Certain privacy-focused tokens have seen a significant increase in value, with DCR experiencing a nearly 40% surge in a single day.

According to market data from BIT (bit.com), U.S. pre-market semiconductor stocks are broadly lower. Arm fell 4.70%, TSMC dropped 4.52%, Marvell Technology declined 3.77%, AMD fell 3.25%, Lam Research dropped 3.12%, and Nvidia slipped 1.62%. The storage sector led losses, with Western Digital down 7.13%, SK Hynix ADR falling 6.66%, SanDisk dropping 6.69%, Seagate Technology down 5.46%, and Micron Technology declining 4.11%. Optical communication-related stocks weakened across the board: Astera Labs fell 4.45%, Coherent dropped 4.43%, Corning declined 4.19%, Applied Optoelectronics fell 3.98%, Nokia dropped 3.82%, and Credo fell 3.61%.

Changxin Technology announced that, per data from the Shanghai Stock Exchange, the company’s online IPO offering drew 9,428,778 valid subscriber accounts, with 816,920,125,000 valid subscription shares. The initial online offering subscription winning rate was 0.40995452%. Total allotment numbers amounted to 1,633,840,250, ranging from 100,000,000,000 to 101,633,840,249. After the clawback mechanism was activated, the final online offering subscription winning rate reached 0.47141739%. (Jinshi)

According to official announcements, Binance Alpha has launched the second round of its Block Street (BSB) airdrop campaign. Users holding 250 or more Alpha points can claim 245 BSB airdrops on a first-come, first-served basis, with 15 Alpha points deducted upon claiming. If the prize pool is not fully distributed, the points threshold will automatically drop by 5 points every 5 minutes. Users must confirm their claim on the Alpha campaign page within 24 hours; unclaimed rewards will be considered forfeited after the deadline.

Ivan Branco, head of information management, AI and analytics at Volvo Group’s truck operations division, revealed that the company has been testing its own cryptocurrency on a closed blockchain network to streamline transactions and data exchanges with material and transport suppliers. The internal initiative aims to facilitate cross-border transactions by bypassing traditional currency systems, while preserving immutable records of orders and transport data. This trial is part of Volvo Group’s broader push to leverage blockchain for supply chain efficiency (the group oversees trucks, buses and construction machinery), though the project remains in the conceptual stage and has not yet entered industrial deployment.

Samsung Electronics has installed two High NA EUV lithography systems for its foundry business, but is taking a cautious approach to delaying their deployment to mass production lines. The core reason is that the foundry division is currently seen as one of the candidates to return to profitability as early as the fourth quarter of this year. After years of losses, rushing to fully deploy such expensive equipment would significantly increase fixed costs including depreciation and operating expenses. In other words, the profitability inflection point is imminent, and accelerating capital expenditure would instead delay this milestone. Meanwhile, Samsung’s 2-nanometer process yield is reported to have reached around 55%, close to the roughly 60% threshold widely considered by the industry to be sufficient for stable mass production. Thus, the issue is not that process maturity is insufficient to support High NA EUV. South Korean media reports that Samsung is maintaining a conservative capital allocation strategy, minimizing equipment spending until its foundry business has a clearer path to sustainable profitability. This strategy reflects Samsung’s pragmatic trade-off in the advanced process race: its technological and equipment capabilities are already in place, but financial discipline takes precedence over rushing to catch up.

The world’s largest stablecoin issuer Tether has invested $20 million in Argentine digital bank Ualá, which counts over 11 million customers across Argentina, Mexico, and Colombia, offering services including accounts, cards, loans, and investments. The investment forms part of Ualá’s $197 million funding round announced in March this year, led by Allianz X, Allianz’s venture arm, with a post-money valuation of $3.2 billion. At this valuation, Tether holds an approximately 0.6% stake. Ualá CEO Pierpaolo Barbieri stated that current regulations in Argentina and Mexico have hindered recent plans to integrate USDT, and Tether is participating in the round solely as a financial investor. Tether has been ramping up its footprint in South America recently: in April, it led a $14 million funding round for Argentine payment wallet Belo; it holds around 70% of shares in Adecoagro, an agricultural and energy producer operating in Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay; and earlier this month, it put $20 million into Brazilian crypto exchange Mercado Bitcoin. Tether uses excess capital from returns on USDT reserve assets for these investments. Currently, USDT has a circulating supply of $184 billion, with a net profit of $1.04 billion in the first quarter of this year.