US Central Command: Its forces remain on constant combat readiness, ready at any time to hold Iran accountable.

South Korea’s Ministry of Finance stated that its finance minister held an emergency meeting with officials from the Bank of Korea and financial regulatory bodies, vowing to closely monitor stock market volatility risks, and warned that the semiconductor sector’s excessive weighting has become a core factor amplifying market fluctuations. Recently, driven by factors including cooling expectations for the AI sector, profit-taking, and portfolio rebalancing, the KOSPI has seen sharp swings, triggering its sixth circuit breaker this year, with a cumulative decline of 15.6% from its June peak. Meanwhile, South Korea’s Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) said it will focus on single-stock leveraged ETFs linked to chip stocks such as Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, noting that these products could amplify market volatility and liquidity risks. While South Korean chip stocks rebounded on Wednesday, regulators cautioned that the market must remain vigilant against risks related to AI industry chain valuations and the semiconductor sector’s concentration.

Crypto venture capital firm Paradigm has led the seed round financing of sovereign debt tokenization platform M1X Global, supporting its expansion of on-chain sovereign debt issuance and management capabilities. M1X Global’s core product, USDM1, is launched in partnership with the government of the Marshall Islands. It is a U.S. dollar-denominated sovereign debt instrument issued directly on public blockchains, backed by U.S. short-term Treasury securities at a 1:1 ratio, and governed by New York State’s legal framework to protect investors. The proceeds from this round will primarily be used to drive institutional adoption of USDM1, including its use as compliant collateral in scenarios such as repo, margin, and collateralized financing, as well as to deepen integrations with banks, custodians, and trading platforms. Earlier, M1X Global closed an oversubscribed $3 million angel round in March 2026, with investors including Balaji Srinivasan and others.

According to a Wall Street Journal (WSJ) report, the Trump administration recently directly pressured major U.S. supermarket chains including Walmart, Kroger, and Albertsons to cut beef prices during the Independence Day shopping peak, in an effort to ease food inflation. Walmart subsequently announced price cuts on thousands of items, with ground beef prices reduced by up to 12%. Trump then posted that Walmart had lowered prices "at the government's request" and called on other retailers to follow suit. This move is part of the Trump administration's measures to control inflation. In addition to pushing for food price cuts, Trump has previously called for lower gasoline prices, limits on credit card interest rates, and lower drug prices, aiming to ease voters' dissatisfaction with high prices ahead of the midterm elections. However, U.S. cattle herds are at their lowest level in 75 years, and tight supply continues to drive up beef prices. U.S. ground beef prices rose 12% year-on-year in May, indicating that food inflationary pressures have not been fully alleviated.

Binance will suspend MTL network deposits and withdrawals at 15:00 UTC on July 8. The network upgrade and hard fork are scheduled to occur at 16:00 UTC. MTL spot trading will remain unaffected during the upgrade; deposits and withdrawals will resume once the upgrade is completed and the network stabilizes, with no further announcement to be issued on this matter.

Prediction market platform Polymarket has announced support for instant, self-custodial deposits via the Bitcoin Lightning Network, with the new feature backed by the Spark Protocol. Compared to prior on-chain deposit methods that required waiting for 3 to 6 block confirmations and took 10 to 60 minutes, the new solution delivers near-instant settlement while lowering deposit barriers and transaction costs. According to details, Spark can conduct checks for double-spend risks, transaction fees, and Replace-by-Fee (RBF) at the time of transaction broadcast, enabling "zero-confirmation" posting. It also supports on-chain, Lightning Network, and stablecoin payment rails, removing the need for the platform to operate its own Lightning Network nodes. Polymarket noted that this step will further boost Bitcoin users' capital efficiency and strengthen its competitiveness against rival Kalshi.

JPMorgan analyst Rajat Gupta stated that while a merger between Tesla and SpaceX "makes sense on paper", current speculation around the deal underestimates the potential hurdles that could derail it. These hurdles include cross-jurisdictional regulatory approvals, governance and voting rights symmetry, and the widespread view that the merger would be seen as an acquisition led by SpaceX rather than a merger of equals. He added: "Overall, we will monitor SpaceX's acquisition currency, the regulatory landscape, and Elon Musk's voting power at Tesla as potential catalysts for a possible merger." JPMorgan noted that if the transaction proceeds, the most likely structure would be an all-stock acquisition of Tesla led by SpaceX.