Coinbase Research: Bitcoin Breaks Key Support, Market Possibly in Early Stage of Long-term Downtrend

According to official announcements, Binance Wallet’s Meme Rush has added new launchpad filter options for Robinhood chain projects including Virtuals Protocol, Flap, and Bankr, helping users discover more on-chain token opportunities. Users can now track tokens across BSC, Solana, ETH, Base, and Robinhood chains via Meme Rush, with a single feed to stay updated on multi-chain hotspots.

Zcash has launched its new full-node client Zakura 1.0.0, the first implementation component aimed at scaling its private transaction throughput from the current ~1 transaction per second (TPS) to payment-network-level capacity. Maintained by Sean Bowe, an early Zcash zero-knowledge cryptography contributor, and Dev Ojha, head of Valar Group, the client operates independently of the Zcash Foundation and is funded via private ZEC donations. Built on the Zcash Foundation’s Zebra client, the team provides an ~11GB blockchain snapshot, allowing new nodes to sync up in two minutes—an approximately 680x speed improvement. Its compatibility mode also replicates the legacy zcashd interface, enabling wallets and exchanges to continue operating after the original client’s maintenance ends on July 18. The team notes that Visa and Mastercard process over 50,000 transactions per second, a benchmark it has set as its minimum target. To reduce the verification burden of large-scale private transactions, Bowe’s Tachyon project is developing recursive proofs, which let nodes validate thousands of proofs with a single proof. Valar Group is building private information retrieval (PIR) technology, allowing wallets to access relevant transaction data without exposing their query content. Zakura is also testing a fast block propagation system that delivers new blocks to all nodes in half a second. Its upcoming testnet is the Ironwood upgrade, set to activate on the mainnet on July 28. Ironwood will use a "rotating door" mechanism to restrict inflows and outflows of the Orchard privacy pool, mitigating risks of fake ZEC entering circulation due to prior zero-knowledge proof vulnerabilities.

According to Bloomberg, Chinese AI startup Moonshot has achieved an unexpected technological breakthrough, triggering sharp declines in global AI and semiconductor stocks on Friday and prompting markets to once again reference the 2025 "DeepSeek Moment". The semiconductor benchmark index has fallen roughly 20% from its June peak, entering a bear market; the triple-leveraged semiconductor ETF SOXL has dropped more than 50% over the same period. This sell-off demonstrates that when rapid advances in AI technology reshape market perceptions of winners and losers, leveraged ETFs, options, single-stock funds, and crypto-related products may be liquidated simultaneously. Bloomberg Intelligence data shows leveraged ETFs make up around 13% of U.S. ETF trading volume but only 1.2% of industry assets. When accounting for embedded leverage, their share of the U.S. stock market remains less than 1%. While these products are generally small in overall size, their holdings are concentrated in AI chips, volatile stocks, and newly listed firms. When leverage, concentration, and volatility rise at the same time, the funds' daily rebalancing turns them into active trading forces that further amplify existing market trends. The South Korean market offers a clear recent case: local retail investors have heavily purchased leveraged products tied to Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, and as market sentiment turned weak, the related funds were forced to sell an estimated tens of billions of dollars worth of SK Hynix positions.

According to Bloomberg, Circle’s stock price has fallen more than 75% from its post-IPO high last year. Dan Dolev, an analyst at Mizuho Securities USA, downgraded Circle this week from "Neutral" to "Underperform", setting a Wall Street-low target price of $50, which implies roughly 18% downside from Thursday’s closing price, well below the average analyst target of $123 tracked by Bloomberg. Dolev argues Circle faces rising competition risks in the stablecoin space. Over 100 fintech firms, payment networks, crypto companies and banks, including Visa, Stripe, Coinbase and BlackRock, are backing the Open Standard project, which will issue OUSD. Circle’s stock fell 7.7% on Thursday, the same day Visa launched a stablecoin issuance, transfer and management platform for financial institutions. Circle generates most of its revenue from interest on USDC’s reserve assets, while new stablecoin initiatives like OUSD plan to share reserve returns with partners and charge lower management fees. Dolev says this business model could draw partners away from Circle, intensifying pricing and margin pressure on the firm. He projects Circle’s adjusted EBITDA for 2027 will hit $699 million, below the consensus market estimate of $907 million. He also noted that Circle and Coinbase’s USDC distribution agreement is set to be renegotiated in August, with Coinbase likely to leverage competitive pressure from OUSD to secure a higher revenue split.

According to Bloomberg, South Korea’s roughly $4 trillion stock market has become a key window for fund managers in London, New York and Tokyo to gauge global AI risk appetite. Stock fluctuations in Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix continue to ripple through global chip stocks, and some Japanese traders have added the KOSPI index to their daily watchlists. The correlation between South Korea’s market and U.S. tech stocks has grown significantly. Bloomberg data shows the 60-day correlation coefficient between the KOSPI index and the Nasdaq 100 has risen to 0.46, near a two-year high—about three times the 0.16 average over the past five years. Last week, South Korea’s market fell nearly 9% at one point amid renewed doubts about AI demand prospects, with the selloff later spreading to Wall Street; SK Hynix’s American depositary receipts dropped 9.3%. However, high-leverage trading in South Korea has amplified volatility. The KOSPI index has fallen 25% from its June peak, erasing roughly $1 trillion in market capitalization, with both Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix down at least 30%. South Korea recently suspended the launch of new single-stock leverage trading products to curb speculation and market volatility. Even so, the KOSPI index is still up 62% year-to-date, ranking among the top of major global markets. Given Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix’s critical positions in the global memory chip supply, multiple institutional players believe that as long as the AI rally persists, South Korea’s stock market will remain an important barometer for global AI and semiconductor trading.

Ostium has released an update on its security incident. Its liquidity provider fund pool was attacked on July 15, resulting in a loss of 23,752,746 USDC. Preliminary investigations show that the attacker breached the off-chain infrastructure supplying price data to the protocol, submitted falsified illegal price reports, and extracted artificially generated profits from the fund pool by rapidly opening and closing multiple large positions. Ostium stated that trader collateral is stored in an isolated smart contract and was not affected by the incident, with all trading positions remaining open. The team suspended trading and froze all trading contracts within 60 minutes of the first attack transaction. Currently, Ostium is collaborating with Mandiant, zeroShadow, Collisionless, SEAL 911, and law enforcement agencies, and coordinating with exchanges, bridge contracts, and stablecoin issuers to advance the investigation. The engineering team is focused on fixing and strengthening relevant infrastructure to support the safe resumption of trading. Ostium said it will provide at least 24 hours’ advance notice before unfreezing trading contracts. After trading resumes, existing positions will be marked at the price when they reopen, unaffected by price fluctuations during the suspension period. Supporting affected liquidity providers and safely resuming trading remain the top priorities.