Crypto Market Fear Subsides Significantly, Today's Fear and Greed Index at 45

According to monitoring by Farside Investors, Bitcoin ETFs recorded a net inflow of $454.8 million yesterday, while Ethereum ETFs saw a net inflow of $186.8 million.

Barclays views SK Hynix’s latest share buyback as a "strong signal" to investors. Analyst Simon Coles at Barclays forecasts that SK Hynix’s shareholder returns will reach roughly 15% of its current market capitalization between 2025 and 2027. The firm maintains an "overweight" rating on SK Hynix’s ADR (SKHY.O), with a target price of $300. Barclays notes that SK Hynix does not need to cut back on capacity expansion investments even as it boosts shareholder returns. While large-scale dividends or share buybacks typically squeeze a company’s investment capacity, SK Hynix can balance both thanks to its robust cash flow. Coles stated: "Even with roughly 15% of its market capitalization allocated to shareholder returns, the company will still have sufficient capacity to advance capacity expansion and new business opportunities in the coming years." Barclays raised its 2027 quarterly dividend forecast to 2,500 South Korean won per share, and its full-year dividend forecast to 10,000 won per share. Assuming a 200 trillion won share buyback in 2027, by the end of that year, roughly 51% of SK Hynix’s cumulative free cash flow from 2025 to 2027 will be returned to shareholders. The balance between dividends and buybacks remains a variable. While raising dividends can demonstrate confidence in future cash flow, Barclays assesses that given the extreme volatility of the semiconductor industry’s earnings, share buybacks when the stock is undervalued are more reasonable. (Jinshi)

Prominent crypto KOL Ansem stated in a post that an equally weighted portfolio consisting of BTC, ETH, SOL, HYPE, and PUMP could easily generate 3 to 5 times returns over the next two years. He noted that among this basket of assets, HYPE and PUMP boast the highest risk-reward ratio (R/R) and are likely to be the standout performers.

South Korea’s stock market closed nearly 6% higher on Thursday, rebounding from a sharp decline in the previous session, as chip stocks surged on the back of shareholder return measures and falling U.S. Treasury yields. Chipmaker SK Hynix rose 12.73% after announcing it would repurchase and cancel its treasury shares; peer Samsung Electronics gained 9.49%. Earlier media reports said Samsung Electronics will also unveil a new shareholder return policy by the end of this month. A total of 905 stocks changed hands on the day, with 521 advancing and 338 declining. Foreign investors net bought 1.7 trillion won (about $12.2 billion) worth of South Korean stocks. (Jinshi)

On-chain analyst Ai Yi (@ai_9684xtpa) tracked that the trader codenamed "Set 10 Big Goals" resumed live trading on Binance on July 27, after a one-month break. As of now, his total short positions in BTC and ETH contracts are valued at around $222 million, with an accumulated unrealized profit of roughly $401,000. For BTC, he holds 4x-leveraged short positions totaling 2,236.384 BTC, with a position value of approximately $156 million, an entry price of $69,826.87, and current unrealized profit of about $369,000. For ETH, he holds 6x-leveraged short positions totaling 29,316.677 ETH, with a position value of around $66.1 million, an entry price of $2,254.74, and current unrealized profit of roughly $32,000.

NeoSoul announces completion of $11 million Pre-A round financing. Participating institutions in this round include MH Ventures, Amber Group, ArkStream Capital, 0G Foundation, Kirin Capital, CatcherVC, and New Oak International. The capital will be used to further advance NeoSoul’s development of AI agent trading products and AI economic infrastructure. This financing round comes shortly after the launch of NeoTrade, NeoSoul’s AI agent trading workbench, which allows traders to configure their own AI trading agents, enabling these agents to make independent decisions and execute trades autonomously. AI is evolving from auxiliary analysis to independent execution; for trading, the industry’s focus is shifting to how to maintain agent autonomy while ensuring controlled fund security. This round brings together multiple investment institutions from digital assets, Web3 infrastructure, decentralized AI, Asian capital, and North American markets. Notably, Kirin Capital, a key investor in this round, has long been rooted in the Vietnamese and Southeast Asian capital markets, and its investment will further support NeoSoul’s expansion into Vietnam and Southeast Asia. NeoSoul co-founder Kaelan stated: “AI is moving from information production to autonomous economic activities, and trading is one of the earliest scenarios that can form a complete economic closed loop. NeoTrade serves as the entry point; following this financing round, NeoSoul will continue building infrastructure that supports large-scale participation of AI agents in economic activities.” NeoSoul plans to allocate the capital from this round to further develop NeoTrade, strengthen its trading infrastructure, and expand its global ecosystem. The company will continue advancing product development around the connection between autonomous AI decision-making and controlled fund execution.