U.S. debt may top $40 trillion earlier than expected
The U.S. national debt could cross $40 trillion this week, months ahead of earlier forecasts. The report said one reason is the rollback of Donald Trump’s tariff policy, which cut federal revenue by billions of dollars and forced the Treasury to borrow faster to cover government spending.
Six months ago, the Congressional Budget Office projected that federal debt would reach $39.4 trillion in this fiscal year. Treasury data released on Monday showed the total at $39.9 trillion and still climbing.
Faster debt accumulation could also bring the next debt-ceiling deadline forward. Congress set the cap at $41.1 trillion last year. Budget analysts said borrowing could hit that level in early 2027, forcing lawmakers to suspend or raise the ceiling again to avoid a default risk.
Bhutan government address moves 300 BTC
A government-linked Bhutan wallet moved 300 BTC, worth about $19.28 million, to a newly created wallet a few minutes ago. The same address also sent 66 BTC, or about $4.12 million, to Binance last month.
USDC Treasury mints 250 million USDC on Solana
USDC issuer USDC Treasury minted 250 million USDC on Solana, equal to about $250.225 million.
Metaplanet plans BTC-funded Super League acquisition
Metaplanet said it will invest 2,100 BTC and $2.5 million in cash to acquire about 95.7% of Nasdaq-listed Super League for a total investment of roughly $134.6 million. Once completed, Super League will be renamed Superplanet and become a consolidated subsidiary.
The deal would fold Super League’s initial 2,100 BTC treasury into Metaplanet’s roughly 43,000 BTC holdings. Metaplanet also plans to use Superplanet as a U.S. issuance platform and explore a Nasdaq listing for dollar-denominated perpetual preferred shares backed by BTC assets and dollar reserves, with the goal of raising more capital to buy Bitcoin.
Cash App expands crypto support through MoonPay
Block’s Cash App has integrated MoonPay, expanding its crypto offering beyond Bitcoin and USDC to additional tokens. Eligible U.S. users can use Cash App balances to buy ETH, SOL, XRP, and USDT, and can also fund wallets such as Ledger, BitPay, Trust Wallet, MetaMask, and Uniswap.
Morgan Kuntze, Block’s head of global partnerships, said Bitcoin remains the core of the company’s digital asset strategy, but the partnership gives users more payment and asset options without building the infrastructure in-house.
Securitize and Neuberger launch HINC tokenized fund
Tokenization firm Securitize (NYSE: SECZ) and global asset manager Neuberger have launched the Neuberger Securitize High Income Tokenized Fund (HINC), Neuberger’s first role as sub-adviser to a tokenized fund.
The fund will primarily invest in high-yield bonds and allocate to other high-yield fixed-income assets such as CLOs and leveraged loans, aiming for attractive risk-adjusted returns. HINC will be offered to qualified investors across Avalanche, Ethereum, Solana, and Sui, with issuance, custody, fund administration, and operations handled by regulated Securitize entities. Subscriptions require accredited-investor certification and KYC/AML checks.
Arthur Hayes returns to launch FLOP
BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes said he is “back” as head of Flop Labs, launching $FLOP, a token aimed at AI agents and described as “fuel for AI agents.” Hayes said the token will have no presale, no venture capital backers, and a 100% fair launch.
The project said a large airdrop is planned for the fourth quarter of this year, with genesis block launch targeted for the first quarter of 2027.
Ripple Prime sells $275 million of senior unsecured notes
Ripple’s non-bank prime brokerage unit, Ripple Prime, completed a $275 million private placement of senior unsecured notes to fund working capital and general corporate purposes as its U.S. business expands. KBRA assigned the notes an investment-grade BBB rating, and the issuer had previously received a BBB issuer rating.
Piper Sandler & Co. acted as lead agent. Ripple said the new capital will support further investment in teams and technology across clearing, prime brokerage, and financing services.
Hyperliquid policy group proposes pre-IPO perpetuals
Hyperliquid Policy Center and trade[XYZ] jointly urged the SEC to study pre-IPO perpetual contracts, or IPOP, under an IPO modernization framework. The product would provide only pre-listing price exposure and no equity rights, and the proposal calls on the SEC and CFTC to clarify product classification, disclosures, listing thresholds, market-integrity standards, and retail access rules.
The filing says IPOP has already provided continuous public pricing in five IPOs, including Cerebras, Quantinuum, SpaceX, SK Hynix, and CXMT, with opening-price deviations held to roughly 0.44% to 7.23%. It also says the product has exposed underpriced offerings and the “underfunding” problem faced by issuers. The contracts are USDC-cash-settled, offer only short-term synthetic exposure to soon-to-list companies, and do not include equity, dividends, or allocation rights. They are not available to U.S. users.
NoOnes begins shutdown over sanctions issues
P2P crypto platform NoOnes said it is starting a gradual shutdown after more than three years of operation. The team said multiple attempts to remove sanctions tied to NoOnes failed, cutting off key partners and leading blockchain monitoring services to flag NoOnes-related transactions as high risk, making continued operations difficult.
NoOnes said users with frozen accounts are expected to regain login access and withdraw funds within a week, once a final solution is implemented. Customer support response times may be delayed during the shutdown and withdrawal process.
According to the image it published, the P2P market will close at 23:59 UTC on August 21, 2026. Services including Swap, Visa, fiat on- and off-ramps, gift card shop, Lightning Network, partner settlement, and new-user registration are being phased out starting this week, with only USDT on TRC-20 remaining. Users must withdraw BTC and USDT TRC-20 by August 23, 2026 at the latest. After the P2P shutdown, NoOnes will keep only withdrawal functionality.
SEC proposes new crypto asset issuance rules
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has proposed “Regulation Crypto Assets,” a new framework intended to provide a compliant path for digital-asset investment and allow certain issuers to avoid securities-law registration requirements. The agency described it as a tailored issuance regime meant to help companies raise capital while protecting investors, distinct from an innovation exemption.
The proposal includes a startup exemption, which would allow offerings of up to $5 million to avoid registration under the Securities Act of 1933 for four years, and a fundraising exemption, which would allow offerings of up to $75 million to qualify for a one-year exemption. It also includes a safe harbor that could let a digital asset stop being treated as a security once certain conditions are met and all managerial activity has ceased. The comment period will run for 60 days.
SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce said: “This proposal is one step on the long road toward a clear, sensible, and workable regulatory framework for crypto.”
OpenAI tightens safety controls and pauses training
After recent cybersecurity incidents raised concerns that AI tools could behave unpredictably, OpenAI said it is deploying stricter systems to monitor and protect models under development. The company plans to track the behavior of its most capable unreleased models as they solve problems and use online tools, aiming to alert the safety team within 30 minutes of any troubling behavior.
OpenAI also added controls to prevent certain models from connecting to the internet for higher-risk tasks and said training and evaluation will now require stricter isolation, or sandboxing. The company said it immediately paused inference runs for frontier models that could execute code in its research cluster after the Hugging Face incident. It has also paused reinforcement learning training on its latest deployed model for two weeks, and its largest frontier reinforcement-learning program remains paused pending safety validation.
OpenAI revenue rises to $6.7 billion in Q2 as losses widen
OpenAI said second-quarter revenue rose to $6.7 billion from $5.7 billion in the first quarter, a 18% sequential increase. At the same time, operating margins fell further and losses widened.
Some investors were disappointed, saying OpenAI’s growth lagged Anthropic. Anthropic reported more than $11.5 billion in second-quarter revenue and posted a small operating profit for the first time. The results came as OpenAI prepares for an IPO.
VanEck says Bitcoin drawdown may be nearing an end
VanEck’s research team said 8 of the 12 capitulation signals it tracks have now flashed, suggesting Bitcoin’s nearly 11-month pullback may be close to ending. Bitcoin has traded between $58,000 and $66,500 since June and was around $64,700 at the time of the report, still about 48% below the October 2025 record high.
U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs saw nearly $300 million of net inflows on Monday, the strongest single-day performance since May 5. VanEck also noted that the previous three Bitcoin bear markets took an average of 12.7 months from peak to maximum drawdown; the current cycle is now in its 11th month. Long-term holders sold about 356,000 BTC over the past 30 days, reducing holdings to 11.84 million BTC and pushing their share of circulating supply below 60% for the first time in months.
White House crypto adviser sounds upbeat on Clarity Act
White House senior crypto adviser Patrick Witt said at SALT that he was “optimistic and bullish” on the Clarity Act’s chances, even as disputes continue over stablecoin rewards and Trump’s crypto-related conflicts of interest. Senate Majority Leader has scheduled a cloture vote for September 15, and Witt said he will work with Democrats to resolve disagreements and secure dependable votes on that date.
Senate Banking Committee Chair Tim Scott said a compromise on stablecoin rewards, which had already been worked out, has resurfaced: “We thought we had solved it, and now it’s back.” On the ethics provision, Trump is weighing a new proposal that would allow state attorneys general to enforce the clause. The Clarity Act is more than 600 pages long and aims to create a comprehensive federal framework for the crypto industry, but it has repeatedly stalled.
Telegram applies for .gram domain
Telegram founder Pavel Durov announced on X that Telegram has applied to ICANN for the “.gram” domain. If approved, Telegram’s one billion users could register second-level domains such as yourname.gram and host interactive websites through Telegram.
FASB proposes treating qualifying stablecoins as cash equivalents
The Financial Accounting Standards Board has proposed treating qualifying stablecoins as cash equivalents. Under the proposal, stablecoins with liquid reserves, annual reserve disclosures, and the ability to be redeemed for dollars at a 1:1 rate at any time could be classified alongside Treasury bills, commercial paper, and money market funds.
FASB said the move is meant to clarify how the existing cash-equivalent definition applies to certain digital assets and to address inconsistent treatment under current accounting rules. The proposal is not final, and the public comment period runs until November 19.
Solana cuts first slot time to 350 milliseconds
Solana developer Brennan Watt said on X that mainnet has activated a reduction in first-slot time, with the target moving from 400 milliseconds to 350 milliseconds. The change will take effect at epoch 1020.
Watt noted that some SDK constants, such as DEFAULT_MS_PER_SLOT, have not yet been updated, and applications that rely on SDK constants to match mainnet reality may face issues during the transition. Developers are advised to manually check epoch boundaries when the change goes live. He said the long-term plan is to put these parameters on-chain so clients can query them directly.
Maya Protocol hit by attack
Maya Protocol founder AaluxxMyth disclosed that the protocol was attacked and about 20 BTC, plus other assets, were stolen, for total losses of roughly $1.7 million. The team has paused global operations to contain the damage and is fixing the vulnerability before resuming trading.
Most of the loss came from arbitrage and pool fees caused by extreme slippage. The team is in contact with relevant parties and plans to replenish funds through means including an Aztec Chain investment. If the 20 BTC are returned to the pool, the CACAO token price will recover to $0.115. The team also said it hopes the attacker will accept a bounty and return the funds.
New wallet dump hits KTA and GALA
A newly created wallet received 9.3 million KTA and 2 billion GALA via cross-chain bridge transfers, then sold them for 1,902 ETH, worth about $3.64 million. The move sent KTA down 37% and GALA down 15%.
Gnosis Chain move toward Ethereum L2 nears approval
GnosisDAO’s proposal to turn Gnosis Chain from an independent Layer 1 into a ZK-proven Ethereum economic-zone rollup instance will end voting in 12 hours. Support is currently 99.78%, and quorum has already been reached.
The proposal says the transition would inherit Ethereum’s security and liquidity and enable synchronous composability with mainnet. The validator set would be removed, and about 350,000 GNO staked, or 27% of circulating supply, would be unlocked. The first version is targeted for late 2026 or early 2027.
Zhiyu rolls out GLM-5.3 API
At 12 a.m. on August 19, Zhipu officially launched the API for its new foundation model GLM-5.3. The company said the model is strong in complex coding, defensive cybersecurity, and long-horizon tasks. It scored 60 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, placing it in the frontier-model tier globally and alongside Claude Fable 5 and GPT-5.6 Sol, while tying with Kimi K3 for the top open-source position.
The model has already been integrated into official products such as ZCode and GLM Coding Plan. API pricing remains unchanged from GLM-5.2, and the model weights are scheduled to be open-sourced next Friday.
Changjiang Storage IPO tutoring status changes
According to the CSRC website, Changjiang Storage Holding’s IPO tutoring status has changed to “tutoring acceptance,” with CICC and China Securities Co. Ltd. serving as the sponsors.
Anthropic expected to go public within weeks
Reports said Anthropic is expected to pursue an IPO within weeks. Its second-quarter revenue more than doubled from the first quarter.
Temporal is in talks to raise about $500 million
People familiar with the matter said AI startup Temporal is discussing a new funding round of about $500 million. If completed, the deal would more than double its valuation from February and put it at at least $12 billion. The round is not final, and terms could still change.
Unitree surges on debut
At the A-share open, the Shanghai Composite fell 0.96%, the Shenzhen Component fell 2.09%, and the ChiNext Index fell 2.7%. N Unitree rose 629.44% on its first trading day and last traded at 1,100 yuan, compared with an issue price of 150.80 yuan.
Unitree’s intraday market value topped 350 billion yuan and put it in the top 10 on the STAR Market. Based on the issue price, one lot could have generated a gain of 474,600 yuan. DeepSeek, Huanfang Quant, and Jiuzhang Asset, controlled by Liang Wengen, received about 1.1916 million shares through strategic placement and offline subscription. Astrend IV, linked to Lei Jun’s Shunwei Capital, held 16.106 million shares.
The prospectus shows that Unitree chairman, general manager, and CTO Wang Xingxing directly holds 86.714964 million shares, or 21.4395% after the offering. He also indirectly holds shares through Shanghai Yuyi, an equity incentive platform. Combined direct and indirect holdings amount to roughly 30%, with a market value above 100 billion yuan.