US Stock Futures Dive Further

Five U.S. Senate Democratic lawmakers, including Elizabeth Warren and Richard Blumenthal, sent a joint letter on June 23 urging multiple Senate committees to hold an immediate hearing on the $500 million investment by UAE officials in Trump family crypto project WLFI, to investigate whether the investment influenced subsequent Trump administration policy decisions toward the UAE. The letter revealed that an agent of an Abu Dhabi royal family member signed an agreement with the Trump family to acquire a 49% stake in WLFI for $500 million, with the deal closing four days before Trump’s inauguration. The foreign buyer paid an upfront $218 million to entities linked to the Trump family and Middle East chief diplomat Steve Witkoff. The transaction was reportedly backed by UAE National Security Advisor Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, with lawmakers calling the move “unprecedented in U.S. political history.” Of greater concern is the policy trajectory following the deal. As outlined in the letter, within months of the agreement, the Trump administration made a series of decisions clearly favorable to the UAE: approving a $1.4 billion arms sale to the country; the Treasury Department launching the “Known Investors Pilot Program,” paving the way for a fast-track CFIUS review long sought by the UAE; and the Commerce Department rolling back Biden-era chip export restrictions, authorizing UAE AI firm G42 to acquire 35,000 Nvidia Blackwell chips in a deal worth over $1 billion. However, U.S. intelligence officials reportedly discovered that G42 had provided U.S. technology to China that could be used to enhance missile capabilities. The senators demanded Trump administration officials “explain under oath when they learned about payments to the president’s family and his top regional diplomat” and outline steps to restore public trust. To date, neither WLFI nor the UAE government has responded to requests for comment on the matter.

According to Saudi Arabia's Al Arabiya TV, Pakistani officials have stated that technical talks between the United States and Iran will resume next week.

Derivatives and quantitative strategist Gordenz Schneider noted in a report published on Smartkarma that the 2x leveraged exchange-traded funds (ETFs) tracking Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix would need to rise roughly 33% to rebound to their June 22 levels, implying a corresponding ~16.5% bounce in the underlying stocks. The report added that both Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix saw double-digit share price drops on Tuesday, dragging the related ETFs down nearly 25%—the Samsung 2x leveraged ETF has fallen 5.4% in total since its launch on May 27. He stated that South Korea’s newly launched single-stock 2x leveraged ETFs can boost returns in trending markets, but they will quickly erode in value amid high market volatility, making them most suitable for short-term tactical momentum investments.

Recently, Japanese semiconductor test equipment giant Advantest (TSE: 6857) and silicon photonic chip firm OpenLight announced a partnership to co-develop high-volume manufacturing test solutions for silicon photonic devices. The backdrop is the ongoing expansion of AI and high-performance computing (HPC) workloads, which is driving data centers to rapidly adopt silicon photonics and co-packaged optics (CPO) technologies, creating a structural bottleneck in high-volume optoelectronic device testing. OpenLight has raised a total of $84 million in funding to date, with its latest Series A-1 round amounting to $50 million. Serenity noted that OpenLight’s ecosystem is continuing to expand, and its public market partner network is already quite comprehensive, covering Jabil (JBL, which partners with SIVE to advance photonic integrated circuit scaling), Marvell (MRVL) and MaxLinear (MXL) for DSP, Tower Semiconductor (TSEM) for wafer foundry services, and TFC Optical (Tianfu Communication, for optical packaging and assembly). Serenity pointed out that while non-accredited investors cannot directly invest in private companies like OpenLight, given the highly interconnected nature of the optical supply chain, they can still gain indirect exposure to the silicon photonics sector’s growth by investing in the aforementioned related public companies. This partnership will put Advantest head-to-head against Teradyne’s Photon 100 in the optoelectronic testing segment, further intensifying competition in the duopoly of the semiconductor automatic test equipment (ATE) market.

Bank of Japan Governor Kazuo Ueda delivered a speech on Tuesday, making it clear that the central bank will continue to raise interest rates based on economic, price, and financial conditions, and expects to hit the 2% inflation target between the second half of the current fiscal year and the next. Regarding the interest rate hike path, Ueda said the timing and pace of future increases will depend on the likelihood of the baseline forecast being met and related risks, stressing that after recent rate hikes, Japan’s financial environment remains accommodative and continues to support economic activity. On inflation risks, Ueda warned that against high oil prices, potential inflation could exceed the BOJ’s 2% target, and elevated oil prices may also drive broader commodity price hikes. He added that when assessing the impact of the Middle East conflict, the central bank will comprehensively weigh the timing and pace of interest rate hikes. After the announcement, USD/JPY briefly dipped nearly 10 points to 161.66, reflecting rising market expectations for the BOJ’s interest rate hikes.

On-chain data shows that selling activity by Bitcoin long-term holders (commonly known as "OGs") who have held coins for over five years has plummeted to its lowest level in nearly two years. According to CryptoQuant data, the 90-day average daily selling volume of these veteran investors has dropped to 962 BTC, the lowest since November 2024, falling below the 1,000 BTC threshold for the first time. This shift is significant. Since the start of the current bull market in early 2023, selling pressure from the OG cohort has reached an all-time high for Bitcoin, with massive sell-off peaks in May 2024, February 2025, and September 2025. Daily selling volumes once exceeded 142,000 BTC, exerting notable downward pressure on prices and considered one of the key reasons why Bitcoin struggled to sustain gains after breaking through the $100,000 mark last year. CryptoQuant analysts note that this slowdown in selling is no coincidence: Bitcoin’s current price of around $63,000 is nearly at the break-even point of the most expensive coins likely purchased by OGs five years ago. Holding rather than selling is now the rational choice, meaning a major core selling pressure that had been weighing on prices is substantially easing. Meanwhile, net outflows from spot ETFs have also narrowed significantly over the past two weeks, aligning with the slowdown in OG selling. Multiple contrarian indicators collectively point to a potential market bottom. As of press time, Bitcoin is trading at approximately $62,776, with little change over the past 24 hours.