News linked to both this project and an event.
According to CoinDesk, U.S. Bank, the fifth-largest commercial bank in the United States, announced that it has completed a cross-border real-time payment using its self-developed US dollar stablecoin, USBDC. The transaction was executed between entities in North America and Europe via the Stellar blockchain. This test covered USBDC’s minting, redemption, freezing, and recall functions, while also verifying the compatibility of the bank's internally developed Digital Asset Platform with its financial, compliance, and risk control systems. U.S. Bank stated that it is exploring the application of USBDC in scenarios such as cross-border financial operations, liquidity management, and collateral transfers, though it has not yet disclosed a timeline for customer rollout. Previously, 21 financial institutions including Bank of America, Citigroup, and Goldman Sachs announced plans to jointly issue a stablecoin, while several European banks have formed the Qivalis alliance to issue a euro stablecoin, indicating an increasingly clear trend of banks entering the stablecoin sector.
According to Sina Finance, Anthropic has refused to submit its latest model, Claude Mythos 5.1, to the UK Artificial Intelligence Safety Institute (AISI) for testing prior to release, restricting access solely to vetted U.S. institutions. This move has raised concerns within Whitehall and at AISI itself, with UK national security officials worried it could set a precedent that prevents AISI from accessing cutting-edge models in the future. Analysts point out that this action may be tied to the U.S. government's increasingly stringent export control policies regarding the AI industry—the U.S. government had previously implemented export controls on Anthropic's Mythos and Fable models, banning their use by foreign nationals. Anthropic declined to comment, stating only that it is "coordinating with the U.S. government to promptly expand model accessibility for more domestic and international partners."
Visa has partnered with Brale to leverage the SBC stablecoin on the Canton Network for a proof of concept, exploring privacy-compliant payment and settlement solutions for institutional users.
Chloe, columnist for HTX DeepThink and researcher at HTX Research, noted that August non-farm payrolls rose by 162,000, significantly beating expectations, while the unemployment rate remained at 4.1%, largely eroding the trading narrative that a sharp jobs decline would force the Fed to pause. Market attention has now turned to this week's CPI: robust employment does not obligate the Fed to raise rates, but it affords it greater policy flexibility. With Warsh declining to precommit at Jackson Hole, this week's inflation figures will act as the first genuine stress test for the new policy framework. Should core CPI fail to register a convincing pullback, staying the course may damage the Fed’s credibility in tackling inflation.
Odaily News – The Bank of Russia has announced that individuals who pass a financial and banking knowledge test and obtain a Qualifin Certificate issued by the National Finance Association (NFA) or an Investor Certificate from the Moscow Exchange (MOEX) may be recognized as qualified investors by brokers or management companies.The new rules will take effect on August 31. Previously, the Bank of Russia only recognized international certifications in fields such as financial analysis, investment advisory, asset management, and risk management.Under recently adopted cryptocurrency regulations, non-qualified investors are subject to an annual cap of 300,000 rubles (approximately $3,800) for purchasing cryptocurrencies through a single licensed intermediary, while qualified investors have a limit ten times higher. Bank of Russia Deputy Governor Mikhail Mamuta stated that the test focuses on enhancing investors' financial knowledge, enabling them to understand and manage associated risks before trading complex instruments. (Bitcoin.com News)
Odaily News – Andrew Park, CEO of Factblock and organizer of Korea Blockchain Week, stated that Korea's crypto market is shifting from retail-trading-driven dynamics toward institutional digital finance. The focus of global financial institutions and enterprises has moved from tokens, exchanges, and prices to custody, tokenization, stablecoins, payment and settlement infrastructure, and regulatory compliance.The Financial Services Commission of Korea has proposed a framework to open corporate virtual asset accounts to approximately 3,500 listed companies and registered professional investors. The National Assembly has officially passed amendments to the Electronic Securities Act and the Capital Markets Act, bringing tokenized real-world assets and security tokens under a unified legal framework.The Bank of Korea has completed the initial trial of Project Hangang, a real-world deposit token initiative, and plans to conduct second-phase institutional testing in late 2026. Related technical experiments have used wholesale deposit tokens to enable AI agents to execute automated conditional transactions. (Bitcoin.com News)
Odaily News, Blockworks analyst Shaunda Devens stated on the X platform that Kraken may be testing Hyperliquid's HIP-3 (Builder-Deployed Perpetuals) new compliant deployment feature, potentially becoming one of the first centralized exchanges to explore this mechanism. BlockworksData shows that a deployer named "Kraken HIP-3 test DEX" has enabled permission management functionality (Star gating) on the Hyperliquid testnet and went live for testing on August 19. Currently, this test DEX has completed whitelist settings for 10 wallets, tested 3 of the 5 compliance control features, and registered a "Kraken Exchange Validator."Shaunda Devens noted that Hyperliquid has been continuously adding testnet features to support regulatory-compliant HIP-3 deployments, including whitelist management, canceling user orders, closing positions via reduce-only orders, and moving collateral. These capabilities are similar to the risk control mechanisms required by traditional financial institutions' compliant trading platforms.Although this is still in the testing phase, and any user could deploy a test DEX with a similar name, making it impossible to confirm it definitively belongs to Kraken, combined with Hyperliquid's recent expansion of xStocks functionality and Kraken's parent company Payward's involvement in related business initiatives, analysts believe Kraken may be testing HyperCore's new infrastructure targeting institutional and compliant markets.HIP-3 is a third-party deployed perpetual contract market framework introduced by Hyperliquid, allowing eligible developers to create independent perpetual trading markets on HyperCore's order book infrastructure. It is considered a key upgrade direction for Hyperliquid to expand into traditional assets and institutional trading scenarios. If large compliant exchanges like Kraken enter the HIP-3 ecosystem, it could further drive the integration of on-chain derivatives markets with traditional financial trading systems.
HashKey has become an authorized distributor for Anchorpoint's HKD stablecoin HKDAP, launched beta testing, and completed the first minting and redemption transaction.
According to TechFlow Research, a buy-side survey by JPMorgan on August 3 showed that for most of the nine semiconductor and hardware companies, buy-side expectations were higher than company guidance. onsemi (ON) Q2 revenue buy-side average was $1.61 billion (guidance $1.59 billion), gross margin 39.5% (guidance 39.0%), EPS $0.75 (guidance $0.71), and FY2027 EPS average $3.57 (guidance $3.11). Approximately 60% of respondents expect ON to slightly raise its 2026 AI revenue target (currently around $500 million). After a stock price drawdown of approximately 25%, ON has shifted from net short to slightly net short, with earnings implied volatility at 7.5%. For the eight companies AMAT, AMD, ANET, COHR, CSCO, LITE, SNDK, and WDC, buy-side average revenue, gross margin, and EPS were all higher than company guidance. JPMorgan believes that July AI momentum unwinding led to a significant drawdown in the semiconductor sector, but buy-side expectations for earnings are not low, creating a contrast between buy-side expectations and stock price pessimism. AMAT earnings implied volatility of 18% is significantly higher than the historical average, indicating the bar for beating expectations is rising. ON is an exception; AI expectations are extremely low, instead leaving room for earnings to beat expectations.
According to official announcements, Baidu Apollo Go has received the Hong Kong Transport Department's first fully driverless test license and will commence trial operations on Airport Island on July 27. This marks the first Level 4 autonomous driving test without safety drivers on public roads in Hong Kong, as well as the first fully driverless trial in the global right-hand drive market. Over the past year and a half, Apollo Go has accumulated over 240,000 kilometers of safe driving across various locations in Hong Kong.
According to official social media channels, Huobi HTX will host a themed debate competition at 20:00 today titled "Life-or-Death Showdown Between Privacy and Regulation: Will Privacy Coins Ultimately Be Eliminated, or Will They Surge in the Darkest Hour?" During the event, Yige, Goubao, Draco, and Qiangge, as representatives of the affirmative side, will debate against negative side representatives DaDa, ZuoZuoMuXingYe, Huoshange, and FomoDao, engaging in a fierce exchange on hot topics such as the future development of privacy coins, regulatory pressure, technical value, and market demand.
According to BusinessMirror, columnist John Mangun wrote that the European Commission’s recent proposal for the first “comprehensive third-country crypto-asset services ban” against Russia reveals an underlying logic: wealthy blocs of nations can impose their policies extraterritorially on any country connected to their financial systems—a development with profound warning implications for developing countries like the Philippines. Remittances account for approximately 9% of the Philippines’ GDP, and the share channeled through crypto continues to rise. While the central bank has established a regulatory framework for virtual asset service providers (VASPs), its regulatory authority stops at the national border. Citing the Philippines’ 2021 placement on the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) “gray list,” the article notes that once external financial linkages are severed, compliance costs will cascade downward—ultimately borne by ordinary overseas-worker remittance-receiving households. The author warns that the Philippines’ current debt-to-GDP ratio has reached 63.2%, the highest in two decades. If crypto regulation is treated solely as a consumer protection issue—while overlooking its deeper implications for capital account management and fiscal sovereignty—the country may face a “Roosevelt-style four-day ultimatum” unprepared.
Odaily News, June 9th — BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes stated in his latest article "Reality Test" that if oil prices continue to rise due to the US-Iran conflict, it could trigger a collapse of the AI stock bubble and drag the entire crypto market down.Hayes said that if traffic restrictions in the Strait of Hormuz persist deep into the second quarter, spot prices for hydrocarbons and other key commodities could rise in the third quarter. If oil prices continue to climb and inflationary pressures impact the US midterm elections, Trump might pivot to a tough stance targeting data center construction, AI regulation, and taxation. Hayes believes the market could anticipate Trump limiting AI capital expenditure and taxing AI companies, thereby triggering the burst of the AI stock bubble.Hayes also noted that since November 2022, the scale of AI-related debt issuance has been approximately $1.5 trillion, and US M2 has increased by roughly the same amount during the same period. He believes the three factors that could pop the AI bubble include rising energy costs, the market's inability to absorb three major AI-related IPOs — namely SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI — and Trump's shift to opposing AI. In terms of portfolio, Hayes stated that Maelstrom's stock portfolio holds significant positions in US-listed energy producers; he has sold AI-related stocks and offloaded non-core crypto assets, having dumped HYPE, NEAR, and WLD last week, as well as selling ZEC due to the Orchard Pool vulnerability. He still holds Bitcoin and ETH and will execute tactical short trades via derivatives.
According to Bloomberg, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) stated that it will soon launch trials of Project Agorá—a cross-border digital payments prototype—in partnership with others, conducting real-value transactions. First announced two years ago, Project Agorá is jointly advanced by the BIS, seven central banks, and over 40 regulated institutions. It has now entered a testing phase involving actual fund transfers.
According to The Block, Lee Reiners—a lecturer in law at Duke University and former examiner at the New York Federal Reserve—published a post on May 8 stating that WLFI, the governance token issued by the DeFi project World Liberty Financial—which is closely associated with the Trump family—may constitute an unregistered security. Reiners cited the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) recently released token classification framework, arguing that WLFI is not a “pure digital commodity” and therefore falls under SEC regulatory scrutiny. He contends that WLFI was publicly presold—approximately 25 billion tokens—prior to the protocol’s launch and was marketed leveraging the Trump family’s brand, leading buyers to reasonably expect profits—a key element of the SEC’s “Howey Test” for determining whether an asset qualifies as a security. Regarding decentralization claims, Reiners referenced litigation filed by Justin Sun, noting that World Liberty unilaterally froze Sun’s tokens and revoked his governance rights—revealing a high degree of centralized control. Additionally, he highlighted clear conflicts of interest: the project borrowed $75 million in stablecoins from the Dolomite protocol, using 5 billion WLFI tokens as collateral; notably, a co-founder of Dolomite also serves as an advisor to World Liberty, and part of the borrowed stablecoins flowed directly to World Liberty itself.