nomic

According to Fox News, senior U.S. officials stated that the U.S. military has struck targets near Hormuz Island and Jask, including Iranian oil tankers. This is part of a larger operation to economically squeeze Iran, with strategies that include sinking and incapacitating Iranian crude oil tankers.

AI Economic Settlement Agreement AEON announces the launch of Agentic Checkout, supporting AI Agents to complete product search, selection, checkout, and payment through natural language dialogue in the Shopify open merchant ecosystem. The payment process is supported by the AEON AI Card, a virtual card that can set predefined spending limits and authorization scopes, allowing AI agents to complete payments without directly accessing the user's main wallet or main card.AEON Agentic Checkout currently covers over 3 million active stores on Shopify and more than 1 billion products, and will later integrate with the Claude open-source e-commerce agent, expanding to shopping and payment scenarios such as Amazon and Travala.

The Ministry of Economic Affairs of Taiwan has confirmed that Taiwanese companies will invest an additional 20 billion USD in the United States. Minister of Economic Affairs Wang Mei-hua stated that in response to order demands, in addition to the main production bases in Taiwan, capacity will also be increased in the United States, primarily focusing on semiconductor manufacturers, supply chains, and AI server manufacturers.U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo previously stated that Taiwan would announce investments of 20 to 30 billion USD in the U.S. next week. The Ministry of Economic Affairs responded that this investment is the 20 billion USD announced by Wang Mei-hua during the opening of the SEMICON TAIWAN 2026 U.S. Pavilion on the 2nd. Wang Mei-hua pointed out that global orders for AI and semiconductors are booming, and the global president of SEMI has raised the forecast for global semiconductor revenue in 2030 from 1 trillion USD to 2 trillion USD.The Ministry of Economic Affairs' review shows that as of May this year, 20 semiconductor and AI server-related companies have announced investments of 35 billion USD in the United States, with an additional 20 billion USD added in the following months. Future cooperation will also extend to industries such as biotechnology and natural gas.

Research institution Delphi Digital stated that hardware limitations are driving Chinese laboratories to shift towards cheaper models and more efficient technology stacks. Export control restrictions limit their access to advanced chips, while domestic accelerators can handle inference, but cutting-edge training remains difficult to achieve. Chinese laboratories are innovating in system efficiency, model architecture, training data, and reinforcement learning. DeepSeek has found a way to avoid GPU idle data movement, and ByteDance and Moonshot are set to release similar versions within months.In terms of architecture, training is shifting to cheaper digital formats that are compatible with domestic chips. Sparse architectures reduce the runtime per token, and the attention mechanism has been redesigned three times to control the memory costs of long context. In terms of data, denser prediction targets and better optimizers enhance the learning signal per token. In reinforcement learning, DeepSeek's GRPO has become the default recipe, with ByteDance, Alibaba, and MiniMax each launching successor plans within a year. Chinese models are now among the lowest-cost cutting-edge adjacent systems.On OpenRouter, the proportion of token consumption by Chinese developed models is expected to rise from less than 1.2% at the end of 2024 to the majority by 2026. The Chinese AI market is experiencing a price war from 2024 to early 2026, with several laboratories implying revenue multiples of about 47-117 times, while Anthropic and OpenAI are around 15-21 times. Huawei's Ascend chips are currently available for inference, and DeepSeek reportedly attempted to train R2 on Ascend but returned to NVIDIA after encountering technical issues. Domestic accelerator supply remains below estimated demand.

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, stated via video link at the G20 summit held in Asheville, North Carolina, on Tuesday that the productivity improvements brought by AI are already evident, and robotics technology will further push productivity to new heights. He predicts that AI could increase the global economy's scale by 20% to 30%, adding approximately $20 trillion to $30 trillion to annual economic output.Musk forecasts that the number of humanoid robots worldwide will reach 1 billion within the next decade, with these robots producing at least five times more than humans. The widespread application of humanoid robots could expand the global economy's scale by more than tenfold. He also predicts that by the end of next year, AI will be able to handle almost all digital tasks that do not involve changing the real physical world, with AI software reaching Stockfish levels, making it impossible for humans to compete in software development. He expects that within 12 to 18 months, AI will excel in all forms of engineering and digital work.As Musk made these remarks, SpaceX is ramping up its investment in AI. SpaceX's AI business generated $2.6 billion in revenue in the second quarter, a year-on-year increase of 247%. The company invested $15.8 billion in AI infrastructure in the second quarter, primarily for the expansion of the Colossus II data center, accounting for about 86% of total capital expenditures. Recently, SpaceX acquired the AI programming platform Cursor for $60 billion and released its latest AI model, Grok 4.6.

According to Cointelegraph, the U.S. Department of Commerce has officially adopted Chainlink to publish core macroeconomic data on-chain, covering key indicators such as actual GDP, PCE price index, and real final sales of private domestic purchasers, marking the first deep integration of traditional government data with blockchain infrastructure.

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."

The long-established financial media in Hong Kong, "Hong Kong Economic Journal," published a column article citing statistics from RootData, indicating that in the first seven months of 2026, over 100 cryptocurrency projects have announced shutdowns, bankruptcies, or indefinite service suspensions. The article states that the actual number of closures may be higher, as many projects have not officially announced their status but are "slowly disappearing."The article further states that this wave of closures is not limited to a single sub-sector but is widely affecting various projects, including exchanges, wallets, DeFi, DAO tools, Layer 2, and infrastructure, showing a trend of spreading across the entire sector.

The Ethena Foundation announced significant reforms to its tokenomics, with the ENA token rising 23% to $0.17 within 24 hours. The reforms include the cancellation of the monthly VC unlock schedule and a proposal to use protocol revenue to buy back ENA. ENA holders are voting to decide on the "fee switch," where 95% of the net income from Ethena's brand business will be used for programmatic purchases of ENA when the circulation of USDe reaches $7.5 billion, with the remaining 5% allocated for growth.Ethena Labs and the Foundation have also reached a principled agreement to assign most of the intellectual property and economic benefits of the Ethena protocol to the Foundation and ecosystem, rather than to Ethena Labs shareholders. This agreement is expected to be announced in October. The reforms come as the supply of USDe has decreased from a peak of nearly $15 billion in October to below $5 billion, with part of its revenue relying on derivative funding rates, which have diminished as the crypto market cools.In search of new sources of growth, Ethena announced last week a $1 billion facility with FalconX to bring USDe collateral into over-collateralized institutional loans. Additionally, Janus Henderson invested in ENA in June and is exploring USDe distribution, while Coinbase has also launched a savings product in collaboration with Ethena.

Flop Labs announced the FLOP token economics draft, with no VC allocation, no presale, and airdrops aimed at miners, validators, agents, and early community participants.According to the draft chart, the total supply of tokens is expected to reach 17.2 billion in the 10th year, with a terminal year inflation rate of 0.6%; in the total supply distribution, miners account for the highest proportion at 51.2% (8.8 billion), airdrops account for 20.4% (3.5 billion, subdivided into miners, validators, agents, and reserve incentives), the team and foundation account for 11.4% (2 billion), validators and brokers/agents each account for 6.8% (1.2 billion each), and staking rewards account for 3.4% (600 million).Flop Labs stated that an AMA hosted by Arthur Hayes (CryptoHayes) will be held next week on X Spaces/YouTube to announce more details. The project team emphasized that the above token economics data is all draft and specific details may change.

Arthur Hayes posted on the X platform that the FLOP tokenomics infographic for his AI/crypto project Flop Labs will be released this week. Hayes stated that there will be an AMA on X Spaces and YouTube next week to answer questions about the tokenomics and gather feedback to improve the design.

The Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council of Iran, Rezaei, stated that if the economic war continues, not a drop of oil will be exported from anywhere in the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf.Iran will consider any country that participates in or supports the economic war against the Iranian people as an act of war.

Strategy Executive Chairman Michael Saylor posted on the X platform, stating that the most profound innovation of Bitcoin is its ability to convert economic energy into digital form and securely bind it to individuals, families, businesses, machines, and even nations.Michael Saylor pointed out that Bitcoin is not only a digital asset but also a brand new mechanism for value storage and economic coordination, allowing wealth to be preserved in digital form for the long term and verified and transferred globally. Bitcoin achieves secure control over digital value through decentralized networks and cryptographic technology, providing individuals and organizations with a form of economic asset that does not rely on traditional financial systems.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Becerra stated that a press conference will be held next Monday to discuss actions related to the economic sanctions on Iran. The maximum economic pressure regarding Iran means that military action is unlikely to be restarted. The oil market has misunderstood the implications of economic pressure.

Cronos Labs CEO Ryan Wyatt posted that the token economics of CRO need to be re-evaluated. In the coming months, the team has a lot to discuss and plan. In particular, the buyback and burn mechanism corresponding to Cronos App revenue, community burns, and other related arrangements.These topics have been included in the project's Q4 roadmap, and the complete plan will be gradually announced at that time.

AI economic infrastructure NeoSoul announced the completion of a $11 million Pre-A round of financing, with participation from MH Ventures, Amber Group, ArkStream Capital, 0G Foundation, Kirin Capital, CatcherVC, and New Oak International.NeoSoul stated that it will further develop NeoTrade, strengthening trading infrastructure to build underlying facilities for AI entities to participate in economic activities on a large scale.

U.S. President Trump announced the most severe economic sanctions against Iran in history, stating that this will be an unprecedented economic war and isolation.

Arthur Hayes posted that the FLOP white paper has not yet been released because the team is still communicating with relevant stakeholders to ensure that the final solution is robust enough in terms of technical design and token economics. The team chose to announce FLOP in advance to gather more feedback.It is expected that starting next week, simple yet informative charts will be released to introduce the token economics design of FLOP.ChainCatcher previously reported that BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes announced his "comeback" as the head of Flop Labs, launching the token FLOP aimed at AI Agents, positioned as "fuel for AI agents."Hayes stated that FLOP will adopt a distribution model with no pre-sale, no venture capital institutions, and a 100% fair launch. The project team expects to conduct a large-scale airdrop in the fourth quarter of this year and to initiate the genesis block in the first quarter of 2027.

The decentralized AI infrastructure network DGrid AI announced the $DGAI token economic model, with a total supply of 1 billion $DGAI tokens. Of this, 50% will be allocated to node network operations and node incentives, 15% will be allocated to community growth and ecological participation, 10% will be allocated to team incentives and long-term development, 10% will be allocated to early investors, 8% will be allocated to airdrop rewards, and 7% will be allocated to initial liquidity and secondary market support.According to previous news, DGrid AI opened the $DGAI airdrop eligibility inquiry and application channel on August 17, and the window will remain open until 16:00 Beijing time on August 22.