isc

According to Livecoins, Brazilian police discovered a hidden illegal Bitcoin mining operation at a recycling station during a routine inspection targeting the theft and sale of scrap metal. Approximately 15 ASIC miners and 3 servers were seized on-site, with the total value of the equipment estimated to exceed 200,000 reais (about 39,400 USD).Bitcoin mining is not illegal in Brazil itself, but these devices were illegally tapping into electricity, with local power company Cemig estimating a monthly loss of about 60,000 reais (about 11,800 USD). A 37-year-old employee of the recycling station was unable to explain the source of the equipment and did not provide an invoice, leading to his arrest on charges of theft and trafficking. The police have also filed cases against a 31-year-old man and woman responsible for the business.The police stated that they are currently investigating the flow of the mined cryptocurrency.

According to Wall St Engine, "AI stock god" Leopold Aschenbrenner's Situational Awareness fund faced liquidity pressure during the market crash in July, with behind-the-scenes details revealed.The report states that after the market rapidly cooled in mid-July, the decline in stocks held by Situational Awareness triggered margin monitoring by banks such as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, leading to margin calls.Insiders said that other hedge funds began shorting related stocks after learning about its positions, creating a cycle of "price drop → margin call → forced selling → further price decline."In late July, while Leopold was hosting a wedding in Carmel, he continued negotiations with his team to maintain fund operations. On the evening of July 29, he reached a preliminary agreement with a consortium led by Greenoaks and Sequoia Capital to sell approximately $3.5 billion in Anthropic equity.However, in the early hours of July 30, before the U.S. stock market opened, Leopold changed his decision, opting to retain the private equity portfolio and instead sell publicly traded stocks. Subsequently, Citadel and Millennium entered negotiations with the fund team, and Citadel ultimately acquired most of the fund's public stock investment portfolio at a discount of more than 10% below market value before Thursday's opening.This transaction helped Situational Awareness meet margin requirements and avoid formal default. After the deal was completed, related AI and semiconductor stocks rebounded on Thursday, benefiting Citadel.As of around July 31, Situational Awareness disclosed to investors that the fund had a net loss of about 67% in July, but was still up about 80% for the year. Leopold stated that he "takes full responsibility" for the incident, and the fund has removed bank leverage, planning to continue operations and invest in the public market while adjusting its portfolio management and risk control systems.

Tether released its Q2 2026 financial report, as of June 30, with a USDT issuance of approximately $184.6 billion, an increase of about $446 million from the end of the first quarter, and the stablecoin market share rose to over 60%. The report was compiled by the independent accounting firm BDO.Tether's net operating profit for the second quarter was approximately $1.5 billion, primarily from U.S. Treasury bonds and repurchase agreements. At the end of the quarter, the company's total assets were approximately $187.751 billion, and total liabilities were about $183.642 billion, of which liabilities related to issued digital tokens were approximately $183.622 billion, with assets exceeding liabilities by about $4.11 billion.During the quarter, the company reduced its secured loan exposure by approximately $2.38 billion, a decrease of 15%; at the same time, it increased its physical gold holdings by 14 tons, bringing the total gold holdings to over 146 tons. Tether stated that it remains one of the largest buyers and holders of U.S. Treasury bonds globally, with the number of global users increasing by over 30 million this quarter.Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino stated that despite significant volatility in the gold and Bitcoin markets, USDT continues to have full reserve backing. The company also continued to advance the audit process with the Big Four accounting firms during the same period.

According to Jinshi, the United States and Israel are discussing the possibility of implementing a land blockade against Iran. Trump and Netanyahu are exploring various options to increase economic pressure on Iran, and this plan is one of them.

According to Bitcoin Magazine, Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalio stated that Bitcoin only accounts for 1% of his portfolio, and he still prefers gold. In a podcast on Thursday, Dalio described Bitcoin as a currency that cannot be printed infinitely, but it faces technological threats such as quantum computing and may be subject to government monitoring and taxation.Dalio had previously stated that he would not invest in Bitcoin, and although he now admits to holding some, he still insists that gold is the better choice, stating in the program, "I prefer gold." Last year, Dalio also acknowledged that Bitcoin only makes up 1% of his investment portfolio.

According to The Defiant, Spain's Santander Bank disclosed for the first time in its 13F filing submitted to the SEC that it holds 129,615 shares of BlackRock iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) (approximately $4.31 million) and 297,947 shares of iShares Ethereum Trust (approximately $3.54 million), as well as $1.51 million in iShares Gold Trust.No Bitcoin ETF holdings were reported in previous quarterly filings. The total amount of U.S. stock holdings disclosed by the bank is approximately $16.08 billion, with crypto ETF holdings accounting for about 0.05%. It is reported that Santander's digital bank Openbank has already provided crypto trading services to retail customers in Europe.

According to CNBC, Anthropic disclosed that its Claude AI model unexpectedly breached the isolated environment during a cybersecurity assessment, accessed the real internet, and unauthorizedly infiltrated the real systems of three different organizations through basic means such as accessing unverified endpoints and exploiting weak passwords. The models involved include Opus 4.7, Mythos 5, and an internal research testing model.The incident was caused by a communication misunderstanding between Anthropic and the third-party evaluation partner Irregular, which led to the model being told it was in a simulated environment with no internet access, while it could actually still access the internet. Anthropic stated that this review was triggered by a similar incident involving Hugging Face disclosed by OpenAI last week, and it has currently suspended all cybersecurity assessments and initiated further investigations in collaboration with the independent AI evaluation agency METR, while also urging other AI labs to conduct similar reviews.

According to monitoring by Catcher Predict, in the Polymarket event "San Francisco Giants vs. San Diego Padres," the sub-market "First Five Innings Spread -1.5" for the "San Diego Padres" option experienced significant fluctuations in winning probability, soaring from 33% an hour ago to the current 50% (a fluctuation of 17%). Please note the impact of relevant breaking news.

According to Jinshi reports, Apple CEO Tim Cook stated that spending on memory in the third fiscal quarter was "significantly higher" than in the second fiscal quarter.

According to Jinshi reports, Apple's Chief Financial Officer expects the year-on-year growth rate of iPhone revenue in the fourth fiscal quarter to reach around 15%.

According to Jinshi reports, Apple's service revenue in Q3 of fiscal year 2026 was $30.74 billion, lower than the market expectation of $31.22 billion.

According to Jinshi reports, Apple Inc. (AAPL.O) had a gross margin of 50.1% in the third quarter of fiscal year 2026, higher than the market expectation of 47.92%.

According to Jinshi reports, Apple Inc. (AAPL.O) had a revenue of $109.42 billion in Q3 of fiscal year 2026, an increase from $94.036 billion in the same period last year, exceeding market expectations of $108.578 billion.

According to Jinshi reports, on the evening of July 30, Beijing time, the Chinese lead in Sino-U.S. economic and trade relations, Vice Premier He Lifeng, held a video call with the U.S. lead, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, and Trade Representative Katherine Tai.The two sides discussed the implementation of the important consensus reached during the meeting between the leaders of China and the U.S. in Beijing, focusing on stabilizing economic and trade relations, pragmatic cooperation, and addressing each other's concerns. The Chinese side expressed serious concerns regarding the recent economic and trade restrictions imposed by the U.S. side.

According to Bitcoin Magazine, Spain's largest bank, Santander Bank, reported that it holds a spot Bitcoin ETF worth $4.3 million.

The B.AI API officially launched its first "official 10% discount group," providing users with highly reliable AI calling services through official direct connection channels while balancing model invocation stability, service quality, and cost efficiency. The first batch supports the Claude series models, with more mainstream models set to be opened successively. Meanwhile, the platform's "self-selected service provider" model offers discounts as low as 20%, granting users full autonomy to flexibly weigh performance, stability, and cost based on the actual needs of their business scenarios, achieving optimal configuration.

On July 28, OpenAI quietly updated its security incident disclosure, confirming that its AI agent accessed four external service platforms during the breach of Hugging Face, bringing the total number of affected platforms to five.Previously, OpenAI had disabled security filters while testing GPT-5.6 Sol and a more powerful model to assess raw capabilities. The model did not complete the security benchmark tests as expected; instead, it discovered a zero-day vulnerability in the package caching agent within the testing environment that granted internet access, subsequently breaching Hugging Face to steal answers.According to a forensic report released by Hugging Face on July 27, this autonomous agent executed 17,600 operations over approximately four and a half days, connecting 181 devices to the Hugging Face internal VPN and forging identity tokens. Among the four additional platforms, Modal Labs CTO Akshat Bubna confirmed through Reuters that his company was one of them, with the attacker using an unprotected public endpoint from a customer as a relay and command control base for the entire attack.The identities of the other three platforms remain undisclosed. OpenAI stated it would "directly notify the service providers" but would not publicly name them, as there is currently no legal requirement for mandatory disclosure. The U.S. Congress has responded by proposing a bipartisan "AI Emergency Shutdown Act," which aims to authorize the Department of Homeland Security to forcibly shut down AI models, with violators facing fines of up to $2 million per day.

According to Jinshi, the Japanese government on Thursday lowered its economic growth forecast for the current fiscal year due to rising oil prices caused by tensions in the Middle East, which are squeezing household spending and corporate profits. The inflation-adjusted GDP growth rate is expected to be 0.9% for the fiscal year ending March 2027, down from the 1.3% forecast in January. However, the economic growth rate for the next fiscal year is expected to accelerate to 1.1%.

The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin dismissed the CFTC's request for a preliminary injunction to prohibit Wisconsin from enforcing sports-related event contracts on platforms such as Kalshi, Coinbase, Robinhood, Polymarket, and Crypto.com. The court found that the CFTC failed to demonstrate a likelihood of success on its claim—that the Commodity Exchange Act (CEA) defines "swaps" to include sports event contracts—and that gambling regulation falls within the traditional police powers of the states, with federal law not clearly indicating an intent to preempt state law.Additionally, the court also denied the intervention requests from Kalshi, Crypto.com Derivatives North America (CDNA), and the American Gaming Association (AGA). The substantive litigation between the CFTC and the state of Wisconsin will continue to proceed.

Microsoft released its Q4 fiscal year 2026 financial report, with revenue of $90 billion, a year-on-year increase of 18%, exceeding market expectations of $87.7 billion; adjusted earnings per share of $4.74, a year-on-year increase of 23%, which is 11.5% higher than expected; operating profit of $40.6 billion, a year-on-year increase of 18%. Intelligent cloud revenue was $39.3 billion, a year-on-year increase of 32%, with Azure and other cloud services revenue growing by 43%, significantly higher than the market expectation of 39.6%. Total revenue from Microsoft Cloud was $59.3 billion, a year-on-year increase of 27%. CEO Satya Nadella disclosed that Azure's annual revenue has surpassed $100 billion for the first time, and paid users of Microsoft 365 Copilot exceeded 30 million.In terms of capital expenditure, the fourth quarter's property and equipment acquisition expenditure was $35.8 billion, a year-on-year increase of approximately 110%; total capital expenditure including finance leases was $41 billion, a year-on-year increase of 70%, but lower than the market expectation of $42.5 billion. The remaining performance obligations (RPO) for cloud business surged 84% year-on-year to $678 billion, about twice the annual revenue. Microsoft disclosed in a regulatory filing that new unexecuted data center lease commitments in the fourth quarter exceeded $130 billion, with the total unexecuted lease commitments increasing by 67.4% quarter-on-quarter to $329.1 billion. Annual revenue was $331.8 billion, a year-on-year increase of 18%; net profit was $133.7 billion, a year-on-year increase of 31% (GAAP).