Fed's Williams: Inflation returning to the 2% target delayed until 2028; May's PCE rose 4.1% year-on-year, reinforcing rate hike expectations.

Due to market concerns that OpenAI may delay its IPO until next year, which would delay returns for its Japanese investors, SoftBank Group’s stock fell 12% during intraday trading. As of October, SoftBank’s investment in ChatGPT developer OpenAI is projected to reach roughly $65 billion. Earlier, market expectations of massive gains from OpenAI’s IPO had pushed SoftBank’s stock to record highs, lifting its market capitalization above Toyota Motor Corp. last month. However, per a New York Times report, OpenAI’s advisory bankers warned that tech stock volatility could dampen market enthusiasm for the IPO. As a result, SoftBank’s stock posted its largest single-day drop in Tokyo in over three months during Friday’s morning trading session. Hiroki Takei, a strategist at Resona Holdings, noted that an OpenAI IPO would provide transparent market valuations for the vast assets SoftBank holds, as its portfolio includes hundreds of unlisted startups. If OpenAI goes public, investors will find it easier to assess SoftBank’s overall portfolio, and this transparency is expected to reduce the significant conglomerate discount or risk premium currently weighing on SoftBank’s shares. “News of a delayed IPO will naturally lower these expectations,” he said.

According to monitoring by AI Auntie, new address 0x643…CF565 withdrew $1.35 million worth of ETH and $2.87 million worth of HYPE from FalconX for the second time in a week. The address currently holds $14.5 million in ETH and $9.61 million in HYPE, with average withdrawal prices of $1,691.58 for ETH and $66.5 for HYPE, resulting in a cumulative unrealized loss of $1.792 million.

International oil prices have quickly fallen back to pre-US-Iran conflict levels, erasing all gains made during the conflict in just 11 days – a move that has surprised markets widely. Brent Crude dipped as low as $72.06 on Thursday, breaking below the pre-conflict last trading day’s settlement price of $72.48, and has plunged more than 39% from its March peak of $118.35. WTI Crude closed at $71.92, down roughly 36% from its high. This round of decline has far outpaced expectations. The industry had widely estimated that mine clearance in the strait would take time and Gulf production capacity would need months to recover, but actual progress has been much faster. JPMorgan analysts noted that the market rebalanced through a "distinctly different combination of demand loss and inventory drawdown", which is very different from initial assumptions. However, the rapid easing may not be stable. S&P Global data showed that 78 oil tankers transited the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday, hitting a post-conflict high, but this is still only 57% of pre-conflict levels, with many of these vessels being those trapped earlier and departing in a concentrated manner. TD Securities’ head of commodity strategy warned that the market may have overestimated the pace of supply and inventory recovery, and inventory pressure has become a key variable. U.S. Cushing inventories fell to 19 million barrels last week, about 1 million barrels below the level needed to keep the system stable. TD Securities forecasts that an additional 600 million barrels of global inventory may be drawn down by October; once inventories fall below a critical threshold, oil prices could rebound quickly. For the outlook, Mizuho Securities analysts believe the market is already in an "oversold" state, and expect oil prices to rebound to the $80 range in the coming weeks. Full production recovery in countries like Iraq and Kuwait is not expected until this autumn, when the supply-demand pattern may change again.

Crypto KOL Ansem has published a post reaffirming Bitcoin’s long-term investment thesis, stating that despite his previous bearish stance, the current price level presents a strong buying opportunity. He noted that Bitcoin’s core narrative as the “hardest currency” remains intact: it cannot be seized by governments, enables instant cross-border transfers, and is insulated from the long-term depreciation of the U.S. dollar, making it an ideal vehicle for long-term wealth storage. Between 2024 and 2025, gold outperforming Bitcoin temporarily dented the “digital gold” narrative, but he believes market confidence will rebound once price momentum picks up. On the macro front, Ansem argues that with the Strait of Hormuz reopening and inflation pressures set to ease, the Federal Reserve’s hawkish stance may have peaked, at which point the Fed and Washington policymakers will have room to cut rates rather than continue hiking. A strong U.S. dollar and rising interest rates have weighed on gold, but if capital from profit-taking in AI stocks flows into real estate, cash, and long-term value storage assets, both gold and Bitcoin will benefit. Institutional investors like Paul Tudor Jones still hold interest in Bitcoin. Earlier, Ansem admitted he was bearish on Bitcoin due to risks in the holdings of Saylor, founder of Strategy, and had previously thought $60,000 would be hard to defend, but he noted he is now reacting to buy-side entry signals. He pointed out that current price action is already pricing in the worst-case scenario of Saylor being forced to sell, and even if he does need to offload, it would not happen for at least six months. He concluded that Bitcoin is currently at the intersection of its long-term historical support levels and what he describes as the most pessimistic market sentiment he has ever seen, making entry in early Q3 a notable trading opportunity.

Prediction market platform Polymarket disclosed on Thursday that a third-party vendor of its was hacked, with attackers injecting malicious code into the platform’s frontend to steal roughly $3 million in Polymarket’s proprietary stablecoin pUSD from fewer than 15 user accounts. The funds were later converted to ETH and aggregated into a single Ethereum wallet, and as of press time, the assets have not been moved. Polymarket noted that the frontend vulnerability has been identified and patched, with affected users to receive full compensation, though the platform declined to name the specific compromised vendor. This marks Polymarket’s second security incident in two months. Last month, hackers exploited a private key leak to breach an internal wallet used for user deposits and reward distributions, leading to approximately $700,000 in losses. Both incidents were peripheral breaches that did not impact the core protocol, but the consecutive security lapses underscore the potential risks stemming from the platform’s reliance on third-party vendors. Polymarket had recently faced controversy over a Wall Street Journal investigation that alleged it illegally marketed to U.S. users through simulated trades and fake profit videos; the latest security incident has added further pressure on the platform.

Blockchain security researcher Sergey Shemyakov issued a warning on June 25 that Tornado Cash DAO had a highly suspicious governance proposal approximately 8 hours prior, calling on the community to conduct an independent review. The proposal shows multiple red flags: First, its contract code is unverified, a rarity in Tornado Cash DAO’s historical proposals, which the researcher views as a clear sign of a malicious proposal. Second, the address that created the proposal received funds four days ago via privacy protocol Railgun, with obfuscated sources, making the behavior highly suspicious. Third, the proposal’s description appears misleadingly packaged, but its core lies in its target contract: once the proposal passes and is executed, the governance contract will call the target contract’s function via delegatecall, allowing attackers to gain extremely high privileges. The researcher noted that Tornado Cash’s mixing pools themselves remain secure, but if the proposal is approved, it would very likely constitute a direct attack on the Tornado Cash DAO itself. The DAO’s current treasury holds TORN tokens worth approximately $23 million, putting those funds at risk. In 2022, Tornado Cash DAO suffered a similar attack, where attackers successfully seized control of the protocol through a malicious governance proposal. The researcher is urging all TORN token holders to exercise extreme caution before voting on the proposal.