ByteDance's Zhang Yiming denies using distillation technology for AI models.

According to Fox News, the U.S. Department of the Treasury has removed some Iran-related sanctions from its website. A Treasury official stated: "This does not represent any shift in U.S. policy toward the Iranian government, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force, any designated terrorist organization, or their supporters or proxies. Today’s removal is part of normal administrative procedures, carried out after a review of specific circumstances related to Baghdad Aviation." Earlier, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) under the U.S. Treasury Department released an "Update on Revoking Counterterrorism Designations," lifting some Iran-related sanctions, including removing Fly Baghdad (Baghdad Aviation) from the sanctions list. The airline had previously been added to the counterterrorism sanctions list due to its ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force.

Jeremy Allaire, founder and CEO of Circle, the issuer of USDC, stated during tonight’s earnings call: “We have renewed our agreement with Coinbase under existing terms, ensuring USDC remains central to all of Coinbase’s product offerings. We also look forward to expanding our USDC network via distribution deals with strategically aligned partners.” The collaboration agreement between Circle and Coinbase, signed on August 18, 2023, stipulates that Circle—USDC’s sole issuer—shares interest revenue generated from USDC reserve assets with Coinbase: Coinbase will receive 100% of reserve interest from USDC held on its platform, plus 50% of the remaining reserve interest from USDC held off its platform. The agreement has an initial three-year term and an automatic renewal mechanism.

Perpetual decentralized exchange (Perp DEX) Trade.xyz on the Hyperliquid chain has purchased HYPE for the first time using its HIP-3 revenue, acquiring 2,000 HYPE tokens worth approximately $108,000.

HIP-3 decentralized trading platform Trade.xyz has launched Unitree’s pre-IPO perpetual contract, currently quoted at $69, corresponding to a post-listing market cap of approximately $27.9 billion. Separately, HIP-3 decentralized trading platform Paragon also launched Unitree’s pre-IPO perpetual contract yesterday, with a current quote of $68.8. The UNITREE pre-market perpetual contract price represents the USD value of one ordinary Unitree share. Unitree’s STAR Market IPO plans to issue at least around 40.45 million shares, accounting for 10% of its total post-issuance share capital, with post-issuance total shares standing at approximately 404.5 million. The current contract price implies a market cap of $27.9 billion, equivalent to around 190.6 billion RMB. Unitree’s IPO prospectus targets an issuance valuation of approximately 42 billion RMB (around $5.8–6.2 billion), which is expected to deliver a 4.5x gain for new share subscribers after listing. Unitree is set to hold its initial public offering on the Shanghai Stock Exchange’s STAR Market, with its net subscription date scheduled for August 10, 2026.

According to BIT (bit.com) market data, the U.S. optical communications sector extended its gains from yesterday, with the following performances: Pure Photonics ETF (FOTO) rose 2.2%; Corning (GLW) gained 0.52%; Marvell Technology (MRVL) increased 0.5%; AAOI (Applied Optoelectronics) climbed 5.1% — a manufacturer of 800G/1.6T high-speed optical modules focused on AI data center transceivers; LITE (Lumentum Holdings) rose 2.56%, a core supplier of optical communications lasers and modules and a key player in AI data centers; COHR (Coherent Corp) gained 5.86%, a leader in lasers, optical components and photonics solutions covering data center and industrial sectors; CIEN (Ciena Corporation) climbed 2.49%, which produces high-speed SerDes and connectivity chips and focuses on low-power interconnections for AI data centers. Yesterday’s development: The Trump administration is drafting a ban on imports of new Chinese data center components, and the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) plans to impose import restrictions on Chinese optical transceivers (used for high-speed fiber data transmission in data centers), aiming to announce and take effect within this year. A U.S. ban on new Chinese data center equipment imports could raise costs for U.S. cloud computing firms including Amazon Web Services (AWS, AMZN.O), forcing them to switch to alternative suppliers such as U.S.-based Coherent (COHR.N) and Lumentum (LITE.O).

The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has posted an update on its official website, lifting sanctions related to Iran.