A PANews feature argues that the 2017-18 Golden State Warriors were not only one of the strongest teams in NBA history on the court, but also one of the most investment-savvy off it. Looking back eight years later, the roster stands out for how many players built visible careers in angel investing, venture capital, and startup finance. Among the 17 regular-season players, nearly 10 were described as having investment experience. The report traces several of the most notable cases. Andre Iguodala is portrayed as the locker room’s de facto investment mentor, moving from buying Zynga shares on E-Trade to backing Zoom, PagerDuty, Jumia and dozens of other companies, while also introducing teammates to founders and venture capitalists. Kevin Durant, meanwhile, used his Bay Area years to deepen his ties to Silicon Valley through Thirty Five Ventures, building a portfolio that later grew to more than 100 startups. Omri Casspi, whose on-court role with Golden State was modest, later built Swish Ventures into a firm with roughly $800 million in assets under management after raising a new $250 million fund. The article also reviews Stephen Curry’s SC30 and Penny Jar Capital, plus investment activity linked to Klay Thompson, Draymond Green, JaVale McGee, Zaza Pachulia, David West, and Shaun Livingston. PANews says the Warriors’ location in the Bay Area, owner Joe Lacob’s venture background, and the network effects created inside the locker room helped turn a championship roster into a uniquely dense athlete-investor network.

NBA superstar LeBron James announced on X that he has visited the headquarters of prediction market platform Polymarket, with a partnership imminent. A video showed him selecting the 'Sports' option, hinting at a sports-focused collaboration.

Crypto markets opened Sept. 4 with a clear macro catalyst: traders sharply cut expectations for a Federal Reserve rate hike this month. CME pricing showed the odds of a 25-basis-point increase at roughly 50%, down from 70% a day earlier, after comments from Fed Governor Christopher Waller and New York Fed President John Williams signaled that a hike is not a settled outcome. Bitcoin briefly moved above $82,000 in early trading, while most major tokens in centralized exchange volume rankings posted gains, including BTC, ETH, XRP, SOL, BNB, DOGE, UNI, and ZEC. The day’s policy picture was mixed. A Galaxy research executive said House Republican leadership had canceled voting weeks in late September, leaving the CLARITY Act with very low odds of passing before the midterm elections. At the same time, SEC Chair Paul Atkins told Fox Business he expects the bill to be voted on in the Senate on Sept. 15 and ultimately sent to the president for signature. Separately, G20 finance ministers and central bank governors backed a clearer regulatory path for digital assets and called for stronger anti-money-laundering enforcement in large virtual-asset jurisdictions. Elsewhere, Coinbase said it is working to launch single-stock perpetual futures in the U.S., Polymarket rolled out perpetual contracts more broadly, Robinhood Chain DEX volume hit a record $1.89 billion in 24 hours, and Nvidia agreed to acquire Hugging Face for $12.9303 billion.

Swish Ventures, the venture capital firm founded by former NBA player Omri Caspi, has closed its third fund at $250 million, bringing its assets under management to approximately $800 million. The new fund will invest in about 12 startups, focusing on cybersecurity, AI, and infrastructure, with an average check size of $20 million. The firm has already backed 20 companies, including eight unicorns, with a combined portfolio valuation exceeding $60 billion.

IREN reported $707 million in revenue for fiscal 2026, yet its cash use for investing activities surged to $4.723 billion and capital commitments climbed to $13.81 billion by June 30. The company, which is shifting from bitcoin mining to AI cloud infrastructure, has tied that expansion to a string of large GPU orders, including Dell procurement deals linked to contracts with Microsoft and NVIDIA. It has also moved beyond compute, acquiring data center developer Nostrum and cloud software company Mirantis to build out engineering and software capabilities. At the same time, IREN signed a high-profile Golden State Warriors sponsorship that drew scrutiny because its annual cost, as reported by Sportico, exceeds $50 million on average. The company’s financing model relies on customer prepayments, GPU-backed financing, convertible debt, and equity issuance, effectively turning future AI contract revenue into present-day capital for hardware and data center buildout. The bet is not only on AI demand, but on speed: speed to deploy power, data centers, and GPUs before the current infrastructure window narrows.

NVIDIA is set to release DLSS 5, its AI upscaling technology, on September 3 at 9 p.m. PT alongside NBA 2K27. The technology supports RTX 50 series desktop and laptop GPUs as well as GeForce Now cloud gaming. NVIDIA calls it the most important graphics breakthrough since real-time ray tracing in 2018.

Kalshi has reportedly become the exclusive prediction market partner of the US Open under a deal that took effect immediately, according to a Sunday report from Front Office Sports citing two sources familiar with the agreement. The report said the arrangement was not formally finalized until after last week’s qualifying rounds, just before the main draw began Sunday in Flushing Meadows, and that financial terms were not disclosed. The agreement reportedly gives Kalshi a protected position inside the event. The United States Tennis Association, which owns and operates the tournament, is said to be blocking rival prediction market platforms from advertising both inside the venue and on television, including during ESPN broadcasts. One source described that restriction as “unusual.” Front Office Sports also reported that the USTA had been planning to consider prediction market partnerships only for 2027 and beyond, and that the category had not yet been formally approved as of last week. The report arrived two days after Kalshi suffered a legal setback in the Ninth Circuit over whether federal commodities law overrides Nevada gaming regulation for sports-event contracts. That ruling conflicted with an earlier Third Circuit decision involving New Jersey, adding to a growing jurisdictional fight over whether the CFTC or state gaming regulators control the category. Kalshi also remains under pressure from New York, Washington, and Michigan as prediction market firms keep signing sports partnerships.

PANews’ weekly roundup brought together a wide spread of crypto stories, from a major security failure in the Cosmos ecosystem to fresh early-stage funding and a legal dispute involving Sun Yuchen. The most consequential incident centered on the Cosmos EVM module, where a publicly disclosed high-risk patch was not communicated to downstream projects in advance. MANTRA, TAC and KiiChain were named among the affected chains, and the KII, TAC and NES tokens each fell more than 90% within hours after treasury funds were drained. The roundup also highlighted YZi Labs’ EASY Residency S4 batch, where 24 early-stage projects each received a $500,000 investment. The selected teams are focused on areas including stablecoin payments, on-chain foreign exchange and AI agents, pointing to continued attention on next-generation on-chain financial infrastructure. Elsewhere, the selection covered Bitcoin market structure, Upbit’s faster listing pace, Ethena’s token and ecosystem overhaul, Firefox wallet-themed malware, and a series of interviews with industry figures including CZ, Sun Yuchen, Shenyu and Tom Lee. In the news brief section, Sun Yuchen’s lawyer said a civil lawsuit over a property dispute had been filed against Jing and Jing’s parents, and that the case had been formally accepted.