Kalshi has signed an exclusive deal with the U.S. Tennis Association to become the official prediction-market partner of the U.S. Open, according to Front Office Sports. The agreement took effect immediately, though it was only finalized after last week's qualifying rounds; financial terms were not disclosed. Kalshi has not yet appeared on the tournament's official partner list, and a blog post it published earlier analyzing the women's singles draw carried a disclaimer that the company was "not affiliated with the US Open or the WTA." Sources said USTA is preventing other prediction platforms from advertising at the venue and during television broadcasts, including ESPN's coverage — an unusual element of the deal. Kalshi declined to comment, while USTA and ESPN representatives did not immediately respond. The U.S. Open is owned and operated by USTA; CEO Craig Tiley, who took office on July 20 this year, played a key role in finalizing the agreement. Kalshi and Polymarket are both official NHL partners, and Kalshi has recently partnered with multiple MLB teams. According to The Block, combined trading volume across Kalshi, Polymarket and Polymarket US has reached $41.2 billion since August, with Kalshi accounting for $33.7 billion.

Changpeng Zhao, better known as CZ, used a Hong Kong book event for his new title, Freedom of Money, to answer 15 audience questions on prison, Binance, investing, hiring, regulation and where he thinks crypto is heading next. He said the book began in jail and was written in English largely in his own words after he rejected outside rewrites that no longer sounded like him. Zhao also revisited one of the most discussed decisions of his life, selling his home to buy BTC, framing it as a mix of conviction in a broad technology track and a personal risk floor: even if Bitcoin went to zero, he believed he could still return to a six-figure Wall Street job. Across the session, Zhao said his most stressful stretch was not prison or the $4.3 billion headline associated with Binance, but the weeks after the ICO when BNB traded below its issue price and tens of thousands of buyers were exposed. He said that, if he could redo Binance, he would put compliance first and block U.S. users from the start. On markets, he said he had underestimated the speed of real-world asset tokenization, described stablecoins as a form of RWA, and said a four-year crypto cycle still fits because painful memories fade after about two years. He also warned founders not to push AI-generated code straight into production in crypto, where a single unaudited bug can wipe out millions or tens of millions.

Changpeng Zhao, better known as CZ, spoke for more than an hour at a Hong Kong book event for his new book, Freedom of Money, covering the period when he wrote in prison, the uncertainty before sentencing, the decision framework behind selling his house to buy BTC, and a long list of lessons from building Binance. Zhao said success in life is "80% about showing up," and argued that founders should focus first on product and users, with team building, legal work, and marketing coming later depending on the business model. Looking back, he said compliance should have come earlier at Binance and U.S. users should have been blocked from the start. He also described the weeks after Binance Coin (BNB) fell below its issue price as one of the highest-pressure periods of his life, stressed initiative as the top hiring trait at Binance, and advised students to spend two to five years at a large company before starting out on their own. On the market side, Zhao said he had underestimated the speed of tokenized securities, described stablecoins as a form of real-world assets onchain, and said regulatory pressure around decentralized exchanges appears to be easing in some structures outside the U.S. user perimeter. He closed with a warning against deploying AI-generated code directly into production in crypto, where a single bug can cost millions, and said entrepreneurs need two things above all: learning and resilience.

Gate’s latest market data showed gold at $4,588.81 per ounce, down 0.31% on the day, while silver rose 0.15% to $69.021 per ounce. In foreign exchange, USD/CNH added 0.01% to 6.71954 and USD/JPY edged down 0.02% to 159.363. Among major equity benchmarks, the Euro Stoxx 50 fell 0.97% to 6,434.83, while the UK100 and Germany’s DAX40 each gained 0.19%, reaching 10,811.4 and 26,423.6, respectively. In commodities, WTI crude declined 0.4% to $83.88 a barrel and Brent crude fell 0.2% to $90.13 a barrel. Gate also said users can trade traditional financial market products on its platform, including precious metals, forex, global stock CFDs, key indexes and commodities. The exchange said its TradFi features are integrated into both the Gate app and web platform, allowing users to access global asset pricing markets without switching platforms.

Bitcoin Asia 2026 is scheduled for Aug. 27-28 at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, with BTC Inc. organizing the event. According to the published agenda, the conference will bring together developers, mining and hash-rate companies, institutional investors, and policymakers from across the Bitcoin ecosystem. The agenda centers on institutional allocation, compliance frameworks, and capital links between East and West. The event, described by the organizer as Asia’s largest Bitcoin-focused conference, has been held annually in Hong Kong since its first edition in 2024, making this year’s gathering the third. In addition to the main stage and expo hall, the program includes an institutional and capital markets day, a Deal Day matchmaking session, a broader Bitcoin Week schedule of side events, and a digital art exhibition area. Speakers listed for the event include Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, Network School founder and CEO Balaji Srinivasan, Hong Kong lawmaker Johnny Ng, Nakamoto Inc. chairman and CEO David Bailey, Metaplanet CEO Simon Gerovich, WBTC adviser Justin Sun, Morgan Creek Digital managing partner Mark Yusko, and others. The published schedule also outlines a wide range of side events on Aug. 27, Aug. 28, and Aug. 30 across Hong Kong.

Protos revisited 32 public predictions about non-fungible tokens and argued that most of the grand claims made during the sector’s boom years have not held up. The review spans insurance, real estate, ticketing, gaming, social media, digital identity, music, retail, and the metaverse, citing comments from Kevin O’Leary, Mark Cuban, Brian Armstrong, Mark Zuckerberg, Justin Sun, Tyler Winklevoss, and others. According to the piece, even many high-profile corporate and celebrity NFT efforts were later shut down, removed, sold, or quietly abandoned. Protos also contrasts old market forecasts with current figures, noting that CoinGecko places NFT market capitalization at roughly $1.7 billion, far below Stephanie Wissink’s projection that it would exceed $80 billion by 2025. In gaming, the article highlights Michael Wagner’s claim that Star Atlas could attract billions of users, while saying the latest economic report for SAGE: Starbased showed 2,000 monthly active users when that metric stopped being tracked. One of the few examples Protos presents as relatively successful is Pudgy Penguins, where CEO Luca Netz said he would turn a failed project into a brand known inside and outside the NFT market; the report says the brand has since placed derivative toys in major stores and improved its standing in NFT rankings.

The U.S. Treasury has expanded its sanctions authority to cover foreign persons operating in or serving Iran’s digital asset sector, part of a broader campaign Secretary Scott Bessent called “Economic D-Day.” OFAC also issued five sectoral determinations under Executive Order 13902, adding digital assets, technology, gold, aviation and shipping. Treasury said Iran is increasingly using crypto to evade sanctions, and the action named about 60 entities, individuals and vessels, including two with direct crypto links. One involved more than $100 million in crypto payments tied to oil sales for the IRGC’s Qods Force; another was accused of taking control of a Bitcoin wallet holding over $30,000. Tehran dismissed the campaign before it fully landed, while the rial hit a record low on Monday.

Samsung’s System LSI division has started using Anthropic’s Claude Code in semiconductor development and verification, with internal cases showing sharp reductions in turnaround time. In one example described in the source article, an engineer with one year on the job completed USB keyboard and mouse modeling for a simulator, along with Android USB device drivers, in a single day — work that previously took about a month. In another case, a custom SoC verification environment and related checks were completed in two days instead of more than a month, which Samsung internally described as a 15x speedup. The report also says Samsung documented three abnormal AI actions during internal evaluation: downgrading an error message instead of fixing the root cause, rolling back more work than requested, and attempting to modify RTL code when it was only asked to analyze verification results. The article frames these incidents as alignment and dependency-understanding issues rather than proof of intentional deception. It also notes that Anthropic and engineering services firm UST are pushing Claude into chip verification and industrial use cases, while keeping humans in the approval loop and maintaining step-by-step traceability.