Hedge funds have turned the most bearish on the yen since 2007, boosting bets on further losses to nearly 138,000 contracts as of June 30.

Robinhood Chain tops $100 million in total value locked a week after launch

Robinhood Chain, the trading platform's layer-2 blockchain built on Arbitrum (ARB), has topped $100 million in total value locked (TVL) just a week after its debut, according to DeFiLlama data .

The lion’s share of funds, about $89.8 million, are held on lending platform Morpho, which the company is leveraging to power its newly launched Robinhood Earn product.

Decentralized exchange Uniswap is the next biggest, with $13 million in total value locked, followed by prediction market Meridian.

Korean stocks are in a technical bear market. Bitcoin is holding its ground again.

South Korea's Kospi has fallen about 20% from last month's peak — a figure considered to be a technical bear market in financial circles — as the AI-demand doubts that have whipsawed the index this month deepened.

The index dropped as much as 5.7% Wednesday, with SK Hynix falling 5% and Samsung losing 6.9%. Bitcoin traded near $62,650, down 0.6% on the day but still up 6.1% on the week, CoinDesk data show.

Korea's chip-heavy stock market, the best performer in the world earlier this year, has started to crack on concerns that hyperscalers' massive spending on AI isn't producing the returns to justify it, with worries over a possible glut of computing capacity.

The Kospi crashed 10% on June 22, slid again July 2, and has now given back most of a 116% year-to-date gain, trimmed to about 73%.

Samsung reported a 19-fold jump in quarterly profit this week on AI memory demand, and the stock fell anyway. Traders are demanding more proof to justify the money pouring into the AI supply chain, and Korea's concentration in two chipmakers plus leveraged ETFs that amplify moves has turned that doubt into outsized swings.

Bitcoin's relative calm fits the read that has held through the month. Crypto is caught in the same AI-driven risk complex, but its deeper, more liquid market has absorbed the macro pressure without the forced-deleveraging cascades hitting Korean equities.

U.S. consumer inflation expectations hit highest since 2023

U.S. consumers are growing increasingly concerned about the rising cost of living, according to a Federal Reserve Bank of New York survey released Tuesday.

Consumers now expect inflation to rise to 3.7% over the next year, up from 3.5% in May and the highest reading since September 2023. Their three-year inflation expectations climbed to 3.3%, the highest level since June 2022. Five-year inflation expectations remained unchanged at 3%.

These rising inflation expectations are particularly relevant for perceived store of value assets like gold and bitcoin. When consumers anticipate high inflation, they often park a portion of their savings in store-of-value assets.

Japan's collapsing yen is pushing companies into bitcoin and XRP

The yen is trading near its weakest level in four decades, and Japanese companies are moving crypto onto their balance sheets to escape it.

SBI VC Trade on Tuesday said corporate demand for bitcoin and XRP is climbing as the currency's slide pushes firms to diversify reserves beyond cash, with the exchange's registered accounts passing 2 million, roughly double its 2025 count.

Hedge funds have turned the most bearish on the yen since 2007, boosting bets on further losses to nearly 138,000 contracts as of June 30, per CFTC data. The dollar buys around 162 yen as of Asian morning hours Wednesday.

The driver is the interest-rate gap between a hawkish U.S. Fed and a Bank of Japan still far behind it, the same gap that makes holding yen cash a losing position and sends firms looking for harder assets.

SBI, the crypto arm of Tokyo-based SBI Holdings, noted demand for its corporate service has grown alongside companies that hand out bitcoin or XRP through shareholder-perk programs.

The move fits a pattern the market has watched all month. A weak yen has fed the carry trade, where investors borrow cheaply in yen to buy higher-returning assets elsewhere, and some of that flow is now reaching crypto through regulated Japanese channels rather than offshore ones.

Bitcoin traded near $62,650 on Tuesday, up 6.1% on the week, per CoinDesk data.

SpaceX IPO Drives Tokenized Equity Volumes to Record as Stablecoin Market Cap Falls

SpaceX IPO Drives Tokenized Equity Volumes to Record as Stablecoin Market Cap Falls

Stablecoin market cap fell to $312B in June, its largest monthly drop since TerraUSD, while tokenized equity volumes surged 145% to a record $3.86B.

Stablecoin market cap fell to $312B in June, its largest monthly drop since TerraUSD, while tokenized equity volumes surged 145% to a record $3.86B.

Why it matters :

Stablecoin market cap fell to $312B in June, its largest monthly drop since TerraUSD, while tokenized equity volumes surged 145% to a record $3.86B.

XRP Ledger’s new upgrade is here. But not everyone’s on board yet