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New York state officials warn that AI-generated content and fake cryptocurrency projects are making investment scams more deceptive. Investment scam losses exceed $8 billion, a 38% increase from 2024, with 144,041 consumers reporting losses, and the median loss per incident is $10,560. AI can be used to clone voices, forge videos, impersonate financial professionals, and create social media advertisements.New York Attorney General Letitia James has warned that scammers attract investors through deepfake endorsements of celebrities, fake cryptocurrencies, pump-and-dump schemes, and fraudulent trading platforms. Some fake platforms display forged account balances, earnings, and transaction records, allowing victims to withdraw small amounts to build trust, and then request additional funds or fees. New York state officials advise consumers to verify the identity of promoters, companies, and investment projects, and confirm the destination of funds. According to the FBI, reported losses from cybercrime amount to $20.877 billion, with complaints involving cryptocurrency losses totaling $11.37 billion. Common signs of scams include promises of high returns, unsolicited investment opportunities, high-pressure sales tactics, and projects lacking clear documentation.

Financial services giant Charles Schwab announced on Thursday that it plans to add Solana, Avalanche, and Chainlink to its cryptocurrency trading platform in the coming months, further expanding beyond Bitcoin and Ethereum, but did not provide specific launch dates. This addition comes about three months after Charles Schwab introduced direct trading of Bitcoin and Ethereum to some retail clients, who previously could only gain exposure to cryptocurrencies through exchange-traded products and stocks of companies like Coinbase and Strategy, without the ability to directly purchase cryptocurrencies.Joe Vietri, head of digital assets at Charles Schwab, stated that this expansion will provide clients with more options for digital asset allocation. Solana focuses on fast, low-cost transactions, Avalanche supports businesses and developers in creating custom blockchains, and Chainlink connects blockchains with external information, providing data such as asset prices for smart contracts. Clients can buy and sell these cryptocurrencies on the official website, mobile app, and thinkorswim platform, with a fee of 75 basis points (0.75%) per transaction.

Co-founder of the crypto trading app fomo, Se Yong Park, announced the completion of the first round of financing, with 140 angel investors participating in this round. Currently, there are over 200 angel investors on the cap table.He stated that early founders almost always misunderstand the dynamics between the company and angel investors, and should view angel investors as call options for product success. Even if there are tech CEOs, celebrities, athletes, etc., on the cap table, their likelihood of providing early assistance is close to zero. As the scale expands and a product is created that angel investors are truly willing to use and proudly share, more and more people will naturally recommend the product to the outside world.

SBI Holdings, a Japanese financial services group, announced an investment of $270 million in the Indonesian multi-asset investment platform Ajaib Group, acquiring approximately 20% minority equity, making the Jakarta-based Ajaib an equity method associate of SBI. Ajaib confirmed this strategic investment in a LinkedIn post on Friday, stating that it is the largest tech financing in Indonesia since 2022, bringing its total funding since 2019 to over $500 million.Ajaib offers investment channels including domestic and international stocks, bonds, mutual funds, exchange-traded funds, crypto assets, stablecoins, commodities, and foreign exchange, while also covering payment and savings services, and providing over-the-counter stablecoin settlement services and liquidity support for Indonesian businesses and institutional investors. SBI stated that this collaboration will promote the adoption of digital assets in Asia and continue to expand its business footprint in the region.The SBI Group operates the Japanese crypto exchange SBI VC Trade, the Singapore exchange Coinhako, and the UK market maker B2C2. Other digital asset projects include the yen stablecoin JPYSC and the Layer 1 blockchain Strium developed for financial applications. SBI Holdings Chairman and President Yoshitaka Kitao stated that in the era of tokenization, the importance of global infrastructure for digital assets is increasingly prominent. SBI is establishing a network of digital asset exchanges in Southeast Asia through the "SBI APAC Digital Economic Zone" initiative, and Ajaib's model of combining traditional financial products with digital assets aligns with this strategy.

According to The Block, research and brokerage firm Bernstein stated that Bitcoin mining company IREN plans to invest $25 billion to $30 billion to expand its AI cloud business in fiscal year 2027. This scale of capital expenditure may "scare the market," but analysts believe investors are overlooking the improving economic benefits.Bernstein analyst Gautam Chhugani pointed out in a report to clients on Friday that the payback period for GPU capital expenditures has shortened from about three years under the 2025 Microsoft contract to about two years. IREN's fiscal year 2026 performance released on Thursday showed that AI cloud service revenue grew nearly eightfold from $16.4 million the previous year to $128.8 million, while Bitcoin mining revenue reached $578.2 million, a year-on-year increase of 19%. Total revenue rose from $501 million to $707 million, but the company recorded a net loss of $702.6 million, partly reflecting a $638.8 million impairment due to the retirement of Bitcoin mining hardware to support AI cloud expansion.Bernstein stated that IREN currently has an annualized run rate revenue of $1 billion from operating cloud and $4 billion in contract revenue, with its 2026 capacity nearly sold out. In addition to the expected $700 million related to the Nvidia contract in 2027, IREN's total contract cloud ARR amounts to $4.7 billion. Over the past 12 months, IREN has raised $19 billion through customer prepayments, GPU financing, convertible bonds, and equity issuance.

SoftBank Group is seeking an additional $10 billion loan to refinance the related debt incurred from its investment in OpenAI and to raise further funds. According to informed sources, this loan has a term of two years and an interest rate approximately 275 basis points higher than the secured overnight financing rate (SOFR), with Mizuho Bank serving as the lead arranger and bookrunner.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has filed civil lawsuits against 38 entities, accusing them of making significant false statements in the Form ADV documents submitted between 2025 and 2026, in order to present themselves as legitimate U.S. investment advisors and attract retail investors.The defendants include several entities involved in cryptocurrency business, such as CryptoOrbit, Ftaexchange, Pinnacle Crypto Exchange, Quantum Financial Institute, and RBH Infinity Exchange. The SEC has removed the relevant ERA filings of the aforementioned 38 entities from its website and is seeking a permanent injunction and civil penalties.

According to LatePost, the general robotics company Sharpa has completed over 4.5 billion yuan in financing, with investors including Alibaba, Meituan, Tencent, JD.com, and other industrial capital, as well as Sequoia China, Qiming Venture Partners, and Meituan Longzhu. The post-investment valuation is 22 billion yuan. This is the first time Sharpa has publicly disclosed its financing since its establishment.Sharpa was founded at the end of 2024 by He Sai Technology CEO Li Yifan, CTO Xiang Shaoqing, and Chief Scientist Sun Kai, focusing on developing general-purpose robots and components that specialize in dexterous operations. Co-founder Li Yifan stated that Sharpa's logic is to first "navigate" several real-world scenarios, accumulating generalized capabilities and real data on the "track," gradually entering households starting in 2028; real scenarios must meet three conditions: the environment is not specially modified for robots, operations are fully autonomous by robots, and complex tasks involving multiple steps are completed.

Capital B issued approximately 36.22 million shares with warrants (ABSA) to global institutional investors at a price of €0.58 per share, raising approximately €21 million, with a net fundraising of about €19.9 million after deducting related expenses.Strategic investors include early Bitcoin developer Adam Back and asset management company TOBAM, with Maxim Group serving as the exclusive placement agent. Capital B is a French Bitcoin reserve publicly listed company, primarily advancing a Bitcoin treasury strategy. This round of funding is planned to be used to further acquire approximately 270 Bitcoins, and after the transaction is completed, its Bitcoin holdings are expected to increase to about 3,415 Bitcoins.

According to TokenPost, Park Seung-jin, head of the Digital Asset Strategy Department at Korea Investment & Securities, stated in an interview with Yonhap Infomax that the company is preparing to move beyond fragmented investments in the token securities market and enter the tokenization of standardized securities such as stocks and bonds. If regulations allow, the company hopes to leverage its experience as an early entrant in the issuance of notes, IMAs, and other areas to become the first institution to enter this market.Park Seung-jin emphasized that even with significant first-mover advantages in the market, it is essential to prioritize discovering and supplying products that can win customer trust. The company will rely on the capabilities accumulated by its investment banking headquarters, project financing department, and investment products department to provide trustworthy products for investors. The Digital Asset Strategy Department started last year with a special task force and was officially established at the beginning of this year, focusing on token securities, stablecoins, and collaboration with Coinone.Korea Investment & Securities is entering the digital asset market by investing in Coinone shares. Park Seung-jin believes that the virtual asset sector should be led by trading platforms that are more familiar with the business, with both parties collaborating. Current collaboration has begun with providing domestic stock investment information from Korea Investment & Securities in the Coinone app, while simultaneously reviewing internal controls and security. The formal cooperation is expected to commence after the passage of the Digital Asset Basic Law currently under review in the National Assembly. The company is also paying attention to stablecoins, viewing them as a convenient payment method, and is researching solutions for settling other goods.

According to Crunchbase, AI fraud prevention company Socure announced the completion of a $156 million strategic growth round financing, with the company's valuation reaching $5.2 billion. Summit Partners led the investment, with participation from Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs Alternatives, Docusign, and others. Currently, its fraud prevention services are applied to companies such as cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, stablecoin issuer Circle, digital bank Revolut, and Robinhood.In addition, the company also announced the acquisition of AI startup Fravity, aiming to leverage AI agents to conduct fraud, risk, and compliance investigations, with the specific acquisition amount not yet disclosed.

NBA star Kevin Durant initially invested $250,000 in the open-source AI platform Hugging Face. With Nvidia agreeing to acquire Hugging Face for $12.9 billion, the value of this investment could rise to over $60 million.Hugging Face has become an important platform for the development and distribution of AI models and has ventured into the cryptocurrency field through decentralized AI projects.

Consumer rights organization Public Citizen released a report stating that U.S. President Trump and his family's cryptocurrency projects have resulted in investor losses of at least $4.7 billion since 2022. Most of the losses stem from the TRUMP meme coin issued by Trump, with investors losing about $3.2 billion, while buyers of World Liberty Financial's USD1 stablecoin "have not suffered significant losses."The report noted that Trump profited $7.2 million from NFT royalties, over $600 million from the sale of World Liberty tokens and equity, $635 million from meme coin royalties, and $197 million in revenue from investing in World Liberty. These figures do not include the company and project shares he continues to hold, and some data is included in the President's 2025 disclosure documents, showing his cryptocurrency-related income reached $1.4 billion.Public Citizen once again called for the inclusion of ethical provisions in the Digital Asset Market Clarification Act (CLARITY Act), requiring the U.S. President and his family to divest from industry-related projects. The bill is scheduled for a final vote on September 15 and requires support from at least 60 senators to advance. White House spokesperson Anna Kelly previously responded that Trump's cryptocurrency investments "do not present a conflict of interest."

Mirae Asset, a South Korean financial group, announced the establishment of a digital asset business with a scale of $109 billion. The group will rely on its cryptocurrency exchange Digital X (formerly Korbit) to focus on the layout of cryptocurrencies, stablecoins, and the tokenization of real assets.

According to the New York Times, citing two informed sources, Meta had internally predicted this year that it might invest up to $10 billion annually in Anthropic's AI models.

The decentralized lending protocol Moonwell is investigating issues affecting the MAMO Core Market on Base. Security firms CertiK and PeckShield have flagged a multi-million dollar exploit incident, estimating losses of approximately $8.7 million.Moonwell stated on X that as a precaution, the borrowing limit for all Core Markets on Base has been set to 1 wei, and the supply limits for MAMO and WELL have also been set to 1 wei. PeckShield noted that the attacker aggregated stolen funds to an address for the DAI stablecoin; CertiK indicated that the attacker manipulated the collateral price of the low liquidity MAMO token and then borrowed real cbBTC from the mCBTC market to carry out the attack, with Blockaid also identifying the same attack mechanism.As a result, the WELL token dropped about 13% in 24 hours, while MAMO fell about 9%. This exploit incident is part of a period of frequent DeFi vulnerabilities since April, during which multiple protocols have been hacked for over $600 million, with the largest being a $292 million exploit of Kelp DAO.

The fixed-rate lending protocol TermMax (parent company Term Structure Labs) announced a strategic investment from YZi Labs, with the amount undisclosed. TermMax is a selected project in the YZi Labs incubation program EASY Residency for the third quarter. The protocol has raised over $8 million in total financing, with previous investors including lead investor Cumberland DRW from the 2023 seed round, as well as HashKey Capital, Decima Fund, Longling Capital, MZ Web3 Fund, and other institutions.The TermMax mainnet is set to launch in April 2025 and is currently deployed on 10 EVM-compatible chains, operating 60 fixed-rate markets and 40 strategy vaults, with a total locked value of tens of millions of dollars and over 1.5 million registered wallets. The protocol achieves fixed-rate lending by splitting debt into three tradable tokens: FT (zero-coupon bonds), XT (interest and option value), and GT (leverage position certificates), with settlement using physical delivery.Its token $TMX completed its TGE on August 25, with trading on the first day across platforms such as Binance Alpha, Kraken, Bitget, MEXC, and KuCoin. It is reported that TermMax will subsequently advance in three directions: on-chain yield curves, interest and options markets for tokenized stocks, and the institutional financing platform TermPrime.

According to Bloomberg, the Orange County Employees Retirement System invested $60 million in SpaceX about eight years ago, and now that investment has grown to approximately $2 billion.Although the significant appreciation of the investment has brought considerable returns to the pension fund, it has also resulted in a concentration of assets that is significantly higher than expected. As a result, the fund needs to reassess and adjust its risk management and portfolio strategy to address the long-term management challenges posed by the high proportion of a single high-volatility asset.

According to Bloomberg, the U.S. government is investigating Apex Logistics, headquartered in Singapore, for allegedly playing a role in smuggling NVIDIA AI chips to China. Sources say this could become the first action against a transportation company involved in illegal semiconductor trade.Authorities are verifying whether Apex (a unit of shipping giant Kuehne+Nagel) violated U.S. export restrictions by transporting AI systems assembled by Super Micro Computer. NVIDIA chips are regarded as the industry standard for training and running AI models, and companies like Super Micro Computer assemble them into data center servers.