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ETH Led Altcoins in Driving Crypto Market Higher With Stablecoins, Tokenized Stocks in July: Binance Research
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ETH Led Altcoins in Driving Crypto Market Higher With Stablecoins, Tokenized Stocks in July: Binance Research

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The crypto market grew 13% in value in July, fueled by a rotation from bitcoin

into altcoins, according to Binance Research’s “Monthly Market Insights” report for August.

Ether (ETH) was the standout, rallying 48% as another 24 companies added the asset to their balance sheets, lifting corporate holdings by 128% to 2.7 million ETH. That’s nearly half the number held by ETFs. Binance attributed the trend to staking yield, ETH’s deflationary supply and growing comfort among companies to hold cryptocurrencies directly .

Bitcoin

dominance fell 5.2 percentage points to 60.6%, driven by expectations of Federal Reserve interest-rate cuts and U.S. regulatory clarity from the passage of three major crypto bills, including the GENIUS Act on fully reserved stablecoins .

Stablecoin transfer volumes held near $2.1 trillion, outpacing Visa again, as they have done since late 2024. JPMorgan expanded its deposit-token pilot, Citi explored tokenized deposits for cross-border settlements and Visa reaffirmed stablecoins as complementary to its network .

The report also highlights a 220% month-on-month jump in the market cap of widely traded tokenized stocks such as Tesla (TSLA). The company excluded Exodus Movement (EXOD) shares issued via Securitize from its calculations, saying they skewed the calculation.

Tokenization is the process of representing real-world assets (RWAs) such as stocks as digital equivalents that can be traded on blockchains. As of June this year, the RWA tokenization market reached $24 billion in value.

Active on-chain addresses for tokenized stocks soared to 90,000 from 1,600, while centralized exchanges facilitated over 70 times more volume than on-chain venues. Binance likened the growth of the sector to DeFi’s 2020-2021 boom and estimated that tokenizing just 1% of global equities could create a $1.3 trillion market.

NFT sales rebounded nearly 50% in July, led by a 393% jump in CryptoPunks transactions, while Bitcoin NFTs saw a 28% rise. Still, volumes remain below prior-cycle peaks.

The report suggests that if macroeconomic tailwinds hold, the capital rotation into altcoins, coupled with the regulatory green light for stablecoins and tokenized assets, could accelerate crypto’s integration into mainstream finance.



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Bambu Lab A1 Combo and Prusa Reseach MK4S with MMU3, Tom’s Hardware
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Bambu Lab A1 Combo vs Prusa Research MK4S with MMU3: Battle of the Color Bed Slingers

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Today, we’re starting a series of 3D printer showdowns, starting with the Princes of Polymers: Bambu Lab and Prusa Research. In one corner, we have the Prusa MK4S with an MMU3, Team Orange’s favorite European workhorse. In the other corner, the challenger to the crown, the sleek Bambu Lab A1 Combo.

The philosophies of these two companies reflect the founders of each. Joseph Prusa famously bootstrapped his company as a college student, shipping his first products in pizza boxes. Bambu Lab was started by former engineers from drone maker DJI, who hold doctorates in fluid dynamics and automation. Prusa Research stands for Open Source, community, and DIY tinkering, while Bambu Lab leans into proprietary software, plug-and-play machines, and AI technology.

Both Prusa Research and Bambu Lab have diehard fans, rich ecosystems, and excellent, high quality machines.


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The Prusa MK4S is a classic, with roots going back to the RepRap movement. It’s locked into its form and styling, due to Prusa’s commitment to upgradability. Rather like the Ship of Theseus, it is entirely possible to have bought an MK2 in 2016 and continuously upgraded it to a present day MK4S.

Going toe-to-toe with Prusa is the stylish and affordable Bambu Lab A1, one of the most popular 3D printers for those new to the hobby. Released in 2023, it brought color printing to the masses.

We have taken an in-depth look at both of these 3D printers with detailed reviews, but we have never put them head-to-head. Can the $549 Bambu Lab A1 Combo take on the $1,269 Prusa Research MK4S with MMU3? Let’s put these two mighty bed slingers into the ring and decide which 3D printer you should buy this summer.

Reliability and Maintenance

Any 3D printer can work perfectly out of the box, but how a machine fares after months or years of service is just as important.

Prusa Research nudges out the competition on reliability and maintenance, with machines that are designed to be assembled and serviced by the user. Even if you buy your MK4S fully assembled, you’ll get a bag of tools and replacement parts. Plus, many parts of the MK4S can be printed at home with PETG – not that it helps if your printer is already down for maintenance, but it’s the thought that counts.

Prusa Research also provides around-the-clock customer service available by phone, chat, and email, with English speakers burning the midnight oil in Prague to talk to North American customers. Live chat is your best bet for technical help, with friendly humans on the other end of the line able to receive photos of your broken parts to help diagnose problems.

Prusa also has an incredibly thorough Wiki, with comments left by the community. Unfortunately, it’s primarily for those assembling their printers, but it can come in handy.

Not to be outdone, Bambu Lab has leaned into technology to provide support for its 3D printers. They have an expansive support Wiki full of clear photos and detailed guides that can be searched for nearly any answer. Bambu Lab machines, like the A1 combo, will provide error codes when they falter. The codes are accompanied by a QR code that can be scanned with your mobile device for on-the-spot troubleshooting through Bambu’s Handy app.

Live chat is only available for billing and sales. Technical support can only be reached through email, which may involve a potential 24-hour delay for a response.

Bambu Lab machines like the A1 combo are designed for basic owner maintenance, and spare parts must be ordered online, rather than printed. A perk for Bambu Lab owners who live near a MicroCenter: many common spare parts are available in store.

🏆 Winner: Prusa MK4S

Though Bambu Lab has an excellent system with the Bambu Handy app, it’s not always accurate. It’s also difficult to diagnose problems when you don’t know what to call the thing you’re looking at, which makes live chat with a technician invaluable.

Plus, though Prusa’s MMU3 looks complex, it has fewer moving parts and motors to fail, making the MMU3 more robust and easier to maintain.

Material Handling

The first question you should ask when buying a multicolor printer is: How well does it handle color?

Prusa Research literally wrote the book on color slicing, having developed an earlier version of the MMU before the A1 was a sparkle in its designer’s eye (in 2017).

Prusa Research did have some bumps along the road. The MMU has yet to become as popular as its rival, partially thanks to cost but also due to an awkward design and early glitches. The MMU3 has finally become a reliable tool, but it still looks like an unfinished science project. Thankfully, the CORE One is getting a more polished edition, but that’s for another match.

The Prusa MMU3 has a couple of things going for it that make it worth the hassle: it can load five colors (instead of 4), it doesn’t care what size your spool is as long as it’s round, and it doesn’t mind filament. Upon changing colors, the Prusa bed slinger yanks filament out of the hotend rapidly, leaving only a tiny drizzle to be cleared out on the prime tower.

The Bambu Lab made the first multicolor printer embraced by the masses, and with the A1, made it affordable as well. Simply stated, it just works. Filament is easy to load, and Bambu’s RFID tagging system lets the printer tell your slicer what colors and materials are in use, eliminating the huge hassle involved with tracking colors.

The only real problem with the A1’s AMS Lite is the waste it can produce by needing to purge filament through the hotend when swapping colors. Another minor issue is that the spool holders don’t accept all spools, since they need to be gripped by the spool holder. However, Bambu Lab has an amazing variety of home-grown filament, so many users probably never notice this flaw.

🏆 Winner: Tie

Pick your poison. Do you want a machine that loads easier and has RFID tags, or one that looks like a rat’s nest and prints like a dream?

Speed

This one is a shocker. On paper, the A1 Combo looks to be the faster machine, with a 6000mm/s² average acceleration rate and a normal print speed of 250mm/s. The Prusa’s MK4S is a slower 4000mm/s² average acceleration rate and a normal print speed of 170mm/s.

But the Bambu A1 needs to be slowed down to produce glossy surface finishes, and it takes an average of one minute and 30 seconds to swap colors. The MK4S doesn’t need to be slowed much more than normal for the best shine, and its swaps only need 54 seconds on average. Multiply by hundreds of colors swaps per print, and the MK4S is often hours faster than the A1 Combo.

🏆 Winner: Prusa

Slow and steady really does win the race.

Pricing

Today’s best Bambu Lab A1 Combo and Prusa Original Prusa MK4S deals

The price of a 3D printer is an important factor, especially if you’re on a budget. But if cost is no object, is a premium printer worth the premium price tag?

The Prusa Research MK4S with MMU3 is $1,269 assembled or $999 as a kit, and one of the more expensive bed slingers we’ve reviewed.

The Bambu Lab A1 Combo is $549, which includes the color unit. It is only sold as a mostly assembled machine, requiring only a few screws and plugging in a couple cables to put together.

But is the initial cost the only factor when defending your wallet? The engineers at Prusa Research have refined the science of color swapping to an art and devised a system that retracts nearly all the filament from the tool head, leaving only millimeters of waste to be wiped from the nozzle on the prime tower.

Bambu Lab has certainly worked hard to improve its machine’s color swapping methods, allowing the user to tune the flushed amounts and fill purge objects with otherwise wasted material. But in the end, it still poops, making the A1 more costly on your filament budget.

🏆 Winner: Bambu Lab

I will curse every ounce of wasted filament, but I have to admit it would take a very long time to burn up the nearly 17 kg of wasted material to make up the cost difference between an MK4S with an MMU3 and an A1 Combo.

Bottom Line: Prusa Research MK4S vs Bambu Lab A1 Combo

Swipe to scroll horizontallyRow 0 – Cell 0

Prusa Research MK4S

Bambu Lab A1 Combo

Review Rating

5 star

4.5

Reliability and Maintenance

❌

Row 2 – Cell 2

Material Handling

❌

❌

Speed

❌

Row 4 – Cell 2

Pricing

Row 5 – Cell 1

❌

Total

3

2

The score is two for the MK4S with MMU3, one for Bambu’s A1 Combo, and a tie, making this a surprising win for the more expensive Prusa Research machine.

Though Bambu Lab’s A1 Combo seems like an easy favorite with its affordable price point and widespread adoption, Prusa Research still comes out on top with superior customer service, maintenance, and filament swaps that are speedy and efficient.

Both machines are true champions, with excellent quality, so it’s hard to go wrong with either choice. Are you Team Orange or Pro Panda?



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Digital Finance Reform Could Add Billions to Australia’s Economy, New Research Shows

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In brief

  • Digital finance innovation could contribute 1% to the country’s annual GDP, if drastically improved.
  • Foreign exchange markets represent a $4.6 billion opportunity.
  • Industry collaboration and regulatory reform could accelerate the adoption timeline, Decrypt was told.

Billions in economic gain could be achieved if Australia develops a strategic approach to innovating its digital finance sector, according to new research revealed at the Australian Digital Economy Conference held on Monday at the Gold Coast, Queensland.

Mapping specific opportunities across financial markets, the study found that foreign exchange emerged as the most significant opportunity, estimated at approximately US$4.8 billion annually, followed by cross-border payments at US$7.6 billion.

Additional opportunities span several asset classes: investment funds ($670 million), private credit ($1.34 billion), public debt ($1.07 billion), and private equity ($800 million). Even niche markets, such as carbon credits, present potential gains through tokenization and streamlined trading.

“Australia is at a key fork in the road,” Talis Putnins, chief scientist at the Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre, said in a statement shared with Decrypt. “By working together at pace, we can choose a path that allows us to seize this opportunity and make Australia a digital finance leader.”

Still, the team acknowledges the country “isn’t currently on track to realize even half of the potential economic gains,” though it says that it has ongoing engagements with the government.

Data based on the research indicates that only around $1.8 billion per year is expected to be unlocked for economic gains by 2030, assuming the current pace continues.

The research methodology measured how blockchain technology enhances value exchange, essentially eliminating intermediaries and reducing friction in financial transactions.

When settlement happens instantly rather than over days, and costs drop from dollars to cents, entirely new economic activity becomes possible.



OKX Australia CEO Kate Cooper, meanwhile, noted the research captures just two segments currently, with “additional benefits to be gained from digital finance innovation beyond economic impact,” she said, hinting at broader applications in the final report due in November.

When asked what specific policy or regulatory changes would best boost the adoption of digital finance innovation in Australia, Cooper pointed to the need for licensing clarity and addressing the country’s debanking issues.

“Treasury’s digital asset regime is coming, but speed is everything. Clear rules will unlock capital and confidence,” Cooper told Decrypt. “Without access to basic financial rails, innovation is operating with a handbrake on.”

The research suggests Australia already possesses the foundational elements: strong financial markets and its technological capability, to become a global digital finance hub.

Still, the biggest barriers to unlocking Australia’s full US$12 billion digital finance potential include outdated infrastructure, unclear regulatory standards, and resistance from sectors such as private credit, commodities, and real estate, which are slow to adopt tokenization due to disruption and legal complexity, Cooper said.

What remains as a question, however, isn’t whether these gains are achievable, but how quickly the country could mobilize to capture them. The path forward requires coordinated action, according to DECA CEO Amy-Rose Goodey.

Already, the groundwork is being laid “for more informed, coordinated decisions as we shape the next chapter of Australia’s digital economy,” Goodey said.

Edited by Sebastian Sinclair

Daily Debrief Newsletter

Start every day with the top news stories right now, plus original features, a podcast, videos and more.



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Ripple commits additional $5M to Asia-Pacific blockchain research
GameFi Guides

Ripple to invest $5M to Asia-Pacific blockchain research

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Ripple Labs will invest $5 million to strengthen blockchain education and research across the Asia-Pacific region.

According to a June 10 announcement on the company’s blog, Ripple is expanding its University Blockchain Research Initiative in Asia-Pacific with a new $5 million investment. The fund will support academic research and student-led innovation in six countries. This marks Ripple’s latest move to grow its influence in a region known for progressive fintech regulation and rapid digital asset adoption.

Through UBRI, Ripple is deepening ties with top institutions in South Korea, Japan, and Singapore, while forging new partnerships in Taiwan and Australia. The funding brings Ripple’s total UBRI contribution in Asia to over $11 million since launch, reflecting its long-term focus on building a pipeline of blockchain talent and real-world applications using the XRP (XRP) Ledger.

In Taiwan, Ripple is partnering with the National Kaohsiung University of Science and Technology to research real-world asset tokenization across XRPL, Ethereum (ETH), and Solana (SOL). The grant will also support a student builders club and validator node on XRPL.

Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University received a grant to build an autonomous AI agent network on XRPL, while Ripple renewed its support for the National University of Singapore, where past UBRI funding led to the first university-based DAO in Asia.

In South Korea, a renewed $1.1 million partnership with Korea University will fund advanced blockchain research, alongside ongoing initiatives at Yonsei and Hanyang universities, including privacy-enhancing zk-SNARKs and layer-2 scaling technologies.

Australia’s Victoria University joins UBRI with a focus on blockchain curriculum development, while the Australian National University will continue research into blockchain law and smart contract platforms like Evernode.

Ripple’s UBRI expansion complements other recent Asia-Pacific ventures. These include the XRPL Japan and Korea Fund launched in 2024 to support local developers, a partnership with Web3 Salon in Japan to fund XRPL startups, and Ripple’s role as an anchor investor in HashKey Capital’s XRP Tracker Fund, Asia’s first institutional fund focused on XRP.

This year’s UBRI Connect event will take place at XRP Ledger Apex, with a pre-summit hosted at NUS, stressing the region’s growing role in global blockchain research and adoption.



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Apple
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Apple says generative AI cannot think like a human – research paper pours cold water on reasoning models

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Apple researchers have tested advanced AI reasoning models — which are called large reasoning models (LRM) — in controlled puzzle environments and found that while they outperform ‘standard’ large language models (LLMs) models on moderately complex tasks, both fail completely as complexity increases. 

The researchers from Apple, which is not exactly at the forefront of AI development, believe that the current LRMs and LLMs have fundamental limits in their ability to generalize reasoning, or rather thinking the way humans do.

Apple researchers studied how advanced AI models — the Claude 3.7 Sonnet Thinking and DeepSeek-R1 LRMs — handle increasingly complex problem-solving tasks. They moved beyond standard math and coding benchmarks and designed controlled puzzle environments, such as Tower of Hanoi and River Crossing, where they could precisely adjust problem complexity. Their goal was to evaluate not just final answers but also the internal reasoning processes of these models, comparing them to standard large language models under equal computational conditions. Through the puzzles, they aimed to uncover the true strengths and fundamental limits of AI reasoning.


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Apple researchers discovered that LRMs perform differently depending on problem complexity. On simple tasks, standard LLMs, without explicit reasoning mechanisms, were more accurate and efficient and delivered better results with fewer compute resources. However, as problem complexity increased to a moderate level, models equipped with structured reasoning, like Chain-of-Thought prompting, gained the advantage and outperformed their non-reasoning counterparts. When the complexity grew further, both types of models failed completely: their accuracy dropped to zero regardless of the available compute resources.  (Keep in mind that the the Claude 3.7 Sonnet Thinking and DeepSeek-R1 LRMs have limitations when it comes to their training.)

A deeper analysis of the reasoning traces revealed inefficiencies and unexpected behavior. Initially, reasoning models used longer thought sequences as problems became harder, but near the failure point, they surprisingly shortened their reasoning effort even when they had sufficient compute capacity left. Moreover, even when explicitly provided with correct algorithms, the models failed to reliably execute step-by-step instructions on complex tasks, exposing weaknesses in logical computation. The study also found that model performance varied significantly between familiar and less-common puzzles, suggesting that success often depended on training data familiarity rather than true generalizable reasoning skills.

Follow Tom’s Hardware on Google News to get our up-to-date news, analysis, and reviews in your feeds. Make sure to click the Follow button.



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Hashed Research CEO Appointed Chief Policy Officer at Presidential Office

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Korea’s new President, Lee Jae-myung, has appointed the CEO of Hashed Research, Kim Yong-beom, to be the Chief Policy Officer of Korea’s Presidential Office.

A very sad day at @hashed_official. The new president just stole the CEO of our proud think tank, Hashed Open Research.

He’s now Chief Presidential Secretary for Policy —
a minister-level position, and arguably the most crypto-native and Web3-friendly official in Korean… pic.twitter.com/VS2ouCjgRa

— Simon Kim (@simonkim_nft) June 6, 2025

Before leading Hashed Research, crypto fund Hashed’s think tank, Kim was the Vice Minister of Economy and Finance during the Moon Jae-in administration.

In a previous interview with CoinDesk, Simon Kim, the CEO of Hashed, stated that the Lee administration will be crypto-friendly and that local regulators are closely monitoring crypto policy developments in the U.S with an aim to emulate them.

One of the first policy initiatives Kim Yong-beom might be working on is a Won-based stablecoin, which was identified by newly elected President Lee as a priority to “prevent national wealth from leaking overseas.”





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US Emerges As Bitcoin Superpower With 40% Ownership: Research

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Trusted Editorial content, reviewed by leading industry experts and seasoned editors. Ad Disclosure

A new deep-dive published by River, the San Francisco-based Bitcoin services company, argues that the United States has quietly become the planet’s unchallenged Bitcoin hegemon, controlling an estimated 40% of the entire circulating supply. In dollar terms, the report places the combined holdings of American investors, corporations and public entities at “north of $790 billion,” a figure that would eclipse the market capitalisation of most Fortune 50 companies if it were tallied as a single asset on a balance sheet.

The Bitcoin Empire

River’s analysts describe a multi-pronged dominance that extends far beyond raw coin ownership. Publicly listed US firms hold 94.8% of all Bitcoin sitting on corporate treasuries worldwide, the study notes, while American organisations account for 82% of global Bitcoin development funding and roughly 70% of venture capital deployed into the ecosystem. Even the fledgling exchange-traded fund market skews heavily toward domestic investors: the report calculates that US-domiciled ETFs control 79.2% of the outstanding shares for the entire asset class.

Bitcoin ownership by percentage of population | Source: River

Hashrate—often seen as the most tangible measure of security and industrial commitment—also tilts toward America. River estimates that miners operating within US borders generate 36% of global computational power, a share large enough to make the country the single biggest contributor to network security.

Since the start of 2021, those miners have hauled $42.6 billion worth of newly issued Bitcoin out of the protocol, backed by more than $30 billion in capital expenditure on rigs, power contracts and infrastructure. The boom has spawned a cluster of at least 40 industrial-scale sites exceeding 10 megawatts and has pushed the nationwide head-count of Bitcoin-focused firms past 150, collectively employing more than 20,000 Americans.

Geographic hashrate distribution | Source: River

“America is the global Bitcoin superpower,” the report states in its title banner, before charting the country’s footprint on a map speckled with golden circles for company headquarters and triangles for large-scale mines stretching from Washington State to Georgia’s nuclear-powered corridor.

Texas, Georgia, New York and Ohio appear as dense constellations, underscoring the migration of energy-intensive computing to deregulated or energy-rich states.

The US Bitcoin Industry | Source: River

Sovereign holdings provide another lens on Washington’s clout. The US government controls approximately 198,000 coins—nearly three times the stash attributed to the United Kingdom and more than ten times the totals linked to China, North Korea or Bhutan. El Salvador, whose president Nayib Bukele has turned Bitcoin into legal tender and a geopolitical calling card, holds a comparatively modest 6,000 coins; Venezuela barely registers at 200.

Institutional ownership is no longer confined to hedge-fund hot-hands or crypto-native treasuries. Endowments at Yale, MIT, Brown and Harvard have all built direct positions or ETF exposures, while insurers such as MassMutual, TIAA and Northwestern Mutual have added the asset to long-duration portfolios traditionally populated by Treasuries and investment-grade credit. Hedge-fund heavyweights Citadel, Millennium, D. E. Shaw and Mariner round out the list of marquee names flagged by River as significant holders.

At press time, BTC traded at $106,510.

BTC grinds higher above the 0.786 Fib, 1-day chart | Source: BTCUSDT on TradingView.com

Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com

Editorial Process for bitcoinist is centered on delivering thoroughly researched, accurate, and unbiased content. We uphold strict sourcing standards, and each page undergoes diligent review by our team of top technology experts and seasoned editors. This process ensures the integrity, relevance, and value of our content for our readers.



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