Check out U.Today's selection of the top three news stories over the past day.
Ripple aims to kickstart Japan's Web3 surge
In a recent announcement on its website, Ripple revealed a new partnership with Web3 Salon, a project supported by the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) and powered by the Asia Alliance Web3 Japan. The collaboration aims to nurture Japan's digital assets ecosystem by supporting early-stage blockchain startups based in the country. Ripple will specifically prioritize those startups that are working with the XRP Ledger, particularly in use cases like DeFi, tokenized RWA and digital payments. As part of the partnership, the San Francisco-based firm will offer grant funding of up to $200,000 per project over the year. In addition to funding, startups will gain access to Ripple's global network of partners.
Major Shibarium upgrade brings radical change to SHIB burns: Details
Yesterday, June 9, Lucie, Shiba Inu marketing lead, took to X platform to announce the upgrade of the SHIB DeFi toolkit. "This isn’t a cosmetic refresh," wrote Lucie in the introduction to her post. The upgrade includes five features, with the first one being precision liquidity pools that allow users to target specific price zones for more efficient yields. Second, users will now be able to get their multiple rewards in just one move from various sources (incentives, fees, etc.). Third, auto burns will be triggered directly by any activity on Shibarium (swaps, liquidity actions, etc.). Fourth, the platform has unified core functions, swapping, staking, bridging and burning, into a single, streamlined interface. Last, but not least, these updates enable users to adopt smarter strategies, such as locking LPs for better APYs and burning tokens on the go.
Bitcoin rockets 53,247% in abnormal liquidation imbalance
Bitcoin's rapid rise past $107,000 caused a massive liquidation event; according to CoinGlass data, as a result, in a few hours, over $39 million were wiped out in liquidations. The majority of these liquidations, $38.95 million, were from short positions, while long positions were represented by a tiny $73K. This created a highly imbalanced situation with a 53,247% skew in favor of long positions. The event marked one of the most lopsided liquidation snapshots Bitcoin has experienced recently. Overall, over the course of four hours, about $65.5 million worth of crypto positions were liquidated, and most of that, over $61.6 million, came from short positions. Other cryptocurrencies like Ethereum, Solana and DOGE also saw liquidations — but nowhere near BTC's scale. The sudden parabolic surge was likely fueled by renewed U.S.-China trade talks, which may have reenergized global risk sentiment.
