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The asset management company Grayscale's crypto research team stated in a report that the so-called "debasement trade" is favorable for Bitcoin. The head of research at the institution, Zach Pandl, pointed out in the report that uncontrolled government debt growth undermines the credibility of fiat currencies, prompting investors to seek alternative stores of value such as physical gold and certain cryptocurrencies, with Bitcoin being the primary beneficiary.The report states that U.S. public debt has surpassed $40 trillion, and the Treasury is conducting bond buybacks to alleviate rising borrowing costs, but the core deficit still exists. Grayscale believes this may drive investors towards debasement trades involving Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Zcash. The report also notes that the buybacks themselves indicate a problem—the heavy growth of government debt is driving up borrowing costs, and the Treasury is merely treating the symptoms (rising bond yields) without addressing the root cause of the structural deficit.As Bitcoin began to surge last week, the dollar experienced its worst week in August and fell to a three-month low. As of Friday afternoon New York time, Bitcoin was trading at approximately $77,493, having reached a high of $81,281 earlier in the week; it has remained relatively flat over the past 24 hours but has risen over 20% in the past 30 days.

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.

U.S. Federal Judge Rita Lin issued a partial summary judgment in a 59-page ruling regarding Anthropic's lawsuit against the Trump administration, determining that the government's punishment of Anthropic for publicly refusing to allow the military to use its Claude large model for mass surveillance of U.S. citizens and lethal autonomous operations constituted illegal retaliation, violating the First Amendment, due process clause, and the Administrative Procedure Act. The judge also revoked the related designations and Defense Secretary Hegseth's injunction, issuing a permanent injunction.The controversy arose from the Pentagon's demand that Anthropic remove all usage restrictions and accept terms allowing "all lawful uses," while Anthropic maintained its last two bottom lines. On February 27, 2025, Trump ordered all federal agencies to cease using the company's technology, and Hegseth subsequently prohibited any military contractors from doing business with it. During this process, the government abandoned its core claims, acknowledging that Anthropic had no backdoor access to the deployed models and that the risks of Claude were no greater than those of other "black box" systems. Lin pointed out that the government's punishment under the guise of "national security" was not a blank check, and that the government had been operating under the preliminary injunction since March without indicating any harm.Anthropic did not achieve a complete victory, as its claim that Trump's directive exceeded presidential authority was dismissed. Anthropic informed the court that if the relevant measures continued, its defense-related revenue would decrease by 50% to 100%, resulting in a loss of billions of dollars in overall revenue by 2026.

Grayscale's research director Zach Pandl stated that over the past year, during the rise of risk assets driven by AI, Bitcoin's trading performance has been more aligned with high-beta assets, but this situation may be reversing. The 90-day correlation between Bitcoin and the Nasdaq 100 index has dropped from over 60% to about 33%, while its correlation with gold has risen from slightly above 0 at the beginning of the year to over 50%. Grayscale believes this change may indicate that investors are refocusing on Bitcoin's scarcity, monetary independence, and store of value function.Meanwhile, the U.S. federal debt recently surpassed $40 trillion, and the ongoing fiscal deficit along with rising long-term U.S. Treasury yields has led the market to once again pay attention to assets that can hedge against the deterioration of fiscal and monetary fundamentals. Pandl pointed out that Bitcoin has no central issuer, its issuance rules are transparent, and its maximum supply is fixed at 21 million coins. In an environment where the long-term purchasing power of fiat currency is being reassessed, Bitcoin can serve as a scarce and more liquid alternative asset beyond gold. Bitcoin and other scarce digital assets may be entering a more favorable market phase.

According to a report by The Wall Street Journal citing informed sources, Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, a member of the Abu Dhabi royal family, is the backer behind StringZ Holding RSC, which holds a 49% stake in WLTC Holdings, the parent company of World Liberty Financial, associated with the Trump family, which is proposing a U.S. trust bank. It is said that entities linked to the Trump family hold an additional 38% stake in the company.The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) granted preliminary conditional approval to World Liberty Trust Company on August 14. The decision announced by the OCC confirms that StringZ is an investor in WLTC Holdings and has signed a commitment not to interfere with the bank, but does not specify Tahnoon as its backer or disclose his shareholding percentage. The trust bank must meet OCC's pre-operational requirements and obtain final approval before it can begin operations.Tahnoon previously supported the acquisition of a 49% stake in World Liberty Financial for $500 million, prompting U.S. Democratic senators to call for hearings on the deal and investigate whether it affects U.S. policy towards the UAE. Tahnoon currently serves as the UAE's National Security Advisor and is also the chairman of the artificial intelligence company G42. Cointelegraph reached out to the Trump Organization for comment, but had not received a response by the time of publication.

NBA star Kevin Durant initially invested $250,000 in the open-source AI platform Hugging Face. With Nvidia agreeing to acquire Hugging Face for $12.9 billion, the value of this investment could rise to over $60 million.Hugging Face has become an important platform for the development and distribution of AI models and has ventured into the cryptocurrency field through decentralized AI projects.

According to on-chain data, two wallets suspected to be related to Hermeneutic have sold approximately $15 million worth of HYPE tokens in the past three days. The data shows that these two wallets currently still hold about 660,000 HYPE, valued at approximately $56 million, and are continuing to reduce their holdings at a slower pace.Market participants believe that the continued selling by large holding addresses may put pressure on HYPE's short-term price, but due to the remaining position size still being relatively large, subsequent capital movements are still worth monitoring.

Gold prices rose slightly on Thursday due to the depreciation of the dollar and ongoing concerns about the U.S. budget deficit. OANDA analyst Kelvin Wong stated that these factors support gold prices in the medium term. The market is paying attention to the speech of Federal Reserve Chairman Waller to understand the direction of monetary policy.The U.S. Treasury has expanded the scale of long-term bond purchases, raising concerns about the depreciation of the dollar, and gold prices rose more than 5% last week. In addition, the Prime Minister of Qatar will visit Tehran to restart diplomatic mediation.

According to on-chain analyst Ai Yi's monitoring, the Hack VC associated address (0x2a5...590CF) transferred 21.85 million ENA to the Wintermute deposit address through multiple intermediaries 4 hours ago, suspected to be a sell-off, involving an amount of 3 million dollars.ENA has risen 58.09% in the past week, currently priced at 0.1478 dollars.

According to DIGITIMES, the Taiwanese semiconductor supply chain reveals that advanced packaging technology is diversifying, with Intel's EMIB becoming a key option. Google TPU has confirmed the adoption of EMIB packaging, and the first TPU using this technology has met yield standards, with technology, cost, and capacity performance all aligning with Google's original criteria. The likelihood of continuing to use EMIB in future generations of TPU has significantly increased.Against the backdrop of ongoing tight capacity at TSMC's CoWoS, as long as EMIB yield and technology remain up to standard, Google will continue to adopt it. MediaTek, as a relevant ASIC partner, has some managers in its U.S. team with Intel backgrounds, facilitating smoother collaboration between the two parties. Although MediaTek still relies heavily on TSMC, its success with Intel on TPU helps solidify Google's trust, secure more projects, and provide diverse packaging solutions to cloud customers.Previously, TSMC called for more suppliers to invest in advanced packaging to share the pressure during its earnings call. The supply chain generally believes that its own capacity expansion will not be limitless, making the diversification of packaging paths, such as those from Intel, a necessary direction, and related testing equipment and interface companies are also expected to benefit.

The bankers' associations from 39 states in the United States have jointly formed the BankChain alliance, planning to build an industry-owned blockchain network for tokenized deposits, stablecoins, smart payments, and automated settlements, with the goal of launching in 2027. The alliance is currently still selecting technical partners and has not yet become an operational payment network.The BankChain alliance states that the 39 member associations represent 3,283 banks, with total assets of $21.8 trillion. The board of the alliance is chaired by Kathy Kraninger, president and CEO of the Florida Bankers Association. Howard Headlee, president of the Utah Bankers Association, stated that governance is a differentiated advantage, and BankChain aims to allow member banks to "equally access a network owned by them and have their voices heard."The area that BankChain is entering has a bank tokenization deposit project led by The Clearing House, which was announced in June and aims to facilitate on-chain clearing and settlement of tokenized commercial bank money, connecting the RTP and CHIPS payment networks. In contrast, BankChain's product range is broader, covering stablecoins and automated settlements, but it is still in the early stages and needs to first identify technology suppliers and convert association-level support into commitments from member banks.

According to CoinDesk, Coinbase Chief Policy Officer Faryar Shirzad wrote an article for CoinDesk rebutting the arguments made by the American Bankers Association (ABA) against the stablecoin reward provisions in the Clarity Act. ABA CEO Rob Nichols claimed that only minor wording changes were needed to strengthen the bill and warned that allowing stablecoin rewards would lead to a loss of deposits for community banks.Shirzad pointed out that Coinbase has been paying stablecoin rewards for USDC for over four years, while community bank deposits grew by 26% from June 2019 to March 2026, amounting to approximately $482 billion.Shirzad cited research from Charles River Associates and the Economic Advisory Council stating that there is no significant correlation between stablecoins and bank deposits. He emphasized that the credit card industry was built on reward mechanisms, and the banking industry itself relies on this model. The current text of the bill was reached after months of negotiations between Senators Tillis and Alsobrooks and bank representatives, clearly delineating the boundaries: prohibiting returns on idle funds but allowing compensation for real activities.Shirzad believes that the Clarity Act will grant banks the broadest statutory powers since the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999, including custody, staking, lending, payments, clearing, and market-making, with community banks benefiting the most. He called on all parties to accept this compromise and work together to advance the bill.

According to sources, Dark Side of the Moon is negotiating with Microsoft, Amazon, and Google for revenue sharing of the Kimi K3 artificial intelligence model. Dark Side of the Moon is seeking to obtain up to 30% of the revenue generated from K3-related services in the early negotiations.

The American Bankers Association announced plans to create a nationwide financial infrastructure based on blockchain to optimize industry collaboration and settlement efficiency.

Visa announced its participation in the BLOOM (Borderless, Liquid, Open, Online, Multi-currency) initiative led by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), aimed at expanding the settlement capabilities of financial institutions and promoting interoperability between traditional payment systems and stablecoin payment rails, allowing institutions to enjoy faster, programmable payments while retaining security and compliance assurances.As the first partner under the BLOOM framework, Nium will pilot the use of stablecoin settlements with Visa, exploring more efficient cross-border fund flows based on Visa's payment network, security, and compliance capabilities. The two parties will study the implementation of settlements seven days a week (including weekends and public holidays) using stablecoins to reduce delays and enhance efficiency. The pilot supports regulated stablecoins backed by major currencies, including US dollar and euro-denominated stablecoins.

The TRON network super representatives (SR) have initiated a proposal vote for the mainnet Committee No. 107, which is expected to conclude on August 28 at 14:00 (Singapore time).The proposal aims to enable features related to the TVM compatibility with Ethereum Prague and Osaka upgrades in GreatVoyage-v4.8.2, including support for historical block hash queries, the addition of the CLZ instruction, support for Passkey verification with the secp256r1 precompiled contract, and optimization of MODEXP energy consumption. If the proposal vote passes, it will further enhance the compatibility of TVM with the latest upgrade features of Ethereum, strengthening smart contract development and cross-ecosystem adaptation capabilities.

According to The Block, the Blockchain Association has submitted a letter of opinion regarding the stablecoin issuer rules proposed jointly by the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and the Federal Reserve. The association supports limiting the Customer Identification Program (CIP) obligations to transactions where issuers directly face customers in the primary market, and it should not extend to peer-to-peer transfer activities in the secondary market.At the same time, the association calls on regulators to further clarify definitions such as "account," "customer," and "digital asset service provider," excluding one-time redemptions and other non-continuous businesses, and to avoid creating overlapping compliance burdens with anti-money laundering rules. The association stated that the implementation of the rules should balance stablecoin security, operability, and space for industry innovation.

According to a report by the Financial Associated Press, sources reveal that Apple is accelerating preparations to launch the next-generation Mac mini desktop computer, marking the first significant update for this product in nearly two years. The relevant insiders stated that this brand new desktop is expected to officially debut in the coming days, with the release likely occurring before the iPhone new product launch event in September.This updated Mac mini is part of Apple's new product lineup for the second half of this year, which will also include new Apple Watch, AirPods, and a smart home device with a screen that can recognize users through facial recognition.

According to market news, New York AI startup General Intuition is in talks to raise funding at a pre-money valuation of $6 billion, with new investors including Valor Equity Partners, Point72 Ventures, and Seven Seven Six, while existing investors Khosla Ventures and General Catalyst are also participating in this round of financing.The company is building foundational models to train general AI agents to move through space and time. This financing comes just weeks after General Intuition completed a $320 million funding round at a valuation of $2.3 billion. CEO Pim de Witte spun it out from the video game clip sharing platform Medal last October, leveraging hundreds of millions of hours of gaming data and player operation records as the initial training dataset. The company is becoming one of the hottest startups in the field of physical AI.