Cryptopolitan

Strategy has announced a pivot in how it will manage capital moving forward, with sales of Bitcoin, stock buybacks up to $2 billion in its own securities, and raising dividends on its troubled STRC preferred shares to 12%, all on the table according to its 8-K filing with the SEC on Sunday.
The pivot comes amid a $14 billion setback on its 847,363 BTC holdings, which the firm also revealed in its filing, with Bitcoin trading around $60,500 at the time of the announcement.
Now, the Michael Saylor-led firm has answered with a five-part plan in its “Digital Credit Capital Framework.”
What is Strategy’s Digital Credit Capital Framework?
Strategy’s Digital Credit Capital Framework, as it is presented, is being seen by observers as the firm’s first systematic attempt to manage the financial strain that critics like Peter Schiff, analysts at CryptoQuant, and even Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse have flagged in recent weeks.
Specific details shared in the SEC filing include:
A formal USD reserve policy.
A revised STRC dividend rate.
Two separate repurchase programs.
A Bitcoin monetization program.
Strategy has to maintain its cash reserve
On the reserve policy side, Strategy’s board approved a policy that will prevent the company from using its $2.55 billion cash reserve for anything other than preferred stock dividends and interest payments on debt.
Under the plan, Strategy’s management is expected to be in a position where it can cover at least 12 months of its obligations, without any stated exceptions.
Right now, the firm is safely in the green. The $2.55 billion cash reserve it has on hand means it does not need to worry about any cash strain for at least the next 17.4 months based on its current spending rate of approximately $1.76 billion per year.
Does Strategy now have a stock buyback program?
The board greenlit a $2 billion plan to buy back its own preferred and common stocks at an even split of $1 billion across each category.
In simpler terms, it means Strategy has authorization to repurchase up to $1 billion of STRC, STRF, STRD, and STRK and a separate $1 billion program for its Class A common stock, MSTR.
While the program now exists, Strategy does not have any binding obligation to actually buy anything. In fact, it has the wiggle room to suspend or cancel either of the preferred or common stock programs without notice.
BTC monetization is the most interesting update
Of all the updates it shared, all eyes are actually on how Strategy plans to move forward with its BTC monetization program.
The program gives Strategy the discretion to sell Bitcoin when it sees a window. Any funds generated from those sales, if they happen, will go to rebuilding the cash reserve, funding dividends, or financing the repurchase programs.
The $1.25 billion in sales that the company’s board greenlit in this category will be accretive to the existing $2.55 billion reserve. If those sales ever happen, it would bring total liquidity coverage to roughly $3.8 billion, or about 26 months of obligations before accounting for repurchases, taxes, or transaction costs, according to Strategy’s press release.
Cryptopolitan had reported earlier that the firm sold 32 BTC for $2.5 million to help fund dividend repayments.
STRC rates get another rate hike
As from July 1, the annual dividend on the struggling STRC preferred stock has gone up to 12%, the filing shows. Before this latest hike, the instrument had gone through seven rate increase rounds, from 9% to 11.5%. Cryptopolitan previously reported that STRC closed Friday near $74.57, a discount of roughly 25%.
Michael Saylor, ever the bull, framed the overhaul around credit quality. “Digital Credit requires liquidity, discipline, and active capital management,” Saylor said in the press release. He continued that the framework is “designed to strengthen credit quality and enable the Company to reduce expected preferred stock dividend payments when accretive.”
CEO Phong Le read from the script, saying that Strategy is moving from a capital issuance model to active capital structure management through both issuance and repurchases.
MSTR shares were up 6% in pre-market trading following the announcement, and STRC gained about 9%. Bitcoin itself moved modestly higher to around $60,500.
Will Strategy start selling Bitcoin now?
While the framework puts the paperwork in for Strategy to sell Bitcoin if it wants, whether the firm actually offloads any of its stash is completely at management’s discretion.
Potential situations that could force Strategy’s hands could be a $1 billion debt that matures in 2027. Cryptopolitan previously reported that CryptoQuant has estimated that the firm needs about $2.8 billion in cash over the next two years to steady the ship as it concerns dividend coverage.
In the meantime, investors will be watching quarterly disclosures on BTC sales, reserve balances, and repurchase activity in upcoming filings to see which direction Strategy ship is steering.
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The Bank of Thailand is preparing a plan for a stablecoin pegged 1:1 to the Thai baht, with a public hearing on the proposal expected before the end of 2026. Governor Vitai Ratanakorn explained plan details at the “Capital with Purpose” conference hosted by efinanceThai.
The planned stablecoin will not be a central bank digital currency, as it would be issued by regulated private entities and not the Bank of Thailand itself. Every token in circulation would have to be fully backed by baht reserves held in well defined accounts at licensed financial institutions, according to the Bangkok Post.
In the first phase, only banks and financial institutions would be allowed to use the stablecoin, and it would work purely for settlement purposes. Other use cases for the general public would come afterwards, pending evaluation.
Bank of Thailand plans backed by experimental sandbox data
The Bank of Thailand’s plans are not sudden and come from a well known foundation. The central bank launched a Programmable Payment Sandbox in 2024 to test baht-pegged digital units in a controlled environment, and later expanded in December 2025 to allow even more experimentation.
The structure of the regulation in the proposal for this new stablecoin directly draws on data from those sandbox trials, giving the central bank real operational experience to use in creating the rules governing this baht-backed stablecoin.
Ledger Insights also reported that the BoT has signaled interest in extending stablecoin use into carbon credit markets and green financing, where the use of blockchain settlements could reduce the limited clarity plaguing carbon trading.
Thailand to tighten FX enforcement
BoT Governor Ratanakorn reiterated the central bank’s interest in reinforcing Thailand’s foreign exchange controls during the conference. Personal QR code payments within Thailand must be denominated in baht, the governor said, and renminbi-denominated transfers through Alipay and WeChat Pay are not allowed in the Thai market.
Between February 2025 and May 2026, regulators suspended about 5,000 accounts used for peer-to-peer renminbi transfers through those platforms. Ratanakorn warned that payment service providers processing transactions in currencies other than the country’s baht face fines, suspension, or a removal of their operational licenses.
The governor also addressed the growing number of institutions offering retail foreign exchange trading, stating the central bank has no plans to license speculative forex activity. Providing settlement services for such trades could violate Thailand’s Foreign Exchange Control Act of 1942, carrying penalties of up to 200,000 baht in fines and three years’ imprisonment.
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Google has put a definite cap to how much of its Gemini AI platform Meta is allowed to make use of after the tech and media company’s demand for AI compute exceeded available capacity, according to a Financial Times report.
Alphabet’s cloud division informed Meta around March that its Gemini capacity demands could not be fulfilled, a situation that ended up delaying and disrupting some of Meta’s internal AI projects.
Meta and Gemini: why?
Meta had turned to Google’s Gemini models because they outperformed its own open-source Llama models for specific tasks. The company was using Gemini for content moderation processes that included harmful content removal and scam detection.
The AI model was also used for customer service automation, advertiser chatbots and coding. Engadget reported that Meta also uses Anthropic’s Claude for similar workloads.
Meta, which does not operate its own cloud business, has pledged $600 billion in cloud computing investments over the next two years to reduce that dependence.
Following the restrictions, Meta has instructed employees to use AI tokens more efficiently, according to FT. The company has also accelerated development of Muse Spark, an internal model built under its Superintelligence Labs division, and has started to shift workloads away from Gemini to this platform.
Meta cut 8,000 jobs in May and reassigned 7,000 workers to AI-focused roles.
AI industry in compute supply crisis
Several other Google customers are also facing reduced access, though to a lesser degree, according to the FT report. Even though Google operates one of the world’s largest AI infrastructure pools, the tech giant still cannot meet the massive demand for AI compute.
Google Cloud revenue reached $20 billion in Q1, but CEO Sundar Pichai acknowledged that compute constraints prevented higher growth and contributed to the cloud unit’s backlog doubling over the last quarter.
Google has also agreed to pay SpaceX $920 million per month for access to 110,000 Nvidia GPUs as “bridge capacity” for the Gemini Enterprise, according to Reuters.
Google’s competitor, Anthropic, is also separately renting an entire data center from SpaceX, proving that the AI industry’s biggest constraint currently is the physical infrastructure to run AI models and not the talent to build them.
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South Korean financial services company Kiwoom Securities is currently in talks to acquire a stake in Bithumb, the country’s second-largest crypto exchange.
The deal will be fulfilled through a third-party allotment of newly issued shares, under which Kiwoom would acquire new shares issued by Bithumb.
However, the exact stake and investment are yet to be concluded, Chosun Biz reported Monday.
Kiwoom shares rose 7.99% to 333,500 won following the announcement.
Kiwoom Securities share price. Source: Yahoo Finance
Korean securities firms position ahead of STO reforms
Kiwoom’s interest in Bithumb comes as Korea prepares to pass regulations on security token offerings (STOs) and stablecoins that would give licensed securities firms a larger role in digital asset markets.
Samsung Securities, Mirae Asset, and Korea Investment & Securities are also pursuing a stake in Bithumb.
“We are discussing partnerships with the financial sector and several corporations across various possibilities, but nothing has been specifically reviewed or decided yet,” a Bithumb official noted.
Crypto exchanges in Korea have been opening their doors to more investments amid a proposed rule by the Financial Services Commission to cap major shareholder equity in exchanges at 20%, with exceptions allowing up to 34%.
Bithumb Holdings currently controls 73.56% of the exchange. That means it could be required to divest more than 50%% if the regulation takes effect.
In May, three Samsung affiliates had agreed to acquire a combined 4% stake in Dunamu, the operator of South Korea’s largest crypto exchange, Upbit. The deal was estimated to reach 612.8 billion won, roughly $408 million.
Bithumb’s IPO pushed past 2028
Bithumb is also pursuing a KOSDAQ listing with Samsung Securities as lead manager.
The second-largest Korean exchange originally targeted 2025 for its public debut, then pushed to 2027, and most recently indicated it would not list until after 2028, as Cryptopolitan reported in April.
Despite strong financial reporting, Bithumb delayed its planned IPO, saying it still wanted to work on its accounting policies, internal controls, and other rules.
Bithumb was once under regulatory scrutiny for issues including AML violations, where it received a 36.8 billion won fine (or $24.2 million) from the FIU and a six-month partial suspension.
Earlier this month, South Korean police named Bithumb CEO Lee Jae-won as a suspect in an ongoing bribery investigation, saying Jae-won hired the son of an independent lawmaker as a political favor.
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BitMEX made the unprecedented move of replacing three of its top executives in one fell swoop when it let its chief executive (CEO) Stephan Lutz, chief financial officer (CFO) Ina Steiner, and chief growth officer Raphael Polansky exit the building all at once.
Peter Wilkinson, the man who used to hold the role of BitMEX’s global general counsel and chief operating officer, will now move into the CEO office. The C-suite reshuffle was first noticed by recent changes to various LinkedIn profiles, and not the typical route of company announcements or even thank-you statements.
That was not the only atypical pattern in the sequence. CFO changes typically imply that an impending IPO. However, the accompanying clear-out of the upper deck has been linked to the crypto derivatives exchange’s reported search for an acquirer, especially because the firm already completed its listing in September last year.
Why are BitMEX executives leaving their posts?
It is not abnormal for crypto firms to make changes to their executive ranks. However, it still needs to clear certain context hurdles first.
For example, when a privately held firm names a new CFO with capital markets experience, you don’t need a crystal ball to tell you that a public listing is in its near future. In the same way, companies trying to look attractive to a new owner could name new leaders who can repackage the business for potential buyers.
BitMEX appears to be the latter. Reports have previously claimed that the exchange could be up for sale, and the simultaneous removal of its CEO, CFO, and growth lead only adds credence to the fire behind the smoke thesis.
The decision to go with a lawyer for the top job only pours gasoline on that fire.
Before making the step up, Wilkinson was in charge of overseeing BitMEX’s legal and compliance standing, something that will be a top priority for any hypothetical new owners, given the company’s history with U.S. enforcement agencies.
When all those contextual clues line up, right now, BitMEX looks like a firm trimming overhead to improve its appeal to prospective acquirers during a prolonged market slump.
Notably, BitMEX is no stranger to leadership shakeups, going through four chief executives in six years.
Why does BitMEX’s regulatory status matter for new owners?
BitMEX started out with Arthur Hayes, Ben Delo, and Samuel Reed as co-founders back in 2014. However, U.S. authorities had a big role in disbanding that original crew.
In October 2020, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) came in with charges relating to money laundering and improper clearance to operate in the United States. Separate Department of Justice (DOJ) criminal charges against Hayes, Delo, and Reed for Bank Secrecy Act violations forced all three co-founders to step down.
Alexander Hoeptner only lasted a year after he replaced Hayes as CEO in early 2021. Lutz took over as interim CEO during the 2022 bear market and held the position until this week’s removal.
Gemini announces similar executive cuts post-IPO
Interestingly, BitMEX did not blaze a new trail when it cleared its executive ranks. Another crypto exchange had made a similar move earlier in 2026, under different circumstances.
The Gemini exchange, co-founded by the Winklevoss twins, disclosed in an SEC filing in February that its COO Marshall Beard, CFO Dan Chen, and chief legal officer Tyler Meade were no longer with the crypto company, according to Cryptopolitan’s reporting at the time.
Those departures were linked by analysts to post-listing cost-cutting and a strategic retreat from international markets as the exchange adapted its business.
However, like BitMEX, Gemini did not look to immediately fill those recently vacated roles. Cameron Winklevoss absorbed COO functions, as the exchange also announced plans to shrink its roster by 25% and simultaneously exit the United Kingdom, European Union, and Australia.
What will happen to BitMEX now?
With roughly $962 million in assets as of late June, according to CoinMarketCap reserve data, BitMEX is an integral part of the crypto ecosystem, and many will be seeking clarity as to how the exchange plans to move forward under its new structure.
BitMEX has not said whether it will follow the Gemini route and make Wilkinson absorb the CFO or head of growth positions, or whether it plans to fill those roles with new appointees. The exchange hasn’t actually issued a public statement explaining the departures or outlining a strategic direction as of this report.
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South Korea has announced that it is lining up about $1 trillion to invest in semiconductor manufacturing, AI data centers, and robotics infrastructure across the country.
The country’s president, Lee Jae-myung, stated that the investment is essential for South Korea to keep pace with its neighbors who are already spending heavily on the same technologies.
The plan, unveiled Monday alongside the leadership of Samsung and SK Hynix, arrives as Japan commits $65 billion to physical AI by 2040. Taiwan also funds a national robotics center backed by $629 million, among other investments, and China has been bullish in its chip production, especially in the face of US trade restrictions.
For South Korea, standing still is not an option.
Are Samsung and SK Hynix anchoring the spending?
Samsung reportedly disclosed that it would be investing 2,655 trillion won across domestic operations. Samsung reportedly stated that it is setting 2,030 trillion won of that total for semiconductor clusters in Pyeongtaek and Yongin. The remaining 625 trillion won is going towards investments in AI chip fabrication, robotics, batteries, and IT components spread across the country’s southern and central regions.
Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Jae-yong has also stated that Gwangju is the next candidate for a semiconductor cluster, citing infrastructure advantages including power supply, water access, and workforce availability.
The company also plans a high-bandwidth memory (HBM) fabrication facility in the Cheonan-Onyang corridor and a humanoid robot production line in Gumi.
SK Hynix is also heavily involved in the plan. As of May, SK Hynix’s market capitalization crossed $1 trillion on the back of AI data center demand. The company’s HBM chips power Nvidia’s AI accelerators and are sold to hyperscale cloud providers around the world.
For South Korean President Lee, the initiative is one of three “mega projects” covering semiconductors, physical AI, and AI data centers. “We must secure the core elements of AI faster than any other country,” he said during a televised address, adding that “semiconductors, physical AI, and AI data centers are the triple axis for a great leap forward.”
What are neighboring countries investing in for AI and related sectors?
Japan’s government has committed 10.5 trillion yen ($65.1 billion) to physical AI earlier this month, and this is part of a larger 370 trillion yen spending strategy that spans 17 sectors through fiscal 2040.
The Nikkei 225 responded by closing above 72,000 for the first time, led by chip and robotics stocks.
Taiwan launched its National Center for AI Robotics in April with a $629 million funding program designed to create domestic robot startups between 2026 and 2029. The island already ranks among the top 10 economies by robot density, with 302 units per 10,000 employees.
China has been actively expanding its semiconductor output in the face of US export controls, and its AI labs now have combined valuations approaching $2 trillion.
South Korea’s exports rose 44% year-over-year to $21.4 billion, and that rise has been driven almost entirely by semiconductor demand tied to AI workloads.
Stakeholders want to decentralize the development beyond Seoul
A secondary goal of the plan is geographic diversification, with Lee stating that it is a way to reverse decades of industrial concentration in the Seoul metropolitan area.
President Lee said, “We must break this long-standing cycle of discrimination and marginalization, not only for the sake of justice and equity, but also to ensure sustainable and inclusive growth.”
The government pledged to fast-track permitting, power, and water supply for the new facilities.
What is the state of the South Korean market and does it add pressure to this move?
The announcement comes days after a major selloff in Korean equities. On June 23, the KOSPI fell nearly 10%, with Samsung Electronics dropping 12.3% and SK Hynix declining 12.5% as foreign investors rotated out of crowded AI trades. The correction came after months of gains fueled by semiconductor demand.
South Korea’s stock market is heavily weighted toward chip stocks, and this means that the performance of the likes of Samsung, SK Hynix, and how they maintain their positions in the supply chain will have an extensive impact on the country.
US tech giants, including Google, Amazon, and Meta, have committed to spending $650 billion on AI infrastructure this year alone. That spending creates the demand South Korea is racing to supply, but it also attracts competition from every chip-producing nation in the region.
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Hyperliquid Foundation will allocate $10 million in grants to developers affected by the sunsetting of its native stablecoin, USDH, in favor of USDC.
The news came on Sunday, weeks after the Foundation had unstaked 250,001 HYPE, worth $16.9 million, from its grants wallet.
Three days ago, 250,001 hyperliquid:native worth $16,993,317.97 was unstaked from the grants wallet, which originally held 3M hyperliquid:native at TGE.
This is likely related to supporting builders that used $USDH. pic.twitter.com/EFvXUUDteh
— Hyperliquid News (@HyperliquidNews) June 15, 2026
Per the announcement, the grants will be distributed to HIP-3 deployers, HIP-1 deployers, and other developers who built around USDH. Hyperliquid said the aim is to “help offset migration costs and recognize the work involved in an orderly transition.”
HIP-1 and HIP-3 grants will be distributed based on auction deployment costs, while HyperEVM grants are based on the affected USDH TVL. Teams migrating affected markets to USDC will receive a larger allocation than those simply winding down USDH markets.
All the recipients are under an agreement to commit to orderly migration and wind-down before the end of July.
USDH gives way to USDC
USDH is being shut down after its original developer, Native Markets, granted Coinbase the right to purchase USDH brand assets in May, making way for USDC as a primary asset on Hyperliquid.
Both Circle and Coinbase had partnered with Hyperliquid to adopt the new AQAv2 for USDC, designating USDC as a “protocol-aligned stablecoin,” Cryptopolitan reported.
AQAv2 is a framework aimed at aligning exclusive stablecoins, such as USDC, with the Hyperliquid network. Only then can such stablecoins be used as “aligned quote assets” across the platform’s perpetual and spot markets.
Validators approved the proposal for AQAv2 on June 12th, with 19 of 26 nodes (69%) voting in favor. Following the approval, Circle moved $4.4 billion in USDC to Coinbase via AQAv2, the single largest USDC transaction ever recorded.
HYPE market update
Trading activities have continued to swell across Hyperliquid’s HIP-3 and HIP-4 markets.
HIP-3 markets now make up 37.2% of all Hyperliquid perpetual trading volume. Meanwhile, total liquidation across the markets has also increased to over $3.33 billion, according to data from ASXN.
HIP-3 total liquidations. Source: ASXN
Elsewhere, data shows that HIP-4 outcome markets recorded $29.9 million single-day volume, with a 360% increase week-over-week.
At the time of writing, HYPE was up 1% on the 24-hour timeframe, trading at $63.42.
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A Solana (SOL) meme coin named after crypto celebrity Ansem rallied 18,000% in just 3 days to reach a $125 million market capitalization. During this time, the general cryptocurrency markets were experiencing extreme fear.
High levels of speculative capital continue to follow small amounts of available liquidity, even though overall cryptocurrency market capitalizations are decreasing as measured by market-capitalization-weighted indices.
According to on-chain analyst Ai Yi (@ai_9684xtpa), there were 12 wallet addresses each purchasing more than $100,000 worth of ANSEM in the past 24 hours, totaling $1.985 million. The purchases pushed the total market capitalization of ANSEM above $100 million based on data.
ANSEM deployer walked away with $5,500
According to a report from blockchain analytics company Lookonchain, the origin of the ANSEM token can be traced back to a wallet that was identified as the deployer of the token (identified by the address “yHCxHB”), where it created the ANSEM token for a total out-of-pocket cost of $6300 (USD). In addition to creating the token, the deployer also purchased 792.45 million tokens when the token was first launched.
The $ANSEM deployer “yHCxHB” created a $120M+ token but made only $5.5K himself.
He spent $6.3K to deploy $ANSEM and bought 792.45M $ANSEM.
He then transferred 650M $ANSEM to @blknoiz06 and sold the remaining 142.45M $ANSEM for $11.8K, making a profit of only $5.5K.… pic.twitter.com/7ZDYN6svet
— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) June 29, 2026
Once the token was created, the deployer transferred 650 million tokens to the influencer’s wallet, Ansem (also known as @blknoiz06 on X), and the remaining 142.45 million tokens were sold at an approximate value of $11,800 (USD), which provided the deployer of the token an approximate profit of $5,500 (USD).
The influencer’s wallet, meanwhile, held 604 million ANSEM tokens worth more than $71 million as of June 29, Lookonchain reported in a separate post.
Early traders posted triple-digit returns
Individual traders did well for themselves during the bull run-up in the price. Lookonchain recently drew attention to a particular address (CxCTVj) that purchased $2,330 worth of assets and has been able to sell them for $614,500 (both realized and unrealized gain), which is a return of 261x. The trader sold 4.2 million tokens, which they received $68,100 for, and they still have 10 million tokens left, which will be worth $548,800 at the time of posting (June 28th).
Another trader (2M2vLX) purchased 25.99 million ANSEM tokens for 56.4 SOL, or approximately $4,050, just 10 days prior to the spike and sold all of it for 7,649 SOL, which is equivalent to a total of approximately $539,000. This is a gain of 135x, according to Lookonchain.
Concentration risk and the broader market signal
The capital structure around ANSEM raises questions about sustainability. AInvest analysis noted that Ansem’s personal holdings ($71 million) exceeded the token’s circulating market cap, and the $1.985 million in new external investment accounted for roughly 1.5% of total token value across all wallets. Daily trading volume hit $30 million against a $60 million market cap at one point, implying a 0.5x daily turnover ratio (calculated by dividing 24-hour trading volume by market capitalization).
While turnover ratios vary across asset classes and market conditions, elevated turnover over short periods generally indicates that a relatively large proportion of the asset’s market value is changing hands rapidly, a pattern more commonly associated with speculative trading, short-term profit-taking, or distribution than with long-term accumulation by investors. In cryptocurrency markets, however, turnover should be interpreted alongside liquidity, holder concentration, and order-book depth rather than in isolation.
ANSEM’s cap had risen as high as $125 million, then fallen back down to roughly $117 million, and in one day the price of the token had increased by over 12,000%. Meme coins continue to be priced mainly based on feelings and speculative momentum rather than any fundamental real-world utility.
This large upward movement in price for ANSEM was accompanied by a corresponding downward contraction of the overall market (as measured by the crypto Fear and Greed Index at 12 points reflecting extreme fear) following the typical pattern seen in previous meme cycles: as capital leaves all risk assets in the market as it is invested into one speculative investment due to perceived availability of liquidity.
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HP Inc. and OpenAI entered into a strategic agreement on June 28. They launched the Frontier platform throughout HP’s worldwide presence, which is just another example of how major businesses throughout the world are wagering that the use of AI will alter the entire fabric of how large businesses operate. This partnership will put OpenAI’s business offering into one of the world’s largest manufacturers of printers and computers with operations in more than 180 nations and revenues of $57.4 billion in the trailing 12 months.
The significance of the HP/OpenAI partnership extends far beyond HP. OpenAI launched its enterprise platform, called Frontier, in February 2026, as an enterprise-level platform for creating, deploying, and managing AI agents in production-ready environments.
The first list of customers included HP, Intuit, Oracle, State Farm, Thermo Fisher Scientific, and Uber, as reported by OpenAI. Additionally, many other enterprises, such as Cisco, BBVA, and T-Mobile, have tested the system. Each successful large-scale implementation of new AI-based systems creates new data regarding the effectiveness of how AI agents perform in the daily operations of large companies. Therefore, HP’s size and scope represent one of the most significant examples to date of a successful large-scale implementation of AI into a business.
What HP plans to do with Frontier
According to its company press release, HP plans to utilize the Frontier platform in four different ways, including tools for customers and partners, insights gained with respect to telemetry from devices through the Workforce Experience Platform (WXP), product and service productivity for employees, and developing software
According to Prakash Arunkundrum, HP’s Chief Strategy and Transformation Officer, the Frontier platform will enable HP to provide “a more consistent experience across store, partner, chat, and voice experiences, giving customers and partners faster ways to get answers, complete routine workflows, and move toward resolution.”
HP’s partner network is a major area of emphasis for the company. Over 80% of HP’s revenue is generated via partner sales, and HP has more than 100,000 partners globally who use its global Partner Portal. AI agents implemented via the Frontier platform will provide partners with automated assistance when navigating HP programs, information about business processes, and operational information.
From a security perspective, during the pilot phase of the Frontier project, HP Security teams leveraged OpenAI solutions to address software vulnerabilities that would have taken approximately one month to resolve without AI assistance, compressing that time frame down to one day. Based on information provided to OpenAI by HP, Frontier AI implementations resulted in the elimination of approximately 82 hours of weekly security personnel capacity.
The pilot that led to the deal
HP initiated its evaluation of Frontier in February 2026 through pilot programs testing agent-based capabilities, security features, and enterprise integration. During this timeframe, an engineer processed 122 pull requests across 43 different projects using OpenAI’s models in just a few weeks, according to OpenAI’s account of the collaboration.
Denise Dresser, Chief Revenue Officer for OpenAI, stated: “HP has been an exceptional early partner, turning early value from OpenAI APIs and tools like ChatGPT and Codex into repeatable systems.”
Based on the results of their evaluation, HP determined that OpenAI provided “best-in-class” models with an incredible vision for developing agent-based capabilities, according to the HP press release. The two companies have now agreed to continue working together by co-developing additional use cases, focused on data integration, governance, and security.
Where this fits in the enterprise AI market
This acquisition gives OpenAI a foothold in the enterprise AI space and follows OpenAI’s push into enterprise sales. The launch of OpenAI Partner Network in July will include a $150 million investment and a 3-tier channel program that includes partners like Accenture, PwC, Bain, and Boston Consulting Group. OpenAI’s goal is to have trained 300,000 certified consultants by the end of 2026.
According to analysts at Futurum Group, OpenAI’s addition of Frontier is the company’s way of addressing the increasing disparity between the theoretical capabilities of AI models and the actual capabilities of organizations to implement AI in their systems, governance structures and security controls. Frontier connects previously siloed enterprise systems (data warehouses, CRM tools, ticketing systems) in a way that AI agents can operate with a shared context instead of being isolated workers.
HP is linking this partnership with its hardware strategy. The company indicated they will develop devices with dedicated hardware components that are optimized for 24/7 operations of an agentic AI workload. WXP, which was recently recognized by Gartner as the Leader in the 2026 Magic Quadrant for Digital Employee Experience Management Tools, will be the management layer for fleets of these AI-capable devices.
The unresolved question is whether Frontier will deliver measurable productivity improvements at HP’s scale. Pilot results are encouraging but span a small sample of teams. Investors, competitors, and other enterprise customers will be looking at how many engineers and security teams can experience productivity improvement and if those improvements translate across an organization of HP’s size without governance overhead reducing the efficiency improvements.
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Bitcoin miners weighed down the spot market after transferring another 19,560 BTC to Binance. This is the fourth-largest BTC inflow to the exchange since February, showing the current price range is putting pressure on mining companies.
Bitcoin miners accelerated their exchange deposits in June, with another deposit of 19,560 BTC. The recent wave of deposits follows an inflow of 23,000 BTC earlier this month.
According to Cryptoquant analyst Amr Taha, the recent inflows go beyond routine transfers and are a significant on-chain event. Miners strongly prefer Binance, with minimal inflows to Coinbase, HTX, OKX, Kraken, Bybit, Gemini, or other exchanges.
The inflows happened as BTC hovered just under $60,000. Later, the coin recovered to $60,019.25, with a dominance of 55.8%. According to F2Pool, one of the biggest miners, BTC conditions worsened notably in the past week.
⛏️ Recent metrics indicate a tightening environment for #Bitcoin miners:
Difficulty: +7.15%
BTC price change (7d): -7% (~$60k)
Daily revenue: < $0.03/T
Currently, Bitcoin ASICs with a unit power of 19.5 W/T are running close to their break-even line.
View the full list here:… pic.twitter.com/66r11YxhtP
— f2pool 🐟 (@f2pool) June 29, 2026
The transfer to exchanges does not mean that the coins are sold. It may mean that miners may take advantage of the spot market if prices are favorable. The two large-scale inflow events in June suggest miners are still actively managing their reserves.
For now, it remains uncertain if the miner inflows will persist, while BTC aims to stabilize and recover to a higher price range. The exchange reserves will also be watched for signs of spot selling. In the past two weeks, spot whale trading accelerated, suggesting some miners may be part of the downward trading pressure.
Which miners are the most active sellers?
The miner inflows in the past month came from specific pools. On June 2, Antpool and several others made significant deposits. Antpool also deposited BTC on June 28 and 29.
The most active depositor was BTC.com, which operates 0.46% of the Bitcoin hashrate. Larger block producers like F2Pool, Binance Pool, Antpool, and others are still holding their coins.
BTC.com was among the most active sellers on Binance, while larger pools still kept their rewards as reserves. | Source: Cryptoquant
All BTC miners operate under distress conditions, based on the hash ribbon indicator. However, individual costs vary, depending on access to electricity and available mining centers. Bitcoin’s network has not shown a spiral of capitulation and is within its usual range of seasonal fluctuation.
Miners are not the biggest source of spot selling pressure, as spot retail and older whales are among the most active sellers. Despite this, miners are more closely watched for overall BTC sentiment and its long-term outlook. Miner selling is still strategic, compared to the recent retail selling of 55,000 BTC at a loss.
Will BTC mining stocks recover?
Most BTC mining stocks are in the green for the past month and the year to date. The stocks may be supported by the still active mining sites, which are seen as prime locations for AI compute and data centers.
Iren (Nasdaq:IREN) is among the biggest losers for the past month, erasing 25.70% of its value. IREN has slid more than some of the pure mining companies, finally vindicating the short sellers.
Miners also seem dedicated to protecting the BTC network, even at their expense. Even some of the most advanced mining machines are barely making a profit, so the key difference is access to cheap electricity contracts and infrastructure.
Miners are also showing some conviction in continuing their operations despite the latest rise in BTC difficulty on June 29.
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The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) warned that if AI has a major contraction, similar to prior recessions, it could have a much greater impact on global stock markets than previous recessions. The reason for this concern is that, with all the uncertainty surrounding the financing of AI, many of the investments in AI projects internationally are highly concentrated among a limited number of investors, causing many of these investors to be dependent on a rapid deleveraging of their investment portfolio.
According to BIS’s recent annual report published on June 28, AI is one of three “pressure points” affecting the global economy (alongside inflation and sovereign debt pressures). These findings strongly suggest that technology companies will continue investing heavily in AI over the coming years. McKinsey had estimated that by 2030, approximately $6.7 trillion in cumulative capital expenditures will be required globally to meet the growing demand for compute power, including $5.2 trillion for AI-enabled data centers and $1.5 trillion for traditional IT infrastructure.
The firm also projects that global data center capacity could nearly triple by 2030, with about 70% of demand driven by AI workloads, underscoring the sustained need for investment in AI infrastructure, semiconductor technologies, power systems, and data centers. Furthermore, as stock prices continue to rise and investor confidence returns to equity markets, uncertainty associated with the possibility of not receiving an expected return on investment for AI will have potentially more dire consequences than historically experienced.
BIS flags risks in AI funding
According to the BIS report, the majority of the money flowing into the AI sector has moved through hedge funds, private credit vehicles, and other types of non-bank financial intermediaries (NBFIs), which typically do not have the same amount of regulatory oversight as many regulated financial institutions. Because they lack sufficient regulation, there remain some areas within this segment of the financial services industry that could lead to significant amplifications in losses if the sentiment in the market turns against them.
A general concern about NBFIs is reflected in various studies conducted by the BIS over the past several years, with many of these reports warning about the rapid growth of NBFIs (often referred to as the “shadow banking sector”) and how financial risks are now being increasingly concentrated outside of banks as a result. Although banks have generally improved their balance sheets since the global financial crisis of 2008 by becoming better capitalized, leverage and liquidity risks have shifted into other types of unregulated financial services providers, such as investment funds, hedge funds, private-equity funds, etc., resulting in it being potentially more difficult for regulators to detect large-scale disruptions to financial markets.
According to Zhang Tao, the chief representative for Asia and the Pacific at the BIS, the interrelationship of worldwide financial systems could lead to an incredibly quick correction, unlike anything that has ever happened before. “The speed of a correction could be much faster than previous banking crisis episodes,” Zhang stated.
The BIS further noted that this situation bears a striking similarity to what transpired in the global financial crisis of 2008. A repricing of risk resulting from either rising interest rates or unfulfilling returns on AI has an equivalent potential to create disruptions in the credit markets comparable to those produced during the global financial crisis; however, the channels for transmission of those problems will vary between the two crises. In the case of the 2008 global financial crisis, the majority of the problems were caused by an excessive amount of leverage across the banking and residential mortgage loan sectors, while in today’s case, a significant portion of the risks is concentrated across several areas, which include the financing of interconnected technology, private credit markets and non-bank lenders.
Capex boom turns to investment bust
The BIS defined the key risk economically rather than in purely financial terms. Should AI investments yield inadequate returns, corporations may defer making significant capital expenditures, thus transforming the current investment boom into what the BIS describes as a prolonged period of underinvestment and perhaps some indirect consequences to the availability of financial capital.
The report by BIS positions the current investment cycle for AI within broader historical trends of rapid investment in revolutionary technologies, including canal building in the 1830s, the railway construction boom in the 1840s in Britain, the electrification of the economy in the late 1920s, and the late 1990s dot-com boom. Each of these previous examples experienced sharp downturns when rapid investments exceeded the ability to generate sustainable returns on those investments. The BIS believes that fierce competition between developers of AI products and services and cloud technology may perpetuate similar conditions of excess investment to the detriment of long-term profits.
The report warns that a significant decline in tech equity valuations could trigger larger macroeconomic ramifications today than they did historically, due to the extent AI spending has become incorporated into corporate budgets, earnings projections, and overall growth projections.
Furthermore, the BIS reports that households actually have more exposure to the equity markets than they did in previous decades and therefore could experience a larger economic impact from a market correction caused by technology.
In discussing the fragile global environment, BIS General Manager Pablo Hernández de Cos stated that the 2022 inflation shock is fresh in the minds of all economic actors, which implies a heightened probability that renewed disruption of supply chains would again disanchor inflationary expectations.
What’s next?
The BIS has published its report ahead of the annual Sintra symposium hosted by the European Central Bank, where many of the same issues that pose risks to stability will be debated among global policymakers. For AI specifically, the most important factors will be whether corporate earnings from AI investments support the significant level of investments made recently, whether capital spending is sustained at current levels, and whether banks and regulators improve transparency concerning the non-bank funding sources that have supported AI growth. The BIS cautioned that the longer fiscal/financial oversight reforms are delayed, the more chaotic any subsequent market adjustment will be.
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San Antonio has passed an ordinance requiring fraud warning signs at every crypto kiosk in the city. The move targets 660 scam reports and about $39 million in losses police recorded from January 2024 to April 2026.
The San Antonio Police Department said the scams follow a similar pattern. A caller claims to be a law enforcement officer, court official, government agency or utility company and invents an emergency.
They then tell the victim to deposit cash into a Bitcoin ATM. The caller says the payment will clear up an arrest warrant, unpaid fine or overdue bill, according to KENS 5 reporting.
Police say the callers keep victims on the phone during the entire transaction. This means they can’t ask a relative, ask a store employee for help or call 911 before the money is converted to crypto and moved out.
Bilingual signs hit 193 crypto kiosks on July 1
During the ordinance approval process, SAPD data showed nearly 38% of the victims identified were 66 or older, according to the San Antonio Report. Victims were as young as teenagers and as old as 90 years. About 88% of the cases resulted in losses of less than $50,000. But four individual cases were over $1 million each.
The city identified San Antonio’s 193 crypto kiosk locations. That number beats Dallas, Fort Worth or Austin, according to the San Antonio Report.
Operators are required to post warning signs in English and Spanish at each crypto machine. The signs must be in color-coded 18-point font and must be placed so that users standing at the kiosk can read them directly. The signs will list common crypto scam tactics and tell anyone feeling pressured to send money to call 911 instead.
The SAPD must generate and distribute the signs, and enforce compliance. Failure to post them subjects the company to a fine of $100 to $500 for each violation, each day that a violation continues being a separate offense. The ordinance goes into effect on July 1.
Texas pushes for a statewide ban
San Antonio isn’t the only Texas jurisdiction to go after crypto kiosk fraud. Smith County Sheriff Larry Smith met with state legislators earlier this week to lobby for a statewide ban on the machines. Sheriff Smith first publicly called for a ban in May after an elderly woman lost $13,000 to an inmate running a scam from a Georgia prison.
Among those who attended the meeting were the office of State Sen. Bryan Hughes, State Rep. Cole Hefner, State Rep. Daniel Alders and officials with the Texas Financial Crimes Intelligence Center. The report noted that Indiana, Tennessee and Minnesota already have a ban on crypto ATMs at the state level.
Cryptopolitan has previously reported that Bitcoin Depot, which has more than 9,000 crypto ATMs across North America, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in May after its Q1 2026 revenue fell by ~50% year over year. In February, the Massachusetts Attorney General sued the company for more than half of its ATM revenue in the state being linked to transactions associated with scams.
U.S. Secret Service Investigative Analyst Laura Bravo told KSAT that crypto moves faster than traditional money and gets harder to recover once it reaches a foreign exchange. Crypto ATMs also isolate victims by stripping out the human interaction a bank teller would provide, Bravo noted. This gives the scammers more control, and the victim follows phone instructions at a crypto machine.
SAPD’s advice is blunt. No government agency or utility company will ever ask you to pay via a Bitcoin ATM. That’s the case even if the caller knows personal details, uses the name of a real officer or spoofs a real phone number. When cash is converted to crypto and sent to a scammer’s wallet, the transaction cannot be reversed.
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A retired man in Florence, Alabama, lost $222,000+ to a crypto romance scam. Federal court documents filed this week say he was manipulated by a person posing as a young woman to transfer his savings into fraudulent crypto wallets.
The U.S. government has filed a civil forfeiture complaint to permanently seize the funds. WAFF reported June 26 that investigators tracked the money through several wallets and exchanges before seizing it under a federal warrant.
How the scam worked
Court papers described a classic “pig butchering” scheme. In this scam, fraudsters gradually build victims’ trust over weeks or months and then direct them to fake investment platforms.
The federal complaint states the victim connected with a person calling herself “Bella” who claimed to be a 23-year-old woman and offered to help him invest in crypto. The conversations moved to the encrypted messaging app Telegram, where they became romantic.
“Bella” then provided step-by-step instructions on how to transfer money out of the victim’s Alabama bank account to a Coinbase account. The money was then moved to cryptocurrency wallets controlled by the scammers. Federal prosecutors say more than $222,000 of the stablecoin USDT was laundered through a series of wallets and exchanges before being seized by law enforcement, according to WTVA’s reporting of the court documents.
Now the government wants a federal judge to order the forfeiture of the seized money as proceeds of wire fraud.
Pig butchering drained $5.5 billion in 2024
In February 2025, on-chain security firm Cyvers reported that crypto investors lost $5.5 billion to pig butchering scams in 2024. That grew to 200,000 identified cases on the Ethereum network alone, per Cryptopolitan’s earlier coverage. Data from Chainalysis during the same period found that pig butchering accounted for 33.2% of all crypto scam revenue by subclass. Deposits in these schemes were up by about 210% year-on-year.
Michael Pearl, vice president of GMT strategy at Cyvers, called pig butchering “by far the biggest threat” to crypto investors. He ranked it above outright hacks, which stole $2.3 billion in assets across 165 incidents in 2024.
Across the data, 75% of pig butchering victims lost more than half their net worth, Cyvers found. The grooming period ran one to two weeks in 35% of cases. But some scams stretched to three months. Men aged 30 to 49 were the most targeted group, according to the firm’s data.
Cyvers found 75% of pig butchering victims across the data lost more than half their net worth. The grooming period was 1–2 weeks in 35 % of the cases. But some scams take up to three months. The firm’s data showed that men aged 30 to 49 were the most targeted group.
“The rate at which bad actors are using elaborate pig-butchering scams to defraud innocent people is despicable,” Special Agent Stacey Moy of the FBI’s San Diego Field Office said in a statement tied to a separate 2024 forfeiture case in the District of Columbia.
Federal prosecutors have not identified any suspects in the Florence case. It is not known whether any of the recovered funds will be returned to the victim. The forfeiture action is against the crypto itself, a normal step in cases of fraud when the perpetrators are located abroad.
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A Chinese startup has raised $2.7 million on Indiegogo for a portable device that detects and kills mosquitoes in mid-flight using AI and lasers. 4,000 backers from more than 50 countries donated.
Photon Matrix Lab is located in Changzhou, Jiangsu, China. The company has built what it calls a consumer-grade laser defense system against mosquitoes. The device is about the size of a smartphone.
The company’s Indiegogo campaign describes the device as a combination of a computer vision module with lidar to find and kill flying insects. Each backer shelled out about $630 to reserve a unit, according to data from Indiegogo cited by South China Morning Post.
The campaign was first targeted to raise $20,000. It surpassed that by 130+ times.
The device hunts mosquitoes with lidar and AI
The system distinguishes between dust particle movement, mosquito movement, and sensor artifacts. Creator Jim Wong says the device can hit insects flying at up to one meter per second, with body sizes ranging from 2 to 20 millimeters. The company says the device can handle up to 30 mosquitoes a second. That figure has not been independently confirmed by anyone.
Sand flies and fruit flies are also in the device’s targeting range.
In April, Photon Matrix CTO Li Ran told China Daily that Chinese manufacturing gave the company an edge over Western rivals. Li said it takes two weeks to prototype a high-precision fiber laser module in Changzhou, because suppliers are nearby.
“In Silicon Valley, it’s hard to find a supplier who can prototype a high-precision fibre laser module in two weeks,” he told the outlet. “But in Changzhou, the supply chain is right downstairs.”
Chinese firms repurpose military or industrial tech for consumer products with the help of mature local supply chains, cheap lidar, and edge computing, according to SCMP.
Mass production moves to August
Photon Matrix initially promised deliveries in early summer 2026. But the company is now hoping to begin mass production in August.
This sort of delay is common in hardware crowdfunding. Indiegogo and Kickstarter campaigns often do not ship on the original date, and some never ship. Photon Matrix still has to comply with Western safety standards for a consumer laser product. That may mean further delays.
Laser mosquito defense technology has existed since 2007. Astrophysicist Lowell Wood proposed the idea in a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation brainstorming session on malaria elimination, according to Wikipedia. Wood was an aide to the architect of the Strategic Defense Initiative, conceived during the Reagan years. He envisioned using missile defense principles against disease-carrying insects.
Since then, a number of teams have attempted to create commercial versions. But none of them could be produced cheaply on a mass scale. Photon Matrix is a pricey $630 device, but it could be the first viable consumer product in the category.
Climate change is expanding the range of mosquito species that carry dengue and Zika into previously temperate regions. In 2024, the European Union has seen over 300 cases of locally acquired dengue. According to a ClimaHealth report, that’s more than the combined total of dengue cases of all the previous 15 years.
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USDT issuer Tether and crypto lender Ledn have laid out plans to let holders of Tether Gold (XAUT) borrow against the it later in the year, which would open a lending channel taking advantage of the stablecoin issuer’s $23 billion physical gold reserve.
Tether partners with Ledn
Lending platform Ledn announced it will add XAUT to its platform alongside Bitcoin (BTC) and Tether’s dollar-pegged stablecoin USDT. This is expected to go live before the end of 2026, and would let XAUT holders use their holdings as collateral for loans instead of selling off the gold they own.
Each XAUT token represents one troy ounce of physical gold stored in Swiss vaults, according to Tether.
The structure of this product mirrors Ledn’s handling of bitcoin-backed lending for the past few years. Client collateral is held on a 1:1 basis and is not lent out or used to generate yield, the company said.
Gold-backed lending has been controlled by central banks, large financial institutions, and bullion dealers since forever. Tether and Ledn’s partnership is betting on bringing the same concept on-chain, giving holders access to liquidity without forcing the sale of their gold assets.
“As digital assets become an increasingly important part of the global economy, demand is growing for solutions that combine long-term ownership with financial flexibility,” Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said in a statement.
Tether expands past the dollar
Profits from USDT, the world’s largest stablecoin, have funded expansion into areas well beyond dollar-pegged tokens.
The company has invested in precious metals marketplace Gold.com, partnered with crypto financing firm Antalpha on XAUT lending and physical redemption, and has also backed AI infrastructure provider Northern Data. Tether has also put massive amounts of capital into bitcoin mining and multiple renewable energy projects.
The lending product backed by Tether’s physical gold reserves is expected to expand Ledn’s collateral options beyond its current supported assets.
As at the time of writing, XAUT traded at $4,070.34 per token.
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BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes is facing another round of exit liquidity allegations after on-chain observers flagged that his fund, Maelstrom, appeared to offload $1.92 million worth of $CARDS tokens within days of Hayes publicly promoting the project.
The move, which is recognized as using others as “exit liquidity” to get out of a trade, is coming just roughly three weeks after blockchain investigator ZachXBT called out Hayes for similar actions that involved four different tokens.
Why is Arthur Hayes getting criticized?
On June 23, Hayes posted on X that “$CARDS degens” had a “solid” thesis and predicted the token’s price would be “pamping,” according to his post on X. Maelstrom’s official account shared a link to the project around the same time, according to a post from the fund’s X account.
Four days later, crypto analytics account SolanaFloor reported on X that Hayes had set a $4 price target for $CARDS when the token was trading around $0.30 and that Maelstrom sent $1.92 million worth of $CARDS to market maker Flowdesk the following day. SolanaFloor added that it was “likely for selling.”
That was all Crypto Twitter needed to fire a barrage of posts and criticism at the socially active Arthur Hayes.
The token was trading near $0.23 at the time of SolanaFloor’s post, a decline of roughly 23% from where it sat when Hayes endorsed it. Currently, it trades around $0.24
Another on-chain analyst, Ericonomic, also flagged the sequence on X, noting that Hayes “shilled $CARDS 4 days ago” and that three days later an address sold “his entire stack through Fireblocks.”
Ericonomic added that the wallet address was never publicly disclosed by Hayes, and the link was based on timing and token patterns.
What did ZachXBT call out Hayes?
On June 6, Cryptopolitan reported that ZachXBT confronted Hayes over a similar cycle of endorsing tokens and then liquidating his holdings of those tokens. That time it involved four tokens, HYPE, NEAR, ZEC, and WLD.
ZachXBT documented how Hayes exited all four positions within a two-week window after publicly endorsing each one.
Hayes had called HYPE, ZEC, and NEAR the “Holy Trinity” on May 22, then went on to sell his HYPE and NEAR holdings by June 4 and dumped ZEC on June 5 after citing an exploit in its Orchard Pool.
He also closed his WLD position the next day, less than 24 hours after framing Worldcoin as a SpaceX IPO play.
ZachXBT asked Hayes directly how much exit liquidity his followers had absorbed. Hayes responded that he “sold to a willing seller at a price” and that he “happened to call it right this time” regarding his trading goals.
ZachXBT’s history of flagging suspicious actions
ZachXBT has built a track record of flagging this kind of promote-then-sell dynamic across crypto.
His investigations into RAVE, SIREN, and LAB tokens over the past two months have all centered on the role insiders or prominent figures play in generating retail buying interest and then selling into the demand they created.
In a May 14 investigation into LAB, ZachXBT documented how insiders allegedly controlled over 95% of the token’s supply while the project reached a fully diluted valuation above $6 billion. He characterized that case as “everything wrong with the current meta of retail extraction on major centralized exchanges.”
So far, Hayes has not publicly responded to the latest $CARDS allegations, and the connection between the Maelstrom fund wallet and the Flowdesk transfers has not been independently confirmed beyond what was cited by SolanaFloor and similar sources.
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Coinbase’s CEO has proposed experimenting with cheaper open-weight AI models to keep AI spending in check as token consumption climbs.
This proposal has led to concerns over the security and geopolitical risks of directing enterprise workloads through Chinese-origin systems.
Why are companies using Chinese AI models?
U.S. export controls have made it harder for Chinese companies to access American AI chips, but that hasn’t stopped them from building competitive models and selling them at much lower prices.
For instance, Zhipu’s GLM 5.2 costs $1.40 per million input tokens and $4.40 per million output tokens compared to Anthropic’s Opus 4.8 at $5 and $25 for the same volume.
GLM 5.2 scored 62.1 on SWE-bench Pro, a key coding benchmark, beating OpenAI’s GPT-5.5 at 58.6. One AI researcher said GLM 5.2 “is at least as good as Opus 4.8 and GPT 5.5.”
Another called it “the first open model that can really compete with closed-source systems.”
Is Coinbase using Chinese AI models
Coinbase’s CEO Brian Armstrong says the best way to control rising AI costs is to use cheaper open-weight models, including systems from China like GLM 5.2.
Armstrong said instead of spending more and more on AI, companies need “better defaults, routing, and caching.” His suggestion to use Chinese models, even if they are cheaper, has drawn concerns about security and political risks.
Beyond its convenient pricing, GLM 5.2 uses an MIT license, meaning companies can download it, modify it, and run it on their own servers, removing any risk of sending sensitive company data to an outside API.
AI spending has become a genuine issue, causing companies to roll back the use of the technology in operations.
Cryptopolitan recently reported that Uber used up its entire 2026 AI coding budget by April and now caps engineers at $1,500 per tool each month. Meta sent a memo warning of an “exponential increase” in AI usage and started building spending controls. Amazon scrapped an internal leaderboard that ranked employees by AI consumption because people were gaming it and driving costs up.
A KPMG survey found only 26% of companies have full visibility into their AI costs, while 22% discover spending only after receiving the bill. Goldman Sachs projects that AI token consumption could increase 24-fold by 2030, reaching 120 quadrillion tokens per month.
The International Data Corporation predicts 70% of leading AI-driven enterprises will use multiple models by 2028 rather than relying on a single provider.
What makes Chinese AI models risky?
Z.ai’s cloud API, which allows developers and companies to use its AI models (including GLM 5.2), falls under China’s National Intelligence Law. That raises real concerns for any company handling sensitive information.
U.S. lawmakers opened a formal inquiry in May into cybersecurity risks from Chinese-origin AI models in critical infrastructure.
There are also concerns that models trained under different legal systems could carry undisclosed behaviors. Adding to that, an AI builder tested GLM 5.2 against GPT-5.5 on a debugging task and found it “not even close” to the OpenAI model’s ability to spot problems, despite reports that Chinese models outperform their more expensive counterparts.
Anthropic disclosed in an open letter to the Senate Banking Committee that Alibaba Qwen operators ran 28.8 million Claude exchanges through about 25,000 fake accounts between April and June. They called it the largest known campaign to steal a model’s capabilities.
Self-hosting the open weights eliminates the API data-routing risk, as companies that run the model on their own servers don’t send data to China. But the concern about the models themselves remains.
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Apple will not roll out iPadOS 27 to any iPad with an A12 or A12X chip. That leaves five models out in the cold for the company’s next tablet OS.
Devices sold from 2018 to 2020 are affected by the change, as Apple is raising iPad prices across the board.
Apple kills all five A12 and A12X iPads
According to 9to5Mac, the cutoff removes the 2019 iPad Air (3rd generation), the 2019 iPad mini (5th generation), the 2018 11-inch and 12.9-inch iPad Pro models, as well as the 2020 iPad (8th generation). All five iPads are powered by either the A12 or A12X processor.
Apple gave these devices six to eight years of software updates, longer than most tablet makers provide. But the timing is suspicious. All iPhones that ran iOS 26 will support iOS 27. The iPad side is taking a harder line.
There has been a lot of criticism for how well iPadOS 26 performs. Michael Burkhardt of 9to5Mac also argued that Apple should either allow owners to downgrade to iPadOS 18 or find a way to bring iPadOS 27 to the dropped hardware.
A downgrade path is technically doable. Apple still ships security patches for iOS 18. iPadOS 18.7.9 landed about a month ago, so the older operating system stays actively maintained.
Apple’s current policy blocks downgrades by “unsigning” old firmware versions when a new release ships. Apple first restricted Stage Manager to M1 iPads on iPadOS 16 in 2022, then relented and released it for the 2018 and 2020 iPad Pro models following criticism. Those older iPad Pros ran Stage Manager without support for an external display.
Full windowing in iPadOS 27 may require a bit more GPU headroom and RAM than 4 GB can provide on the A12. Apple never made a public explanation. The iPadOS 27 beta is about three weeks old. If the public backlash increases, Apple may broaden device compatibility ahead of the fall release.
Apple’s iPad prices jump by $100 to $200
On June 25, Apple hiked the iPad prices. The base iPad is now $449, up from $349. iPad Air was increased to $749 from $599. The iPad Pro increased from $999 to $1,199.
Apple attributed the increases to the cost of memory components driven by the build out of AI infrastructure. “The consumer electronics industry is facing an unprecedented challenge,” Apple told CNBC. “The rapid expansion of AI data centers has created an extraordinary surge in demand for memory and storage. We have never seen a component price increase this much, this quickly.”
Memory prices jumped more than fourfold since late 2025, and higher bills of materials are a lasting challenge said Tarun Pathak, research director at Counterpoint Research, to TechCrunch.
Counterpoint said smartphone DRAM prices increased 50% and NAND flash storage prices rose by more than 90% Q/Q in Q1 2026. For a user owning the 2019 iPad Air, which is out of software support, it’s now $100+ more expensive to trade in for the lowest-end iPad than last quarter.
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The Monetary Authority of Singapore has placed fast developing decentralized trading platform Hyperliquid (HYPE) on its Investor Alert List on Friday, flagging both the Hyper Foundation website and the Hyperliquid trading application as unlicensed entities operating without regulatory authorization in the city-state.
The listing makes Hyperliquid one of the first major decentralized finance protocols to appear on the register. HYPE joins centralized exchanges Binance (BNB), KuCoin (KCS), Bitget (BGB), and Bybit on the alert list.
What even is Singapore’s alert list?
MAS created the Investor Alert List in 2004 as a consumer-protection tool, identifying financial service providers without proper licenses to operate in Singapore. However, it is important to note that appearing on the list does not mean there is any fraud at play or any enforcement action underway.
Entities on the register have not gone through Singapore’s regulatory process. This process covers capital requirements, compliance with anti-money laundering actions, and consumer safeguards. The consequence for Singaporeans who use platforms on the list is that MAS protections do not apply if anything goes wrong in their use of these platforms.
Hyperliquid responds
In a post on X, Hyperliquid said the listing “does not constitute a ban, an enforcement action, or a finding of wrongdoing.” The protocol also stated that it has never represented itself as holding MAS authorization and described itself as permissionless infrastructure where users maintain self-custody and transactions are settled purely on the blockchain.
Hyperliquid has been added to the MAS’s Investor Alert List (IAL). IAL listing does not constitute a ban, an enforcement action, or a finding of wrongdoing. The IAL provides a list of entities that, based on information available to MAS, may be wrongly perceived as being licensed…
— Hyperliquid (@HyperliquidX) June 26, 2026
Hyperliquid added that its operations remain unchanged and that it would “continue to engage constructively with regulators and institutions.” The platform currently ranks as the ninth-largest decentralized exchange by trading volume on CoinGecko, with roughly $5.7 billion in total value locked per DefiLlama estimates.
HYPE was trading around $64 to $65 at the time of the announcement, down by about 1% over 24 hours, according to Yahoo Finance.
Singapore tightens crypto regulation
Over the last few years, MAS has increased its efforts to shrink operational freedom available to unlicensed crypto operators in Singapore.
In 2024, rules were put into place to bar crypto and digital payments service providers from offering credit, leverage, or trading incentives to retail customers while also prohibiting them from lending or staking retail assets, according to Yahoo Finance. Crypto firms have also not been allowed to market themselves to the general public since January 2022.
In May 2025, MAS told crypto companies serving overseas customers from Singapore to either obtain licenses or stop operating, putting an end to a loophole used by some firms to avoid licensing by restricting services to non-Singaporean users.
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