South Korean stocks plummeted sharply, triggering margin call pressure, with total reverse transaction volumes reaching approximately 36.9 billion won over Monday and Tuesday.

Renowned trader Doctor Profit posted that on July 18, he decided to take profits on his Bitcoin short position built around $120,000 while retaining his stock short positions. Despite still expecting a potential downturn in the broader market, he has started dollar-cost averaging into BTC and ETH. The current correction is concentrated mainly in the AI sector, with multiple AI stocks plunging sharply, while BTC remains stable within its range and ETH has shown strong resilience. The S&P 500’s impact on BTC is currently relatively limited. While it is still too early to draw conclusions, this may support his original judgment that this round’s major correction may focus on AI stocks rather than a large-scale sell-off of BTC and ETH. Doctor Profit said his current stock short positions include MicroStrategy (-64.8%), Coinbase (-51.8%), SanDisk (-49.4%), Palantir (-40.6%), Netflix (-34.3%), IBM (-32.2%), Microsoft (-28.2%), and NVIDIA (-8.6%), generating significant unrealized gains. Apple (+26.2%) and the S&P 500 (+4%) have been unfavorable to his positions. He added that he invested in Coinbase last week, so his current Coinbase short position is mainly used as a hedge, and he plans to gradually close it out and take full profits in the coming weeks.

According to Bitget data, South Korea’s KOSPI index closed 1.35% lower today at 5586.81 points. SK Hynix fell 5.6%, while Samsung Electronics dropped 0.7%. Separately, Japan’s Nikkei 225 index closed 0.71% higher at 61867.43 points.

Commerzbank’s foreign exchange research team noted that after the Federal Reserve kept interest rates unchanged but exposed significant internal divisions, the U.S. Dollar Index briefly fell while the euro rose temporarily. The weakening U.S. dollar, combined with market pricing of a September rate hike and rising long-term U.S. Treasury yields, jointly boosted gains in European and U.S. assets, reflecting a shift in market expectations for U.S. monetary policy. The bank’s analysts stated: “Three officials dissented from the decision to hold rates steady, instead backing a 25 basis point hike, highlighting growing concerns about persistent inflation. The market interpreted the outcome as less hawkish than the dissent votes implied, pushing U.S. 2-year Treasury yields and the dollar lower. However, long-term yields rose sharply as investors view the Fed’s response as insufficient to curb sustained inflation. Federal funds futures indicate a 63% probability of a 25 basis point rate hike in September. The market has cut its cumulative rate hike expectation for this year from 42 basis points on Tuesday to 33 basis points.” (Jinshi)

xAI founder Elon Musk has stated that Grok 4.6 will be released in one week. The official has not yet disclosed specific features, performance improvements, or detailed release schedule information for the new version.

China Business Journal issued a statement noting: "Recently, our organization has discovered that criminals are impersonating the 'China Business Journal' to send emails to some enterprises via non-official company email accounts, falsely claiming to have obtained major negative information about the enterprises through so-called 'undercover probes', and threatening that if payment (in Bitcoin) is not made, the relevant 'undercover investigation articles' will be published." The China Business Journal emphasized that all its news reports strictly abide by national laws and regulations, and all interviews and communications are conducted through official channels. Such acts are suspected of fraud. The paper has closely monitored the situation and collected evidence, reserving all rights to pursue legal liability. The statement reminds relevant enterprises to stay vigilant: if they receive such impersonation emails, do not make any payments, immediately save all evidence and report the incident to the local public security organ.

According to Aave founder Stani Kulechov, following a comprehensive review, Aave will phase out 50 low-utilization asset reserves across multiple deployment environments, and orderly terminate deployments on Sonic, Scroll, zkSync, Metis, Soneium, and Aptos, involving an additional 25 asset reserves. Additionally, 21 expired Pendle Principal Token (PT) assets will also be phased out and replaced with newly expiring assets. The adjustment covers approximately $98.1 million in supplied assets and $15.6 million in debt. Stani stated that the move aims to reduce the protocol’s economic and technical risks in line with Aave’s new risk framework and technical asset listing framework, adding that Aave will continue to conduct risk assessments on assets across all deployment environments going forward.