An X user calling themselves CyberLeek posted leaked Grand Theft Auto VI gameplay footage together with the ticker for a crypto token, $CYBERLEEK, and said the token was created to fund a secret project. The footage, which reportedly showed parts of GTA VI’s map and free-roam gameplay, was later no longer viewable on X after a copyright strike from Rockstar Games, the game’s creator. According to Protos, CyberLeek said the fundraising effort was not a “cash grab” and claimed the money would go toward infrastructure, security, and protection needed to carry out action against large corporations. The token’s market capitalization surged nearly 5,800% within an hour to $3.46 million after the posts, before falling to $1.5 million at the time of writing. CyberLeek’s website says the leaks are tied to objections over what it describes as anti-consumer behavior in the video game industry, including digital pre-orders, paywalled single-player content, and the lack of long-term offline access. The account has also threatened to release more footage unless Rockstar Games meets its demands, as debate over GTA VI’s no-disc release plan continues.

Stablecoin infrastructure provider Yellow Card said on Aug. 4 that it had raised $40 million in a strategic financing round backed by SC Ventures, Sony Innovation Fund, Polychain Capital, and Blockchain Capital, lifting its total equity funding to more than $120 million. The company’s path to this point took nearly a decade and included two major shifts: from a Bitcoin gift card product launched in 2016, to a retail crypto trading app in Nigeria in 2019, and then to a business focused on enterprise stablecoin infrastructure after demand moved sharply from Bitcoin to USDT. During the pandemic, Yellow Card’s transaction volume rose from $1 million per month to $1 million per day, and after listing USDT, 99% of volume shifted from Bitcoin to stablecoins in four months. The company later decided to shut its consumer mobile app, telling retail users on Oct. 29, 2025 to withdraw funds by Dec. 31 before the app closed on Jan. 1, 2026. Yellow Card now positions itself as a payments and settlement infrastructure provider for banks, fintech firms, and enterprises across emerging markets, with operations in more than 50 markets and licenses, authorizations, or registrations in 22 jurisdictions as of August 2026.

Binance is expanding on two fronts at once: bringing real stock holdings from brokers such as Interactive Brokers into Binance accounts, and listing perpetual contracts tied to Hong Kong and Asian equities. According to the article, users can now submit details such as their full account name and a delivering broker’s DTC number to move real holdings into Binance, while an incentive program running from Aug. 11 to Sept. 30 offers a share of 300,000 USDC for U.S. stock transfers. At the same time, Binance and other major exchanges including Gate, OKX, Bitget, Hyperliquid, Bybit, and Coinbase are broadening stock and index perpetual offerings covering names in Hong Kong, South Korea, Japan, and mainland China-related markets. The piece argues that these two tracks serve the same direction: exchanges become a unified venue for trading both tokenized real-world securities and synthetic price exposure, reducing the role banks and traditional brokers used to play in the path between capital and markets. The report also highlights the trade-off. Tokenized equities such as bStocks, issued by BTech Holdings Limited under an Abu Dhabi Global Market framework, differ sharply from USDT-settled stock perpetuals that offer only price exposure. Past regulatory pressure on Binance in 2021 and scrutiny of Robinhood’s tokenized stock products in 2025 show that legal boundaries remain unsettled, especially around whether tokens are backed by real assets and what protections apply in each jurisdiction.

KuCoin Ventures used its latest weekly report to put a spotlight on two very different parts of the crypto market: a security failure in self-custody hardware and a capital shift toward regulated infrastructure. The report said the Coldcard incident has become one of the more significant personal custody security events of the year because the weakness was tied to seed generation rather than online exposure. According to the report, an integration error introduced in a March 2021 firmware update may have pushed some devices into a predictable software random-number path, cutting effective entropy from roughly 128 bits to as low as 40 bits. TRM Labs had tracked about 1,816 BTC stolen across more than 5,200 addresses as of Aug. 5, while Galaxy Research later raised the estimated losses to about $130 million. On markets, KuCoin Ventures said softer U.S. employment data eased immediate rate-hike pressure, though inflation and energy prices still limit room for a policy turn. It cited CME FedWatch data from Aug. 10 showing a 53.9% chance of no change at the Sept. 16 meeting and a 46.1% chance of a 25 bp hike. In crypto, weekly ETF flows improved, with close to $900 million in net inflows in the first week of August, yet BTC remained near $65,000 and ETH near $1,919. The report also said primary-market funding is still clustering around RWA, payments and compliant stablecoin infrastructure, highlighting Yellow Card’s $40 million strategic round and JPYC’s $38 million Series B2 financing.

U.S. stocks entered Monday’s premarket session on a busy note. Intel dropped more than 5% as it plans to raise $15 billion to expand AI investment, joining a wave of AI infrastructure financing. Nvidia is weighing an investment of up to $3 billion in Lancium to support AI data center power infrastructure. Jefferies downgraded Apple to Underperform from Hold and cut its price target to $263.66 from $285.56. In crypto-related moves, BitMine added 7,391 ETH last week, lifting its total holdings to 5,805,238 ETH, with staked ETH at 5,067,309, or 87% of the total. Strategy sold 1,690 BTC and raised its dollar reserves to $4.65 billion. Meta released a lightweight, open-source AI model called Muse Glimmer that can run locally on a single GPU card. Berkshire Hathaway repurchased more than $3.3 billion of stock from July 1 through July 29. Archer Aviation gained over 18% in premarket trading after Boeing said it plans to invest and collaborate with the company.

Bybit has filed a civil lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, its Reconnaissance General Bureau, and the Lazarus Group over the February 2025 theft of roughly $1.5 billion in crypto assets. The court granted a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction covering part of the stolen assets held by unidentified defendants listed as John Doe, finding that Bybit is likely to succeed on the merits of the case. The exchange said the civil action is separate from an ongoing criminal investigation by U.S. law enforcement. The filing follows one of the largest crypto thefts on record. According to the report, the attackers compromised Safe’s multisig wallet supply chain and altered the transaction interface while funds were being moved from a Bybit cold wallet to a warm wallet, allowing them to take control of the signing flow. Stolen assets included 401,347 ETH, 90,375 stETH, 15,000 cmETH, and 8,000 mETH. Bybit has so far recovered about $48.4 million and frozen another $30.5 million across more than 28 exchanges and custodians, but that still accounts for only about 5% of the total. Most of the funds are believed to have become untraceable after moving through cross-chain bridges, mixers, and OTC channels.

Sony Group and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) plan to invest about 1 trillion yen, or roughly $6.3 billion, to form a joint venture in Kumamoto Prefecture, according to a report from Nikkei. The venture is intended to mass-produce next-generation semiconductors used in image sensors, with Sony expected to hold about 60% and TSMC about 40%. Commercial production could begin as early as 2029. Nikkei said the manufacturing base would use Sony Semiconductor Solutions’ existing site in Kumamoto rather than a newly built location. The report also said the two companies aim to establish the joint venture during fiscal 2026, while an investment agreement could be finalized in the coming months. The partnership builds on an announcement made in May, when Sony and TSMC said they would jointly develop and manufacture next-generation image sensors. Sony is expected to contribute sensor design capabilities, while TSMC would provide manufacturing and process technology. Nikkei added that Sony is already a minority shareholder in TSMC’s Kumamoto plant, meaning local cooperation between the two groups is already in place. The report said the effort is aimed not only at smartphones but also at Physical AI applications, including automotive and robotics, where demand for high-performance sensors is expected to matter more after 2029.

Japanese multinationals are cashing in on a weaker yen, prompting a wave of earnings forecast upgrades in the latest reporting season. Toyota, Honda, Sony and Ryohin Keikaku have all revised their guidance higher. Okasan Securities data shows 159 of about 1,600 Topix constituents have raised full-year forecasts since July 1, versus just 12 downgrades — an adjustment ratio of 86%, the highest since fiscal 2016.