Coinbase Ventures emerged as the most active crypto venture capital firm in the first half of 2026, with DeFi, AI, and payment sectors being its most favored investment areas.

US President Donald Trump said that to honor late Senator Lindsey Graham, the US Senate should be pushed to pass the Clarity Act as soon as possible. Trump noted Graham was a key supporter of the bill, adding that the Clarity Act is critical to America’s competitiveness in the digital asset sector. He warned that other countries are seeking to fully dominate this major financial transformation and the artificial intelligence space, while the US currently remains in a leading position.

U.S. President Donald Trump stated that the Strait of Hormuz is open and will remain open regardless of Iran’s presence. We will resume the "Block Iran" operation, named as such because it only blocks Iranian vessels or clients from entering or exiting the strait. All other countries will use the waterway fairly and openly. Going forward, the U.S. will be known as the "Strait of Hormuz Guardian". However, as the guardian and in the interest of fairness, the U.S. will impose a 20% fee on all cargo transits to compensate for all costs required to provide security and safety in this volatile region. Relevant procedures and setup work will commence immediately. Thank you all for your attention to this matter!

Global oil prices rose across the board, with WTI crude oil climbing above $75 per barrel, up 5.01% on the day. Brent crude surged 5.00% intraday, trading at $79.74 per barrel as of press time. Crude oil futures main contracts rallied in the short term, with SC crude oil’s gain expanding to 2.21% to 481.5 yuan per barrel. Low-sulfur fuel oil (LU) rose 1.92% to 4,195 yuan per ton; fuel oil gained 2.51% to 3,312 yuan per ton; and asphalt climbed 3.13% to 3,960 yuan per ton. On the news front, US President Donald Trump stated that the Strait of Hormuz is open and will remain open regardless of Iran’s presence. The US will resume the "Blockade Iran" operation, named as such because it only blocks Iranian vessels or clients from entering or exiting the strait. All other countries will use the strait fairly and openly. Going forward, the US will be known as the "Strait of Hormuz Guardian". As the guardian and out of fairness, the US will charge a 20% fee on all cargo shipments to compensate for all costs required to provide security in this volatile region.

Japan’s largest securities token issuance and management platform Progmat has completed its migration to the Avalanche blockchain, moving all its managed tokenized assets worth over 452 billion yen (approximately $2.7 billion) from the Corda 5-based permissioned blockchain to a dedicated Avalanche Layer 1. The migration, announced in February this year, was completed as planned without disrupting the normal operations of financial institutions. Progmat stated that the new architecture no longer relies on a single blockchain, enabling future multi-chain expansion. All smart contracts have been migrated to the EVM environment; while retaining all original functionalities, the processing speed of asset equity transfers has increased 3 to 5 times, and transaction finalization time has been shortened to less than 2 seconds. Originally incubated by Mitsubishi UFJ Trust Bank (MUFG), Japan’s largest bank, Progmat became an independent operation in 2023. It is currently backed by major Japanese financial institutions including Mizuho Bank, the Tokyo Stock Exchange, and SBI, holding a 53% market share in Japan’s securities token market and accounting for 64.6% of the total issuance scale of securities tokens. Its business covers most tokenized real estate and corporate bond projects. Additionally, Progmat established a working group on Japanese government bond tokenization and on-chain repo in May this year, collaborating with asset management institutions, banks, and securities firms to research tokenized Japanese government bonds and explore use cases such as 24/7 trading and T+0 real-time settlement.

Cross-border payment infrastructure platform Borderless.xyz released its Q2 2026 Benchmark Report, showing that stablecoin cross-border payments throughout the quarter had actual exchange rates better than the Interbank FX Rate, achieving a rare negative premium in the traditional cross-border payment system. Data shows the median "Parity Gap" for stablecoin payments in Q2 was -3.2 basis points, further widening to -5.9 basis points in June, meaning users’ final transaction rates were more favorable than the interbank mid-rate. Meanwhile, the average cost of sending a $10,000 cross-border payment remained around $27, staying largely stable for five consecutive months. The report notes that as stablecoin cross-border payment costs converge, payment routing has become the largest area for enterprises to optimize costs. If enterprises rely long-term on a single payment provider instead of dynamically selecting the best quote, they will pay an average of ~$2,330 extra per $1 million transferred, a phenomenon Borderless terms the "Routing Tax." Additionally, price differences between stablecoins across payment corridors remain significant. For example, in Peru’s payment corridor, USDC has long maintained a ~99 basis point price advantage over USDT; in the Brazilian real corridor, the lowest-quote provider changed 34 times in 88 days, an average of every 2.6 days. Regionally, payment costs in Latin America and Asia remained stable, while Africa saw the most volatility. Notably, the Malawi payment corridor’s spread once widened to 1,975 basis points, and the spread for Ghana’s USDC payment corridor rose 596% quarter-over-quarter. Borderless states that stablecoin cross-border payments have entered a competition-driven phase, and payment providers’ smart routing capabilities will be a key competitive advantage for enterprises to reduce costs going forward.

Jito Network announced it will allocate 100% of its JTX platform revenue sharing proceeds to repurchase and burn JTO tokens for at least the next year. Per the announcement, all gains from JTX revenue sharing will be continuously used to buy back JTO on the secondary market, with the repurchased tokens permanently burned to reduce circulating supply.