A dense stream of updates hit crypto and AI markets between Aug. 12 and Aug. 13, spanning venture funding, protocol incidents, regulatory moves, exchange actions and large on-chain transfers. PANews’ roundup included Lovable’s $400 million Series C at a $13.3 billion valuation, Wintermute’s plan to spend about $1 billion over five years on high-frequency trading and AI data center infrastructure, and Tencent’s second-quarter results showing higher capital expenditure tied to AI spending. In digital assets, Harmony said it had traced fraudulently minted tokens across 409 wallets and was considering a rollback, while Solana briefly came close to a network-freeze threshold after a data center routing issue knocked nearly 29% of staked SOL offline. Anchorpoint also began the first phase of distributing its Hong Kong dollar stablecoin HKDAP, and Coinbase said it will suspend 10 perpetual contracts on Aug. 26. Whale activity remained active as well, including an Ethereum ICO participant moving 2,000 ETH to Coinbase, a wallet sending 2,300 BTC to Wintermute-linked deposit addresses since June 25, and a leveraged ETH trader closing out positions for a reported $4.3 million profit. The period also brought new product releases from Grok and DeepSeek, a major SEC no-action letter tied to Franklin Templeton’s BENJI fund, and fresh scrutiny of prediction markets from U.S. regulators and New York City lawmakers.

Anchorpoint, a subsidiary of Standard Chartered, has formally launched the first phase of issuance for HKDAP, a Hong Kong dollar stablecoin, according to The Block. The initial rollout opens test access to institutional distributors and professional investors rather than the broader market. Anchorpoint was established as a joint venture involving Standard Chartered, HKT and Animoca Brands. In April this year, the company received a stablecoin issuer license from the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, making it one of the first licensed institutions in the city’s new regime. The phase-one launch marks the start of live testing under that framework, with participation currently limited to professional and institutional channels named in the report.

OSL Group (HKEX: 863), a stablecoin payments and trading platform, said it has become an early approved distributor of HKDAP, a regulated Hong Kong dollar stablecoin from Hong Kong-licensed issuer Ding Dian Financial Technology. OSL will handle distribution and liquidity support, with services initially open to professional investors through its licensed exchange OSL HK, enabling fiat-to-HKDAP subscription, redemption, exchange, trading and settlement. The two partners have completed technical preparation and will focus the first institutional phase on tokenized funds, trade finance and cross-border payments. OSL CEO Kevin Cui described the appointment as a milestone in deepening cooperation, adding that regulated stablecoins are set to bridge digital assets and mainstream finance.

HashKey Exchange and Anchorpoint Financial Limited said HashKey has joined the first institutional phase of HKDAP, or HKD At Par, as a primary authorized distributor. Under the arrangement, HashKey will support distribution, trading and related services for the regulated Hong Kong dollar stablecoin. The companies said qualified institutions and professional investors can access HKDAP starting immediately through the HashKey app and other designated channels. HashKey also said it has completed the first HKDAP minting and redemption transaction for qualified clients, a step meant to verify the subscription and redemption process between HKDAP and fiat currency. HashKey Exchange Exchange Business Group CEO Haiyang Ru said the platform aims to connect issuers, financial institutions and market participants while providing compliant, secure and convenient market access. Anchorpoint Financial CEO and co-founder Dominic Maffei said market access and distribution will be key as regulated stablecoins move into practical use. The two firms said they plan to add more access channels and applications as preparations advance and market demand matures, with future use cases including payments, settlement and tokenized assets. They also said they want to expand cooperation with participants in digital assets, financial services and payments.

HashKey Holdings Limited said its wholly owned subsidiary, HKDAG (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., has entered into a non-legally binding framework agreement with the major shareholders of Asia Pacific Exchange Pte. Ltd. and APEX itself for a proposed acquisition of all equity interests in APEX. The target operates financial market infrastructure in Singapore and holds a Monetary Authority of Singapore-recognized exchange license for derivatives trading, while its subsidiary Asia Pacific Clear Pte. Ltd. holds a recognized clearing house license. According to the company, only three institutions in Singapore currently hold both types of licenses under the city-state’s regulatory framework. HashKey said the proposed deal, if completed, would expand its institutional trading and clearing infrastructure and strengthen its regulated business presence in one of Asia’s core financial markets. The transaction has not been finalized and remains subject to definitive agreements and MAS approval. HashKey said no final documents have been signed and the required regulatory approval has not been obtained, meaning the acquisition may or may not proceed.

Kimi.ai has continued its open-source push as it released several pieces of underlying infrastructure alongside the opening of Kimi K3 model weights and its technical report. The newly disclosed components include MoonEP, a high-performance communication library built for distributed mixture-of-experts, or MoE, training; AgentENV, a distributed environment system designed for large-scale agent workflows and developed in collaboration with kvcache-ai; and FlashKDA, a high-performance Kimi Delta Attention kernel based on CUTLASS. According to the official description, these components are intended to reduce communication and inference overhead in large-scale MoE training and agent reinforcement learning workloads. The team also said the tools can be used as a plug-and-play backend for flash-linear-attention. The announcement was cited by ChainCatcher.

MarsBit’s Weekly Editor’s Picks for July 18 to July 24 pulled together a wide range of stories spanning macro markets, crypto investing, AI, prediction markets, policy, stablecoins, emerging ecosystems and security. The roundup pointed to fresh stress in the U.S. Treasury market, where rising yields and a long stretch of elevated 30-year rates have pushed investors to rethink the Federal Reserve path. It also revisited South Korea’s single-stock leveraged ETF unwind in eight stages, arguing that the selloff was driven by a feedback loop involving foreign capital rebalancing, retail dip-buying, daily ETF rebalancing, forced liquidations, shifting industry expectations, tighter regulation and tighter monetary policy rather than a collapse in fundamentals. On the crypto side, MarsBit highlighted arguments that the next bull market could center on the merger of on-chain finance and traditional finance, with stablecoins, tokenized assets, 24/7 trading, instant settlement and institutional DeFi at the center. Hyperliquid and Robinhood were named as two representative players pushing that convergence from different directions. The roundup also covered Hyperliquid’s HIP-4 proposal, updates around the U.S. CLARITY Act, a report that SpaceX will release $116 billion in stock into circulation on August 6 through a phased structure, and a MetaMask contractor incident in which a person later identified by Consensys as a North Korean hacker had accessed core wallet code. MarsBit said the incident caused no user asset or data losses.

Hong Kong stablecoin HKDAP completed Ethereum mainnet transfers successfully, issued by a Standard Chartered-HKT-Animoca Brands joint venture. Regulated by HKMA, phased issuance starts Q2 2026, targeting cross-border payments.