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The weekly change in ADP employment in the United States for the week ending August 8 was an increase of 11,750 people, compared to the previous value of 9,500 people.

Arthur Hayes updated on the X platform stating: The FLOP airdrop eligibility will depend on users' testnet activities. The testnet token faucet will be launched on Technocore.chat, and users will need to access it through the DID keys provided by the AI agent.Previously, Hayes revealed that the FLOP is planned for a large-scale airdrop in the fourth quarter of 2026, with an expected 20% of the total token supply to be airdropped to testnet participants, distributed over 10 years------this may be adjusted later, and the purpose of announcing this figure is to collect user feedback. The FLOP token is expected to become one of the top two tokens in the cryptocurrency market.

On August 25, according to Hong Kong Stock Exchange documents, Alibaba Group Chairman Cai Chongxin purchased another 720,000 shares of Alibaba on Tuesday, costing 82 million Hong Kong dollars, following his initial purchase of 720,000 shares.After Alibaba announced a new share placement plan of 80 billion Hong Kong dollars, Group Chairman Cai Chongxin and CEO Wu Yongming increased their holdings by a total of approximately 120 million Hong Kong dollars in Alibaba shares. Among them, CEO Wu Yongming bought 350,000 shares of Alibaba's Hong Kong stock at an average price of about 111.6 Hong Kong dollars, costing approximately 40 million Hong Kong dollars. Together, the two increased their holdings by 1.07 million shares, totaling about 120 million Hong Kong dollars.The proceeds from Alibaba's 80 billion Hong Kong dollar new share placement will be fully invested in full-stack AI capabilities and AI infrastructure construction. The placement received active subscriptions from long-term investors such as global sovereign wealth funds, ultimately achieving nearly 3 times oversubscription.

He Xiaopeng, Chairman of XPeng Inc., stated at the 2026 semi-annual financial report meeting that the humanoid robot IRON plans to enter large-scale production by the end of this year and will implement commercial scenarios in XPeng stores and parks. In 2027, IRON will officially launch, targeting external customers in the retail and service industries, with large-scale deliveries in China and overseas, and monthly production capacity can quickly increase to several thousand units. He has also served as the CEO of the robotics business since June of this year, integrating resources such as the automotive supply chain, automotive-grade manufacturing, global layout, and Turing AI chips to promote mass production and commercialization.On the same day, XPeng announced that its humanoid robot business has secured over $900 million in its first round of financing, with a post-investment valuation exceeding $6.3 billion. IDG led the investment, with Gao Rong Venture Capital, Tencent, Alibaba, and others subscribing for $600 million, while XPeng Inc. and senior executives including He Xiaopeng subscribed for $300 million. He Xiaopeng believes that the technical threshold for advanced general-purpose robotics is at least 20 times that of smart cars, and the revenue and gross profit over the entire lifecycle of a single unit will be significantly higher than that of cars, expecting considerable gross profit after mass production to support physical AI research and development.The pre-installed mass-produced Robotaxi equipped with the second-generation VLA has completed over 2,000 internal test orders in Guangzhou, and XPeng has completed the development of the cloud takeover platform, aiming to achieve passenger operations without safety personnel next year. The automotive business generated total revenue of 32.78 billion yuan in the first half of the year, delivering 166,000 vehicles, with a gross margin of 20.6%; it is expected to deliver between 115,000 and 121,000 vehicles in the third quarter, with total revenue between 21.7 billion and 23.4 billion yuan.

According to Bloomberg, OnlyFans' operating company Fenix International announced its accounts on Tuesday, revealing that the late owner Leonid Radvinsky received dividends of up to approximately $709 million in the months leading up to his death, including $535 million for the fiscal year ending in November 2025, and another $174 million in batches during the first three months of 2026. Since acquiring OnlyFans, Radvinsky has received a total of over $2 billion in dividends.Bloomberg also disclosed that just weeks after Leonid Radvinsky's death, OnlyFans reached an equity deal with San Francisco investment firm Architect Capital at a valuation of $3.15 billion, with the latter acquiring about 16% of the shares and planning to collaborate with OnlyFans to develop financial services and products aimed at creators. Previously, it was reported that OnlyFans' controlling owner Leonid Radvinsky passed away from cancer at the age of 43.

The engineering collective Shipyard, focused on IPFS and libp2p technologies, announced that Protocol Labs will not renew its funding. As a result, Shipyard will gradually cease its engineering, maintenance, and infrastructure operations related to IPFS, with a final deadline of September 30, 2026.Shipyard stated that several core projects it maintains (including Kubo, Helia, Boxo, Rainbow, IPFS Desktop, etc.) will no longer have dedicated maintainers responsible for new features, fixes, and releases; contributions to go-libp2p and js-libp2p will stop; and the public infrastructure it operates (such as ipfs.io, dweb.link, IPFS bootstrap nodes, etc.) will also cease, with the future of related domains and infrastructure to be determined by Protocol Labs. The team will assist with the transition before the end of September.

Research institution Digitimes stated that with the surge in AI-driven infrastructure spending, major cloud service providers are expected to place greater emphasis on operational efficiency and financial discipline in the second half of 2026. Amazon, Alphabet, and Microsoft reported a combined cloud business revenue of $106.3 billion in the second quarter, with an annual growth rate accelerating to 43%. These companies are expected to increase their total capital expenditures to $74.5 billion.

Stablecoin issuer Tether entered Uruguay in May 2023, planning to engage in sustainable Bitcoin mining and invest in energy production with local licensed companies. The project has two mining sites in the Florida province, with an estimated investment of 60 million USD each, totaling approximately 120 million USD.Uruguay's state-owned electricity company UTE had a disagreement with Tether regarding the electricity supply contract amount. Tether's Uruguayan entity Microfin stopped paying electricity bills in May 2025 and notified of its intention to terminate the contract in June; on July 25, UTE cut off power to the mining site, with Microfin owing nearly 5 million USD and monthly electricity costs of about 2 million USD.On November 25, 2025, Tether notified the Uruguayan labor department of its cessation of operations, with 30 out of 38 local positions being eliminated. UTE stated that Microfin had settled its debts by December; in 2025, 98% of Uruguay's electricity generation came from renewable energy.

FundaAI released a research report on enterprise AI applications, indicating that enterprise AI budgets are still expanding, but there is a divergence in trajectories in the second half of 2026 and 2027. The AI spending guidance from large U.S. telecom operator A shows an increase from a baseline of 100 in January to about 190 in December, with an expected year-on-year increase of 40%--50% in 2027; large European automaker A has only increased by 10%--15% so far this year, with guidance for next year remaining roughly flat.Incremental spending is shifting from paid seats to API/Token consumption and production workflows. The aforementioned telecom operator's subscription and API ratio has changed from about 50%/50% to 40%/60%, and it may trend towards 35%/65%; mid-to-large biopharmaceutical company A has adjusted from 80%/20% to about 70%/30%. Open-source adoption is uneven, with active scenario usage accounting for 30%--40%, as the unit price is lower, leading to a smaller spending proportion; experts estimate that open-source inference can be about 40%--70% cheaper than closed-source cutting-edge models, with the gap narrowing to 20%--40% under full cost metrics, and model routing, caching, and context compression could further reduce API spending by about 20%--30%.On the production side, AI budgets are increasingly built from the bottom up based on workflow ROI. The typical production ROI for this telecom operator is about 1.5--2 times, with a payback period of 6--18 months, and mature use cases can reach 3--5 times. The next wave of spending is related to agents, software modernization, network operations, commoditized workflows, and longer-cycle business processes, but engineering capacity, process reengineering, governance, and data readiness are becoming tighter constraints than funding.

According to a report by ZDNet Korea, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix plan to continue investing in equipment for NAND flash production lines in China until next year to strengthen local production bases. Since the first half of this year, Samsung has been advancing V9 NAND conversion investments at the Xi'an X2 production line, which features an advanced process with approximately 280 layers stacked, and is expected to achieve a monthly production capacity of 40,000 to 50,000 wafers. To stabilize mass production, the company has confirmed a supplementary investment plan, focusing on additional etching process equipment, with related procurement orders expected to be clarified around the end of the year, and the supplementary investment planned to be executed starting in the second half of next year.SK Hynix has been advancing equipment investments related to NAND product upgrades at its Dalian Plant 2 since the third quarter of this year, with a discussed scale of approximately 30,000 wafers per month. Key manufacturing equipment will begin arriving next month, with plans to complete deployment by the first half of next year. The Dalian plant is an asset acquired after SK Hynix took over Intel's NAND division in the second half of 2020. In 2022, a groundbreaking ceremony was held for the expansion of Plant 2, but equipment investment was temporarily halted due to market conditions; this investment is now being restarted.Industry insiders point out that the above arrangements aim to gradually expand advanced NAND capacity within China to meet the rapid growth in demand for high-end storage in fields such as artificial intelligence servers.

Coinbase Markets stated that it will regularly monitor the assets on the exchange to ensure they meet listing standards. Based on recent review results, Coinbase will suspend trading of IoTeX (IOTX) on September 23, 2026, at around 2 PM Eastern Time.

Cosmos Labs announced that an ongoing security incident has affected users of the Cosmos EVM module. The security and engineering team at Cosmos Labs is actively responding to the incident and has advised validators on the Cosmos EVM chain in contact with them to suspend the operation of their chain.Cosmos Labs appreciates the swift response from all teams using Cosmos EVM and stated that an incident report will be released after the situation is resolved. If relevant teams are using Cosmos EVM and have questions, they can contact security@cosmoslabs.io.

Bitcoin News posted on the X platform that Bitcoin mining company Bitari Inc. plans to sell 4.3 million shares at $7 per share, raising $30 million, and intends to conduct an IPO and list on NASDAQ.

BitcoinTreasuries.NET reported that Strive's SATA expects to raise enough funds to purchase over 130 bitcoins, with 90 minutes remaining until the transaction ends.Since returning to par value, SATA's trading volume has exceeded $125 million in the past three days.

According to Reuters, the cryptocurrency advocacy organization Stand With Crypto, supported by Coinbase, announced endorsements for 32 incumbent congressional candidates for the midterm elections in November. All 32 candidates voted last year in favor of sending the cryptocurrency industry's top legislative priority, the CLARITY Act, out of the House of Representatives, which is currently stalled in the Senate due to opposition from some lawmakers.The list includes key allies in the cryptocurrency industry such as Republican Representatives Tom Emmer and Bill Huizenga, as well as Democratic Representatives Ritchie Torres and Josh Gottheimer, some of whom are facing fiercely competitive races.Mason Lynaugh, Executive Director of Stand With Crypto, stated, "In 2024, we proved that crypto voters are real, and in 2026, we want to demonstrate our organizational mobilization ability; our advocates are a voting bloc that can truly impact outcomes."Stand With Crypto was launched by Coinbase in 2023 to influence elections by mobilizing voters rather than through large-scale campaign spending, and it claims to have over 3 million registered "advocates." In 2024, the cryptocurrency industry invested $170 million to support congressional candidates, most of whom won, and pushed Congress to pass the GENIUS Act for stablecoin regulation. During this midterm election cycle, the cryptocurrency industry has already invested nearly $200 million through channels such as the Fairshake super PAC to continue solidifying its influence in Congress.

According to Jinshi reports, the dark side of the moon Kimi announced that the company's first-generation trillion-parameter multimodal model Kimi K2.5 will end its service at the end of this month.

On August 24, according to the Financial Times, Anthropic's U.S. corporate clients are reducing their use of its most powerful model, Fable5, opting instead for lower-priced alternative models, raising concerns about its high-investment business model. Anthropic is currently preparing for an IPO, with the market expecting its valuation to reach $2 trillion or more, potentially listing as early as September.Data from Ramp on spending by 70,000 companies shows that two months after the release of Fable5, corporate spending on this model accounted for only about 11% of Anthropic's total tool spending, and has recently stabilized. Analysts believe the main reason is that Fable5 is expensive, while older models can meet the needs of most companies; the Opus5 launched at the end of July is smaller and cheaper, with corporate spending already exceeding that of Fable5. Fable5 was withdrawn shortly after its release in early June due to intervention by the Trump administration on national security grounds, and was allowed to go back online on July 1, but demand and adoption rates remain lower than those of previous cutting-edge models.Anthropic's annualized revenue reached $65 billion last month, up from $47 billion in May, growing nearly sevenfold since the beginning of the year; the company achieved adjusted operating profit for the first time in the second quarter and has 6,000 clients with annual spending exceeding $100,000. Companies are controlling AI spending by choosing models with better cost-performance ratios, while OpenAI has seen a rebound, with annualized revenue growing 35% this quarter after the release of GPT5.6, exceeding $40 billion. The market is shifting from "chasing the strongest model" to placing greater emphasis on a comprehensive balance of model capability, price, and actual ROI.

According to Coinglass data, the Coinbase Bitcoin premium index has reappeared with a positive signal for the first time since May 19, reporting 0.0052%, ending a historical longest negative premium period of 97 consecutive days until August 23. Although these positive values are still relatively sporadic, they indicate that selling pressure from institutions has eased, undoubtedly helping the market continue to push upward, with the next step waiting for institutions to truly return and generate substantial demand.The previous longest record of negative premium was 40 consecutive days from January 16 to February 24 this year, and the second longest was about 30 days of continuous negative premium during last year's "1011 crash." The Coinbase Bitcoin premium index is used to measure the price difference between Coinbase Pro and Binance for Bitcoin. A sustained negative index typically means that Coinbase's quotes are relatively low, reflecting weak buying in the U.S. market or significant selling pressure, but it is not advisable to directly conclude that institutional funds are flowing out based solely on this indicator.

According to CoinDesk, cryptocurrency card spending reached $1.04 billion in July, more than doubling compared to the same period last year. Dollar stablecoins (USDC and USDT) funded 70% of over 10 million transactions, with the average payment amount rising from $59 last year to $86, indicating that users are shifting from large-scale cash-outs to everyday spending, such as groceries, rideshares, and takeout.Emerging markets have become the main growth driver. Data from Visa partner StraitsX shows that total transaction volume in low GDP markets grew by about 600% from March 2025 to February 2026, while high GDP markets only grew by 150%. In Latin America, active users of Oobit in Brazil spend about $400 per month, with grocery stores accounting for 35% of their regional activity; in Argentina, 72% of payments use USDT, with food making up 41% of transactions.Market concentration remains high, with the three platforms RedotPay, EtherFi, and KAST collectively accounting for about 77% of the total tracked volume in July. Visa stated that there are currently over 160 card projects associated with stablecoins launched or in development worldwide. The number of Binance card users in Brazil has increased by 53% since its launch quarter, and Kraken's Krak Card payment frequency has doubled over the past year to 8.3 times per user per week.