Sydney home prices fell 1.2% month on month in June, while Melbourne declined 1% and Canberra slipped 0.6%. The national median price dropped 0.4% over the month, the biggest month-on-month fall since 2022. The faster declines are attributed to Labor’s tax changes and expectations of further interest rate rises weighing on buyer confidence, signalling a sharper cooling in Australia’s housing market.

Australia’s federal government is preparing sweeping regulatory reforms that would require PwC, KPMG and other global firms to structurally separate their audit and consulting operations and restrict offering both services to the same client. The proposals also include a 400-partner cap, shorter audit tenures and stronger enforcement powers for ASIC. The overhaul follows KPMG’s recent confidential-data misuse scandal and PwC’s tax information leak, and is aimed at restoring trust in the sector.

A Ripple executive said a proposed XRP Ledger credit facility has moved into the network voting process, aiming to enable on-chain lending for digital asset holders and businesses seeking faster financing. The feature would only be deployed if nodes approve it through a vote. RLUSD is also expanding via new settlement support across eight chains and additional integrations and listings, while XRP network activity has risen over the past two weeks even as large holders continue moving tokens to exchanges. Separately, technical analysis cited a TD Sequential daily buy signal and flagged $1.06 as a key support level.

Empery Digital (NASDAQ: EMPD) said it will acquire AI data center assets for $65 million, marking a full exit from its Bitcoin treasury strategy. The company had previously been forced to sell BTC multiple times amid shareholder pressure, effectively abandoning its original crypto plan. The shift follows ongoing governance disputes and financial strain, as detailed in SEC filings and the company’s press release. The move does not involve any new tokens, protocols or infrastructure changes, and reflects only a single public company’s asset-allocation pivot.

In June 2026, the “Magnificent Seven” erased a combined $2.3 trillion in market value as investors fretted over massive AI-related capital spending. Microsoft fell 20% over the month, Nvidia slid about 13%, and Apple and Amazon each declined around 8%. Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet and Meta have pledged hundreds of billions of dollars for AI chip purchases and data-center construction, with some of the spending financed through borrowing. Industrywide AI-linked capital expenditures are projected to reach $700 billion in 2026, up roughly 70% year over year, pushing the group’s 12-month forward free-cash-flow outlook well below 2024 levels.

Open USD officially launched on Tuesday, backed by more than 140 companies including Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, Shopify and Coinbase, and it says it offers zero-fee minting and redemptions along with shared reserve earnings. The debut has heightened concerns it could erode Circle’s USDC market share and put pressure on Circle’s business model. Circle Internet Group shares fell 16.3% to $63.57, marking a year-to-date low and forming a technical “death cross.” USDC’s market capitalization has declined to $73.7 billion from a year-to-date high of $80 billion.

多家大型金融及跨行业公司宣布成为Open USD稳定coin的首批启动合作伙伴。该稳定币由新联盟发起，旨在构建开源、可验证的美元锚定资产基础设施。目前未披露发行方、储备审计细节、上链网络或代币合约地址。Open USD尚未在任何主流交易所上市，亦无公开代币符号或智能合约部署信息。事件属稳定币生态建设层面合作官宣，不涉及现有加密资产的技术整合、流动性注入或监管许可突破，对市场短期价格无直接驱动，但可能间接强化机构对合规稳定币赛道的关注。

Ionic Digital Inc., formed from Celsius’ mining assets, filed an S-1 with the SEC on June 29, 2026 to pursue a Nasdaq direct listing under the ticker IOND. The company says it will not raise money in the listing, instead registering up to 10.8 million shares for resale by existing stockholders. As of March 31, 2026, Ionic reported holdings of 2,815.6 BTC worth about $192.1 million, $34.9 million in cash and no debt, and said it stopped selling bitcoin in 2026’s first quarter as it shifted toward AI compute leasing. Its Texas datacenter is backed by a 126-month contract with as much as $2.6 billion tied to added power coming online.