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As the US dollar stablecoin continues to dominate the on-chain payment market, Europe is accelerating the development of a digital currency system that reflects its own regulatory framework, monetary sovereignty, and privacy standards, gradually forming two parallel paths: "digital euro + private euro stablecoin." Among them, the European Central Bank is prioritizing privacy protection as an important design focus for the digital euro. Piero Cipollone, a member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank, stated that the digital euro will provide the highest possible level of privacy under current technological conditions, with offline payments visible only to the payer and payee; in online transactions, the euro system cannot directly identify specific individuals, but banks can still obtain the information required for anti-money laundering.At the same time, private institutions have taken the lead in promoting euro stablecoins. Revolut has begun rolling out EURR to some users in Denmark, Poland, and Portugal, with plans to expand to the entire European Economic Area in the future. EURR operates on Ethereum and is issued by Bridge Building, a subsidiary of Stripe, aiming to maintain a stable value against 1 euro. Forbes points out that the digital euro and EURR are not simply in a substitutive relationship: the former is a public currency issued by the central bank, while the latter is a privately issued on-chain stablecoin. The European digital currency market is developing along these two models simultaneously, with competition focusing on privacy, usability, regulatory clarity, and actual economic value.

Stablecoin issuer Circle has reached a sponsorship agreement with Premier League giant Chelsea, becoming its chief partner and official shirt front sponsor. According to news released on Friday, Circle and the USDC brand logo will appear on the jerseys of Chelsea's men's, women's, and youth teams starting from the 2026/27 season. Circle stated that stablecoins are moving from early adoption to mainstream, bringing USDC to one of the largest global stages in sports, reflecting the scale and ambition of this opportunity.Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire stated that USDC is built on the idea that "currency should operate seamlessly for everyone around the world, just like the internet," and the partnership with Chelsea connects a global sports community based on the same borderless vision. Chelsea chairman Jason Gannon noted that this collaboration places Chelsea at the forefront of the digital evolution in football. The specific amount and duration of the agreement have not been disclosed.This collaboration comes as the crypto industry rebuilds its sports sponsorship landscape following a market downturn in 2022. Previously, Crypto.com secured a 20-year naming rights deal for the former Staples Center for $700 million, and OKX had also partnered with Manchester City. In June of this year, the UK's Financial Conduct Authority warned Premier League and other football clubs to be cautious of sponsorship agreements with unauthorized crypto companies, while Circle holds an electronic money institution license from the UK FCA. Chelsea will debut the jerseys featuring the Circle and USDC logos in their home match against Brighton on Sunday.

The Frontier Data Research Laboratory idler announced the completion of a $9 million seed round financing, led by Alpo and Frankie from Paradigm, with participation from Y Combinator, Long Journey VC, as well as angel investors including marrc, catheryn_li, dcposch, Janine Leger, Lynett Capital, feross, and nur_daulet_.idler is positioned as a frontier data research laboratory, and this round of funding will be used to build evaluation systems, benchmark testing, and reinforcement learning environments for leading frontier laboratories worldwide to train and measure their model performance.

CFTC Chairman Mike Selig stated, "For years, the anti-crypto army, doomsayers, and slowists have stifled innovation." "The CFTC is turning a new page, charting a course for innovators to explore the new frontier of finance."

Bitcoin News posted on the X platform that the Bitcoin Policy Institute, along with a coalition of over 40 organizations, is calling on leading AI labs to provide trusted access to their state-of-the-art AI models for qualified open-source defenders.The open letter states that Bitcoin and digital asset developers are facing increasingly complex AI-driven cyber threats, while legitimate security research is often hampered by cutting-edge model security mechanisms. Signatories including Block, Coinbase, Strategy, MARA, Galaxy, BitGo, Brink, OpenSats, Chaincode Labs, Spiral, Trezor, and Unchained are requesting early access to cutting-edge cybersecurity models, sufficient computing power, secure research environments, and the establishment of direct communication channels with AI lab security teams. The open letter states: "Defenders need cutting-edge technology; please give them a fair head start."

The research organization SemiAnalysis released an analysis indicating that Google DeepMind is no longer among the leading AI laboratories. A week prior, DeepMind co-founder Demis Hassabis stepped back from daily operations, and key members such as Google Chief Scientist Jeff Dean and Gemini co-lead Oriol Vinyals left to establish a new lab called Discovery Loop. The analysis suggests that the long-term struggle within Google over computing power allocation between Gemini and GCP has concluded with GCP emerging victorious.SemiAnalysis stated that Gemini 3.5 Pro has been canceled, and Gemini 3.6 Flash's performance is inferior to that of leading Chinese open-source models and Grok 4.5. Currently, Gemini has fallen to the 8th or 9th position in the large model rankings. Meanwhile, GCP is selling a large number of TPUs to competitors like Anthropic, having secured long-term leasing and sales contracts for hundreds of thousands of TPUs over the past nine months. The Tokenomics model estimates that Gemini's own ARR is about $12 billion, while GCP's third-party AI cloud service revenue is expected to exceed $73 billion by the end of 2027, with TPU system sales contributing an additional over $120 billion. GCP's latest quarterly growth rate is 82%, and it is expected to accelerate to over 100% by 2027 due to TPU system sales, contributing approximately $3 to Google's earnings per share.

According to official news, the Ethereum Foundation's "Trillion Dollar Security" (1TS) has announced a special grant to the Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) to support the ongoing development of the open-source tool WEBCAT, aimed at addressing the long-standing front-end code verification security gap in Ethereum wallets and decentralized applications (DApps).WEBCAT (Web-based Code Assurance and Transparency) is an open-source tool designed to help browsers verify whether the code loaded by a website matches the version publicly released by the developer.This funding will promote the expansion of WEBCAT to Ethereum wallets and application scenarios, enabling users to verify whether the front-end pages they access have been tampered with.The Ethereum Foundation stated that while HTTPS can verify the website a user is connected to and encrypt communication, it cannot prove that the front-end code actually running on the website is the same version released by the developer. If an attacker controls the website's front-end code, they may modify the transaction receiving address without the user's knowledge or induce the user to sign transactions that do not match the content displayed on the page.The Ethereum Foundation noted that front-end attacks have become a significant security risk for blockchain infrastructure, with malicious modifications to web interfaces potentially leading to supply chain attacks, DNS hijacking subsequent attacks, and user interface deception.WEBCAT was initially developed by the Freedom of the Press Foundation to enhance the code credibility of secure communication systems like SecureDrop.With this expansion into the Ethereum ecosystem, it will complement security measures such as "Clear Signing" in the 1TS program: the former helps wallets confirm that the application front-end has not been tampered with, while the latter helps users understand the transaction content they are approving.

Fortune magazine recently published a commentary article pointing out that with the rapid rise of China's open-source AI models, the competitive landscape of the global AI field is changing. The real contest has shifted from U.S.-China rivalry to the battle between open-source and closed-source models. The article cites data from the independent evaluation platform Artificial Analysis, stating that the intelligence index of DeepSeek V4 Flash is only 1 point lower than that of GPT-5.6 Luna. Even though OpenAI has reduced prices by 80%, the former's single-task cost is still 60% lower.The author notes that while U.S. export control policies aim to limit China's AI development, they have objectively stimulated innovation at the architectural level among Chinese companies, forcing them to shift towards open-source and low-cost routes. Chinese models attract global developers to participate in improvements by opening weights, while transferring inference costs to overseas cloud service providers, achieving a low-cost global layout. Regarding the viewpoint that open-source models "cannot be profitable," the article argues that their profit model is similar to that of open-source software: users pay for hosting services, and most companies are not inclined to self-deploy.The article also points out that recently, several figures in the U.S. tech community, including former White House AI official David Sacks, have begun to support open-source, and NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang has also called for the industry to embrace open-source. The author urges both China and the U.S. to cooperate in the field of AI security, viewing open-source AI as a "global public good," rather than falling into a zero-sum competition that costs trillions of dollars.

According to ChianCatcher news, the stablecoin credit protocol Ebisu Finance announced today that it has decided to gradually shut down the project. Users need to quickly close remaining Troves, withdraw Stability Pool deposits, and ebUSD DEX liquidity. The minting of ebUSD has been suspended, and the front end will be deprecated in 3 months on October 30.This protocol is a fork of Liquity V2, supporting new collateral types and adjustable risk parameters. It has been running for over a year and has passed two audits. Ebisu aims to provide fixed-rate, open-term credit through ebUSD, with collateral including blue-chip yield-bearing assets such as LRTs, but the team has failed to expand ebUSD liquidity to support meaningful lending volumes.The project explored multiple solutions, including liquidity optimization, multi-chain expansion, structured products, and acquisition opportunities, but none addressed the core bottleneck of the CDP protocol: stablecoin liquidity and sustainable demand. The team stated that there are no plans for the launch or airdrop of EBISU tokens and thanked supporters, inviting other teams to contact them for permission to use their tech stack.

Robinhood Chain's Pons launchpad officially responded to previous reports regarding a token authorization vulnerability in its frontend, stating that the Pons launchpad trading page does not have any Multicall3 functionality. The Multicall3 functionality mentioned in the tweet comes from the previous version of the Debank Chain cross-chain bridge, which was launched before the Pons launchpad and does not affect launchpad users.Currently, the only confirmed affected asset is 0.6 NOXA tokens, valued at approximately $0.66. As a security precaution, Pons recommends that users who have used the old cross-chain bridge revoke token authorization through revoke.cash. The team is currently working with auditing firms to investigate potential risks and stated that they will restore Pons frontend services once it is confirmed that there are no actual vulnerabilities.

According to Caixin, the case involving 60,000 bitcoins belonging to Qian Zhimin held a three-day hearing from July 7 to 9, 2026. Blue Sky Ge Rui Company officially joined the battle for bitcoin rights through the litigation administrator. The bitcoin dispute has transformed from a "two-party confrontation" into a "three-party competition": 1. The UK prosecution (DPP) claims that the assets should be recovered by the state; 2. The Chinese victims assert that they have property rights to the bitcoins that can be traced and have significantly appreciated in value; 3. The litigation administrator representing Blue Sky Ge Rui Company argues that the bitcoins are substitute assets formed after Qian Zhimin misappropriated company funds.It is reported that the estimated value of the bitcoins involved in the case is about 427,000 yuan each as of July this year, a 152-fold increase from the purchase price when Qian Zhimin acquired them in 2014 (2,815 yuan each). If the applicant can successfully assert their property rights to the relevant bitcoin assets, the amount they can recover will not be limited to the original investment loss but can also extend to the appreciation gains of the bitcoins. The litigation administrator representing Blue Sky Ge Rui Company believes that the bitcoins in question are essentially transformed from misappropriated company property, and the company has the right to trace them and assert property rights.Meanwhile, the Director of the UK Crown Prosecution Service (DPP) continues to insist that Chinese law should apply, while the leading law firm representing individual victims has proposed four complementary legal arguments to avoid the victims' claims being entirely dismissed due to any single legal pathway: 1. Bitcoin in the UK should be governed by UK law; 2. The investment contract is a scam, and upon cancellation, the rights revert to the victims; 3. The tracing mechanisms under POCA Sections 305 and 306 should also apply to the victims; 4. A "mixed structure" should break the binary choice between Chinese and UK law.

Gate, as the exclusive platform supporting Korean stock trading services, continues to enrich the global stock asset layout. Recently, the volatility in the Korean semiconductor sector has intensified, and the market trading heat remains high. According to the latest data from the Gate platform, the semiconductor leader SK Hynix reached a high of $1654.1 and a low of $1509.9 during the day, currently reported at $1543.1, with a daily decline of 5.03%. According to CoinGlass data, the contract position for Gate SK Hynix (SKHYNIX) exceeds $24.5448 million, ranking among the industry leaders.

HP Inc. announced a strategic partnership with OpenAI to scale the deployment of the OpenAI Frontier platform across its global operations, aiming to accelerate the transformation of internal operations and enhance customer experience.According to the cooperation plan, HP will widely apply AI agents in several core business flows, including: self-service experiences for customers and partners, device health diagnostics and telemetry based on the Workforce Experience Platform (WXP), cybersecurity vulnerability analysis, and daily software development and code review.It is reported that HP began related testing in February 2026 and successfully utilized AI to significantly reduce the time costs of code testing and security vulnerability remediation. As a unified enterprise-level AI foundation, OpenAI Frontier will provide HP with capabilities such as shared context, permission governance, seamless integration across applications, and effectiveness evaluation, helping its AI strategy transition from initial technology pilots to full enterprise-level implementation.

Blockchain intelligence company AMLBot's monitoring data shows that recently Polymarket users on the Polygon network had approximately $3.1 million PUSD stolen due to a front-end malicious script intrusion.The attackers implanted a malicious script that induced users to sign authorization transactions (involving EIP-7702 delegated execution), resulting in the users' wallets being emptied. The stolen funds were then converted to USDC.e through Relay, bridged to Ethereum, and ultimately exchanged for ETH, which was concentrated in a designated address. Currently, about 1891.9 ETH is distributed across three new wallets.AMLBot pointed out that this attack is similar to the incident involving the 2024 1inch web application, where a wallet theft script was implanted in the Lottie Player library, both cases involved third-party scripts being compromised, leading to front-end contamination.

The security alert released by Blockaid on platform X indicates that its system has detected an attack targeting the front end of the Yield Yak website. The project's subdomain vote.yieldyak.com has been implanted with eleven drainer malicious code. Blockaid pointed out that the method of this attack is similar to the security incident that Gitcoin.co encountered yesterday.