Halfway through a turbulent year, a clear pattern has emerged across global markets: anything tied to the physical build-out of AI has soared, while several other assets that investors traditionally turn to in uncertain times have stumbled.
War in the Middle East, political upheaval and an oil-price spike formed the backdrop, yet stock markets in several regions still pushed to fresh record highs.
Japanese financial services giant SBI Holdings plans to buy crypto exchange Bitbank for $289 million, with closing expected in October — another large traditional-finance entry into crypto infrastructure despite near-term market weakness. #bitbank #japanesenews
Japan’s central bank on Tuesday raised its policy rate to the highest in over 30 years at 1%, in line with expectations of economists polled by Reuters, accelerating policy normalization started in 2024.
This is the Bank of Japan’s first hike since December, when it raised rates to 0.75%, and the first time since 1995 that rates have been raised to 1%.
The BOJ said the decision to raise rates by 25 basis points was split 7-1, with board member Toichiro Asada dissenting and advocating for a hold.
The policy tightening comes at a time when Japan has been struggling with a weak yen and inflation that has started to creep up, partly due to the Iran war.
The benchmark Nikkei 225 was up 0.46% after the decision, while the yen strengthened marginally to 160.22 against the dollar. Yields on the 10-year Japanese Government Bonds climbed 3 basis points to 2.615%.
The central bank said that it will continue reducing its government bond purchases by 200 billion yen per calendar quarter before halting the taper and maintaining monthly JGB purchases of 2 trillion yen from April 2027
1. 🤖 DeepSeek Valued at $50 Billion — China's AI Champion Goes Big Chinese AI startup DeepSeek has been valued at more than $50 billion in its first-ever fundraising round, raising over $7.4 billion. The firm stunned global AI giants in 2025 with a low-cost chatbot that matched the power of US rivals. (Asia Financial) Outside investors received no voting rights and face a five-year lock-up, with China's state-backed AI fund the only party granted direct equity. The raise puts DeepSeek in direct competition with Anthropic and OpenAI — but at a fraction of their capitalisation. #techfundingnews