News linked to both this project and an event.
Visa is closing a checkout loophole supported by crypto payment infrastructure company Crossmint. The loophole previously allowed users purchasing Meme coins with credit cards to have transactions classified under a merchant category code intended for digital media such as e-books, movies, and music.Visa has notified payment processors, including Checkout.com, that it will no longer accept that code for Meme coin transactions, giving processors a grace period to stop the practice, which is expected to end next week. Thereafter, Meme coin purchases must be processed as cryptocurrency transactions and are subject to Visa's corresponding rules.Chase had disputed a Visa transaction that was not flagged as a cryptocurrency transaction, arguing that its merchant category code was incorrect and that it should not have earned credit card rewards. The New York State Attorney General's Office is also aware of and reviewing the matter. (Decrypt)
According to Crypto in America, the US Senate failed to advance the crypto market structure bill known as the "Clear Act" this week with a 49-50 vote, with Democrats voting as a bloc against it and Republican Senators Collins, Hawley, and Moran joining the opposition. Following the setback, the focus of crypto regulation shifted from Congress to regulatory agencies: the SEC subsequently issued innovation exemption measures, paving a limited pathway for on-chain trading of tokenized US stocks, while the CFTC adopted a no-action stance regarding passive software providers and submitted a broader proposal for crypto market rulemaking to the White House. Meanwhile, Visa announced the closure of a loophole that allowed purchasing memecoins with credit cards in exchange for standard loyalty points, with related processors granted a grace period expected to expire next week. Some Democratic senators involved in the negotiations stated that the "Clear Act" is not "dead," with efforts to restart talks still underway.
Odaily News: Peer-to-peer cryptocurrency trading platform NoOnes announced that it will begin gradually winding down operations after running for over three years. The company stated that it had been continuously seeking to resolve and lift the sanctions imposed on NoOnes, but ultimately failed. The sanctions caused the platform to lose key partners, and blockchain monitoring firms also flagged transactions associated with NoOnes as high-risk, making it increasingly difficult for the platform to continue normal operations. According to the plan, the business contraction began on August 17, and the P2P marketplace will close at 23:59 UTC on August 21. Services such as Swap, NoOnes Visa, fiat withdrawals, the gift card store, and the Bitcoin Lightning Network will also be discontinued progressively. After that, the platform will only support withdrawals, and users will still be able to log in, view balances, and withdraw remaining assets. The company advises users to complete asset withdrawals as soon as possible, no later than August 23. Previously, on January 26, 2025, NoOnes revealed that the platform had suffered a major security breach earlier that month, resulting in losses of approximately $8 million in crypto assets. CEO Ray Youssef confirmed the news after on-chain detective ZachXBT disclosed the hacking incident on his Telegram channel.
According to TechCrunch, the Open Safety AI Alliance (OSAA), led by Nvidia, has exceeded 120 member companies just one week after its establishment, including tech and financial giants such as Adobe, BlackRock, Cisco, Intel, Microsoft, and Visa. During the Black Hat Cybersecurity Conference held in Las Vegas this week, the alliance established a working group named "Shared AI Findings Exchange" (SAFE) and has submitted multiple proposals open for public comment, managed by the Linux Foundation. The proposals cover confidential reporting mechanisms for AI cybersecurity incidents, alert processes for affected parties, and no-fault attribution analysis frameworks. Meanwhile, member companies are also actively contributing open-source technologies: Nvidia open-sourced the LLM vulnerability scanning tool Garak, Amazon contributed the agent building tool Strands Agents and authorization language Cedar, and Okta and Red Hat are advancing agent identity authentication and governance technologies respectively. Notably, Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google have not yet joined the alliance, although OpenAI and Google previously co-signed the open letter that spurred the creation of the alliance.