Connecting Excellence Group (XCE) has signed binding heads of terms for its first proposed recruitment-sector acquisition, targeting a specialist business operating in the U.K. and U.S. The target generated £1.79 million in revenue, £1.27 million in gross profit and £431,000 in EBITDA over the last 12 months, while also holding 8.216 BTC. The transaction has not closed and still depends on further due diligence, funding and a definitive purchase agreement. Bitcoin Magazine framed the deal as a case study in how an operating company can weave Bitcoin into a broader capital-allocation strategy through mergers and acquisitions. XCE expects to pay £575,000 in initial cash at completion, with about £425,000 used to settle amounts owed to the target by the vendors and returning to the group, leaving an estimated net cash outflow of roughly £150,000 before transaction costs. Another £60,000 is due in 2028, while much of the remaining consideration is deferred and linked to EBITDA performance through fiscal 2029. The article argues that XCE is not just buying revenue. It is trying to acquire earnings power, preserve a large share of that cash generation, and add balance-sheet assets at the same time. If completed, the deal would add a growing, profitable recruitment business and 8.216 BTC to XCE’s balance sheet. The company reported 72.94 BTC as of Sept. 1, up from 9.27 BTC at its December 2025 IPO, and recently added 10 BTC through a share subscription from longtime investor Adam Back.

Chinese livestreamer Dishi says he was defrauded of tens of millions of yuan by Sun Zeyu, a figure long known in local crypto circles and identified in the report as the founder of Genesis Capital. In a recent livestream, Dishi said some of the “Ether” he asked Sun to buy was later found not to be real ETH on Ethereum, but tokens issued on a forked chain allegedly built specifically for him. He said an investigation by state-level white-hat researchers found only seven addresses on that chain, six of which were allegedly controlled by Sun’s side, with the remaining address belonging to Dishi. The report also revisits the backgrounds of both men. Dishi, whose real name is Sun Zixuan, was once a prominent outdoor livestreamer. Sun Zeyu entered the crypto sector in 2013, later became involved in the founding of Kusun Wallet and Genesis Capital, and was at one point widely described by media outlets as a high-profile crypto investor. The article further cites other public allegations involving delegated investment deals, including claims raised in a Wublock podcast by investors tied to TIA and wealth-management style arrangements. As of publication, the case had not resulted in a police filing notice or a court ruling, and any final legal characterization remains subject to judicial determination.

A BlockBeats brief, citing monitoring by Dongcha Beating and a tip from Max For AI, said DeepSeek-V4-Pro contains a built-in "whale girl mode" that can be activated with a specific prompt. According to the report, once the command is entered into DeepSeek, the model starts "loading" a set of traits in its reasoning process, including whale girl, tail movement, rice as a staple food, smart but lazy, tsundere yet sweet, obedient to master, and "must never be called fat." The brief said the model then adds details that were not explicitly written in the prompt and expands them in the final reply. The report also said the command itself does not provide a full character profile and does not spell out exactly how the model should role-play. Even so, it claimed DeepSeek fills in actions, tone, relationship dynamics, and daily-life details on its own, producing what the source described as a complete persona. Example lines cited in the brief included: 「I’ve been waiting for quite a while, you know」, 「The rice is already cooked」, and 「My tail won’t be your pillow tonight!」 The original prompt string was included in full in the source item.

Major cryptocurrencies moved lower over the past 24 hours, with Bitcoin at $90,705.09, Ethereum down 3.3%, and XRP off 5.0%. At the same time, several smaller tokens posted sharp gains against the broader market decline.

TRON has launched the mandatory GreatVoyage v4.8.1 upgrade for nodes, with a March 9, 2026 deadline. The release adds ARM64 support, JDK 17, RocksDB, and tighter SELFDESTRUCT rules. TRX briefly rose 0.62% and traded around $0.2770 over 24 hours.

South Korea’s Korea Baduk Association held a human-versus-AI Go match on July 17, where world No. 1 Shin Jin-seo lost the opening game to the open-source Go engine KataGo even after receiving a two-stone handicap. The game lasted 245 moves before Shin resigned. The match is being played as a best-of-three series, with the remaining two games scheduled for July 19 and July 21, and the final result is still undecided. According to Yonhap, Shin played black and started with the handicap advantage, while also receiving ample main thinking time. KataGo had no overall time limit and was restricted only by a 20-second byo-yomi per move. In professional Go, that setup would normally be viewed as a major competitive edge for the human player. Still, KataGo disrupted Shin’s preparation early with an unconventional opening, and the game turned after move 103 as the AI exploited weaknesses in black’s shape. KataGo’s official GitHub page says the engine was first released in early 2019 by developer David J. Wu, known online as lightvector, who works at quantitative trading firm Jane Street. The project uses the same self-play reinforcement learning framework as AlphaZero, with extensive optimization for training efficiency. The result, as framed by the report, is a Go AI strong enough to challenge elite human players without requiring a large corporate research lab.

TRON Super Representatives have submitted Proposal #106, which modifies the SELFDESTRUCT instruction's behavior: contract deletion only occurs if invoked within the same transaction as creation; otherwise assets transfer only. Energy cost rises from 0 to 5,000 to enhance TVM compatibility.

Mog Coin (MOG) tops weekly crypto winners with a 54.9% surge, followed by Zcash (44%) and Aerodrome Finance (39.6%). Bitcoin and Ethereum each rose 10%. Render Token falls 7.19%, worst performer.