South Korean exchange: KOSDAQ futures rose over 6%, triggering a five-minute trading halt.

A research team from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) recently launched an OnlyFans account named "OnlyMarms" to raise funds for its long-running wildlife study, unexpectedly drawing attention from the crypto community and leading to the emergence of multiple related Solana meme coins. The project, which has tracked yellow-bellied marmots in Colorado since 1962, is one of the longest-running wildlife studies globally. Facing declining traditional research funding, the team created the OnlyMarms account, using humorous angles like "uncensored marmot content" to attract subscribers to support the research. To date, OnlyMarms has raised around $4,000, but the project still requires $75,000 to $100,000 annually to fund graduate student support and fieldwork. Meanwhile, multiple OnlyMarms-inspired meme coins have popped up in the Solana ecosystem. However, these tokens were all created spontaneously by the community, their issuers are unidentified, and they have no official connection to the UCLA research team. The lead researcher confirmed the team did not create any related tokens. The incident is regarded as an example of the intersection of internet culture, science communication, and the crypto community. Earlier, Solana has seen meme coins driven by internet-famous animals, such as the token based on viral baby hippo Moo Deng, which once reached a market cap of around $680 million in 2024.

UBS believes markets may have underestimated the sustainability of the current earnings cycle, with the degree of underestimation outweighing the impact of geopolitical noise from the Strait of Hormuz. Its core view is that energy flows through the strait will recover gradually rather than rebound rapidly, which will continue to drive stock market upside supported by strong earnings growth. The bank notes that the U.S. Q2 earnings season was robust, with earnings beats outperforming historical averages in both breadth and magnitude. It still sees upside risk to its 20% EPS growth forecast for the S&P 500 this year, adding that factors like resilient consumer spending and improving cyclical strength should support the rally’s spread beyond large-cap bellwethers to broader market segments. In Europe, UBS says companies are delivering their strongest performance in over three years, with earnings estimates for the STOXX 600 being revised higher consistently. The bank argues this trend reinforces the view that investors should hold diversified equity allocations to fully capture market gains. In Asia, UBS forecasts corporate profits will rise 72% this year. (Jinshi Data)

BlockBeats and the Trade.xyz Chinese Community have officially launched the first-ever "XYZ" Trading Strategy Sharing Event. The 7-day event runs from August 4 to August 10. Users can participate by sharing their [XYZ] trading performance and strategy reviews to win HYPE rewards. Eligible sharing topics include: - Reviews of trading opportunities in Pre-IPO assets and Asian tech assets - Logic, position sizing, and risk management for long-short strategies - Entry/exit points and post-trade summaries during trade execution - Research and insights on Trade.xyz-related market opportunities The event offers three reward tiers, with the top prize being 18.88 HYPE. To join, users must quote the event’s promotional content, post original trading strategy shares, and join the Trade.xyz Chinese Telegram community during the event period. The event is co-sponsored by ecosystem projects MOJO and Lighthouse, with collaborative support from the HyperEVM Chinese Portal and the Hyperliquid Madhouse Community.

The storage market continues to heat up, with multiple institutions projecting that DRAM and NAND prices will keep rising amid supply tightness and surging demand for AI computing power. SK Hynix and SanDisk have released the first-ever High Bandwidth Flash (HBF) standard specification, advancing the development of new storage technologies. Meanwhile, South Korea’s average selling price (ASP) for single-layer NAND products rose 35% month-on-month in July, hitting a new all-time high. TrendForce forecasts that due to supply shortages, fixed transaction prices for PC DRAM in Q3 2026 could rise 15% to 20% quarter-on-quarter. Separately, reports indicate that the world’s top three storage manufacturers have finalized negotiations for their full-year 2027 capacity allocations, with DRAM and HBM production capacity nearly fully booked. In the industrial chain sector, Samsung Electronics’ foundry business is expected to reach 100% capacity utilization this year. Data from Counterpoint shows that Samsung Electronics is expanding its lead in DRAM market share, while competition between Micron and SK Hynix is intensifying further. In the end-market segment, tight memory supplies have disrupted consumer electronics shipments. Reports say MacBook Air is facing supply constraints due to memory shortages. Additionally, South Korean AI chip unicorn DeepX is reportedly valued at 3.14 trillion won, a four-fold surge, reflecting the growing momentum in the AI chip and storage industrial chain.

According to monitoring by Ai Yi, a new address (0x341…CaADb) opened a position of 40 million ENA tokens three hours ago, valued at approximately $3.69 million, with an average purchase price of around $0.09269. The address subsequently staked all its ENA tokens on the Ethena protocol. Market data shows that ENA has gained 18.13% cumulatively over the past month, with relatively strong performance recently.

US stocks kicked off August with a strong rally, but JPMorgan warns that the market’s main trend in the second half may no longer be driven solely by AI and large tech stocks. On Monday (Eastern Time), the S&P 500 rose 1.5% to 7600.50 points, just shy of its all-time high; the Dow Jones gained 693 points to notch a new closing peak; the Nasdaq rallied 2.1%. On the surface, tech stocks have reignited risk appetite, but JPMorgan strategist Mislav Matejka’s team believes tech stocks will struggle to replicate last year’s single standout market performance in the second half of 2026. The bank’s concerns center on two fronts: First, AI capital expenditures by hyperscale cloud providers including Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, and Alphabet remain at high levels, and the market is starting to question when these investments will translate into free cash flow; second, AI’s substitution effect on sectors like software, business services, and media is weighing on valuations. Recent market moves have already signaled this shift: In July, chip and AI momentum stocks saw sharp pullbacks, and the Nasdaq at one point significantly underperformed the Dow and equal-weighted indices. Meanwhile, falling oil prices, resilient U.S. economic data, and shifting rate-cut expectations have renewed investor interest in consumer cyclicals, industrials, financials, and non-U.S. stocks. JPMorgan therefore favors a broadening of market leadership, rather than continuing to bet on a small number of AI giants driving index gains.