CHAIN news

Tether completes a full KPMG audit with an excess reserve of $6.814 billion: USDT officially passes four major KPMG’s full-year independent audit, receiving the highest level of unqualified opinion with no reservations. The audit involved on-site verification of gold bars throughout, along with complete verification of all assets and liabilities, confirming that the reserve funds exceed total liabilities by $6.814 billion. This fully dispels long-standing market doubts about audits and significantly improves transparency.
More than 1.4 billion USD worth of crypto options expiring this Friday; BTC’s key resistance levels are clear. On this coming Friday, large-lot options are set to expire in clusters, with the total notional value exceeding $1.4 billion. BTC’s biggest “pain point” is at $64,000, with a heavy sell-pressure zone above it between $68,000 and $72,000; for ETH, the pain point is $1,900 as short-term range trading battles intensify.

Regulatory standoff between the U.S. and China: The CFTC ensures predictions market operations—New York state prosecutors have indicted and moved to shut down prediction platform Kalshi, prompting the CFTC to urgently use its authority to require the platform to continue operating. Disagreements between federal and state regulators are intensifying. The CFTC insists that derivatives trading is not subject to state gambling regulations.
Key timeline for the CLARITY Act takes shape: Coinbase executives confirm that a procedural vote in the Senate will be held on September 15. During the recess, lawmakers will continue negotiating the disputed provisions—this is the final critical window for the bill to be enacted within the year.
Iran sets hardline conditions for opening the straits: Senior Iranian officials state that the U.S. will not accept Iran’s terms, will not end the regional conflict, and will not unfreeze Iranian funds—otherwise the Strait of Hormuz will not open fully. Pakistan also reveals that the U.S. and Iran are nearing an agreement on a reconciliation arrangement.

Vitalik updates the latest Ethereum roadmap: Ethereum’s R&D priorities have been comprehensively adjusted, adding four major core directions: native privacy, scaling with post-quantum security, native Rollup, and a streamlined EVM design. The scaling approach shifts from broad expansion to specialized scaling for high-load scenarios, with a focus on STARK proofs and AI-assisted security verification.
Microsoft releases its next-generation AI chip MAIA 300 in September: officially announced that it will launch next month, continuing to intensify its push in the compute-power and self-developed chip space.
Meta releases a lightweight local AI model: launches the Glimmer lightweight model, which can run locally on standard PCs and Macs, focusing on AI intelligent agent tasks. Zuckerberg calls for loosening U.S. AI training regulations, giving open-source models more room to grow.

Apple tests China-made Changxin storage chips: Apple is testing Changxin storage chips for iPhone and MacBook models, planning to use them first in mainland China devices to alleviate memory shortages amid the AI boom. HP and Acer have already been the first to mount this domestic storage solution on overseas models.
The CLARITY Act window is left with only a short timeframe, with a low probability of being implemented within the year: a White House adviser warns that if there is no substantive progress by September 15, the bill will be virtually impossible to pass afterward. Grayscale also believes that this year’s implementation is difficult due to election-year agendas crowding out other matters. However, regulation will not be on pause: the SEC will fill in the rules on its own, and the industry’s trend of going global may further intensify.

AI stock guru in liquidation—actually gets crazily抢购 by Silicon Valley capital: A 25-year-old AI fund founder Leopold’s fund was liquidated, but overall it is still profitable by 80% this year, with remaining assets of about $10 billion. After the liquidation, Sequoia and multiple top VCs instead took the initiative to follow up and invest—Silicon Valley recognizes his technical judgment, sharply contrasting with Wall Street’s dislike of high-leverage risk. Currently, the fund does not accept new capital and has already fully deleveraged.
Naval: Open-source AI won’t overturn closed-source giants: In response to industry anxiety triggered by the open-sourcing of Kimi K3, Naval said that high-value areas are about adversarial competition; simply open-sourcing can’t erase the commercial moat of leading closed-source models, and the big tech companies’ fortifications remain solid.

Hyperliquid destroys massive amounts of HYPE: the team sells large quantities of tokens. Hyperliquid has cumulatively destroyed 47.57 million HYPE, worth $2.64 billion, accounting for 4.76% of the maximum supply. In the past 24 hours, it destroyed tokens worth $1.12 million. During the same period, the platform’s fee revenue was $1.41 million. Its development team, HyperLabs, yesterday redeemed 433,000 HYPE (about $24.25 million) and has completed the sell-off via market makers and platforms such as OKX and Bybit.
BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF continues to accumulate: added nearly $480 million this week. BlackRock’s spot Bitcoin ETF IBIT today again withdrew 1,840 BTC from Coinbase Prime, worth $119 million. This week, it has cumulatively added 7,320 BTC, worth about $478.5 million, continuing to accumulate against the trend.

Google’s core AI team collectively resigns to start a business: Jeff Dean, the head of Google’s AI strategy, along with three top senior researchers, leaves to found an AI nonprofit company focused on scientific discovery. The four are highly cited leading scholars in the industry; this departure further intensifies Google’s loss of core AI talent.
Anthropic’s self-developed chip accelerates: Official confirmation that it has formed an internal chip team and will no longer rely entirely on external computing power, with deep in-house R&D to adapt to the Claude model.
Zhang Yiming sets ByteDance’s AI direction: It clearly prohibits using model distillation techniques to catch up with competitors, even if it falls behind in the short term—insisting on a route of developing native models in-house.

BNY Mellon Bank × Galaxy launches institutional staking services: a traditional top-tier custodian bank teams up with a crypto firm to introduce an integrated custody + staking service, strengthening institution-grade digital-asset infrastructure and helping traditional capital enter in a compliant manner. The rollout is pending regulatory approval.
Wells Fargo rolls out its own-chain tokenized deposits: launches a tokenized deposit offering on-chain for corporate customers, supporting cross-chain interoperability. The traditional banking sector’s blockchain and tokenization momentum continues to accelerate.
Samsung phones natively integrate stablecoins: plans to embed stablecoin payment and savings features into 800 million Galaxy devices, supporting assets such as USDC and covering 61 countries. Leveraging its massive existing wallet user base, the company aims to capture the crypto entry point on mobile.

The Coldcard crypto theft incident continues to escalate, with losses still growing: the vulnerability attacks are ongoing, with a total of 4,585 addresses stolen for 1,367 BTC, for total losses of about $88.6 million. The vulnerability stems from a flawed random number generation in firmware from five years ago. Hackers used AI to crack private keys in bulk, and even ordinary offline cold wallets were not spared—completely breaking the market consensus that cold wallets are absolutely secure.
AI quickly uncovers fatal vulnerabilities and upends industry understanding: developers use large models such as Claude and Zhipu GLM to pinpoint Coldcard’s core vulnerability in just 8 minutes. Industry views suggest that Kimi’s open-sourcing in the recent period and this large-scale crypto theft are not a coincidence—AI has become a key tool for hackers to efficiently audit and find on-chain vulnerabilities.

Coldcard vulnerability hackers shift stolen funds in bulk: The hackers moved 1,159 BTC worth about $72.71 million out of 870 stolen addresses. Most of the funds remain in the hackers’ control of eight addresses. There is a risk of a second round of transfers to dump (sell) them later.
Bitcoin mining hashrate continues to weaken: The network’s mining difficulty has dropped 14% from its in-year peak and is seeing year-over-year negative growth for the second time in history. The main reasons are sluggish coin prices and reduced miner earnings, alongside a large-scale shift of electricity and computing resources to the AI industry. Mining revenue is unlikely to recover noticeably this year.
Russia issues mining ban: Starting August 15, Moscow and surrounding areas will fully prohibit cryptocurrency mining and participation in mining pools. The ban will last until the end of 2032. About 1 GW of local mining power will be released.