Arthur Hayes: I bet that Bitcoin will surpass $110,000 before retracing to $76,500

June 18: Tether has announced it will wind down operations for Alloy by Tether and its aUSDT stablecoin product as planned. The decision comes after a full assessment of user engagement, market demand, and the company’s overall strategic priorities. Launched earlier as an open platform, Alloy by Tether was designed to explore a digital asset issuance model backed by Tether Gold (XAUT), including its overcollateralized stable asset aUSDT. Since its launch, the platform has provided the market with meaningful real-world data on gold-backed tokens and key insights into asset tokenization applications. Following this strategic adjustment, Tether will redirect its resources to core product lines with stronger demand, higher liquidity, and long-term growth potential—including critical ecosystem assets like XAUT. The closure will be phased to ensure a smooth transition: effective immediately, the platform is disabling functions for opening new positions and minting aUSDT to prevent additiona

June 18 – Per Bitget market data, South Korea’s KOSPI index breached the 9,000-point level for the first time, climbing over 1% intraday and having surged more than 110% year-to-date. Samsung Electronics added 2.45% intraday, while SK Hynix rose 5.87% intraday.

Per tracking from Insightful Beating, a surge in pair trades focused on Chinese AI large language models (LLMs) is unfolding in Hong Kong’s stock market. Since the end of March, Intellectstock has rallied 170% while MiniMax has tumbled roughly 50%. Both firms have notched gains since their January IPOs, but Intellectstock’s year-to-date jump of over 1,500% dwarfs its rival. Amid a wave of global AI companies going public, investors are increasingly zeroing in on LLM profitability—a trend driving sharply divergent capital flows. HSBC projects MiniMax will unlock 65% of its shares on July 8, compared to just 6% for Intellectstock on July 7. This stark unlock gap has sharply boosted MiniMax’s short-selling activity, and analysts predict the related pair trade will pick up steam in early July. Divergences in performance and model quality are the key drivers. This year, Intellectstock lifted the price of its GLM model while keeping sales volumes steady, whereas MiniMax cut the price of it

June 18 – U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs saw a net outflow of $82.2 million, and Ethereum ETFs reported a net outflow of $29.3 million yesterday, per Farside’s monitoring data.

June 18 – South Korea’s Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) has issued a warning targeting single-stock leverage and inverse products, alerting retail investors that risks tied to these investments are escalating amid rising stock market volatility. The heightened market swings have triggered sharp price fluctuations in these specific products. The FSS noted the warning is designed to remind individual investors of significant potential loss risks and urge them to make cautious, prudent investment choices. Going forward, the FSS will continue closely monitoring investment trends related to single-stock leverage products. Should concerns about potential investor losses intensify, the regulator will take additional action, including issuing more formal warnings to the public.

June 18: Binance founder CZ (Changpeng Zhao) took to social media to share a personal giving update. Over the past two years, he has donated $500,000 every six months to Prison Professors, a U.S. prison education nonprofit. The four separate donations total $2 million, earmarked to support free educational programs for American correctional facilities. CZ noted he had not publicly disclosed this series of donations prior to today. Prison Professors’ stated mission is to provide incarcerated individuals with free, life-changing educational resources, collectively working to break the cycle of recidivism and lay clear paths to post-release success.