Author: Charlotte

EU to extend MiCA to DeFi and NFTs. On July 7, the European Parliament (EP) approved its official stance on further regulation of digital assets. The report titled “Digital Assets – Challenges for the Competitiveness and Integrity of the EU Financial System” represents the EP’s official policy position on digital assets. However, it does not amend MiCA directly or create new legal obligations for crypto companies. Lawmakers are calling for expanded oversight and clear rules for sectors currently outside the regulation: This follows the completion of the MiCA regulation’s transition period on July 1, after which crypto companies in the…

In March 2026, the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the CPC for the first time included the “Computing Power Network” into the national “Six Networks” system — ranking alongside the water network, power grid, and transportation network. What does this mean? It means that computing power has been upgraded from a “technical tool” to a “national infrastructure”. Just as electricity reshaped industrial civilization more than a century ago, new-type computing power is now reshaping intelligent civilization. And the depth and breadth of this revolution far exceed most people’s imagination. 01 A set of figures to see how explosive…

Farm management company Velcourt has reported a third consecutive year of trading losses, as continued market pressure took its toll. Pointing to the “worst harvest for 25 years”, low prices in a well-supplied global grain market, and “embedded inflation” in production costs, the company faced a significant squeeze on margins. This was not helped by the premature withdrawal of the Basic Payment Scheme in England, and the overnight closure of the Sustainable Farming Incentive. See also: Velcourt machinery up for auction after major restructure So, while turnover was broadly stable in the year to 30 September 2025 at £22.7m, the…

June Production Update Puts CleanSpark’s Bitcoin Output in Focus CleanSpark (CLSK) drew investor attention after reporting unaudited June 2026 operating results, including production of 614 bitcoin and an update on its holdings and Sandersville facility progress. The company closed June with 13,924 bitcoin in its treasury, compared with 13,470 at the end of May, reflecting activity from mining and derivative linked trading during a month of market volatility. See our latest analysis for CleanSpark. CleanSpark’s update landed after a sharp pullback, with the share price down 19.95% over the past month but still showing a 26.32% 90 day share price…

At least 568 healthcare facilities operate through nonprofit-private equity joint ventures, according to a new report calling for scrutiny into those arrangements. The figure is likely an undercount, considering only public data were used. The report (PDF) was published by the Private Equity Stakeholder Project (PESP), a nonprofit that advocates for more disclosure about private equity deals. More than a fifth of private equity (PE)-owned hospitals operate under joint venture arrangements with nonprofit health systems. Apollo Global Management-owned Lifepoint Health, for instance, runs nearly two-thirds of its hospitals through joint ventures. Such joint ventures extend beyond hospitals, spanning subsectors such as…

San Francisco’s AI boom has buyers spending unprecedented amounts of money on homes – much more than sellers are asking for.A new analysis from real-estate brokerage Compass, found that in the first half of 2026, more than 140 homes in the city sold for at least $1m above their asking price, 44 of them in June alone.The figure is a huge jump from January through July of last year, in which only eight homes sold for more than $1m, according to Compass data. Just six homes sold above that amount in the first six months of 2024.The skyrocketing demand for…

Mumbai: Rich investors eyeing a debt-oriented portfolio with higher returns and better tax efficiency are considering niche plans offered by mutual funds and the newly created specialised investment funds. These structures bundle together high-yielding debt, equity arbitrage, REITs (Real Estate Investment Trusts) and InvITs (Infrastructure Investment Trusts) among other securities that boost returns while minimising the tax outgo.For instance, the UNIFI Dynamic Asset Allocation Fund (UDAAF) allocates roughly one-third of its portfolio each to arbitrage, high-rated debt papers and credit. While the scheme does not hold unhedged equity positions, it may participate in special situations such as buybacks, open offers…

Stablecoin activity is becoming a contest over which blockchains move the most tokenized dollars.Visa Onchain Analytics showed that the adjusted stablecoin transaction volume reached about $1.79 trillion in June, surpassing its February high and rising sharply from May. The key network split was tight: Base ranked first at about $565 billion in adjusted volume, just ahead of Ethereum at roughly $562 billion.While the edge Base might have over Ethereum might be small, it’s still a significant achievement. Base is a layer-2 network built around cheaper, faster Ethereum activity. When it rises to the top of an adjusted stablecoin flow table,…

Five years ago, XRP (CRYPTO:XRP) was the problem child of crypto. The SEC had just sued Ripple, exchanges were dropping the token, and it traded for 23 cents with a high chance the lawsuit could sink it for good. Bitcoin (CRYPTO:BTC), meanwhile, was the golden child—it traded around $29,000 and pulled in big names like Tesla and MicroStrategy (now Strategy) as it started its biggest run yet. So imagine you ignored the noise and put $1,000 into each crypto back then. One was a bet on a coin fighting for its life, and the other a bet on the safest…

In the central banker world, boring is good, and I’m sure the RBNZ would prefer to be in a period of such inflationary stability that its next few calls were non-events.But the Iran war and dramatic oil spike of the past few months have put paid to that.While a hike looked like a near certainty after the May Monetary Policy Statement, fuel prices have fallen further than forecast and have taken some edge off the inflation risk.Ultimately, this won’t just be a call about when we lift the OCR by 25 basis points; it will be an insight into how…