律动BlockBeats

BlockBeats report: On August 25, a joint statement by Iran and Oman showed that: during a working visit to Iran, Oman’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Busaidi held constructive consultations with Iran’s Foreign Minister Aragchi. The consultations focused on a matter highly valued by both countries: restoring safe navigation through the Strait of Hormuz while safeguarding each country’s sovereignty and sovereign rights.
In light of recent wars and their disastrous consequences, the situation in the Strait has changed. The foreign ministers of the two countries discussed a phased framework that can provide a practical, implementable foundation for moving the situation forward. The proposed framework includes establishing a temporary joint maritime corridor in the Strait of Hormuz and agreeing to carry out a joint project to clear sea mines in the Strait.

BlockBeats message: As the U.S. trade offensive against Canada continued to escalate on August 25, pushback emerged in the United States against remarks by the Trump administration toward Canada. Multiple U.S. national security officials, retired military figures, and Republican lawmakers publicly criticized the comments, saying they were “embarrassing for the United States” and damaging this long-standing alliance.
After U.S.-Canada trade talks broke down last Friday, Trump again blasted Canada on Tuesday. He even proposed renaming Lake Ontario to the “American Lake” and said the U.S. “doesn’t expect to do much business with Ontario anymore.” Vice President Vance had earlier joked during a speech in Maine that Canada was “a state” of the U.S., and he again referenced the claim that Canada would become the U.S.’ “51st state.”

BlockBeats message: On August 25, in the Robinhood Chain ecosystem, the decentralized trading platform Arcus launched the pToken protocol, tokenizing custodial perpetual futures contract accounts into transferable ERC-20 tokens. This allows users to gain leveraged asset exposure without directly managing margin and positions, and to use pTokens for on-chain protocols such as lending.
Arcus表示，每个pToken代表在特定市场、固定杠杆倍数下永续合约账户的按比例所有权，用户可像交易现货代币一样买卖。目前已推出BTC、SOL、HYPE等资产的杠杆产品，包括pBTC、pBTC3x等，同时支持pHOOD3x等股票代币的杠杆产品。

BlockBeats message, August 25: Although the earnings report Nvidia is about to release and a speech by Federal Reserve Chair Powell at the Jackson Hole Symposium are the main events investors are watching this week, traders in the stock derivatives market have already begun preparing for potential increases in volatility around the U.S. midterm elections in November.
Volatility traders closely monitoring futures markets linked to the volatility index VIX say there are signs that demand for hedging S&P 500 index volatility has increased around and ahead of the election. VIX futures expiring in September are currently trading at about 17.4, the October contract has risen to 19, and the November contract has further climbed to 19.7.

BlockBeats message: On August 25, according to (The New York Times), the U.S. Department of State is preparing to gradually bring back some diplomatic personnel who had previously been evacuated from the Middle East due to the U.S.-Iran war, with some of them possibly resuming their duties as early as this week.
U.S. embassies and consulates in places including Israel, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, Oman, Iraq, and Kuwait will all increase staffing levels, and some missions plan to restore to full establishment. Analysts believe this move suggests that the Trump administration may be judging that the conflict is nearing its end, but restricting the return of diplomats’ family members also indicates that local security risks remain higher than pre-war levels.

BlockBeats report: On August 25, U.S. consumer confidence for August fell, hitting the lowest level since the beginning of the year. The decline was driven by worsening consumer views on the business environment and the outlook for the labor market. Data released by the Conference Board on Tuesday showed that the consumer confidence index fell by 0.8 points to 89.4, and the prior month’s figures were revised downward. Economists’ median forecast was 90.2.
The report shows that this month’s gasoline prices remain high, overall pressure from rising living costs continues, and slowing hiring has further increased strain on American households. This survey was conducted from August 3 to 16. During this period, as the conflict between the United States and Iran escalated again and pushed up oil prices, the average gasoline price at U.S. gas stations has remained hovering above $4 per gallon.

BlockBeats report: On August 25, amid concerns over the widening U.S. fiscal deficit, government debt exceeding $4 trillion, and the Treasury buyback (repurchase) program, market worries about a depreciation of the U.S. dollar intensified. Gold and emerging-market currencies have strengthened in the near term. Gold has already been up for the fifth consecutive week, and the gain for August could set the largest monthly rise since 1999. The U.S. Dollar Index also fell to a three-month low last week.
The U.S. Department of the Treasury last week raised the upper limit on the size of its long-term Treasury buyback (repurchase) program from $2 billion to at least $4 billion, and may also use roughly $1 trillion in funds from the Treasury General Account (TGA) to support the buybacks. However, the yield on 30-year Treasuries rose at one point to 5.34%, suggesting the market believes that buybacks are unlikely to offset long-term pressures stemming from fiscal deficits, inflation, and debt supply.

BlockBeats report: On August 25, the Canadian government will, on Tuesday local time, release its retaliation plan targeting the United States’ latest tariff measures. The country’s finance minister and other senior officials will hold a press conference in Ottawa. Previously, starting from Saturday, the U.S. imposed a 50% tariff increase on a large number of Canadian goods. This occurred after the two countries’ trade talks broke down.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney previously said that Canada was prepared to take retaliatory measures in kind. But on Monday, he said that given the much larger scale of the U.S. economy compared with Canada, the final plan may involve more targeted measures rather than a comprehensive tit-for-tat tariff response. Carney said that the conditions proposed by the U.S. at the final stage of the negotiations are “unfair and not in the economic interests.”

BlockBeats message: On August 25, according to documents related to Trump’s financial disclosure, the manager of his investment portfolio bought SpaceX shares valued between $15,001 and $50,000 shortly after SpaceX went public on June 23. The documents show that the transaction was one of more than 1,000 trades conducted in June as part of Trump’s investment portfolio.
A White House spokesperson, Davis Ingle, responded that the third-party institution responsible for managing Trump’s investment portfolio mainly replicates well-known indexes, including the Schwab 1000, and that Trump and his family are unable to instruct, influence, or participate in investment-buys-and-sells decisions.

BlockBeats report: On August 25, the market is closely watching remarks by Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Wush at this Friday’s Jackson Hole conference. With U.S. long-term Treasury yields continuing to rise, market participants broadly expect Wush to deliver a more dovish signal to ease concerns about the bond market stemming from inflation and fiscal risks.
Bank of America’s U.S. rates strategist, Mark Cabana, said that the market has gradually become less sensitive to Wash’s earlier verbal remarks about “fighting inflation,” and that investors now more want to see a concrete policy roadmap to address inflation. Meanwhile, the Treasury Secretary, Bessent, has recently increased its long-term Treasury buyback efforts and financed the government through the issuance of short-term Treasury bills, indicating that there are some disagreements between the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve in managing the bond market.

BlockBeats news: On August 25, expectations of easing tensions between the US and Iran intensified, and global risk assets generally rebounded. The New York Times reported that the US is preparing to allow diplomats who had previously been evacuated to return to the Middle East embassies. Based on this, the market believes Washington may not expect a full-scale conflict with Iran in the near term. Brent crude fell below $90 per barrel at one point, with an intraday decline of more than 3%; WTI crude also fell by about 3% in tandem.
US stock index futures rose. S&P 500 index futures were up 0.4%, and Nasdaq 100 index futures climbed 0.9%. The semiconductor sector led the gains; Nvidia was up about 0.9% premarket and is poised to end seven straight trading days of declines. AI-related stocks such as Micron and Seagate also rose noticeably. The yield on the US 10-year Treasury fell by about 3 basis points to 4.66%, and the drop in bond yields provided support for risk assets.

Original title: (A $1.1 billion legal AI unicorn backed by OpenAI begins “wrapping” China’s open-source models)
Original author: Insight Beating
On August 20, Harvey, a legal AI company backed by OpenAI, released Tenet. Founded in 2022, the company is now valued at $11 billion—making it the highest-valued legal AI company globally. It serves thousands of institutions, and its shareholder list includes Sequoia, a16z, and GIC.
Tenet is its first set of proprietary models, built on Kimi K3, a weight released with Moonshot’s open weights from July. Tenet is still in the research preview stage, and Harvey plans to gradually roll the validated capabilities from it into its products.