Ant Bailing has launched Ling-3.0-flash-Sante, a medical AI model using MoE architecture with 124 billion total parameters and only 5.1 billion active per token. In benchmarks, Sante achieved 83.8 on DiagnosisArena-MCQ, surpassing GPT-5.6 Sol (81.9), Kimi K3 (78.4), and Gemini 3.6 Flash (76.2). On MedXpertQA-Text, it scored 53.9, slightly above Kimi K3 but below GPT-5.6 Sol and Gemini 3.6 Flash. The model also performed well on BrowseComp, DeepSearchQA, and HLE with tools, emphasizing self-research and answer generation. For medical ethics, Sante scored 82.1 on MedEthicAlign and 78.6 on the internal safety test AFUSAFE-MedSCE. It is now freely accessible via OpenRouter and Vercel.

AI cloud computing company Nscale is seeking up to $3.5 billion in pre-IPO fundraising, including $1.5 billion in convertible bonds and approximately $2 billion from Nvidia. Third Point, led by Daniel Loeb, is expected to lead the convertible bond investment, with Goldman Sachs involved in arranging the financing. The London-based firm plans to follow with an IPO that could raise about $3 billion. Nscale reports a total contract value of approximately $10.3 billion, including a $45 billion computing supply agreement with Anthropic. The company projects annual revenue of around $18.1 billion and adjusted EBITDA of about $13.6 billion, though it emphasizes these are illustrative estimates, not formal guidance. Nscale is building a large data center campus in Norway for Microsoft and has a major project in West Virginia, USA. It has already purchased approximately 194,000 Nvidia Vera Rubin GPUs.

Bitcoin mining in August was defined by two parallel shifts. Public miners kept redirecting capital, power and data center capacity toward AI and high-performance computing, while the economics of core mining operations stayed under pressure. Data cited across the report showed falling tracked hashrate, a lower network difficulty, fee revenue near multi-year lows, weaker miner balances, and rising shutdown prices for several machine models. Capital spending by listed miners and AI data center peers in the first half of 2026 already surpassed the total for all of 2025, with AI-native cloud companies accounting for most of the spending. Corporate disclosures reinforced the same trend. Riot Platforms signed a long-term cloud deal with Anthropic, IREN delivered the first phase of its Horizon AI cloud project to Microsoft, and companies including Bitdeer, Soluna, TeraWulf, Ionic Digital, Cipher Digital, CleanSpark, Hut 8, Cango and BitFuFu reported results that showed different mixes of mining, hosting, AI cloud and infrastructure revenue. At the same time, MARA added debt backed by BTC collateral, Tether’s Uruguay mining sites stopped operating, and tax disputes in Sweden pushed some miners to rethink local deployments. On the protocol and industry governance side, BIP-54 moved forward as a proposed soft fork cleanup package, while BIP-110 failed to gain broad miner support. Michael Saylor said the proposal had only about 2.6% signaling support and would not reach its voluntary activation threshold in the current cycle. Separately, Poolin creditors formed a committee after the company’s Chapter 11 filing, SBI Crypto shut down its pool service, and new regulatory and enforcement developments emerged in Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Brazil and China.

OpenPayd has completed its integration of MSB USA Inc. and obtained money transmitter licenses in 43 US states, accelerating its North American expansion. The company plans to list on Nasdaq via a merger with Titan Acquisition Corp in Q4 2026, at a valuation of approximately $1.1 billion. It already holds an EU MiCA authorization, with annualized recurring revenue exceeding $96 million and annualized transaction volume surpassing $300 billion. Its infrastructure supports fiat and stablecoin settlement, serving over 1,200 clients including Kraken and OKX.

Identity verification firm IDScan.net is at the center of an alleged data breach that may have exposed more than 150 million identity records, according to a report cited by Protos. Among the documents reportedly listed for sale on the dark web is the driver’s license of US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, which was said to be available for $100. KrebsOnSecurity reported that the FBI is investigating the incident. The leaked data was allegedly being marketed through the Russian identity theft service Nexus, which claimed to hold travel documents, medical cards, and other forms of identification. Nexus also said it had been continuously extracting fresh data for more than a year, with hundreds of thousands of new records added in recent days, though KrebsOnSecurity noted the service is no longer reachable. Cybersecurity analyst vx-underground shared a list of IDScan clients that may have been affected, including Shell, FedEx, Hertz, GameStop, Caesars Entertainment, Motorola, and several other companies and institutions. Privacy researcher Zach Edwards said his own ID appeared in the leaked dataset after visiting Planet 13 in Las Vegas. Separate security incidents this week also hit X users and Dropbox, while stolen GTA VI footage was reportedly used by a pseudonymous X account to promote a cryptocurrency.

ARK Invest and on-chain analytics firm Glassnode said in a joint research report that Bitcoin and Ethereum would each need only three major entities, based on block production concentration, to cross their respective consensus thresholds. Solana, by contrast, would require 19 validator entities under the report’s framework. The study, titled The Decentralization Spectrum: Design Tradeoffs in Digital Assets, uses the Nakamoto coefficient to estimate how many independent actors would need to coordinate in order to control enough hash power or staked weight to disrupt network operations. Using a July 2026 snapshot, the report put Bitcoin’s threshold at 51% of network hash power, while Ethereum and Solana were measured against a 33% staking threshold tied to liveness and finality risk. The authors also cautioned against reading the figures too literally. They said three entities do not amount to full control of Bitcoin or Ethereum, and warned that Bitcoin’s 51% threshold is not directly comparable with the 33% threshold used for proof-of-stake networks, making simple comparisons such as “3 versus 19” incomplete.

Prospect Markets, through its wholly-owned indirect subsidiary Prospect Brokerage USA, has signed a definitive agreement with OG Prediction Markets and Crypto.com's Derivatives North America (CDNA) to launch a sports-focused prediction market platform in the United States, targeting a Q3 2026 launch. Under the agreement, Prospect Brokerage will offer event contracts provided by CDNA to U.S. users, with services facilitated by OG Broker, a CFTC-registered futures commission merchant owned by Crypto.com. The move positions Prospect Markets to enter the rapidly growing prediction market sector. Data shows that monthly trading volumes across major global prediction markets surged from under $5 billion in September 2025 to approximately $25.7 billion in May 2026, and exceeded $50 billion in June 2026. Sports contracts account for about 85% of trading volume on leading platforms. Bernstein estimates that global prediction market volumes could reach approximately $240 billion in 2026 and potentially exceed $1 trillion by 2030.

According to the latest reserve report released by Anchorage Digital Bank, Tether's USA₮ stablecoin had a circulating supply of 175.2 million units as of July 31, and reserve assets were valued at $175.9 million. That put the reserve surplus at about $661,000, which represents a gain of roughly 5% from the previous month and sets a new record high. The report goes on to say that around 90% of the reserve assets are invested in reverse repurchase agreements that are backed by U.S. Treasuries, while the remaining portion is kept in cash. The data was compiled in accordance with the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants' 2025 standards, ensuring consistency in the presentation. Additionally, all reserve assets are held in an independent trust account that is unencumbered and established specifically for USA₮ holders. The reserve report was originally cited by CryptoBriefing, shedding light on the backing of the USA₮ stablecoin issued by Tether.