HYPE whale plans to cover short positions on a rebound, placing $18 million in sell orders above $57.

According to Hyperinsight monitoring, among current SKHY holding addresses, the whale starting with 0xdb0 ranks first with an unrealized loss of approximately $993,000, a loss scale nearly 10 times that of the second-ranked address. This address currently holds a long position of about 47,500 SKHY contracts with 5x isolated margin leverage, with a position value of around $6.547 million, an average entry price of $158.87, and a return of -65.8%. Its liquidation price is $124.78, only about 9.6% away from the current price. The whale has been trading SKHY since its listing, and realized a profit of about $553,000 in its first round of trading. On July 15, it re-entered long positions near $184, an entry price 23.5% higher than the issuance price. As SKHY continued to decline afterward, it kept adding positions, gradually lowering its overall average holding price to $158.87. After SKHY broke below the issuance price for the first time, the address today created an additional 100 layered buy orders, extending its bottom-buy averaging range from $136 down to $52.3, planning to add about 113,600 SKHY, with a total order value of approximately $10 million and a weighted average order price of $88.05. The lowest-tier buy order is set at $52.3, 62.1% lower than the current price and 64.9% lower than the issuance price, equivalent to 35.1% of the issuance price. If all orders are filled without triggering liquidation and with sufficient margin, its SKHY long position will increase to about 161,000 contracts, expanding to 3.4 times its current size, and the overall average holding price will drop to around $108.92. When the final-tier order is filled at $52.3, the position’s unrealized loss is expected to expand to approximately $9.121 million...

CryptoQuant analyst Darkfost released data showing that Bitcoin spot trading volume continued its long-term contraction trend in July this year. Spot trading volumes on major exchanges have overall dropped by more than 75% from their end-of-2024 peak. Binance alone recorded over $35 billion in monthly volume, but this is still a sharp decline compared to the $246 billion in November 2024. Trading volumes across all platforms contracted simultaneously during the same period. The last time such low trading volume levels were seen dates back to the end of the 2023 bear market. The analyst attributes the weak demand for risk assets to multiple macroeconomic pressures: the ongoing escalation of the U.S.-Iran conflict has suppressed risk appetite, while high inflation has left persistent concerns about elevated interest rates—an environment extremely unfavorable for speculative assets. Meanwhile, the stock market has continued to absorb most available liquidity, with the tech sector’s strong performance driving this liquidity siphon effect, though this narrative began to be questioned in July. For Bitcoin to return to an uptrend, a shift in the macro environment is needed, and more importantly, a recovery in demand, which is the only true driver of a rebound in trading volume.

E-commerce working capital advance RWA platform Dow Protocol announced the completion of a $9 million seed funding round, with participation from MH Ventures, OKX Ventures, Animoca Brands, Arcane Group, Essentia Partners, and Quartet Group. Dow Protocol serves merchants of leading global e-commerce platforms, providing working capital advances based on their sales receivables and real operational data. Its underlying asset service system is embedded in mainstream e-commerce platforms, enabling direct access to merchants’ original operational data for credit approval and risk control. Meanwhile, via partnerships with these platforms, repayments are deducted directly from the platform side without passing through merchant accounts, controlling repayment risks at the source and building an industry-leading collection mechanism. On the funding side, Dow Protocol leverages the instant settlement capabilities of stablecoins to compress the lengthy loan disbursement process of traditional lending to as fast as same-day arrival. For the working capital market, which is highly sensitive to cash flow, disbursement speed itself is a value driver, so market participants are willing to pay a premium for this efficiency. Additionally, Dow Protocol advances the on-chain-native new logic of working capital advances, enabling advance terms to be executed with high-granularity programmability, and reconstructing the underlying operational logic of supply chain finance. Dow Protocol positions itself as a general-purpose pan-e-commerce PayFi RWA advance protocol, whose framework is scalable to meet supply chain finance advance needs across multiple scenarios including e-commerce, catering, payments, gaming, and AI computing power.

According to market data from BIT (bit.com), the US pre-market storage sector is lower, with Seagate Technology (STX) down 4.11%, Western Digital (WDC) down 4.9%, SanDisk (SNDK) down 4.1%, Micron Technology (MU) down 4.9%, and the Roundhill Memory ETF (DRAM) falling 6.92%.

Hong Kong-listed education firm Fenbi Group (02469.HK) released its interim performance forecast, additionally disclosing that between July 1 and 7, 2026, the group sold several ETF products and listed securities purchased via the public market, recording a total investment loss of approximately $8.3 million (around 56.15 million RMB). As of last Friday (July 24), among its investments measured at fair value through profit or loss, it still holds listed securities of three public companies, with a total value of about $8.5 million. The board of directors said it will closely monitor the performance of its investment portfolio. Notably, on June 3 earlier this year, Zhang Xiaolong, CEO of Fenbi Education – China’s leading civil service exam training provider – was invited to deliver a career planning lecture at Renmin University of China. The original theme was focused on civil service exams, but he temporarily changed it to "Career Planning in the AI Era". During the event, he strongly promoted stock trading as the optimal future career path, claiming that it is best to trade tech stocks, even better to trade US stocks, and that trading stocks is ideal for the whole family. He also bragged that he used 80 million RMB in cash to enter the market last month and earned 53 million RMB within a month. Due to the lukewarm response from the student audience, Zhang Xiaolong lost his temper, used abusive language to insult the students, and stormed off the stage. Earlier this month, Zhang had already resigned from his positions as executive director, chief executive officer, and board chairman of Fenbi. According to Bitget market data, Hong Kong-listed Fenbi (02469.HK) plunged nearly 17% today, hitting a new share price low.

This week, U.S. stocks face a dual test of interest rate decisions and tech earnings reports. The Federal Reserve will announce its interest rate decision at 14:00 ET on July 29 and hold a press conference at 14:30 ET, corresponding to 2:00 and 2:30 Beijing Time on July 30. The current federal funds rate target range stands at 3.50%-3.75%. Markets are largely betting on the Fed to hold rates steady, but the risk of an unexpected rate hike is priced in at roughly one-third. Goldman Sachs’ David Mericle team calls this week’s Fed decision “unusually uncertain.” It argues that cooling June inflation data has weakened the case for an immediate rate hike, and the Fed has rarely implemented surprise hikes in its history, so most voting members are unlikely to back action this week. However, market pricing shows investors cannot fully rule out a 25 basis point rate hike. JPMorgan Chase’s Michael Feroli takes a more cautious stance. He believes the policy framework and communication mechanism reforms pushed by Fed Chair Warsh will not quickly alter the interest rate path in the short term. JPMorgan still projects the Fed will hold rates steady through the rest of 2026, with the next potential rate hike not coming until September 2027. Feroli also notes that the softening CPI has bought time for the FOMC, but the Fed retains its tightening bias. By contrast, Neil Dutta, chief economist at Renaissance Macro, warns markets to guard against a surprise July rate hike. He points to factors including steady employment, AI-fueled demand, elevated oil prices and services inflation, and persistent tariff pressures that could prompt the Fed to act earlier. For U.S. stocks, the interest rate uncertainty paired with earnings reports from tech giants like Microsoft, Meta, Apple and Amazon will directly impact risk appetite for high-valuation growth stocks and AI-related trades.