South Korea's KOSPI index plunged 4% intraday, with Samsung down 3.55%.

One of Australia’s largest pension funds, UniSuper, is seeking to buy U.S. tech stocks amid their pullback, brushing off concerns over high valuations and betting that artificial intelligence will drive earnings growth over the coming years. The fund’s chief investment officer, John Pearce, said UniSuper is structurally overweight U.S. tech stocks because the sector is at the “sweet spot” of the AI spending cycle, and will add to positions even if the sector pulls back by 10%. This bullish stance underscores the growing divergence among investors over the long-term outlook for U.S. mega-cap tech stocks, which have retreated from their all-time highs set last month. Pearce noted: “Everyone is talking about a bubble, but valuations don’t reflect that. We know they are investing heavily in capital expenditure, but these are companies with solid fundamentals and strong growth prospects, so we are very happy to continue holding long positions.” UniSuper, which manages A$166 billion (approximately $115 billion) in assets, has maintained an overweight position in U.S. tech stocks for months. International stocks account for roughly 35% of its default investment strategy, with Nvidia, Microsoft and Apple being its largest holdings.

According to Bloomberg citing Vortexa data, after the U.S. revoked waivers for Iran's oil sales, around 63 million barrels of Iranian crude oil are currently stranded at sea, with most tankers remaining in the Persian Gulf and Asian waters and having yet to find buyers. Previously, the U.S. had allowed Iran to sell crude oil within 60 days without sanctions, but this week revoked the waivers on the grounds of Iran's attacks on oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, resulting in a large backlog of loaded crude oil sales. Market analysts noted that driven by factors including sudden U.S. policy shifts, Western sanctions, and insurance restrictions, Iran's crude oil exports are facing renewed pressure. Apart from China, no Asian refineries have publicly purchased Iranian crude oil so far; industry insiders project that Iran may need to further deepen discounts to attract overseas buyers.

South Korea’s KOSPI index extended its intraday decline to 5.00%, with a cumulative drop of over 20% from its June peak. The Korea Exchange has activated circuit breakers for the KOSPI index, suspending program trading. Samsung Electronics’ share price extended its loss to 6%.

According to Hyperinsight monitoring, SK Hynix (SKHX) opened with an 11% surge today before pulling back sharply, now trading at $1,423, having given back most of its intraday gains. Over the past half hour, two large whales that entered low positions on Hyperliquid overnight and early today have closed out all their long positions, totaling approximately $4.95 million. The address starting with 0x1cb closed 2,362 SKHX long positions at an average price of $1,438, worth around $3.4 million. As of press time, this address has flipped to short positions: it currently holds SKHX short positions (10x leverage) worth $1.63 million, at an average price of $1,457, with a liquidation price of $1,529, and an unrealized profit of roughly $51,000 (+23%).

According to GMGN market data, the on-chain meme coin CASHCAT on Robinhood’s chain has extended its rally, briefly surging past $110 million to hit a new all-time high; it has now pulled back to $104 million, marking a 24-hour increase of over 13.9 times. CASHCAT was the early mascot of Robinhood’s US stock app, later rebranded as Robinhood. On July 1 this year, Robinhood launched its own Layer 2 public chain, Robinhood Chain, which focuses on on-chain finance and real-world assets (RWA). Robinhood co-founder and CEO Vlad Tenev posted on X today that while the company is building Robinhood Chain into the top public chain for real-world assets (RWA), it is also "very suitable for trading meme coins". BlockBeats reminds users that most meme coins have no intrinsic value and are highly volatile, so trading them requires caution.

Over the past seven days, the stablecoin supply on Robinhood Chain, the blockchain platform operated by Robinhood, has surged 155% to $246.97 million. Stablecoins now account for 93% of the chain’s total value secured (TVS) of $266.35 million, while the network’s total value locked (TVL) has risen 172% over the same period. Data shows that of the $266.35 million in total assets on Robinhood Chain, roughly $212.5 million is native-issued assets, with an additional $53.85 million transferred into the network via cross-chain bridges in the past week.