Bank of England Holds Steady as Scheduled

June 18: U.S. initial jobless claims for the week ended June 13 came in at 226,000, right in line with the consensus forecast of 225,000. The prior week’s claims figure was revised upward from 229,000 to 230,000. Separately, the June Philadelphia Fed Manufacturing Index hit 10.3, beating economist expectations of 10 and rising sharply from the previous month’s reading of -0.4.

June 18: U.S. Vice President Harris is scheduled to host a press briefing at 11 a.m. Eastern Time (11 p.m. Beijing Time).

On June 18, a social media user asked online: "When will China’s large-scale models reach the level of Anthropic’s Fable? Zhiku’s GLM-5.2 has undoubtedly narrowed this gap." Tesla CEO Musk replied: "Possibly in Q1 (2027)." On June 15, Zhiku officially announced the launch and open-sourcing of its next-generation flagship large-scale model, GLM-5.2. Several AI industry insiders believe Musk’s prediction is relatively conservative, noting the capability gap between Chinese and American models could be less than seven months. Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind, has also stated that Chinese AI models may only lag behind overseas counterparts by "a few months" in overall capabilities. --------------------------------- Click the original link below to join the BlockBeats · Feishu AI News Channel, where AI trends and news are monitored 24/7.

On June 18, Bitcoin mining firm HIVE Digital announced that its fully owned subsidiary BUZZ HPC has entered into a sovereign AI infrastructure partnership with Bell Canada and Cohere. The three parties signed a three-year GPU cloud contract totaling $220 million, as disclosed in the announcement. Separately, BUZZ HPC will procure a GB200 NVL72 rack-level system consisting of 2,304 NVIDIA Grace Blackwell GPUs. This AI cluster will provide computing power support for Cohere’s foundational models and enterprise AI applications.

June 18 — Trust Wallet officially launched the $SPCXB Trading Tournament, a two-week event with a total prize pool of $100,000. Users trading SPCXB (SpaceX’s bStock tokenized U.S. stock) through Trust Wallet will enjoy perks like zero trading fees, zero gas fees, and eligibility to split the $100k reward pool. SPCXB is a tokenized security issued by bStocks, with every unit fully backed 1:1 by actual SpaceX stock held by a regulated custodian. Holders of SPCXB can trade it 24/7, track SpaceX’s stock price fluctuations, claim dividend distributions, and access the full DeFi ecosystem on the BNB Chain. Trust Wallet is the first wallet to support bStocks, and it already backs other popular bStocks tokens like $NVDAB and $TSLAB. During the tournament, users accumulate trading volume by swapping $SPCXB; hitting at least $500 in volume qualifies them for rewards. The top 200 users on the leaderboard will earn fixed, substantial prizes—with the highest individual reward standing at $6,000.

June 18: CryptoQuant analyst Crazzyblockk reports Binance’s current funding rate is 370 basis points below the median across three major exchanges, placing it in the bottom 2.8% of all readings since 2021. As the dominant venue for Bitcoin (BTC) perpetual contract trading, Binance’s structured short positions are significantly larger than the combined total of OKX and Bybit—a rare scenario that signals deeply bearish pricing from the exchange, with its structured shorts far outpacing those of other centralized crypto exchanges (CEX). Additionally, Crazzyblockk noted a recent sharp reversal in the Retail Aggressive Buying Index (TBSAI): it has surged from -1.85σ to +0.81σ, a 2.66σ jump over 30 days. This indicates retail traders are aggressively buying the dip, while selling pressure stems primarily from whales (the Institutional Whale Capital Ratio, IWCR, shows large holders are in continuous net outflow), creating a classic divergence between retail buying and whale distribution. Cur