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

According to market data from BIT (bit.com), US pre-market optical communication concept stocks extended their losing streak, with declines as follows: Marvell Technology (MRVL) fell 2.85%; Applied Optoelectronics (AAOI) dropped 3.11%; Lumentum Holdings (LITE) decreased 2.24%; Coherent Corp (COHR) fell 3.31%; and Ciena Corporation (CIEN) dropped 2.7%.

Hyperliquid officially responded to the price pinning incident in its SK Hynix (SKHYNIX) perpetual contract market, explaining how the HIP-3 market operates. Hyperliquid is a permissionless blockchain, where different teams can deploy and run markets on it as an infrastructure layer. The SKHYNIX perpetual contract was deployed and operated by the Trade.xyz team, which is currently investigating the incident and will share updates once a conclusion is reached. Secondly, HIP-3 deployers push their market’s mark price, oracle price, and external perpetual price inputs. Based on today’s posts and support tickets, it may be necessary to walk through this mechanism. Deployers can choose to adopt a mark price method similar to that used for perpetual contracts operated by validators (such as BTC). In this case, the protocol contributes one of three median components: the median of on-chain data (latest trade price, best bid, best ask). The other two components are pushed by the deployer and influence the final mark price. For a simplified example: if the median of on-chain data (latest trade price, best bid, best ask) is 100, but the deployer pushes (150, 151), the mark price will be 150. Note: As of press time, Hyperliquid officials have not provided further clarification. For more related reports, see "The Truth Behind Hyperliquid’s Pinning Incident: $868 Leveraged $500M Hynix Contract Market".

E-commerce working capital RWA platform Dow Protocol announced the completion of a $9 million seed round, with participation from MH Ventures, OKX Ventures, Animoca Brands, Arcane Group, Essentia Partners, and Quartet Group. Dow Protocol serves merchants of leading global e-commerce platforms, providing working capital advances based on their sales receivables and real operational data. Its underlying asset service system is embedded in mainstream e-commerce platforms, enabling direct access to merchants' raw operational data for credit assessment and risk control. Meanwhile, via partnerships with these platforms, repayments are deducted directly from the platform side, bypassing merchant accounts, which fundamentally mitigates repayment risks and establishes an industry-leading collection mechanism. On the capital side, Dow Protocol leverages the instant settlement capabilities of stablecoins, cutting the lengthy disbursement process of traditional lending to as fast as same-day arrival. For the cash-flow-sensitive working capital market, disbursement speed is a value in itself, so market participants are willing to pay a premium for this efficiency. Additionally, Dow Protocol advances new on-chain native logic for working capital advances, enabling high-granularity, programmable execution of advance terms, and reengineering the underlying operational logic of supply chain finance. Dow Protocol positions itself as a general-purpose pan-e-commerce PayFi RWA advance protocol, with a framework scalable to supply chain finance advance needs across multiple sectors including e-commerce, catering, payments, gaming, and AI computing power.

According to market data from BIT (bit.com), Nasdaq 100 index futures fell 1%, while Dow Jones futures rose 0.1%. Most large-cap U.S. tech stocks traded lower in pre-market trading: Microsoft gained 0.7%, Meta rose 0.2%, Apple added 0.1%, Amazon was unchanged, Google Class A fell 0.3%, Tesla and Nvidia each dropped 1%, SpaceX declined 2%, and SK Hynix fell 4%.

Per its official announcement, Huobi HTX launched the CXMT/USDT (Changxin Technology) perpetual contract on July 28, supporting long and short trading with leverage ranging from 1x to 10x.

According to Bitget market data, Hong Kong-listed large language model stocks saw broad declines after the Hong Kong stock market closed. Zhipu (02513.HK) fell more than 18%, while MINIMAX-W (00100.HK) dropped over 14%.