AEON, an AI economy settlement protocol, released its latest operating figures showing that transaction volume processed in July exceeded $39 million, while cumulative processed amount rose above $514 million. The platform also said its user base has surpassed 2.3 million. According to the update, QR-code payments settled through AEON grew 83.5% month over month in July, while crypto payment volume increased 55% over the same period. AEON said demand from AI Agents for instant and borderless payment infrastructure is rising as the AI economy develops, and it positioned its QR and crypto payment network as part of the infrastructure for machine-to-machine payments and AI payment use cases. The protocol also said it is improving payment rails for scenarios including collaboration between Agents and autonomous spending by Agents, with the aim of connecting AI-driven activity to offline commercial fund flows.

NFTs on the Robinhood chain have started drawing fresh attention, with one immediate trigger coming from an X exchange between Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev and digital artist beeple. In beeple’s post, Tenev appeared as an "NFT savior" holding Cash Cat, with the caption that Robinhood was saving NFTs. Tenev replied, "Someone has to do it." Following that interaction, the floor price of the Cash Cat NFT collection climbed to about $660, marking a fivefold increase in two days before later pulling back to roughly $375. Before that social media catalyst, StonkBroker had already emerged as the leading NFT collection on the Robinhood chain. Its floor price briefly rose above 13 ETH, or around $25,000, and later held at 11.75 ETH. On a per-NFT basis, that put StonkBroker above Bored Ape Yacht Club, while its market capitalization at one point exceeded $100 million, surpassing established collections such as Pudgy Penguins and Milady. The article groups the current Robinhood NFT activity into three buckets: meme-coin-linked NFT collections such as Cash Cat and $HOODRAT, the broader StonkBroker ecosystem including Chain Mancers and Yardkeepers, and veteran founders or older NFT brands launching new projects on the chain. It also flags a key risk: NFT liquidity remains far weaker than meme coins, making exits harder and slippage more severe, especially in smaller collections.

Strategy’s standing in major equity indexes emerged as one of the day’s main storylines after Bitcoin News said MSCI had proposed new rules aimed at “non-operating companies,” with a May 2026 simulation showing Strategy could be removed from its global investable market index. The consultation period runs through Sept. 30, a decision is expected by Oct. 16, and any changes could take effect during the November 2026 index review. Another macro headline came from the U.S. Treasury’s planned $25 billion 30-year bond sale, which is expected to carry the highest financing cost since 2001, while U.S. interest expense for the current fiscal year has already reached $1.17 trillion. Across the crypto sector, TRM Labs said only 281 of 1,343 crypto asset service providers in Europe have obtained authorization after MiCA took full effect. Forward Industries disclosed additional SOL purchases, Wintermute outlined a roughly $1 billion five-year push into AI infrastructure and high-frequency trading, and Bullish, Gemini, Robinhood Chain and Tether each released notable operating or financial updates. The day also brought project launches, new financing rounds for Kalshi, Databricks and several AI startups, plus fresh regulatory developments from the CFTC and SEC.

AEON, an AI economy settlement protocol, said it has integrated with Bre-B, Colombia’s national instant payment system. The integration allows users to pay with crypto assets through Bre-B standard QR codes, while merchants receive settlement in Colombian pesos, or COP. According to the announcement, AEON already supports more than 50 million merchants worldwide. With the Bre-B connection, the protocol is extending its AI settlement network into a local payment rail in Latin America. AEON said the move provides infrastructure for AI and AI agents to enter real-world commercial use cases and complete transactions and fiat settlement through a domestic payment network. The update centers on payment acceptance and settlement, linking crypto-funded consumer payments with local-currency merchant payouts inside Colombia’s instant payment framework.

Crypto exchange Bybit has added a new perpetual contract for AEON under the AEONUSDT trading pair, according to a newsflash published by Odaily. The contract went live today and supports leverage of up to 25x. The source report only states the listing and the maximum leverage available, and does not provide extra details such as launch timing within the day, trading rules, funding parameters, or related promotions. This is a straightforward product update centered on derivatives trading access for AEON on Bybit.

Gate has unveiled two user reward campaigns — a deposit-and-trade promotion and a CandyDrop AEON task — with combined prize pools of 10 million USDT, 5 ETH and 2.85 million AEON. According to the exchange's official announcement, participants earn extra rewards by depositing funds, trading or completing in-app tasks. The deposit-and-trade event runs until Aug. 10, 14:00 (UTC+8): users who sign up and keep a net deposit of at least 100 USDT for 24 hours receive 100 USDT, while those who reach 5,000 USDT in net deposits and complete 500,000 USDT in contract trading volume get an additional 0.1 ETH. The two pools are allocated on a first-come, first-served basis. Separately, the CandyDrop AEON tasks, open until Aug. 12, 16:00 (UTC+8), are backed by a total pool of 2.85 million AEON tokens, worth around 165,015 USDT. Individual participants who complete the designated tasks can earn up to 1,700 AEON, about 98.43 USDT. More than 20,000 users have already joined.

NVIDIA has open-sourced Alpamayo 2 Super, a new inference model for autonomous driving and embodied AI, as the company sharpens its push into physical AI and robotics. The model has 34 billion parameters in total, combining a 32 billion-parameter NVIDIA Cosmos 3 Super Reasoner visual-language reasoning core with a 2 billion-parameter Diffusion Action Expert. According to the company, Alpamayo 2 Super adds Chain-of-Causation reasoning, allowing it to simulate edge cases in a virtual physical world within milliseconds and derive optimal decisions. It scored 79.2 on the LingoQA autonomous driving benchmark. CEO Jensen Huang said physical AI and robotics represent the next major wave of artificial intelligence, adding that self-driving vehicles are essentially robots with four wheels. The report also mapped out Taiwan’s role in NVIDIA’s ecosystem expansion, naming TSMC for foundry work on chips including Thor and Jetson, Foxconn and Quanta for system integration and mass assembly, and several industrial PC makers for edge control hardware. Other companies cited include Solomon in 3D AI vision sensing, HIWIN and related firms in precision motion components, Mirle in pneumatic control, and Delta Electronics in lightweight power modules. The article added that the 2026 Taiwan Automation Intelligence and Robot Show, scheduled for Aug. 19, could add to market attention on the sector.

AEON, an AI-native payment protocol focused on the so-called agentic economy, completed its token generation event on July 27 and began trading on Binance Alpha, Bitget, OKX, Gate and KuCoin, before adding a KRW pair on Bithumb on July 29. The project says it is building a crypto settlement layer for AI agents rather than another consumer wallet, aiming to support verifiable and settleable payments as agents move from answering questions to making purchases and carrying out tasks on their own. According to data released by AEON on July 28, the network has more than 2.3 million users, monthly transaction volume above $30 million, coverage across nearly 20 emerging markets, access to more than 50 million merchants and cumulative processed volume of $475 million. The company said its stack integrates x402, ERC-8004, Google AP2/A2A and MCP, while local payment rails such as VietQR, QR Ph and Pix help convert onchain payments into fiat received by merchants. AEON also points to protocol ties with Coinbase and BNB Chain, an $8 million pre-seed round led by YZi Labs in May 2026, and a three-stage roadmap that stretches from payment verification to execution verification and, later, broader AI financial services based on KYA credit records.