Today's Key News Highlights:
Goldman Sachs lowers gold price target, expects no Fed rate cut this year
CryptoQuant: Bitcoin transactions below 0.01 BTC now account for about 80% of daily transactions
Ethereum Foundation Co-Executive Director Hsiao-Wei Wang announces resignation
Binance to list Re (RE) spot trading pairs with seed tag applied
Regulation & Macro
Swiss Foreign Ministry confirms cancellation of US-Iran talks
The Swiss Foreign Ministry confirmed that the talks originally scheduled between the United States and Iran in Switzerland that day were cancelled.
The US Federal Reserve, Treasury Department, and others jointly released draft implementation rules for the GENIUS Act, requiring stablecoin issuers to comply with the Bank Secrecy Act and implement customer identification programs, including identity verification, record-keeping, and sanctions list screening. The rules enter a 60-day public comment period. Fed Governor Michael Barr expressed reservations about insufficient measures to address illicit financing risks in secondary markets.
The United States and Iran announced an immediate and permanent cessation of military operations on all fronts, including Lebanon. The US will fully end its maritime blockade of Iran within 30 days. US Vice President Vance stated that technical talks are still planned to begin this weekend.
The Federal Reserve issued a proposal to require certain payment stablecoin issuers to establish customer identification programs, adhering to regulatory requirements comparable to those for banks. The proposal was jointly released by the Fed, OCC, FDIC, NCUA, and FinCEN, and is now open for public comment for 60 days after publication. The rules require PPSI to be treated as BSA financial institutions under the GENIUS Act framework and establish effective CIP programs. Fed Vice Chair Michael Barr supports bringing stablecoin issuers under the BSA framework.
The Cyberspace Administration of China released the "Regulations on Promoting Interoperability and Mutual Recognition of Distributed Digital Identities (Draft for Comments)" to promote the innovative development and cross-platform interoperability of blockchain-based distributed digital identities, supporting the construction of the national blockchain network. The deadline for feedback is July 18, 2026.
Project Updates
Strive CEO Matt Cole stated that the price volatility of STRC and SATA was due to leveraged liquidation events, not a deterioration in underlying credit quality. The issuers' credit conditions remain strong, Strive's dividend reserves are intact, company operations are normal, and its ability to meet obligations is unaffected.
Morgan Stanley files second amended documents for Ethereum and Solana ETFs
Morgan Stanley has submitted the second amended filings for Ethereum and Solana ETFs to the US SEC.
Ethereum Foundation Co-Executive Director Hsiao-Wei Wang announces resignation
Ethereum Foundation Co-Executive Director Hsiao-Wei Wang announced her resignation, effective immediately. She stated that after taking a break, she decided to step back and dedicate more time to her family. Vitalik Buterin expressed gratitude, calling Wang one of the ecosystem's most steadfast contributors over the past decade, who took on the most challenging management responsibilities during critical transition periods.
Binance to list Re (RE) spot trading pairs with seed tag applied
Binance will list Re (RE) for spot trading at 22:00 on June 18, opening RE/USDT, RE/USDC, and RE/TRY trading pairs, with a seed tag applied to indicate high risk. RE is positioned as a real-world asset capital layer, connecting on-chain capital with the approximately $1 trillion reinsurance market.
Coinbase launches RE token trading and custody services
Coinbase has listed the Re project token RE, offering buy, sell, convert, send, receive, and custody services to users in compliant regions.
Investment & Financing News
Prediction market platform Kalshi's annualized revenue has exceeded $2 billion, and it has held preliminary, informal IPO discussions with investment banks.
DeepSeek's first round of over 50 billion yuan in financing is largely finalized, with founder Liang Wenfeng personally contributing about 20 billion yuan, Tencent about 10 billion yuan, CATL and Puquan Capital about 5 billion yuan, NetEase, JD.com, Monolith Management, and IDG Capital about 3 billion yuan each, and Loyal Valley Capital and Shixiang Technology about 1.5 billion yuan each. Key terms include a clause barring investors from poaching DeepSeek employees or encouraging them to leave and start their own ventures.
Aether AI completes $20 million seed round, betting on causal world models
Aether AI, founded by causal AI researcher Biwei Huang, completed a $20 million seed funding round, with investors including multiple global institutions focused on artificial intelligence and frontier technology. The company plans to build Causal World Models, focusing on extracting transferable causal structures from high-dimensional observations, and has begun talent recruitment.
Stablecoin compliance startup Range completes $8.3 million Series A round
Stablecoin compliance startup Range completed an oversubscribed $8.3 million Series A funding round, bringing total funding to $11 million, with participation from TX Ventures, SixThirty, Maven 11 Capital, and others. Range provides a unified platform for institutions; its core product Unify integrates bank accounts and wallets, while Protect conducts pre-transaction compliance screening, tracking approximately 99.41% of stablecoin payments. The funding will be used to expand products and the team.
Views & Analysis
Goldman Sachs lowers gold price target, expects no Fed rate cut this year
Goldman Sachs lowered its year-end gold price forecast by $500 to $4,900/oz, as it no longer expects a Fed rate cut in 2026, with rate cut expectations pushed to June and December of next year. Analysts remain structurally constructive on gold prices but tactically cautious, noting near-term downside risks and medium-term upside risks. The downgrade also stems from lowered forecasts for gold ETF inflows and the "surprisingly hawkish" first Fed meeting under Chair Warsh, with concerns about central bank independence likely limited.
Key Data
On June 18, Bitcoin spot ETFs saw a total net outflow of $90.6566 million. Morgan Stanley's ETF MSBT had a net inflow of $10.4337 million, with a historical total net inflow of $301 million; BlackRock's ETF IBIT had a net outflow of $96.6552 million, with a historical total net inflow of $62.07 billion. The total net asset value of Bitcoin spot ETFs stands at $78.325 billion, with a net asset ratio of 6.19%, and cumulative historical net inflows of $53.398 billion.
CryptoQuant: Bitcoin transactions below 0.01 BTC now account for about 80% of daily transactions
CryptoQuant Head of Research Julio Moreno stated that Bitcoin transactions below 0.01 BTC now account for about 80% of daily transactions, up from about 44% in 2023. The surge is driven by OP_RETURN-based on-chain data protocols such as Runes, Ordinals, and BRC-20, generating a large number of very small transactions. The Bitcoin network activity index has been steadily rising since January, breaking above the long-term trend line in late March, and is currently only about 7% below the historical high set in September 2024. Daily total transactions have exceeded 800,000, approaching the peak of the 2023-2025 bull market.
Spot gold and silver continue to decline, gold down 1.49% intraday, silver down 2.55%
Spot gold fell below $4,150/oz, down 1.49% intraday; spot silver touched $64/oz, down 2.55% intraday.
The whale "Set 10 Big Goals First" closed a 3,173.6 BTC short position, with an average opening price of $65,907.13 and closing price of $62,916.04, realizing a profit of $9.467 million. Cumulative profit from three trades since June has reached $12.85 million, with a 66.7% win rate. The whale subsequently opened a 999.121 BTC long position at an opening price of $62,682.
A whale deposited 308,000 SOL into Kraken and Bybit, with an estimated loss of $16.06 million
A whale deposited 308,100 SOL (worth $21.22 million) into Kraken and Bybit, with an estimated loss of $16.06 million. The whale initially withdrew this batch of SOL from Binance at a cost of $37.28 million.
