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The Public Security Bureau of Hongkou District, Shanghai, China, recently solved a case involving cross-border illegal settlement and illegal foreign exchange trading using virtual currency, arresting 9 criminal suspects and involving an amount of over 200 million yuan. The suspects, including a person named Li, established a technology company at the beginning of 2024 to seek illegal profits, building two platforms online: "Cross-Border Fund Exchange" and "Virtual Credit Card Issuance and Settlement." They solicited customers both online and offline, illegally conducting exchange and settlement services for virtual currency and cross-border funds, profiting through transaction fees, service fees, card issuance fees, withdrawal fees, and other means.Investigators stated, "The uniqueness of this case lies in the fact that the criminals developed two apps and publicly solicited customers on such a large scale, which has never been seen before. The platforms built in this case are themselves a closed-loop illegal financial service system, with all transactions settled internally on the platform. This mode of crime has a higher degree of scale, a longer chain, and is more deceptive." Reports indicate that on the "Cross-Border Fund Exchange" platform, the criminal gang collected customers' virtual currency overseas and exchanged it for foreign currency, forming a "fund pool," and then realized cross-border settlement through fabricated contracts, achieving the exchange and transfer of virtual currency to RMB. On the "Virtual Credit Card Issuance and Settlement" platform, the criminal gang "cooperated" with several overseas private banks to issue virtual credit cards to customers, who could use the card for consumption, but the repayment process had to be settled in virtual currency; the gang exchanged virtual currency for foreign currency overseas, relying on false cross-border settlements to complete clearing with overseas card merchants.

Zhao Changpeng stated at the "Bitcoin Asia 2026" conference in Hong Kong that Bitcoin itself does not weaken or strengthen government power; what truly matters is the choices made by the government. Historically, weak governments have sometimes led to better economic performance. For example, the U.S. government is relatively weak, yet it has created one of the strongest economies in the world; after the current SEC chairman relinquished some regulatory power, the industry actually experienced growth, while former chairman Gary Gensler's attempts to control everything stifled industry growth.He mentioned that Bitcoin, as a decentralized technology, allows individuals to have more sovereignty, but its privacy design has flaws, and on-chain transactions can be easily tracked; governments can choose whether to utilize these characteristics. For instance, declaring Bitcoin ownership illegal or imposing a 36% tax on every transaction would stifle industry development. The government may seem to have significant power, but a zero tax rate still results in zero revenue, while taxing a trillion-dollar market at 6% would yield substantial income.He also noted that most governments have relatively recognized Bitcoin, but many countries still lack a regulatory framework for cryptocurrencies. Among government officials, those who understand Bitcoin remain a minority, and in some countries, the older generation's dominance leads to a more conservative attitude. However, he does feel that a shift is occurring, despite some still holding the biased view that Bitcoin is primarily used by drug lords.

According to CNBC, the cryptocurrency project World Liberty Financial, supported by the Trump family, stated that the rapid growth of its stablecoin USD1 and actual market demand refute external doubts about the project primarily relying on political connections for development. Currently, the circulation scale of USD1 has exceeded 4 billion dollars.World Liberty Financial CEO Zach Witkoff stated that the growth of USD1 comes from the product itself and market adoption, rather than special treatment from the Trump administration. USD1 was previously used in the 2 billion dollar investment transaction by the Abu Dhabi investment firm MGX in Binance, which is also one of the most significant institutional applications of USD1 to date.Recently, World Liberty Financial also received preliminary conditional approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) for a national trust bank charter, planning to directly issue and redeem USD1 through World Liberty Trust Company in the future, and manage its reserve assets. Regarding the project's relationship with the Trump family, some Democratic lawmakers in the U.S. continue to raise concerns about conflicts of interest.

According to Business Insider, Thomson Reuters launched its first self-developed AI model, Thomson-1, on Monday. This model is based on Snowdon and constructed through "re-alignment" of Alibaba's open-source Qwen model. Open-source means anyone can download and modify the model for free. Thomson-1 will take over some tasks previously handled by Anthropic's Claude, but it is not intended to completely replace collaboration with Anthropic and other labs, initially focusing on the company's areas of expertise, starting with document review.This move aims to address the high AI costs brought by models like Claude and OpenAI Codex, and reflects the use of cheaper Chinese open-source AI. CTO Joel Hron stated that the main reason is to better leverage Thomson Reuters' own expertise and control costs. The company expanded its collaboration with Anthropic in May this year for the AI legal assistant CoCounsel, which still primarily relies on Claude. Hron said, "Our main goal is to gradually make Thomson the model that drives more and more capabilities for CoCounsel."Thomson Reuters, in collaboration with a team from Imperial College London, spent months transforming Qwen to build Snowdon and ensured it is "ethically and politically bias-processed and safe to use." Hron pointed out that having a proprietary model allows for development based on its own intellectual property rather than continuously paying external AI companies, comparing it to renting versus buying a house: renting provides shelter but does not accumulate long-term equity.

The China Payment and Clearing Association issued the "Self-Regulatory Convention for Intelligent Agent Payment Applications," which regulates the behavior of member institutions in initiating and executing payment instructions using large models and other artificial intelligence "intelligent agents" in payment scenarios. The convention requires banks, non-bank payment institutions, clearing institutions, and others engaged in intelligent agent payment applications to adhere to the principle of "who provides the payment service is responsible," and to implement cybersecurity, data security, and privacy protection.The convention proposes the establishment of "Know Your Agent (KYA)," a hierarchical management system for intelligent agents, and a full-link identity transmission mechanism, strengthening model robustness and traceability, anti-money laundering and anti-fraud controls, and setting stricter authorization and risk control measures for vulnerable groups such as the elderly and minors. The convention will be implemented from the date of its release.

Tesla (TSLA.O) has been approved to produce up to 5,000 autonomous vehicles in Nevada, USA.

According to Bloomberg, Anthropic plans to adjust its data retention policy for its advanced artificial intelligence models, giving enterprise customers greater control over their data. The company expects to launch a new security system later this year, where enterprise customers will still need to retain data for 30 days but can choose to do so on their own cloud computing infrastructure instead of storing it on Anthropic's servers. Sources say that the system has been in preparation for several months and has been developed in coordination with over 100 clients from strictly regulated industries.In June, Anthropic announced that it would retain all customer data for 30 days for its more powerful Mythos, Fable models, and future cutting-edge products to identify and prevent new types of cyberattacks using its technology, while stating that it would not use the data for training. The company recently acknowledged in a report that this policy may not be welcomed by customers accustomed to zero retention and could impact business. Anthropic declined to comment on this. Competitor OpenAI has also recently begun testing a solution called "Private Secure Processing" to avoid retaining customer data and plans to roll it out more broadly in September.

Well-known trader Doctor Profit posted that Ethereum has completely broken through the key resistance area of the bear market stage and has, for the first time since the start of this bear market, re-established itself above the "golden line (weekly EMA50)" that he focuses on.Doctor Profit believes that this breakthrough is an important technical signal for ETH and said, "Fasten your seatbelts," while indicating that bears will face pressure.

According to exclusive information from Intelligent Era AGI, DeepSeek is actively recruiting for emotional intelligence data product manager positions, with a daily salary of 510 yuan. The role is responsible for optimizing DeepSeek's model performance in emotional scenarios, enhancing the realism and immersion of role-playing and emotional interactions, and deeply exploring Badcases in emotional scenarios for attribution analysis.This recruitment information indicates that DeepSeek is expanding from basic capabilities like programming towards emotional interactions that are closer to human language. The product positioning is similar to Doubao, aiming to create a more "personalized" AI model system, rather than being limited to programming scenarios. Previously, DeepSeek launched the Harness preview version for developers on August 13. According to Citigroup's research report and Analysys data, the current market competitor WorkBuddy has surpassed 20 million cross-platform MAU, with 20.97 million monthly visits on the PC side. DeepSeek has not yet provided details on specific product planning for emotional AI.

According to Forbes, the scale of the theft in the Coldcard hardware wallet vulnerability incident has risen to approximately $130 million, involving about 2,000 BTC and over 5,200 addresses, reigniting the industry's debate over who should hold private keys. Data from Bitcoin Magazine shows that in the days following the incident, the net inflow into U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs was $626 million, with some opinions suggesting that the vulnerability may drive more funds towards ETFs.Reports indicate that supporters of self-custody remain undeterred. Casa co-founder Jameson Lopp stated that confidence in self-custody should not be lost due to recent events, as custodial institutions also rely on random number generators. Bitcoin core early developer Peter Todd noted that the historical record of self-custody is far better than that of third parties. Another viewpoint argues that both reflexive choices have flaws. Onramp co-founder Michael Tanguma stated that if the only answer is Coinbase or ETFs, it poses a serious problem, as centralizing what should be decentralized assets undermines their foundation, advocating for a multi-institutional custody solution where keys are held by multiple regulated entities.

MetaMask launched the self-custody wallet Agent Wallet on Thursday, allowing AI agents to execute on-chain transactions within user-defined limits, aimed at traders and developers using AI agents to monitor the market, identify opportunities, and autonomously execute trades. Users can set spending limits, approve specific protocols, choose risk settings, and select different levels of automation between Guard Mode and Beast Mode.Agent Wallet supports Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, OpenClaw, Hermes, OpenCode, as well as Hyperliquid and Ethereum Virtual Machine compatible networks. Agent Wallet supports gas abstraction, allowing users to pay network fees with the assets being transferred, without needing to hold the corresponding native tokens of the network. MetaMask stated that supported transactions will undergo transaction simulation, threat scanning, and smart trading MEV protection, and if qualifying transactions incur losses after passing security checks, they can receive up to $10,000 in Transaction Protection coverage per month.

The B.AI platform's "Self-Selected Service Provider" lineup has completed a new round of expansion, adding the Nebula channel and launching ultra-low discounts starting at 10%, further reducing API call costs. Currently, the "Self-Selected Service Provider" model covers mainstream large model series such as Claude, GPT, and Gemini, allowing users to flexibly choose service providers based on demand and settle according to actual discounts. B.AI will also introduce more high-quality service providers in the future, continuously enriching model choices and discount combinations. Users can now log in to the B.AI platform to customize their exclusive model combinations and immediately start an AI calling experience with exceptional cost-effectiveness.

According to market news, West Main Self Storage has increased its holdings by 0.155 Bitcoin, currently holding a total of 16.188 BTC.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Wells Fargo plans to launch Tokenized Deposits services aimed at corporate clients, further exploring the application of blockchain technology in the traditional financial system.Wells Fargo stated that the tokenized deposit system will operate on its self-developed blockchain network and support interoperability with other blockchain networks.Tokenized deposits represent bank deposits in a digital form on the blockchain, allowing for faster and more transparent transfers of funds on-chain, while still being supported by the bank's deposit system.This move signifies that large banks are accelerating the construction of blockchain infrastructure and exploring on-chain financial applications in scenarios such as corporate payments, fund management, and inter-institutional settlements.

CZ forwarded Willy Woo's post about Bitcoin loss data, stating that if the data is accurate, from a statistical perspective, exchange-held assets may be safer than self-custodied ones. Exchanges are more likely to be targeted by hackers, making such incidents easier to quantify, while thefts or losses from self-custodied wallets often go unreported, making related data harder to collect.On the other hand, the data from exchanges is also influenced by some exchanges that have already gone bankrupt. Finally, CZ emphasized that no custodial method is absolutely superior; different solutions are suitable for different users, and adopting a balanced asset custody approach may be a better choice. The statistical data previously released by Willy Woo indicates that approximately 1.57 million Bitcoins have been permanently lost due to self-custody. Additionally, around 1.51 million Bitcoins have been lost due to incidents such as hacking attacks and bankruptcies of exchanges.

Binance co-founder CZ retweeted user Rager's experience about hardware wallet failures on the X platform. CZ stated that protecting the wallet backup seed phrase is a highly challenging task.The seed phrase cannot be seen by others, or it may be copied or exploited, and it must not be accidentally damaged by fire, flood, or other incidents, while also preventing hackers from gaining access. More importantly, users themselves must not lose the seed phrase.