WuBlockchain Weekly: Bitcoin Breaks Through $110,000, Robinhood Tests Stock Tokens, Circle Applies to Establish National Trust Bank, etc

Jul 04, 2025

1. Bitcoin Breaks Through $110,000 link

On July 3rd, Bitcoin broke through the $110,000 mark, with a current quote of $109,991.5, showing an intraday increase of 2.22%. The price of ETH rose to $2,613.23, with an intraday increase of 6.45%.

2. Goldman Sachs Expects the Fed to Start Rate — cuts in September, with a Total of 75 Basis Points Cut throughout the Year link

Nick Timiraos, a reporter from The Wall Street Journal, published an article stating that Goldman Sachs has advanced its expectation for the Fed’s first interest — rate cut from December to September, and expects three rate cuts throughout the year, with a cumulative total of 75 basis points. Goldman Sachs pointed out that preliminary signs show that the impact of tariffs is lower than expected, and other inflation — downward factors are more powerful. It also believes that the Fed’s top — brass most likely believes that tariffs will only cause a one — time increase in the price level.

3. US First Spot Solana Staking ETF Records $33 Million in First — day Trading Volume link

Bloomberg senior ETF analyst Eric Balchunas tweeted that the first approved spot staking crypto ETF in the U.S., the “REX-Osprey Solana + Staking ETF”, launched on Wednesday with trading volume of about $33 million. Its performance far exceeded that of Solana futures ETF and XRP futures ETF, and was also better than the average first-day performance of ordinary ETFs, but still significantly lower than the first-day trading performance of Bitcoin and Ethereum spot ETFs.

4. Robinhood Has Deployed 213 Stock Tokens on Arbitrum or Is Conducting Related Tests link

Robinhood is testing stock token issuance on Arbitrum, having minted 2,309 o-stock tokens with 213 related deployments, and the on-chain testing cost is about $5. Electric Capital researchers noted that these tokens are in a closed system, requiring whitelist verification for transfers, which makes them difficult to access DeFi but suitable for CeFi scenarios. Currently, 79 tokens have set metadata, covering Robinhood, Trump Media, and multiple ETFs, with some already minted in small quantities.

5. BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF Annual Fee Revenue Surpasses That of Its S&P 500 Fund link

BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) has surpassed its flagship S&P 500 ETF (IVV) in annual fee revenue, despite the latter managing assets approximately nine times larger. As of July 1, IBIT oversees about $75 billion in assets, generating an estimated $187.2 million in annual fees — slightly exceeding IVV’s $187.1 million. Since the approval of Bitcoin spot ETFs in January 2024, IBIT has attracted $52 billion in net inflows, accounting for 96% of total inflows into similar products, and currently holds over 55% of the market share. Driven by regulatory greenlights and institutional capital, IBIT has ranked among the top 20 most traded ETFs in the U.S.

6. Listed Companies Purchased 245,510 Bitcoins in the First Half of 2025, Approximately Twice the Amount of ETFs in the Same Period link

Data shows that listed companies purchased a total of 245,510 Bitcoins in the first half of 2025, approximately twice the amount absorbed by ETFs during the same period, representing a 375% increase from the same period in 2024. This highlights a significant rise in the acceptance of Bitcoin in corporate financial strategies. Among them, Strategy’s purchase volume was 135,600 Bitcoins, with its proportion dropping to 55%, a notable decline from 72% in the same period last year.

Market analysis points out that the motivations for enterprises to buy Bitcoins include hedging against inflation, optimizing cross-border liquidity, and synergizing with brand strategies, and they also have tax and accounting advantages.

7. Circle Applies to Establish a National Trust Bank, Planning to Custody USDC Reserves by Itself and Expand Custody Services link

Stablecoin firm Circle has applied to the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to establish a national trust bank, “First National Digital Currency Bank, N.A.”, as part of its post-listing expansion into financial services. If approved, the charter would allow Circle to self-custody USDC reserves and provide digital asset custody services to institutional clients, though it does not include authority to accept deposits or issue loans. Circle stated that future custody efforts will focus on tokenized stocks and bonds rather than traditional cryptocurrencies.

8. Strategy Purchased 4,980 Bitcoins from June 23 to June 29 link

Strategy purchased 4,980 Bitcoins from June 23 to June 29 at an average value of $106,801, totaling approximately $531.9 million. As of June 29, the company held a total of 597,325 Bitcoins with a cumulative purchase cost of about $42.4 billion.

The funds used for this round of Bitcoin purchases by Strategy came from the proceeds of at-the-market (ATM) offerings of its MSTR, STRK, and STRF stocks. Last week, the company sold MSTR, STRK, and STRF stocks to raise approximately $520 million, $28.9 million, and $29.7 million respectively. Currently, the three types of stocks still have issuance quotas of approximately $18.1 billion, $20.5 billion, and $1.9 billion. The issuance plans for STRK and STRF complement the company’s “42/42” Bitcoin accumulation strategy, which aims to raise $84 billion by 2027 for continuous Bitcoin purchases.

9. Binance Avoids Regulatory Tightening, Retaining Hundreds of Singapore — based Remote Employees link

Despite Singapore’s strengthened regulation of unlicensed crypto enterprises, Binance still plans to retain hundreds of employees working remotely in Singapore. These employees are mainly engaged in back-office compliance, human resources, data analysis, and technical support, and do not directly provide services to Singaporean clients, so they are not subject to the new regulations. According to the latest requirements of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, since June 30, any company registered or having a business premises in Singapore and providing digital asset services to overseas clients must obtain a license or cease related operations.

10. Ethereum at a Crossroads, Vitalik Warns That Decentralization Should Not Be Reduced to Empty Talk link

At the Ethereum Community Conference held in France, Vitalik Buterin stated that Ethereum is at a critical turning point. If decentralization remains only a slogan, it may become an empty promise and eventually be eliminated by the times. He proposed three testing criteria: first, the “walk-away test”, that is, whether users can still control assets after the project team disappears; second, the “insider attack test”, which measures the potential damage caused by insiders acting maliciously or the front-end being breached; third, the “trusted computing base”, namely the minimum amount of code requiring trust to ensure the security of users’ funds and data.

Fundraising

YZi Labs announced its participation in Digital Asset’s latest $135 million Series E financing. link
Boba Network secured $70 million in funding and reached a BOBA token agreement with FTX Recovery Trust. link
Paradigm exclusively led the $15 million Series A financing for decentralized exchange startup GTE. link
UK cloud mining platform TWL Miner completed a $95 million Series B financing. link
The Open Platform, the main application developer of TON, announced the completion of a $28.5 million Series A financing. link
Amber International announced the completion of a $25.5 million private placement. link
AI model marketplace platform OpenRouter announced the completion of $40 million in seed and Series A financing. link
The Smarter Web raised £41.2 million. link
Crypto startup Zama announced the completion of a $57 million Series B financing. link
Inference Labs announced the completion of $6.3 million in financing. link
Web3 game developer Spekter Games announced the completion of a $5 million pre-seed financing. link
DeFi project inshAllah announced the completion of $2.1 million in financing. link
Swedish game studio Cold River Games announced the completion of $2 million in financing. link

Learn more, check out crypto-fundraising.info.

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