According to Odaily Planet Daily, Animoca Brands and its affiliates have officially announced the completion of a strategic investment in the Ethereum NFT project Cool Cats Group, becoming a majority shareholder alongside Coin Operated Group. The Cool Cats series consists of 9,999 NFTs, featuring the "Blue Cat" character, originally created by artist Colin Egan in 2013. According to CryptoSlam data, the series has generated over $410 million in cumulative trading volume, ranking 19th among all NFT series in terms of total trading volume.

According to Odaily Planet Daily, Bitwise Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan stated that incorporating crypto assets into 401(k) plans will provide a "slow, steady, and consistent" retirement investment mechanism, potentially significantly improving returns and reducing market volatility. According to data from the Investment Company Institute and the Federal Reserve, as of the first quarter of 2025, total U.S. retirement assets reached $43.4 trillion, of which defined contribution plans (including $8.7 trillion in 401(k) plans) totaled over $12 trillion. Michael Heinrich, co-founder and CEO of 0G Labs, added that if the relevant policies are designed properly, trillions of dollars in retirement funds could be released for Bitcoin and other compliant assets. However, if they are not implemented properly, they could also trigger political and financial backlash, especially on key details such as token qualifications, custody mechanisms, and protection measures. (CoinTelegraph)

Kaito has announced the launch of the first major upgrade to its ranking system, aiming to improve the quality and credibility of rankings, reduce spam, manipulation, and AI-generated content, while better identifying real creators and community members who have accumulated influence over time. This update includes a completely new ranking structure. The "Creator List" now introduces a higher reputation threshold and dynamically adjusts based on project data. The "Community List" showcases users who are still in the growth phase but are making positive contributions to project content growth. Furthermore, the new rules eliminate the contribution of replies to rankings, strengthening filtering mechanisms against spam accounts and cheating behaviors such as buying followers and engagement. Officials stated that future features will include the gKAITO incentive mechanism, AI content recognition, on-chain behavior integration, and account tag reconstruction, aiming to achieve a more credible and sustainable ranking system and support customized ranking rules for different projects. Kaito emphasized that this update is the starting point of a long-term improvement plan and will continue to iterate and optimize the system.

According to Odaily Planet Daily, Michael Martin, director of Ava Labs' incubator Codebase, predicted in an interview that venture capital firms will invest up to $25 billion in crypto startups by 2025. He noted that a series of favorable events are creating a "perfect storm" of capital flowing into the crypto industry, including Circle's successful IPO, a market recovery, Stripe's acquisition of Privy, increased blockchain investment by Wall Street, and increasingly clear regulations for digital assets. Martin believes these factors will give investors greater confidence in early-stage, real-world blockchain companies. This week, 12 crypto projects have completed funding, raising a total of $121 million. This brings the total funding raised since 2025 to $13.2 billion, a 40% increase from last year's total and on track to surpass PitchBook's previous forecast of $18 billion. Martin's expectations are consistent with those of Mike Giampapa of Galaxy Ventures. Both believe that former US President Trump's passage of the "Genius Act" and his push for Congress to consider more crypto bills have provided a clear compliance path for financial institutions and technology companies to further engage in the digital asset field. However, Martin also warned that if publicly listed crypto companies like Circle and Coinbase fail to perform as expected, or if the macroeconomic environment deteriorates due to uncertainties such as the Trump administration's imposition of tariffs, it could affect investor confidence and slow the pace of capital deployment. (DL News)

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin stated that Visa's original intentions embodied concepts similar to modern decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), yet many now view them as exploitative or oppressive. He believes this holds valuable lessons worth pondering.

According to Odaily Planet Daily, Two Seas Capital, Core Scientific's largest active shareholder, has issued an open letter stating that it will vote against the proposed $9 billion sale of Core Scientific to CoreWeave at a shareholder meeting later this year. Two Seas Capital called the valuation "manifestly inadequate" and urged other shareholders to join in opposing the deal. Previous reports indicated that CoreWeave had announced on July 7th its acquisition of Core Scientific in an all-stock transaction valued at $9 billion, representing a 66% premium to Core Scientific's share price when negotiations resumed on June 25th. (prnewswire)