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Tibo, the product head of OpenAI Codex, stated that the number of active users has reached 25 million. To celebrate this milestone, the usage limits for all paid subscriptions of ChatGPT Work and Codex have now been reset.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Benczkowski vowed at the beginning of this week to launch an "economic assault" against Iran and its trading partners, once again attempting to end the war. However, by the weekend, countries with ties to Iran have so far dismissed this threat, and analysts are disappointed with the actions taken by the U.S.As the week nears its end, the U.S. announced plans to sanction the branch of Egypt's Misr Bank located in the UAE. Previously, Benczkowski had warned that the world would see "significant news of a financial institution being sanctioned before the end of this week," making this move far below expectations.Alex Zerden, a former U.S. Treasury official and founder of Capitol Peak Strategies, stated, "The actions publicly taken by the U.S. Treasury this week do not match the prior hype. The 'economic exile action' continues the restrictive economic measures against Iran that have been in place for 47 years, but it does not provide a clearer path for how this current action will achieve economic or military victory."

Cosmos Labs released a technical report, admitting that it previously misjudged an integer underflow vulnerability in the Cosmos EVM, which led to attacks on six blockchain networks between August 20 and 25, resulting in a total theft of approximately $5.7 million in tokens. The attacker exploited the vulnerability to underflow account balances to the maximum value of 2^256-1, then performed a reverse operation to transfer the inflated balance out, thereby stealing tokens from the target accounts without creating tokens out of thin air.The report shows that researchers submitted the defect through a bug bounty program on April 25, but testers were unable to reproduce it on the existing Cosmos chain configuration, so Cosmos Labs silently patched it in May. Independent researchers confirmed in early August that the vulnerability affected all Cosmos EVM chains, and Cosmos Labs released a patch on August 19, but the first attack occurred about 20 hours later.In terms of specific losses, MANTRA lost 720.9 million tokens (approximately $3.6 million), TAC lost nearly 3 billion TAC, and KiiChain lost about 148 million KII. Both MANTRA and KiiChain criticized Cosmos Labs for not notifying the affected chains in advance and suggesting a shutdown, with KiiChain stating that the patch would take several days to deploy while a shutdown would only take a few minutes. Cosmos Labs stated that it has coordinated responses with 40 chains and assisted 13 chains in completing repairs or shutdowns before being attacked.

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.

Polish Olympic Committee President Radosław Piszczek was arrested on Thursday, suspected of receiving kickbacks from the cryptocurrency platform Zondacrypto during the signing of a sponsorship agreement. Polish Sports Minister Jakub Rudnicki confirmed the arrest on the X platform, stating, "Such a person should not hold the position of President of the Polish Olympic Committee; Piszczek has brought shame to Polish sports." Interior Minister Marcin Kwiatkowski referred to him as "a symbol of extreme corruption plaguing the Olympic movement."According to the investigation, Piszczek facilitated the sponsorship agreement between the Polish Olympic Committee and Zondacrypto in October 2025, which promised cryptocurrency rewards to medalists of the 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics. The Polish government accused Zondacrypto of having ties to nationalist opposition groups, organized crime, and Russian intelligence agencies, estimating that the platform's collapse caused losses of about 350 million zlotys (approximately 80 million euros), affecting around 30,000 people. The Interior Minister described Zondacrypto as "essentially a Ponzi scheme."Media investigations also revealed that Piszczek received a Patek Philippe watch worth approximately 40,000 euros from Zondacrypto CEO Przemysław Kral, who claimed the watch was purchased out of his own pocket. Kral is currently cooperating with prosecutors in hopes of a reduced sentence. Zondacrypto was founded by Sylwester Sucheck in 2014, who went missing in 2022, with Kral taking over his position. The Polish prosecutors launched an investigation in April of this year, and most Polish sports federations subsequently called for Piszczek's resignation.

The Shanghai Public Security Bureau reported the investigation and resolution of a major underground money laundering case involving cross-border currency exchange using virtual currency, arresting more than 70 criminal suspects, with the amount involved exceeding 20 billion yuan.

As of July 26, NVIDIA's total future commitments for the fiscal year increased to $279 billion, primarily related to the procurement of storage chips.

According to Bloomberg, the U.S. SEC submitted a new proposal to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) on August 25, aimed at establishing a new custodial rules framework for investment advisors and investment companies holding client digital assets.The proposal will clarify the custodial framework for crypto assets, addressing previous questions from investment companies and advisors about how to hold digital assets for clients without violating regulatory requirements. It will also eliminate certain existing custodial requirements that the SEC considers outdated due to market evolution and current trading practices.The SEC stated that the proposal is part of Chairman Paul Atkins' efforts to modernize the regulatory framework. The complete details of the proposal will be made public after the OMB completes its review, after which it will be returned to the SEC, possibly with suggested modifications, and then voted on by a committee currently composed of three Republicans, before being announced publicly. As a matter of course, the SEC typically seeks at least 60 days of public comment before finalizing the proposal, followed by another vote for it to take effect.

Hyperliquid co-founder Jeff Yan stated that the manual borrowing feature of HyperCore has been launched on the testnet. Currently, all borrowing functions on the mainnet are still limited to the portfolio margin model.The HyperEVM smart contracts can now access HyperCore's lending features through CoreWriter and read-only precompiled contracts.

According to Chao Xiang Research, a Morgan Stanley report points out that the total off-balance-sheet commitments disclosed by hyperscale vendors, Nvidia, and Broadcom have exceeded $3.1 trillion. Among them, lease commitments amount to $1.1 trillion, procurement commitments to $1.7 trillion, and the total on-balance-sheet debt and lease liabilities of hyperscale vendors is $770 billion.Amazon and Google's free cash flow turned negative in the second quarter of 2026, and Meta is expected to follow suit next quarter. Financing tools are restructuring the capital structure of AI computing power from six aspects: off-balance-sheet lease and procurement commitments constitute the first layer of financing, the proportion of debt issuance rises from 2% in 2025 to 19% in 2026, Google frees up $110 billion by cutting buybacks and issuing equity, Oracle's customer prepayments in the second quarter amount to $4.6 billion, and Broadcom and Nvidia launched a chip leasing SPV to support unrated AI labs.Morgan Stanley believes that as the financing structure itself becomes a core variable of the AI supply chain, the importance of tracking off-balance-sheet commitments and changes in accounting judgments is approaching that of tracking chip shipments themselves.

According to the Form D document disclosed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the prediction market platform Kalshi Inc. is conducting a private equity offering under Rule 506(b) exemption, with a total issuance size of approximately $1.499998 billion, of which approximately $1.12001 billion has been sold, leaving approximately $379.99 million remaining for sale. The document shows that the first sale date is April 3, 2026, and 71 investors have already participated.

A Reuters survey shows that most economists believe the Bank of Japan will take action faster than previously expected, and will raise interest rates again in September, with the terminal rate potentially being higher. 57% of economists expect an interest rate hike next month, a significant increase from 5% in July. Ayako Fujita, Chief Economist for Japan at JPMorgan, stated that delaying the rate hike could lead to market turmoil. In addition, more than two-thirds of respondents believe that the recent US-Japan joint foreign exchange intervention has had limited effects.

Coinbase's policy head Faryar Shirzad stated that Coinbase has submitted a joint request for comments to the CFTC and SEC regarding the definition of perpetual derivatives products and alternative compliance pathways. He emphasized that it is essential to address the complexities of definitions and overlapping regulatory jurisdictions so that the U.S. can bring relevant activities under domestic regulation.Shirzad pointed out that clarifying the rules helps safely open relevant opportunities to U.S. consumers and maintain the competitiveness of the U.S. against foreign jurisdictions that already have significant first-mover advantages in this field. This response focuses on product definitions and compliance arrangements, aiming to promote the regulation of perpetual derivatives in the U.S.

Venture capitalist Tomasz Tunguz pointed out that the narrative of AI infrastructure resembles a slow relay race, with bottlenecks sequentially transmitting from GPUs to memory, CPUs, and storage, each link freezing the supply chain of the next for years and locking in higher baseline costs. At the beginning of 2023, the GPU shock caused H100 rental prices to exceed $9 per hour, and server shipments fell by 22%; subsequently, manufacturers shifted capacity to HBM, leading to an 80% quarterly increase in enterprise SSD prices and over a 60% rise in DRAM.By the end of 2025, the workload of intelligent agents will push the CPU to GPU ratio to about 1:1, with the average price of server CPUs rising by 27% year-on-year; in 2026, nearline HDD annual capacity will be sold out. The construction cost of data centers has risen to about $20 billion per gigawatt, with orders for long-cycle equipment such as transformers and turbines scheduled as far out as 2029 to 2031.Tunguz referred to this as the long whip effect in the hardware sector: years of manufacturing delays amplify downstream demand shocks upstream, and when pressure is relieved at a certain bottleneck, it will be delayed in transmitting to the next link, with transformers scheduled for delivery in 2027 to 2028, NAND wafer fabs, and turbine production lines potentially facing the risk of overcapacity.

20VC partner P_Bonnet published an article comparing the history of the aluminum industry to AI, exploring a scenario of "if everything goes well." Most supply shortages will turn into surpluses within 3-5 years and destroy value, but the aluminum industry has seen a price drop of over 99.9% and a market expansion of over 1000 times over more than a century, as each price reduction unlocks new uses rather than collapsing within the same market.AI Tokens are moving up the same cost ladder at nearly 10 times the speed, with the key point being that humans are no longer a constraint. Conversational AI is limited by human reading speed and user scale, while reasoning and agents can make consumers no longer human. Agentic AI may completely remove human limits, leaving only the rapidly improving costs and utilities. The aluminum industry also relied on technological breakthroughs to transform a cheap metal into a structural material.At the infrastructure level, Alcoa monopolized for decades through processes, its own ore, and electricity; Nvidia has accumulated processes like CUDA, with production capacity resembling leasing, and lacks its own power, as major clients have directly locked in nuclear power and are developing their own chips. Ultimately, value will shift to those who discover new uses that could not exist at old prices; price collapse, technological effectiveness, and capital migration are not opposites but the same outcome.

According to South Korean media NATE, Dunamu, the parent company of South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Upbit, responded to rumors of a U.S. listing, stating that the company has indeed been in contact with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), but has not yet confirmed a U.S. listing and has not converted its financial statement accounting standards to U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (US GAAP).Dunamu stated that it had previously only compared and understood the differences between Korean accounting standards and US GAAP, and is currently planning to complete a share exchange with Naver Financial by December 31. After the transaction is completed, both parties plan to establish an IPO committee and promote the listing within a year, but the specific country and market for the listing have not yet been determined. Market analysts believe that if a U.S. listing ultimately occurs, Dunamu and Upbit's Korean legal entity and existing business will remain unchanged, and it is expected that they may adopt the American Depositary Receipt (ADR) method.

WasabiCard's global remittance service supports over 30 fiat currencies, providing cross-border payment and bulk fund distribution capabilities for businesses, fintech platforms, and internet-native enterprises. Eligible payment channels support real-time or T+0 settlement.This service uses stablecoins as the funding allocation and settlement layer, connecting the traditional banking system with local payment networks. After completing the necessary KYC/KYB verification, users can deposit USDT into their WasabiCard accounts and exchange USDT for their chosen fiat currency through the global remittance feature, which is then transferred in real-time to the user's personal bank card account with the same name. In scenarios of corporate fund management and fund collection, eligible businesses can also use corporate bank accounts for receiving payments.Businesses can initiate payments to employees, contractors, suppliers, creators, affiliate partners, and platform merchants through a unified management backend or API. Core capabilities include bulk payments, smart routing, transparent exchange rates and fees, payment status tracking, and financial reconciliation.

According to Bitcoin.com News, the Central Bank of Russia has launched a special financial literacy test to lower the threshold for residents to qualify as accredited investors, in order to expand their cryptocurrency trading limits.

Jiang Zhuoer released a historical cycle comparison chart of Bitcoin on platform X, stating that if the low point of this cycle is around $57,800, based on historical cycle trends, the current market adjustment in terms of magnitude and duration is already quite close to the previous three cycles, and a large number of investors may currently be in a "missed out" state.Jiang Zhuoer mentioned that as the market continues to consolidate and fluctuate, the anxiety of investors missing out on the market (FOMO) may gradually intensify. Once capital flows back in, the space for further market decline may be limited. He believes that the subsequent trend may reference the "golden pit" in the market at the end of 2021, at which point a brief buying opportunity during a pullback may arise.

According to CryptoBriefing, Texas-based Bitcoin mining infrastructure company Bitari Inc. submitted an S-1 registration statement to the U.S. SEC on August 21, seeking to raise $30 million through an initial public offering (IPO) on the Nasdaq Global Market, with the stock ticker BIAI.This offering will issue 4,285,715 shares of common stock, priced at $7 per share, with expected total proceeds of approximately $30 million, and net proceeds of about $27 million after underwriting and related expenses. Bitari is responsible for building and operating the physical infrastructure required for Bitcoin mining. Its current core facility is a 20-megawatt operational mine located in Wheeler, Texas. A second 20-megawatt mine is under construction in Dumas, Texas, and the company also has a contracted 20-megawatt mine in Marion, Indiana.