military operation was a direct response to “Iran’s continuous actions targeting merchant ships”, with U.S. warplanes striking targets including Iran’s military surveillance facilities, communication systems, air defense positions, drone storage facilities, and mine-laying equipment.

The Kobeissi Letter stated that the U.S. is experiencing an unprecedented ETF boom. Data shows that year-to-date 2026, U.S.-listed ETFs have attracted over $1 trillion in inflows, and at the current pace, they are on track to exceed $2 trillion by year-end, setting a new all-time high. If annual ETF inflows surpass $2 trillion, this will mark the fourth consecutive year of growth in annual ETF inflows, 33% higher than the 2025 record, an increase of roughly $500 billion. Meanwhile, 700 ETFs have launched so far this year, also on pace for an annual record. June alone saw 186 ETFs listed, the highest monthly issuance figure in history. The ETF industry is expanding at a record pace.

Base engineering team released a post-mortem report on the June 25 block production outage, noting that Base mainnet suffered two separate block production interruptions on June 25 and June 26. The first incident occurred at 11:47 ET on June 25, lasting 116 minutes; the second took place at 11:28 ET on June 26, lasting 20 minutes. Both events shared the same root cause. Chain integrity remained unharmed, and all funds on Base are secure. Block production resumed safely after the team mitigated the issues. The root cause was a bug in the sequencer’s block construction logic: after a transaction validation failure, expired log states were not cleared. An invalid transaction was received by the block builder and failed as expected, but the system incorrectly retained log states including accessed accounts and storage slots. A subsequent valid transaction was processed before the log states could be properly cleared, leading to a gas fee calculation mismatch and a sequencer block containing invalid state transitions. Other nodes rejected this block, causing the entire chain to halt. During the outage, Base could not produce new L2 blocks, sequencer and validator nodes could not advance past the invalid block, and new transactions could not be posted on-chain. The team fixed the interruptions by deploying a patch to the sequencer to ensure proper log state updates during execution. Base stated it will strengthen protocol fuzz testing and load testing tools to more easily identify adversarial transaction patterns that could expose similar vulnerabilities, and will continue to improve operational and monitoring capabilities.