delay

According to a report by Reuters, Anthropic is considering launching a new artificial intelligence model before its IPO, which may be delayed until after the U.S. midterm elections.

Zuckerberg stated that every lab has the responsibility and incentive to train models safely at the required speed and has the capability to take action independently. People will not use agents that are not aligned with them or do not act as required, so labs have a strong natural incentive to enhance model alignment. Trust and alignment are rapidly becoming the most important capabilities that distinguish agents from models, and any lab that does not focus on alignment will fall behind.Zuckerberg indicated that labs will face significant liability if their models cause harm, thus there is a strong incentive to prevent this. Meta has postponed the release of Muse by several months to focus on safety and security, and has not asked other labs to follow suit, but rather considers it part of their daily work. Hiring independent evaluators and consultants is an industry best practice, and MSL has been doing this in multiple areas. Allocating most computing power to serve people rather than competing for recursive self-improvement is one of the best ways to ensure the safe development of this technology, and Meta has made this commitment.

South Korean investors are once again pushing to delay the cryptocurrency capital gains tax scheduled to be implemented on January 1, 2027, but regulators insist on proceeding as planned. According to the South Korean National Assembly's electronic petition system, a petition requesting a two-year delay of the crypto tax plan has garnered 50,000 valid signatures, reaching the legislative review threshold, and will be automatically submitted for consideration by the relevant standing committee.South Korea plans to impose a 22% tax (including a 20% basic tax rate and a 2% local tax) on the portion of annual income from digital assets exceeding 2.5 million Korean won (approximately $1,856), covering income from the sale, transfer, and lending of cryptocurrency assets. This tax has been postponed three times since it was first discussed in 2022. Petitioners argue that the majority of crypto investors are suffering significant losses, with major South Korean crypto companies experiencing a decline in operating profits of up to 90%. Implementing the tax at this time would kick young people's wealth ladder away and could push investors toward offshore platforms.In May of this year, a petition calling for the abolition of the crypto tax reached the 50,000 signature threshold within eight days of submission but did not advance further. Meanwhile, the government's stance remains firm, with the nominee for the Minister of Economy and Finance, Lee Heung-ik (phonetic), stating last weekend that the crypto tax plan is proceeding as scheduled, and the National Tax Service will announce detailed tax standards later this year.

According to South Korean media MK, Min Byeong-deok, a member of the Democratic Party of Korea, revealed that the South Korean "Basic Law on Digital Assets" will be promoted for formulation within the year, with a public hearing planned for this month, and the formal advancement of the bill review will begin in November after the national government audit concludes. However, considering that the National Assembly will also conduct national government audits and budget reviews, the legislative timeline may be postponed until the first half of next year.In addition, the South Korean Financial Services Commission has announced a phased implementation roadmap for Security Token Offerings (STO), and financial institutions are also advancing tokenization system testing and global infrastructure cooperation. South Korea's digital asset regulation is gradually shifting from institutional discussions to the preparation phase for implementation.

According to CoinDesk, London challenger bank Monument Bank has postponed its £250 million (approximately $330 million) project to tokenize UK retail bank deposits for several months, as the bank has been unable to find a local crypto custodian that meets the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) standards and can handle zero-knowledge privacy proofs.Mintoo Bhandari, founder of Monument Bank, stated that the bank originally planned to tokenize customer deposits on the privacy public chain Midnight, hoping to launch the world's first tokenized deposits two months ago, but it is now expected to take another two months, with a retail customer launch in November. To meet regulatory requirements, the bank expanded its search for custodial partners to overseas, ultimately finding a Canadian custodian approved by the FCA.Midnight is a privacy-first Layer 1 blockchain project funded by Charles Hoskinson, which keeps customer information within the Monument system through zero-knowledge proofs while allowing the bank to prove compliance on-chain and provide audit records to regulators. Monument Bank announced the project in March this year, planning to offer tokenized private equity, structured products, and automated Lombard loans to "mass affluent" customers with investable assets ranging from £50,000 to £5 million.Bhandari stated that customer deposits will continue to earn interest, fully backed by Monument, and can be exchanged at a 1:1 ratio for pounds, protected by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS), with a limit of £120,000 per person or company.

U.S. Republican Senator Cynthia Lummis has once again criticized the Democrats for delaying the much-anticipated Clarity Act. Lummis stated in response to a Semafor report on the X platform that if the bill fails, the responsibility lies with the Democrats for failing to join Republicans in supporting this bipartisan legislation. She pointed out that the Democrats' continued demands for amendments could lead future regulatory agencies to "stifle the crypto industry." Lummis added that if the differences can be bridged, she believes the Clarity Act could pass, but this requires further compromise from the Democrats, rather than concessions from the White House. Lummis had previously stated that if the bill fails, it will be due to the Democrats. The U.S. Senate is set to hold a procedural vote on the bill next week, and Lummis warned that if it does not pass next week, there will be no realistic opportunity within this decade. The Clarity Act aims to formally delineate the responsibilities of regulatory agencies and distinguish whether digital assets are classified as securities, commodities, or stablecoins. The bill was passed by the House of Representatives last July but was shelved due to conflicts between banking lobbyists and crypto companies over customer stablecoin yield issues. A new draft circulating in July prohibits government officials from promoting or profiting from crypto, with Democrats criticizing the Trump family for venturing into this area, yet still deeming the bill insufficient and calling for amendments.

According to on-chain detective ZachXBT's monitoring, multiple verified WOO X users have recently reported that their withdrawals have remained in "pending" or "processing" status for the past three days. WOO X is incubated by Kronos Research and was acquired by FusionX Digital in the fourth quarter of 2025, which is reportedly associated with BitMart founder Sheldon Xia.Previously, BitMart announced the cessation of operations and restructuring on July 26, 2026, with some user funds still unable to be withdrawn, leading to an increase in related complaints on the X platform. Sheldon Xia has stated that user asset security is a priority, but this claim has not yet been independently verified. As of now, WooX has not issued a public statement regarding the withdrawal delay issue.

Arbitrum issued a clarification stating that Robinhood Chain did not experience downtime today. Due to the impact of L1 market Blob behavior, Robinhood Chain experienced delays in batch publishing, but user-initiated transactions were not affected by the delays.Arbitrum stated that some infrastructure service providers relying on data streams from Robinhood Chain experienced temporary performance impacts due to a high number of subscribed data sources. Currently, Robinhood Chain continues to operate normally.

According to The Block, Securitize President Brett Redfearn stated that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission withdrew the crypto innovation exemption rule last Friday due to concerns about the voting progress of the Clarity Act.Redfearn expects that the rule will be introduced after the Senate votes on September 15, possibly in early October.

According to Axios, payment giant Stripe stated in a letter to investors that January 1 marks "the beginning of a singularity," viewing it as a significant turning point in a long-term trend, and believes that maintaining a private structure is best suited for this critical moment, with the IPO likely to remain on hold. The company reported a 41% year-on-year revenue growth in the first half of the year and a 43% increase in free cash flow; 88% of the companies in Forbes AI 50 (including OpenAI and Anthropic) are building on its platform, with revenue from AI and crypto companies more than doubling year-on-year.Stripe also confirmed the acquisition of the AI routing platform OpenRouter, with the transaction amount not publicly disclosed; Axios learned that the amount exceeds $8 billion and is primarily paid in stock. Stripe stated that remaining private helps advance mergers and acquisitions and long-term investments without diluting shareholders, with its equity count now lower than three years ago, and a compound annual return of about 31% since the D round. The company stated that the total payment volume on its platform is expected to reach $1.9 trillion by 2025, a year-on-year growth of 34%; in February this year, the employee stock purchase valuation was approximately $159 billion. There are also reports that Stripe is in discussions with Advent International to acquire PayPal for about $53 billion.

According to Cointelegraph, DeFiLlama founder 0xngmi stated that the team had delayed the release of the official mobile application due to the long-standing presence of phishing apps impersonating DeFiLlama on the Apple App Store. The team will only release the official mobile application after all counterfeit apps have been removed to reduce the risk of users falling victim to scams.Yesterday, DeFiLlama founder 0xngmi stated, "We have been trying for months to get a fake app impersonating DeFiLlama removed from the Apple App Store and have continuously reported trademark infringement and impersonation of the official app to Apple.Subsequently, we funded a small wallet, downloaded the app, and as expected, all the funds in the wallet were stolen, so we reported this situation to Apple. As a result, the app was removed by Apple within a few days. We hope to inform other cryptocurrency companies about this so they won't waste time like we did."

The SEC has postponed the "innovation exemption" plan for tokenized securities and canceled the cryptocurrency rules meeting, causing concept stocks such as Bullish, Coinbase, and the UNI token to drop.

According to CoinDesk, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) will once again delay the launch of its innovative exemption program for tokenized assets due to concerns raised by Wall Street and the White House. The exemption was originally intended to provide U.S. crypto companies with a regulatory sandbox of 12 to 36 months, allowing them to issue and trade tokenized securities.The core controversy lies in whether the exemption terms allow third parties to issue stock tokens without the consent of the listed company. SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce defended on the X platform that the framework is limited in scope, only facilitating the digital representation trading of existing equity securities, rather than synthetic products.

According to The Elec, Samsung Electro-Mechanics' investment schedule for semiconductor glass substrates has been delayed due to bottlenecks in the reliability assessment of customer prototypes. As a result, the construction schedule for the production line of GlaSSEM, the glass core joint venture between Samsung Electro-Mechanics and Dongyu Fine Chem, has also been postponed, and the timeline for ordering related equipment has become uncertain.The report states that GlaSSEM has failed to communicate the equipment order schedule to its partner manufacturers. Previous orders have been postponed from December last year to March and June this year, and this has happened more than three times. After June, no further schedule guidance has been provided. Industry insiders believe that the main reason is that global communication semiconductor customers have not passed the reliability assessment certification for glass substrate prototypes. Samsung Electro-Mechanics is still producing prototypes at its Sejong plant, and most of the suppliers for key processes required for building the mass production line, such as deposition, etching, laser drilling, and inspection, have already been selected.Since the prototypes need to be remade and resubmitted, the originally planned investment schedule will inevitably be further delayed. Samsung Electro-Mechanics had set a target for mass production in the second half of 2027 when establishing GlaSSEM earlier last month, but during last month's financial report meeting, this timeline was adjusted to 2028, and now the mass production time is expected to be further postponed.

The U.S. Senate has postponed the vote on the CLARITY Act until after the summer recess, increasing uncertainty about the bill's passage in the short term.The CLARITY Act had previously received bipartisan support in the House of Representatives and aims to establish a federal regulatory framework for digital assets, clarify the responsibilities of different regulatory agencies, and promote the further integration of crypto assets into the U.S. financial system.North Carolina Republican Senator Thom Tillis stated that with the vote postponed until September, the probability of the bill's final passage "may have decreased by 50%." Wyoming Republican Senator Cynthia Lummis, who is responsible for pushing the negotiations, indicated that discussions have been ongoing for nearly 11 months, the bill text has increased by about 300 pages, and it has responded to numerous amendment requests from Democrats, and it should now enter the voting phase.Currently, Democrats still oppose the existing version, with the main disagreement centered on the restrictions on government officials' interests in crypto assets. Democrats believe that the current version does not adequately limit federal officials' investments and promotion of crypto assets, nor does it require relevant personnel to fully divest from related holdings, while also seeking to grant state attorneys general stronger enforcement powers.Some Democratic and Republican lawmakers had previously pushed for the inclusion of stricter ethical oversight provisions, but negotiations are still ongoing. Democrats are particularly concerned about the connections between Trump and his family with crypto projects like World Liberty Financial.Previously, the crypto industry hoped the Senate could advance procedural voting before the summer recess to adjust political investments during the 2026 midterm elections based on legislative progress. Data shows that the crypto industry's main political action committee, Fairshake, held nearly $200 million in cash reserves at the beginning of this cycle.

According to Cryptopolitan, the U.S. Senate will enter a recess on August 7, and the window for the CLARITY Act to pass before then is extremely limited. If a vote is not completed this week, the next feasible window will be pushed to September, and if missed again, it may be delayed until after the midterm elections, potentially not being realized until 2027. The main disagreement in the bill currently lies in the Democrats' insistence on including ethical provisions for cryptocurrency professionals targeting senior government officials, but the merged draft has not yet incorporated relevant statements.During this regulatory vacuum, large institutions like Coinbase and Circle are better able to adapt to uncertain environments due to their capital strength—ARK Invest increased its holdings in the aforementioned two companies this week, and Circle also received approval for a federal national trust bank license in July—while small and medium-sized cryptocurrency companies and DeFi projects continue to face pressure. In terms of the market, Polymarket data shows that the probability of the CLARITY Act passing in 2026 has dropped to 23%, a significant decline from the 67%–75% predicted by Galaxy Research in mid-May.

According to Jinshi reports, Iranian state media cited sources as saying that as long as the United States continues to threaten Iran, the agreement with Oman regarding the Strait of Hormuz will be postponed.

According to Edaily, the South Korean Ministry of Economy and Finance has finalized the "2026 Tax Reform Bill," which does not include a clause for delaying the taxation of virtual assets. If passed by the National Assembly, profits from virtual asset transactions exceeding 2.5 million won will be taxed at a rate of 22%, with the first declaration due in May 2028.This taxation has been postponed three times previously, and the opposition party has proposed a repeal bill, facing significant opposition amid the current market downturn.