US media: The US military escorted 40 merchant ships through the strait on Tuesday, with the vessels carrying 18 million barrels of oil.

Elon Musk-owned social platform X said Wednesday that effective immediately, all revenue payments for U.S. creators will be disbursed via its payment service X Money. The adjustment covers X’s original content reward program and creator subscription revenue. X noted that the new payment system’s key benefits include instant deposits, eliminating the need for creators to wait for the end of billing cycles or meet a minimum withdrawal threshold to access funds. Previously, X processed payments every two weeks with a $30 minimum withdrawal requirement. However, per the announcement’s wording, the platform appears to no longer offer alternative payment methods, meaning even creators who preferred the previous Stripe-supported payment option will be required to switch to X Money.

Greg Abel, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, told CNBC in an interview that the company plans to hold its stakes in Japan’s five major trading houses as long-term investments, expected to be held for decades. Currently, Berkshire holds over 10% of each of the five trading houses’ shares, and is continuing to explore other collaboration opportunities in Japan and overseas with these firms. Abel also noted that despite Japan’s 10-year government bond yield rising to around 3%, the five trading houses do not view the interest rate hike as a fundamental challenge, and Berkshire still plans to continue issuing yen bonds as appropriate. On AI investments, Abel said the rapid development of artificial intelligence and the practical application of AI in Berkshire’s subsidiaries are key reasons the company is bullish on Alphabet. Regarding AI data center construction, he believes energy supply and related infrastructure development remain major constraints, which also presents important opportunities for Berkshire and its subsidiary Berkshire Energy. Abel pointed out that the company is willing to provide energy services to large tech firms’ data centers, provided that this does not harm the interests of other clients and delivers net benefits to local communities. On the U.S. housing market, Abel stated that Berkshire takes a long-term view of the housing sector, arguing that the "American Dream" will persist, but there will be no rapid recovery in the short term, and the industry may still face volatility for some time to come. For the overall economy, he said most of Berkshire’s major businesses performed strongly through the second quarter, with demand remaining robust, but U.S. consumers are still under significant pressure and need to manage their income more cautiously. Overall, Berkshire currently views the economy’s fundamentals as "very strong."

A federal judge on Wednesday rejected the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ) request to break up Google’s (GOOG.O) online advertising business. The ruling is historic, effectively putting an end to nearly 20 years of antitrust risks for Alphabet’s Google. As early as the Obama administration, U.S. government enforcers had considered filing a monopolization lawsuit against Google. However, judges have long been strongly resistant to breaking up companies, viewing such remedies as overly radical, and Wednesday’s ruling is the latest example of this. U.S. Judge Leonie Brinkema took a more restrained approach to determining how to penalize Google. Last year, she ruled that Google had illegally monopolized the complex online advertising market for website ads. The DOJ argued that forcing Google to sell its ad exchange was the only way to curb its market dominance and open the market to new competitors. Brinkema disagreed. In a two-page ruling order, she adopted alternative measures to limit Google’s ability to control publishers’ use of its ad technology.

According to Lookonchain’s monitoring, a crypto whale today added 430,224 HYPE tokens, valued at $35.1 million. Separately, a newly created wallet address starting with 0xC5ca withdrew 94,149 HYPE tokens (worth $7.66 million) from FalconX two hours ago.

According to Sportico, Kalshi on Tuesday removed prediction markets related to the duration of athletes’ injuries from its application. A source familiar with the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) revealed that Kalshi’s move was made at the request of its federal regulator, the CFTC. Since 2026, Kalshi has facilitated at least hundreds of thousands of dollars in predictions tied to player health, capitalizing on the uncertainty of injuries to high-profile players such as Luka Don?i?, Anthony Edwards, and Malik Nabers, while collecting fees from these related markets. Critics argue that injury predictions commodify sensitive medical information, potentially increasing the risk of harassment for healthcare providers, and are also vulnerable to manipulation.

According to on-chain data, Robinhood Chain's on-chain fees reached $3.75 million in the past 24 hours, exceeding the total fees of three public chains—Solana, Ethereum Mainnet, and Base—over the same period.