Hi there, this is your daily ☕️ Finpresso.
In today's newsletter:
🛢️ Oil rises as US-Iran truce expires
⚖️ Meta faces $200B penalty in states' trial
📈 30-year Treasury yield hits 19-year high
🎮 Alibaba sells its gaming arm for $2B
💵 Treasury proposes stablecoin rules for 2027
Plus: 🌍 9 macro news, 🏢 12 corporate news, and 📑 6 research & reports.
| 🛢️ Oil rises as US-Iran truce expires LINK |
- Crude oil prices climbed Monday after Iran ruled out extending its memorandum of understanding with the U.S., with a two-month deadline for a nuclear deal expiring the same day.
- U.S. crude futures rose 0.76% to $83.03 a barrel, while Brent, the international benchmark, gained 0.92% to $89.33, reflecting fresh doubts over diplomacy between Washington and Tehran.
- A senior Iranian official told Reuters that Tehran would shift to offense rather than defense if talks fail, and a Foreign Ministry spokesman said the expiring 60-day deadline was "not relevant" since negotiations never began.
| ⚖️ Meta faces $200B penalty in states' trial LINK |
- Meta faces a possible $200 billion penalty as a federal child-safety trial opens in Oakland on August 18, with California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey the first of 29 states to put consumer-protection claims to a jury.
- The states allege Meta misled families and designed Facebook and Instagram features to hook young users while collecting under-13 data without consent; Meta puts its maximum exposure at $1.4 trillion, near its roughly $1.5 trillion market value.
- Beyond money, the states seek nationwide deletion of children's data and models trained on it, plus removal of infinite scroll, autoplay and beauty filters, with an advisory jury and a judge's final ruling possible in October 2026.
| 📈 30-year Treasury yield hits 19-year high LINK |
- The 30-year US Treasury yield climbed more than 4 basis points to 5.311% on Monday, its highest since June 2007, as a selloff in long-dated government bonds deepened and some strategists warned it could run further.
- The move traced back to Japan, where weaker growth alongside rising inflation pushed up long-term government bond yields and spilled into US markets, with the UK, China and Japan all cutting their Treasury holdings in June.
- Strategists see yields reaching 5.60%-5.70%, citing global fiscal worries and a risk that resilient US growth keeps inflation above target, potentially forcing more Fed rate hikes than markets expect despite softening retail sales and labor data.
| 🎮 Alibaba sells its gaming arm for $2B LINK |
- Alibaba agreed to sell its gaming unit Lingxi Games to private equity firm Trustar Capital in a deal valued at more than $2 billion, with shares rising 1.92% after the announcement.
- The sale advances Alibaba's push to shed non-core businesses and pour resources into AI and cloud computing, extending a stretch of divestitures worth over $4.6 billion since late 2024, including retail chains Sun Art and Intime.
- Lingxi, whose main title "Three Kingdoms: Strategy Edition" was built with Japan's Koei Tecmo, keeps its current leadership, while Bloomberg pegged the minimum deal value lower at $1.5 billion, citing different sources.
| 💵 Treasury proposes stablecoin rules for 2027 LINK |
- The U.S. Treasury opened public comment on rules to implement last year's GENIUS Act stablecoin law, kicking off the process to bring the framework into force when it takes effect on January 18, 2027.
- Under the law, companies generally cannot issue dollar-pegged payment tokens in the U.S. without a federal or state license, and foreign issuers face limits unless they can comply with U.S. legal orders and reciprocity deals.
- The proposed rules clarify when a stablecoin counts as "issued" in the U.S. and who counts as selling to a U.S. person, ahead of a July 18, 2028 ban on offering unlicensed tokens; comments run 60 days after publication.
🌍 Macro News
- Canada rushes to strike US trade deal before Wednesday's 50% tariff deadline. LINK
- Austria fines Bitpanda €70,000 in first penalty under EU's crypto rules. LINK
- London copper futures rise 1.7%, nearing January's record high price. LINK
- Gold climbs 9% in August to $4,400 on safe-haven demand. LINK
- Wells Fargo now expects a Fed rate hike before year-end. LINK
- The dollar fell to a two-month low on Fed rate-hold bets. LINK
- China adds eight lenders to digital yuan network, reaching 30 institutions. LINK
- CFTC review of AI compute futures may delay CME's October launch. LINK
- Foreign holdings of US Treasuries fell $72.1 billion in June. LINK
🏢 Corporate News
- HIVE's BUZZ HPC unit signs $350 million GPU cloud contract. LINK
- Alphabet shares dip on report Google is shifting Pixel output from China. LINK
- Uber partners with Zipline to scale drone deliveries for Uber Eats. LINK
- Synchrony partners with OpenAI to enable payments inside ChatGPT. LINK
- Paramount Skydance asks court to block states opposing Warner Bros merger. LINK
- ByteDance and Hollywood's MPA sign first AI video copyright agreement. LINK
- L3Harris ousts CEO Kubasik over code-of-conduct violation, promotes Sam Mehta. LINK
- Monzo chairman Gary Hoffman to step down after shareholder revolt. LINK
- Google pays $10 million for Spirit Airlines' business data. LINK
- IREN delivers first AI cloud deployment under $9.7 billion Microsoft deal. LINK
- Kraken expands US stock trading access across the European Economic Area. LINK
- DOJ probes Andreessen Horowitz over board seats at rival data firms. LINK
📈 Stocks
📑 Research & Reports
- Goldman names 20 stocks poised to gain most from AI savings. LINK
- Top AI-spending firms spent 600 times more per employee than average. LINK
- Tokenized stocks triple market share to 15% of real-world assets. LINK
- DeFi's real-world assets nearing $4 billion, up sixfold in a year. LINK
- Oxford Economics says trade risk lies in shipping delays, not closures. LINK
- China wasted record 360 terawatt-hours of clean power in early 2026. LINK