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The town of Plattsburgh, New York, held a public hearing to discuss a temporary land use moratorium on "high energy consumption computing facilities" such as cryptocurrency mining and AI data centers. If the proposal is approved, it will pause the approval of related operational applications that consume 300 kilowatts or more for 12 months. As of Tuesday, the mayor has not yet approved the moratorium, and the city council plans to meet again on September 17.Plattsburgh is one of the first areas in the United States to implement a ban on Bitcoin mining, having enacted an 18-month moratorium in 2018 due to residents' concerns about electricity costs. Now, with rising mining difficulty, increasing electricity costs, and falling token prices, many cryptocurrency mining companies have turned to AI and high-performance computing, prompting local governments to reconsider restrictions on high energy consumption facilities.

The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) has released a proposed announcement to suspend the acceptance of new applications for registration of payment system operators (OPS) for 12 months and to implement stricter controls on payment arrangements involving virtual asset service providers (VASP). The BSP stated that this move aims to conduct a comprehensive review of its classification and licensing framework.According to the draft, during the suspension period, the BSP will stop accepting and processing OPS applications. Applications submitted prior to the suspension can continue to be evaluated, but will not be approved or rejected until the suspension ends. Relevant entities are prohibited from conducting business activities that require OPS registration unless they obtain special authorization from the regulatory agency. In addition, BSP-regulated entities providing merchant acquiring services must connect licensed VASPs through direct merchant arrangements, and such relationships will be subject to enhanced due diligence, transaction and settlement limits, and other risk control measures.This requirement applies to virtual asset enterprises licensed, registered, or authorized by the BSP, the Securities and Exchange Commission of the Philippines, or other regulatory agencies, with VASPs being categorized alongside betting, gaming, adult industry, and money service businesses. If the draft is ultimately approved, it will take effect 15 days after publication, and the BSP is currently seeking public comments.

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.

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) announced on Friday that former White House teleprompter operator Gabriel Perez has agreed to pay $172,000 to settle allegations of insider trading in the prediction market by using advance knowledge of presidential speeches.Perez was able to access the content before the speeches were released due to his job, allowing him to bet on known outcomes. From December 2025 to February 2026, he profited over $107,500 from this. Under the settlement agreement, he must forfeit $107,539.02 in illegal gains, pay a civil penalty of $65,000, accept a three-year trading ban, and cease further violations of the Commodity Exchange Act.The CFTC noted that the fine was significantly discounted under the new cooperation policy and praised Perez for providing exemplary assistance during the investigation, while also thanking exchange operator Kalshi for their cooperation in the case. This case highlights the insider trading risks associated with the growing popularity of prediction markets. Previously, a U.S. soldier was charged with insider trading related to military operations in Venezuela on Polymarket, and a MrBeast video editor was also fired during the Kalshi insider trading investigation.

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) ordered former White House teleprompter operator Gabriel Perez to pay a fine of $172,539 this Friday for illegally trading on a prediction market platform using advance knowledge of Trump's speech content.According to a settlement agreement with the CFTC, Perez must return illegal profits of $107,539.02 and pay a civil penalty of $65,000. He also agreed to a three-year trading ban and committed to cease and not violate the Commodity Exchange Act and CFTC regulations.The CFTC noted that Perez traded Trump "mention market" contracts on the Kalshi platform during his time at the White House from December 2025 to February 2026. These contracts are event contracts that determine payouts based on whether the president uses specific words or phrases in a speech.

Bitcoin News posted on the X platform that Core Lightning version 26.06.7 has been released, fixing multiple vulnerabilities disclosed responsibly over the past three weeks. The AI-generated security reports for the open-source Bitcoin project have recently increased, and specific vulnerability information will be kept confidential for two weeks to allow node operators to complete upgrades before the technical details and source code are disclosed.Developers warn that immediate disclosure of the fixes could allow attackers to reverse-engineer the vulnerabilities and subsequently attack nodes that have not yet been updated. All Core Lightning node operators should upgrade immediately. Currently, the Docker image is not available, and developers explicitly warn users not to wait for the Docker image.

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang stated that although the industry is shifting towards developing custom chips, cutting-edge AI laboratories will remain long-term customers of NVIDIA.

NVIDIA's Chief Financial Officer stated that the company will provide selective credit enhancement support for another cutting-edge AI laboratory's nearly 2 gigawatt computing power project.

NVIDIA (NVDA.O) Chief Financial Officer stated that the company has invested $50 billion in frontier AI laboratories.

Core Lightning maintains that node operators should shut down their nodes unless they upgrade to an unreleased version. This warning was spread via Discord and amplified by Cashu protocol developer Calle, who stated that there is a serious vulnerability. The fix binary has not yet been released, and the details of the vulnerability are under a two-week confidentiality period.This is the fourth security alert for Bitcoin infrastructure in four weeks. Previously, a Coldcard firmware vulnerability led to approximately $114 million in BTC being stolen, and issues have also arisen with Boltz and BTCPay Server. The CLN team stated that they have received multiple AI-generated CVE reports in the past 10 days and are intensifying verification and fixes.

According to Newswire, IBM announced that it has completed the acquisition of HRL Laboratories, LLC, a leading research and development institution specializing in quantum computing, quantum sensing, advanced communications, electronics, manufacturing, and materials science. This acquisition also complements IBM's broader innovations and investments in the fields of quantum manufacturing and infrastructure.HRL's expertise in silicon-based quantum technology creates opportunities for future collaboration with IBM's pure quantum wafer fabrication plant, Anderon, supporting scalable manufacturing methods and accelerating the learning cycles of various quantum computing paradigms. Boeing and General Motors (the former owners of HRL) will continue to collaborate with IBM and HRL on quantum applications and advanced technology development. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

According to Bits.media, Russia's three major telecom operators MTS, Rostelecom, and Megafon announced that they will start accepting digital ruble payments from September 1. MTS will support the use of digital rubles for all services within its payment module MTS Pay, with no category restrictions. Rostelecom will initially only support one-time payments on its official website, and will later expand to personal accounts; regular payments and automatic top-ups will depend on the readiness of the central bank's platform. Megafon will also offer it as an additional payment method.The two major e-commerce platforms, Wildberries and Ozon, also announced the activation of digital rubles on the same day. According to the law, starting from September 1, all large enterprises in Russia must be able to process digital ruble transactions, and the apps of 12 systemically important banks must have an entry point for digital ruble wallets. The central bank plans to impose limits on the recharge of digital wallets, with a maximum of 300,000 rubles per month through a single bank.

On August 26, according to the Korea Herald, South Korean cryptocurrency exchange operator Dunamu has been designated by the Ministry of the Interior and Safety as a "Joint Utilization Agency for Administrative Information," becoming the first cryptocurrency exchange operator in South Korea to obtain this qualification. The Ministry of the Interior and Safety completed on-site inspections and qualification reviews in May of this year and made the designation decision this month.Dunamu plans to use this system for user identity verification (KYC), reducing the process of users repeatedly submitting proof materials by accessing relevant administrative information, thereby improving the efficiency of account opening and account verification.

Micron Technology's CEO announced the establishment of Micron Research Labs, planning to invest $10 billion, with an investment cycle measured in decades. The lab will bring together customers, suppliers, academia, government, and the broader semiconductor ecosystem, dedicated to breaking through existing technology roadmaps and exploring future possibilities.Micron stated that this move reflects a long-term commitment to early innovation. The company's team has accumulated over 62,000 patents. Micron Research Labs will join Micron's investment layout of over $250 billion in U.S. manufacturing, expected to create more than 90,000 American jobs, covering fabs, engineers, technicians, apprentices, suppliers, and communities.Micron emphasized that current decisions will determine who can lead the future AI economy, and the future of AI in the U.S. will be built on memory manufactured in the U.S., produced by Micron.

The Frontier Data Research Laboratory idler announced the completion of a $9 million seed round financing, led by Alpo and Frankie from Paradigm, with participation from Y Combinator, Long Journey VC, as well as angel investors including marrc, catheryn_li, dcposch, Janine Leger, Lynett Capital, feross, and nur_daulet_.idler is positioned as a frontier data research laboratory, and this round of funding will be used to build evaluation systems, benchmark testing, and reinforcement learning environments for leading frontier laboratories worldwide to train and measure their model performance.

Base officially announced that its accelerator program Base Batches 004 is now open for applications, targeting the Fall 2026 batch, with a deadline of September 9. The program is jointly operated by Base and the Base Ecosystem Fund, aiming to help early teams building on Base to launch, fundraise, and achieve growth. Selected teams will receive a $100,000 investment offer from the Base Ecosystem Fund (subject to due diligence) and participate in an 8-week hands-on support program to refine their product and narrative, culminating in a Demo Day in November in New York to present to selected investors.Applicant teams must meet the following criteria: be in the early stage (from having a founder-market fit product to post-MVP), be in the pre-seed stage without completing a formal seed round, prefer Base as their primary network, and focus on driving on-chain economic development, covering areas such as transactions, payments, smart contracts, or financing. Selected teams will also receive exclusive advisor guidance, weekly support, cross-domain expert resources, content exposure, and opportunities to showcase to investors. Base stated that applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis and encourages early submission, with the application address being base.org/batches.

According to Bloomberg, AI data center operator DataVita announced the completion of a $406 million financing round, with participation from ING, ABN AMRO, Banco Santander, the Scottish National Investment Bank, and Siemens Financial Services.The new funds will be used for the AI data center park and a 15-year data center lease agreement with AI cloud service provider CoreWeave.

Eclipse founder Neel Somani published an analysis stating that by leasing diesel generator sets, AI data centers can bypass grid access bottlenecks and complete deployment within months. Taking a 50MW inference data center as an example, about 40 leased diesel units are needed (monthly rent of approximately 2 million USD), consuming about 2.5 million gallons of diesel each month (approximately 12.5 million USD), with the cooling system costing about 1 million USD, and the total hardware investment being about 1.9 billion USD (including approximately 21,000 GPUs and supporting network equipment). Based on similar leasing agreements like Colossus 2, monthly revenue could reach approximately 180 million USD.

According to CoinDesk, a South Korean court sentenced a cryptocurrency platform operator to 15 years in prison this week, involving an amount of approximately 50 million USD. This ruling is considered one of the longest sentences handed down in South Korea to date for cryptocurrency fraud.Reports indicate that this case occurred against the backdrop of South Korea strengthening its scrutiny of outbound fund transfers and related platforms like Binance implementing restrictive measures, reflecting the local regulatory authorities' ongoing tightening of efforts to combat cryptocurrency fraud and capital outflows.

Upbit operator Dunamu announced its performance for the second quarter of 2026, with quarterly revenue of 173.5 billion won (approximately 12.3 million USD) and operating profit of 23.5 billion won (approximately 1.665 million USD), a decrease of about 26% and 73% respectively compared to the first quarter.In the first quarter, Dunamu's revenue was 234.6 billion won (approximately 16.6 million USD) and operating profit was 88 billion won (approximately 6.234 million USD). Dunamu stated that the decline in performance this quarter was mainly affected by the overall liquidity contraction in the global digital asset market, leading to weakened investor sentiment.