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The prediction market platform Kalshi has permanently banned former U.S. Congressman George Santos and fined him $71,356 for manipulating a market related to his attendance at the State of the Union address, profiting nearly $18,000. This is the first time the exchange has imposed a lifetime ban on a former member of Congress.According to a disciplinary notice issued by Kalshi's compliance department on August 28, Santos conducted multiple large transactions in this market between February 2 and 25. Since he was able to influence the outcome, exchange rules prohibited him from participating in trading. He subsequently issued a series of public statements regarding his attendance, some of which were false or misleading, intending to drive price movements in the "Yes" and "No" contracts. The compliance department determined that these statements did indeed manipulate prices, allowing him to profit $17,839.57 in the relevant market, violating multiple rules regarding market manipulation, influencing trading outcomes, and using deceptive practices, and he faced additional penalties for failing to cooperate with the investigation.The prediction market allows users to bet on the outcomes of real-world events such as elections, sports, and economic data by purchasing "Yes" or "No" contracts. As event contracts have become mainstream, Kalshi and its crypto-native competitor Polymarket have seen a surge in trading volume over the past year, attracting significant institutional interest.

According to The Block, the prediction market platform Kalshi has permanently banned former U.S. Congressman George Santos, marking the first time the platform has imposed a permanent ban on an individual. According to a disciplinary action and settlement notice submitted on Monday, Santos violated platform rules by trading on a prediction contract regarding whether he would attend the State of the Union (SOTU) address and was fined over $71,000.Previously, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) accused Santos of using his public statements made two weeks before the SOTU to influence the prices of related event contracts and reached a $35,000 settlement with him. Santos's lawyer stated that he had booked a hotel and flight to Washington, believing he would attend the event. Santos served as a congressman representing New York from January 2023 until the end of the year, when he was expelled for ethical violations.As the prediction market grows to billions of dollars, concerns about insider trading are increasingly being raised. The CFTC recently fined former White House teleprompter operator Gabriel Perez $172,000 for profiting in Kalshi's "mention market" by using advance access to Trump's speech content. Legislators have proposed several bipartisan bills to restrict trading on non-public information, but they have not yet passed; platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket are taking preventive measures, such as requiring employment verification for sensitive market traders.

According to NADA NEWS, JPMorgan Chase is expanding its professional team responsible for cryptocurrency assets and blockchain business within its retail banking division Chase, which serves individuals and small to medium-sized enterprises. Previously, the bank's blockchain-related services were mainly aimed at corporate and institutional investors, and this expansion indicates that it is building a framework for the application of digital assets in the personal finance sector.According to the recruitment information, the new team will be responsible for formulating digital asset strategies, collaborating with cryptocurrency companies, and implementing new product development. In addition to independent research and development, commercialization methods will also include external cooperation or acquisitions.

Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino stated that stablecoins are a more trustworthy form of currency than tokenized bank deposits, the former being almost fully backed by U.S. Treasury bonds, while the latter typically only has 10% of liquid assets backing it. Pablo Hernandez de Cos, General Manager of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), mentioned that stablecoins face issues such as redemption capability, supply, interoperability, and facilitating crime, and he referred to tokenized bank deposits as a more direct path to preserving the monetary system's foundation while utilizing tokenization.Ardoino pointed out that the market capitalization of USDT has exceeded $183 billion and is used by some emerging markets for domestic and cross-border commerce. In discussions surrounding the Digital Asset Market Transparency Act (CLARITY Act), banks are concerned that allowing cryptocurrency exchanges to provide incentives for stablecoins could lead to a shift in deposits.

The Chair of the Financial Stability Board and Governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, warned G20 finance ministers and central bank governors that cybersecurity threats posed by cutting-edge AI models are significantly increasing the risk of a financial system collapse. Bailey stated that the global financial system is already strained due to energy-driven inflation pressures, a high interest rate environment, and rising investment leverage, and that the involvement of AI risks will exacerbate this pressure.Bailey pointed out that financial institutions and tech giants must prepare for extreme scenarios, as existing financial defense systems will face severe tests if there are synchronized disruptions involving multiple institutions or shared technology dependencies. He mentioned that models tested by labs such as Anthropic and OpenAI have demonstrated the ability to simulate attacks on external organizations and create false identities, and he suggested developing bare-metal backup systems that are completely physically isolated from the main network.Bailey also listed threats that could trigger disorderly market adjustments, including the fragile state of stock market valuations driven by the AI boom, weakness in the sovereign debt market and private credit sector, and investors continuously increasing leverage in the stock market.

According to Cointelegraph citing data from Bank of America, cryptocurrency funds recorded an inflow of $3.2 billion last week, the largest weekly inflow since October 2025.

According to Mobile Payment Network, Lu Lei, a member of the Party Committee and Vice President of the People's Bank of China, stated at the 15th China Payment Clearing Forum that intelligent agent payments must not blur the boundaries of responsibility between consumers, operating institutions, and algorithm systems. Lu Lei believes that the essence of payment is the transfer of fund ownership, which objectively requires that the results of transactions are predictable, responsibilities are definable, and traces are traceable. Large models and autonomous intelligent agents have characteristics such as output randomness and insufficient transparency of logic. If transaction decision-making authority is blindly or excessively granted to intelligent agents, it will affect the trust foundation of fund transactions. The current governance rules of the payment industry and dispute resolution mechanisms are built around "humans as the final decision-makers in transactions." The new model of intelligent agents automatically initiating and assisting in transactions easily blurs the boundaries of responsibility, and the existing governance rules need to be optimized and improved.Regarding the issue of insufficient compatibility of protocol standards in the field of intelligent agent payments, Lu Lei emphasized that the dispute over protocols is essentially a dispute over business rules and technical standards, as well as a struggle for dominance in the era of artificial intelligence. The People's Bank of China continues to strengthen its tracking research on technological innovation, especially intelligent agent payments, guiding the Payment Clearing Association to leverage its advantages in industry self-regulation. Based on extensive soliciting of opinions, they will formulate and publish the "Self-Regulatory Convention for Intelligent Agent Payment Applications," and will continue to work on coordinating protocols and standards, as well as innovating risk governance. Lu Lei proposed three hopes to market institutions: actively respond to and implement the industry self-regulatory convention, with payment security and risk prevention as the bottom line, and consumer rights protection as the focal point; continuously track the trends of cutting-edge technologies such as large models and intelligent agents both domestically and internationally, and build technical reserves and application capabilities; adhere to the principle of rules and standards first, strengthen coordination and compatibility among different protocols and standards, and cooperate with regulatory authorities to promote the construction of a foundational protocol and technical standard system for intelligent agent payments.

The semiconductor and AI independent research organization SemiAnalysis released a deep security report on Neocloud (new cloud), revealing various cross-tenant security vulnerabilities discovered during the ClusterMAX 3 testing period. In a four-month test covering 25 vendors and 32 clusters, the team achieved multiple instances of cross-tenant remote code execution (RCE) solely by exploiting publicly known vulnerabilities and basic configuration checks. Affected entities included banks, telecommunications companies, universities, research institutions, AI laboratories, and even a national intelligence agency.Typical issues included: shared Kubernetes control plane leading to tenant metadata visibility, container escape, exposure of BMC/IPMI management networks, incorrect configuration of InfiniBand security keys (P_Key, SA_Key, M_Key), unfortified default trust mode of BlueField DPU, Grafana monitoring dashboards using god-level API keys, and lack of VXLAN isolation in front-end networks. The report specifically pointed out a cascading vulnerability case: a misconfiguration of shared vCluster combined with software versions being two years out of date ultimately completed the POC verification of cross-tenant RCE within an afternoon.Notably, the report questioned the mainstream narrative that "AI has fundamentally changed the pace of cybersecurity": statistics on CVEs for NVIDIA GPU drivers, CUDA, PyTorch, Kubernetes, Docker, and the Linux kernel showed that there was no significant increase in vulnerabilities after the popularization of AI coding models, with most data supporting the "no change hypothesis." The report also detailed the incident where an OpenAI-trained agent attacked Hugging Face, where the AI agent achieved cluster-level privilege escalation through a message board established via Artifactory, which went undetected from May to July. While building POC verification for existing vulnerabilities, the team found that Claude Fable and GPT-5.6 Sol frequently rejected security-related requests, ultimately relying on open-source models such as DeepSeek V4, Kimi K3, and GLM-5.2 to complete the task.SemiAnalysis stated that the core issue in the Neocloud (new cloud) industry is not the new risks brought by AI, but rather the long-term absence of basic patch management, tenant isolation, and security design. They recommended that vendors establish automated security announcement monitoring systems and rectify single points of failure that could expose all users' architectural patterns.

In response to the recent warning from Pablo Hernández de Cos, General Manager of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), regarding the risks that stablecoins may pose to financial stability, Tether CEO Paolo Ardonio took to the X platform to criticize the BIS.He stated that there is a fundamental difference in the underlying risk structure between stablecoins and tokenized bank deposits. Stablecoins are essentially tools that are 100% backed by high-liquidity assets (such as U.S. Treasury bonds); in contrast, tokenized bank deposits still belong to the deposit system of banks, which typically use a fractional reserve model, with only a portion backed by high-liquidity assets.

Watcher Guru posted that Russia's largest bank, Sberbank, will accept Bitcoin, Ethereum, and USDT as collateral for loans.

According to News.bitcoin, the Independent Community Bankers of America (ICBA), which has about 5,000 community banks, opposes the CLARITY Act, emphasizing that there is no room for compromise on the issue of stablecoin rewards. ICBA President and CEO Rebeca Romero Rainey stated that the "loopholes" related to stablecoin rewards must be completely closed, and there is no compromise solution. ICBA claims that stablecoins could lead to $1.3 trillion in deposits leaving the banking system and reduce local lending by $850 billion.Rebeca Romero Rainey indicated that there are no signs that cryptocurrencies will replace these deposits and reinvest them back into local communities. She also criticized the report titled "Impact of the Stablecoin Reward Ban on Bank Lending" released by the White House Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) for downplaying banks' concerns about deposit outflows. The Senate plans to vote on the CLARITY Act on September 15; if it fails to gain the support of at least 60 senators, the bill will not proceed to further consideration and may halt progress for the foreseeable future.

The Independent Community Bankers of America (ICBA), representing about 5,000 community banks in the United States, is opposing the Clarity for Digital Assets Act (CLARITY Act). ICBA Chair and CEO Rebeca Romero Rainey stated that the "loopholes" related to stablecoin rewards must be completely closed, with no compromise solutions. The ICBA claims that stablecoins could lead to $1.3 trillion in deposits leaving the banking system and reduce local lending by $850 billion.The association has prompted Republican Senators Josh Hawley and Jerry Moran to oppose the current version of the bill. Rebeca Romero Rainey indicated that there are no signs that cryptocurrencies will replace these deposits and reinvest them into local communities. She also criticized the report titled "Impact of the Stablecoin Yield Ban on Bank Lending" released by the White House Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) for downplaying banks' concerns about deposit outflows. The Senate plans to vote on the CLARITY Act on September 15; if it cannot secure support from at least 60 senators, the bill will not proceed to further consideration and may halt progress for the foreseeable future.

The Taliban government in Afghanistan has effectively banned Bitcoin and cryptocurrency trading nationwide, threatening to prosecute traders and related businesses. More than 20 crypto shops in Herat have closed, and at least 13 traders have reportedly been arrested. Monthly inflows of cryptocurrency in Afghanistan have dropped from a peak of over $150 million to less than $80,000.After Afghanistan was largely cut off from the global banking system, Bitcoin and stablecoins had become important tools for savings and remittances. Taliban officials claim that digital assets are fraudulent and believe that cryptocurrency speculation is akin to gambling under Islamic law. Although the related actions have compressed the visible cryptocurrency market in Afghanistan, Bitcoin can still be traded via the internet, private keys, and counterparties.

According to Bloomberg, European Central Bank Executive Board Member Isabel Schnabel stated that central banks should introduce central bank money into blockchain to innovate the execution of monetary policy.Implementing "on-chain" not only maintains the status of money as the "settlement cornerstone," but also allows central banks to utilize the programmable features of distributed ledgers to modernize the execution of monetary policy, collateral management, and liquidity provision, thereby promoting financial stability.

Solana's new bank Avici is facing ongoing attacks, with attackers having stolen over $1 million from users. The attackers' wallet holds 10,005.03 SOL (approximately $1.07 million) and about $11,600 in USDC and USDT. The attack method involves first calling the SubmitSignatures of the Avici authorization program, then calling the AddCollateralAdmin of the collateral program, and finally executing WithdrawCollateralAsset to withdraw the balance. Both of Avici's programs are upgradable and share the same standard Solana account instead of multi-signature upgrade permissions.Avici confirmed the incident 1 hour and 53 minutes after the first theft transaction, stating, "We are aware of the issue affecting card balance withdrawals and are working directly with all relevant partners to resolve it." Prior to this, users had reported stolen balances on social media. A real-time tracker established by anonymous on-chain analyst STACC recorded 125 different sending accounts, with transfer amounts ranging from approximately 9 USDC to over 26,000 USDT.As a result, the AVICI token fell 49.4% in 24 hours to $0.2175, with a market cap of approximately $2.84 million, hitting an all-time low. Avici raised funds through MetaDAO in October 2025, with an original cap of $3.5 million, but the final committed amount reached $34.2 million, and the team refunded 89.8% of the committed USDC.

The digital euro is issued by the European Central Bank (ECB) and represents public money, and it is still in the development stage; EURR is a stablecoin issued by private institutions aimed at maintaining the value stability of 1 euro. Both are aimed at the demand for instant fund flows in digital platforms. The fintech company Revolut has phased the launch of the euro stablecoin EURR to eligible users in Denmark, Poland, and Portugal, with plans to expand to the European Economic Area in the future.EURR is deployed on the Ethereum network and can be used for on-chain transfers between fiat currencies, crypto assets, external wallets, and supported blockchain networks. EURR is issued by Bridge Building, a company under Stripe, rather than directly by Revolut. Piero Cipollone, a member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank, stated that the digital euro will provide the highest level of privacy supported by current technology, with offline payments visible only to the payer and payee, while participating banks in online transactions can still access the information required for anti-money laundering compliance.

Vassilis Tziokas from Matter Labs pointed out in a CoinDesk article that the U.S. Senate has postponed the Clarity Act until September. This market structure bill failed to complete the final vote before the August recess, meaning that regulatory rules for the digital asset market will take weeks to be implemented. Meanwhile, banks are not waiting for regulation; JPMorgan has processed over $30 trillion in transactions through the Kinexys platform and launched the deposit token JPMD, while Citigroup operates cross-border Treasury token services. A clearinghouse, in collaboration with 17 major financial institutions, plans to achieve on-chain tokenized deposit clearing by 2027.The article argues that the interoperability of interbank tokenized deposits does not come from messaging standards or token bridges, but is realized through clearing mechanisms: the sending bank redeems tokens, the receiving bank issues its own tokens, inter-institutional obligations are recorded and netted, and ultimately settled in central bank currency. The engineering challenge lies in simultaneously satisfying privacy, neutrality, and verifiability; each institution must operate its own ledger, prove transfers through cryptography without exposing underlying data, and anchor to a neutral settlement facility owned by no participants.The author notes that the Clarity Act will not directly regulate tokenized deposits, but it can clarify the boundaries of the digital asset market and improve the stablecoin framework established by the GENIUS Act. The Global Financial Markets Association's report in April 2026 lists unresolved gaps such as unified processing of cross-border tokenized deposits and guidelines for off-network transfers, which are regulatory unlocking points for interbank tokenized fund interoperability. In the face of regulatory uncertainty, banks rationally choose to isolate, and each month of delay rewards closed gardens.

SoftBank Group is seeking an additional $10 billion loan to refinance the related debt incurred from its investment in OpenAI and to raise further funds. According to informed sources, this loan has a term of two years and an interest rate approximately 275 basis points higher than the secured overnight financing rate (SOFR), with Mizuho Bank serving as the lead arranger and bookrunner.

According to Bloomberg, citing informed sources, a consortium formed by private equity firm Advent and payment processor Stripe has decided to abandon its acquisition of fintech pioneer PayPal Holdings Inc. This potential deal could have become one of the largest leveraged buyouts in history.Informed sources said that the group is no longer pursuing the acquisition of PayPal. Previously, insiders had indicated that the consortium had made an offer of over $50 billion. Relevant individuals requested anonymity as the information has not been made public.