South Korea’s stock index plunged, with exchanges activating the circuit breaker mechanism for the KOSPI index.

According to on-chain analyst Yu Jin Monitoring, as of press time, a whale or institutional entity has sold a total of 837.8 BTC and purchased 27,500 ETH worth approximately $69.68 million, with an average purchase price of $2,534 for ETH. The entity’s transaction flow: It transferred on-chain BTC withdrawn from HTX a year and a half ago to Hyperliquid, sold the BTC for USDC; then withdrew the USDC to Arbitrum, bridged it to Ethereum, and finally bought ETH on-chain.

Multiple sources familiar with the matter told Caijing Magazine that large language model startup DeepSeek will soon close its latest funding round, with the total capital raised rising from the previously planned 50 billion yuan to around 100 billion yuan. This marks DeepSeek’s second financing round, where the planned investment amount has doubled in less than half a month. New and existing shareholders will each account for roughly half of the total funding. Despite the doubling in financing scale, DeepSeek’s pre-money valuation remains unchanged at approximately 500 billion yuan. New investors in this round include Shixi Capital, SMIC Pi Capital, CPE Source Capital, Legend Capital, and Geely, among others, with industrial investors forming the majority of the new backers. (Caijing Magazine)

Beating AI News: The long-teased X Subscription has officially launched. The new offering bundles X Premium, Grok, Grok Bot, and Cursor into a single subscription, with four paid tiers priced at $8, $30, $100, and $200 per month, plus a free tier. The most notable tier is the $30 monthly Premium plan. Per official details, this package combines benefits from the previously separate X Premium+, SuperGrok, and Cursor Pro—totaling $90 monthly in individual costs—plus access to Grok Bot, Cursor’s cloud Agent, and code review features. The two higher tiers primarily increase usage allowances, set at 15x and 50x the $8 base plan’s limits, respectively. However, the new billing structure differs from prior plans: Grok, Grok Bot, and Cursor share a single weekly-refreshed allowance, which applies mainly to Grok’s native models. The company states that the new plan’s Grok model programming allowance is at least double that of the old Cursor Pro plan. That said, accessing third-party models like Claude and GPT via Cursor will still require additional payments based on API rates. Existing X Premium, SuperGrok, and Cursor members can either retain their current plans or choose to migrate. Eligible old subscriptions will receive pro-rated refunds for remaining time, but account merges are irreversible—users cannot revert to their original plans after switching.

According to market data from BIT (bit.com), South Korea’s KOSPI index has extended its decline to 6%, SK Hynix has slumped 9%, while Samsung Electronics’ drop has widened to 7%.

According to Lookonchain’s monitoring, trader AguilaTrades, who has suffered a total loss of $38 million, has re-entered the market. Four hours ago, he opened a short position of 124.24 BTC with 40x leverage, valued at approximately $10.14 million. He is currently sitting on an unrealized profit of around $165,000, with a liquidation price of $83,432.22.

BlackRock Investment Institute has adjusted its U.S. asset allocation, upgrading short-term U.S. Treasuries to an overweight rating, raising long-term U.S. Treasuries from underweight to neutral, and ending its nearly six-year underweight stance on U.S. government bonds. Meanwhile, the firm cut its rating on U.S. equities from overweight to neutral, lowered its rating on U.S. agency mortgage-backed securities (MBS) to neutral, and reduced its underweight position in Japanese government bonds. BlackRock has held an underweight position in U.S. Treasuries since October 2020, when the 10-year U.S. Treasury yield was near 0.9% and has now risen above 5.2%. The institute believes yields have climbed to an attractive level, and it aims to lock in some of the higher returns, noting that market expectations for further monetary policy tightening by the Federal Reserve may be excessive. Currently, interest rate swap markets show traders expect at least three 25-basis-point interest rate hikes over the next 12 months. BlackRock points out that U.S. Treasury yields would need to rise another 75 basis points over the next year to fully offset the income generated by the bonds. On the U.S. equities front, BlackRock attributed the rating cut to "potential volatility from AI development". As AI expansion drives higher capital expenditure and financing needs, high interest rates amplify return disparities among companies, requiring investors to assess whether firms can generate returns above their cost of capital. The firm emphasized: "We are managing near-term risks, not changing our core beliefs." BlackRock remains bullish on AI-related companies and listed infrastructure, and plans to increase its risk exposure again when visibility improves and attractive entry points emerge.