mission

The Supreme Joint Military Command of Iran stated that any vessel passing through the Strait of Hormuz must obtain permission from Iran.

BIP-110 soft fork has stalled due to support rates far below standard, with thousands of nodes isolated. Just two days after the incident, the Bitcoin BIP editing team removed the editing privileges of the proposal leader Luke Dashjr on Monday. Editor Mark Erhardt proposed a motion for dismissal, citing reasons including conflicts of interest, minimal contributions, leading a controversial fork, and coordination breakdown.Supporters pointed out that Dashjr used his editing privileges to favor the BIP-110 proposal, assigning numbers and quickly merging PRs before discussions on the mailing list, and has contributed less than 1% since April 2024. The peak signal support for BIP-110 was only 2.53%, far from the 55% threshold, and the forced chain has stalled at a height of 961,633. Ocean was the only mining pool signaling before the fork, and has now resumed non-BIP-110 work. Dashjr announced the suspension of his roles as Chairman and CTO of Ocean four minutes before the dismissal confirmation, shifting to Bitcoin open-source projects, but still serves as the chief maintainer of Bitcoin Knots. The price of Bitcoin was unaffected by the incident.

Starting from August 10, hotel orders placed through the Doubao entrance that redirect to Douyin Laike will begin to execute independent rates, with a software service fee of 11.4%, a payment processing fee of 0.6%, and a comprehensive rate of approximately 12%. This policy is implemented based on the "2026 Douyin Life Service Platform Specific Channel Software Service Fee Policy Explanation" released by the Douyin Life Service Learning Center on July 27, and is effective from August 10, 2026.According to industry insiders, the relevant notification has been communicated to merchants through the Douyin Laike backend. The software service fee is based on the "actual amount paid by the user plus platform general coupons and other subsidies." Specific channels include Doubao, and the specific rates are implemented based on differentiated standards according to merchant type, product category, and transaction channel. Whether an order belongs to a specific channel is subject to the display on the settlement statement.

The Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC) will conduct on-site inspections and off-site reviews of authorized crypto asset service providers from the second half of 2026 to the first half of 2027, with a focus on institutions providing digital asset custody services.This action is part of the 2026 joint supervisory action coordinated by the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), which aims to assess areas such as institutional governance and control frameworks, key and storage management, private key security, wallet storage, and access controls.The review will also cover trading controls, monitoring and incident response, smart contract security, and third-party risk management. CySEC stated that the relevant standards are mandatory, and the institutions' compliance readiness will be used as a selection criterion for subsequent inspections.

According to South Korean media NATE, the Korea Regulatory Reform Committee has proposed amendments to the enforcement decree of the Specific Financial Transaction Information Act, excluding minor violations from the qualification restrictions for major shareholders of Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASP).This move has sparked discussions in the market regarding exchange mergers and acquisitions, the entry of new businesses, and the fairness of regulation. The proposal to relax restrictions also involves issues related to the boundaries of the enforcement decree's authority.

The Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission has announced that Polar Tensor has been included in the list of suspicious virtual asset trading platforms, and 17 related websites have been listed.The Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission reminds that Polar Tensor and its website are not licensed by the Commission to conduct regulated activities in Hong Kong.

BIP-110 supporter Dathon Ohm stated that the mandatory signaling for BIP-110 is expected to begin in about 290 blocks, approximately 48 hours. At that time, miners will need to signal through the block to indicate they are prepared for BIP-110; otherwise, the relevant blocks may be deemed invalid and discarded. He also suggested that miners and users upgrade to Bitcoin Knots nodes, stating that continuing to run Bitcoin Core after the mandatory signaling starts will pose security risks.BIP-110 is a Bitcoin Improvement Proposal aimed at limiting the size and manner of arbitrary data embedded in Bitcoin transactions at the consensus level. The main goal is to reduce the burden of "garbage data" on node storage and bandwidth from Ordinals inscriptions, BRC-20 tokens, Runes, large OP_RETURN payloads, and certain Taproot constructs used for data storage.

According to CoinDesk, Summer Mersinger, CEO of the Blockchain Association and former commissioner of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), published an article responding to the Wall Street Journal's editorial on August 4, accusing it of a fundamental misreading of the Clarity Act.Mersinger stated that the bill explicitly prohibits stablecoin rewards that are equivalent to bank deposit interest but allows for rewards similar to credit card points and user behavior-based incentive mechanisms. From the perspective of DeFi regulation, Section 10301 of the bill requires the SEC to establish regulatory rules for protocols that are "nominally decentralized and substantially controllable," which does not equate to regulatory exemption; Section 10201 includes digital commodity brokers under all reporting obligations of the Bank Secrecy Act and allocates $3 billion for state-level enforcement, contrary to the Wall Street Journal's accusations of insufficient regulation of illegal finance.Addressing concerns about the "shadow market" for tokenized securities, Mersinger emphasized that Section 10505 of the bill clearly states that securities remain subject to SEC oversight even after settlement on the blockchain. She believes that the Wall Street Journal is essentially defending the monopoly position of traditional financial institutions, which conflicts with the free market principles that the paper has consistently advocated.

Switzerland provides a regulatory path for anti-money laundering for crypto businesses through the Self-Regulatory Organization (SRO) model. Smaller crypto exchanges, brokers, and custodial wallet providers join the SRO under the framework authorized by the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA), which reviews their anti-money laundering control measures.When crypto businesses engage in financial intermediation activities such as token exchange, customer wallet custody, or payment token issuance in Switzerland, they must obtain a full license from FINMA or join an SRO. VQF, PolyReg, ARIF, and SO-FIT are responsible for supervising most crypto activities, and the review is usually completed within 2 to 4 months after the company submits its business plan, organizational structure, and anti-money laundering procedures.PolyReg, VQF, ARIF, and SO-FIT have jointly raised the minimum regulatory standards for virtual asset service providers at the beginning of 2026, covering transaction monitoring, blockchain analysis, and technical controls. The Swiss Federal Council initiated a consultation on new licensing categories for crypto custody, trading infrastructure, and payment tool issuance under the Financial Institutions Act at the end of 2025.

According to Bitcoin Archive, SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce stated that she remains optimistic about the U.S. Congress passing the CLARITY Act and mentioned that there is still much that can be done even if the bill does not pass.Hester Peirce pointed out that the SEC will continue to advance relevant work, and regardless of whether the bill passes, the SEC will strive to push forward; even if the CLARITY Act fails to materialize, regulators still have significant room to promote the construction of a digital asset regulatory framework.Hester Peirce has previously called for clearer regulatory rules for crypto assets, believing that a clear market structure helps the U.S. maintain competitiveness in the digital asset space and reduces the long-term uncertainty faced by the industry.

The Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission has announced that BiFinance has been listed as a suspicious virtual asset trading platform. The Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission stated that the company claims to be licensed in Hong Kong and asserts that it offers digital asset trading services such as spot, futures, and wealth management on its website, as well as other services related to digital assets. However, the company is not licensed by the Securities and Futures Commission and is suspected of conducting unlicensed activities.

According to Jinshi, the China Securities Regulatory Commission and the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission jointly announced new measures to deepen practical cooperation and closely coordinate development between the two markets, covering various areas such as listing financing, index cooperation, futures products, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), internationalization of financial institutions, green finance, and facilitation of professional qualifications.

Jiang Yi, Director of the Policy Research Office of the National Development and Reform Commission, stated at a press conference on July 31 that in the first half of the year, China's pace of independent innovation in artificial intelligence has accelerated. Domestic companies such as Deep Exploration and Dark Side of the Moon have successively released open-source large models with parameter scales reaching "trillion" levels, and the global download volume of domestic large models has surpassed 10 billion times. The next step will focus on strengthening research and development in cutting-edge areas such as the basic theory of large models, training and inference efficiency, multimodality, and intelligent agents, and accelerating the layout and construction of national artificial intelligence application pilot bases, while vigorously cultivating intelligent derivative enterprises.Jiang Yi pointed out that there will be a coordinated approach to high-quality development and high-level security, accelerating the legislative process of the "Artificial Intelligence Law", constructing a "development---regulation---security" closed-loop system, establishing and improving technical monitoring, risk warning, and emergency response mechanisms, and adhering to the development concept of "human-led, for human use, and benevolent to humanity," actively responding to the impact of artificial intelligence on economic operation and employment distribution.

According to Jinshi reports, the White House and President Trump's peace committee believe that Hamas may sign an agreement in the coming days to gradually disarm and achieve the demilitarization of the Gaza Strip.

According to South Korean media Daum, the Financial Services Commission (FSC) of South Korea has announced that it has completed the draft of the "Digital Asset Framework Bill." Currently, only a few matters remain to be coordinated, and as the agenda for the second half of the year is determined by the South Korean National Assembly, efforts will be made to expedite the legislative process.It is reported that South Korea is considering including legal provisions related to AI Agent payments in the "Digital Asset Framework Bill" to address the trend of AI becoming a subject of small and high-frequency payments in the future. It is suggested to provide legal authorization for regulatory frameworks, including establishing customer identity verification (KYC) for AI Agent payments, defining payment responsibilities, foreign exchange declaration for cross-border transactions, and programmable payment standards.

The Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) issued a restriction notice to Futu Securities International (Hong Kong) Limited, prohibiting it from handling or disposing of assets in customer accounts held by a certain entity, limited to HKD 125,247,000. This entity is suspected of participating in a fraudulent scheme aimed at creating a false or misleading appearance of demand for initial public offering shares. Futu is not the subject of the SFC's investigation, and this restriction notice will not affect Futu or its other clients.According to the notice, Futu must not dispose of or handle the relevant account assets in any way without the SFC's written consent, and must immediately notify the SFC if it receives any instructions related to the restricted assets. The SFC believes that issuing this restriction notice is in the interest of investors and the public. The investigation is still ongoing.

The cryptocurrency card project Tria announced the distribution of over $600,000 in rewards to ambassadors who promoted platform growth during Season One and Season Two, including a $250,000 ambassador bonus pool (distributed based on commission performance grading from Season One, with up to 50% additional rewards) and over $350,000 in card consumption commissions (covering card consumption and membership purchase shares for referred users from January 31 to June 30).The ambassador bonus will be available for claims on July 31, and card consumption commissions will be credited in the coming weeks, with regular distributions on the last Tuesday of each month thereafter. Tria stated that more incentive programs will be opened in Season Three, and the ambassador program continues to recruit.

According to the official report from Ostium, the core of this attack lies in the intrusion of the off-chain price reporting system's permissions, unrelated to smart contract vulnerabilities. After gaining off-chain authorization, the attacker submitted forged prices (5,000 USD and 60,000 USD) to the BTC-USD market using the legally registered forwarding paths of the protocol, completing an atomic open-close arbitrage cycle within the same transaction, and starting with a rolling scale of 100 USDC. Through 8 transactions, they extracted 23.75 million USDC from the OLP treasury within 5 minutes, until the treasury's circuit breaker mechanism was triggered.The root cause is the lack of a multi-party approval mechanism at the same level as on-chain multi-signature in the off-chain infrastructure, creating a single point of permission vulnerability. The stolen funds have been converted to ETH and mixed through Tornado Cash, and tracking efforts are still ongoing.

According to Jinshi reports, SpaceX has obtained a $1.6 billion contract from the U.S. Space Force to carry out 18 Falcon 9 launch missions for launching military-guided satellites.