The popular AI framework Virtuals Protocol will host an in-person meet-up in Hong Kong on Friday, January 17.

SoftBank Group founder Masayoshi Son stated that by 2040, global artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure will require $5 trillion in annual investment to support the expansion of data centers, power supplies, and humanoid robots, thereby driving the shift from a "human-centric" work model to a new paradigm. He pointed out that as AI evolves into Artificial Superintelligence (ASI), the revenue generated will justify these massive expenditures. "AI will revolutionize our lives—and this transformation will bring profits," Son said. (Jinshi)

According to a report by The Korea Times, South Korea’s financial regulators will hold a high-level meeting on Thursday to discuss risks and countermeasures for single-stock leveraged ETFs. The meeting is expected to take place under the framework of the "F4 Meeting" — the South Korean government’s macroeconomic and financial issue coordination mechanism — with officials from the Ministry of Economy and Finance, Financial Services Commission, Financial Supervisory Service, and the Bank of Korea in attendance. Recently, volatility in South Korea’s stock market has continued to intensify, drawing growing attention from regulators and market participants to single-stock leveraged ETFs. Stakeholders believe these products have become a key factor driving sharp stock price fluctuations. An official with knowledge of the matter said regulators have been coordinating relevant plans internally in recent days, but no final policy direction has been set yet. Possible measures under market discussion include raising margin requirements, limiting daily price fluctuation ranges, and adjusting leverage multiples. However, regulatory officials noted that these measures may only provide temporary relief and cannot fundamentally resolve the structural causes of market volatility. (Jinshi)

According to an official announcement, Binance will conduct wallet maintenance for the Ethereum network (ETH) at 14:00 UTC+8 on July 16, 2026. To facilitate this maintenance, Binance will suspend ETH network deposit and withdrawal services starting at 13:55 UTC+8 on the same day. The maintenance is expected to take 1 hour, and deposit and withdrawal services will automatically resume after completion.

U.S. financial blog portal ZeroHedge noted in a post that as of July 13, South Korea had a total of 1.2 million retail leverage accounts that triggered margin calls, with approximately 320,000 to 360,000 of these accounts fully liquidated by securities firms, and some accounts still owed funds to the firms following the liquidations.

Robinhood Chain’s Launchpad platform NOXA announced that its web domain is currently offline. The team is testing a new ENS-based frontend interface, which is nearly complete. Once the new interface goes live, creators will be able to claim their creator fees via the frontend again. NOXA serves as the launchpad for CASHCAT, with cumulative protocol fees exceeding $14.5 million.

South Korea's stock market has seen intensified volatility recently, with risks from leveraged trading starting to surface en masse. According to data from FreeSIS, the Korea Financial Investment Association, the total value of actual reverse transactions conducted by South Korean securities firms for unsettled funds last week (July 6 to July 10) stood at approximately 324.095 billion won. This is about 32% higher than the average of roughly 244.921 billion won over the prior five weeks, marking a week of notable elevated pressure. Compared with the relatively calm week of June 15 to June 19, last week’s figure was roughly five times that level. In terms of daily data, forced liquidation pressure in South Korea’s stock market intensified significantly on July 9. That day’s actual reverse transaction value hit around 142.197 billion won, accounting for 10.2% of unsettled funds, the highest of the week. On July 10, the amount remained at approximately 81.613 billion won, with a 5.7% share. The three preceding trading days saw figures of 39.698 billion won, 31.741 billion won, and 28.846 billion won respectively. The so-called "reverse transactions" refer to cases where, after investors buy stocks using margin or unsettled funds, if they fail to top up funds in a timely manner, securities firms will forcibly sell the relevant stocks in accordance with rules. This data is not equivalent to the number of margin liquidation cases, but it reflects the scale of forced liquidation of leveraged accounts during market downturns. Analysts note that when the index experiences consecutive corrections and individual stock declines widen, margin accounts and short-term trading accounts are more likely to face margin calls or forced liquidation pressure. If market sentiment continues to weaken, reverse transactions could further amplify intraday volatility, creating a vicious cycle of "declines → forced liquidations → further declines".