According to BlockBeats, on July 16, The Kobeissi Letter reported that companies in the Russell 2000 index with negative earnings per share have risen by 154% since mid-2025, while companies with positive earnings per share have only risen by 34% during the same period.

So far this year, unprofitable companies in the Russell 2000 index have risen by 45%, higher than the 18% increase in profitable companies. Driven by this, the Russell 2000 index has risen by 20% this year, on track for its best annual performance since 2003.

During the same period, the S&P 500 rose 11%, while the "Big Seven" US tech stocks only rose 4%. The best-performing small-cap stocks were mainly technology and infrastructure companies expected to benefit from AI spending. The market is rewarding AI-related exposure regardless of whether the companies are profitable.

According to BlockBeats, on July 16, 1inch co-founder Anton Bukov announced that he was laid off at the end of November 2025. He remains a co-founder of 1inch and holds 50% of the shares, but is no longer involved in the company's operations or responsible for product architecture, security design, or related oversight.

Bukov stated that since co-founding 1inch in May 2019, he has been primarily responsible for the design of the protocol architecture, security, and economic model, and has participated in the launch of products such as 1inch Router, 1inch Fusion, cross-chain atomic swaps, and shared liquidity AMMs.

He stated that feedback from users and team members over the past year made him realize that he could no longer remain outside the company's management and operations. He subsequently spent several months learning leadership and communication methods and driving change, ultimately being laid off at the end of November 2025.

Bukov also announced the launch of a new project, Second Tier, which aims to work with like-minded teams to build secure and efficient systems that bridge the gap between economic intentions and actual implementation.