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The prediction market platform Polymarket officially launches perpetual futures trading, covering cryptocurrencies, stocks, indices, and commodities, with a maximum leverage of 20 times.

On Tuesday, the Ukrainian National Police and Security Service announced the dismantling of a fake investment platform network based in Kyiv. This gang stole cryptocurrency from users in over 20 countries through built-in wallet theft tools. Investigators have currently confirmed 62 victims, including citizens from Germany, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Spain, France, the UK, Canada, and Israel. The organizers recruited more than 46 Ukrainians, operating multiple offices in Kyiv and surrounding areas, where developers were responsible for building the fake platform and resisting bans, while other members handled customer service and security.According to the Ukrainian Security Service, the organizer is a 25-year-old IT expert, and the gang's peak monthly revenue reached up to $1 million. The scam began with advertisements for cryptocurrency investment projects on Telegram. After users registered, they connected their wallets and invested funds, while gang members manually forged transactions to show a continuously increasing balance in the user backend. When users requested withdrawals, the platform required them to connect their main wallet and approve a small "test" transaction under the pretext of verification. This authorization immediately triggered the built-in theft tool on the website, transferring assets to wallets controlled by the gang and locking the victims' accounts.Investigators tracked down server equipment storing the gang's database in the Netherlands, which recorded victim information, wallet addresses, stolen amounts, internal communications, and platform operation data, as well as user passports, phone numbers, emails, login passwords, and photos. Police executed 34 searches in Kyiv and surrounding areas, seizing over 100 computers, more than 100 mobile phones, 79 SIM cards, one GSM gateway, cash, and 15 vehicles.

Polygon Labs announced that it has completed a SOC 2 Type 1 examination for the Polygon Open Money Stack API and dashboard, covering the security trust services criteria. The independent auditing firm Schellman & Company, LLC determined that Polygon has implemented appropriate security controls.SOC 2 is an auditing framework established by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. A Type 1 examination assesses whether the design of the control system is correct at the time of the examination, while a Type 2 examination is ongoing and will test the execution of relevant controls over several months of actual operation. The report states that complementary user entity controls are not necessary for Polygon to fulfill its service commitments.Polygon Labs CEO Marc Boiron stated that as a technology provider handling real funds, it is essential to meet the standards of financial institutions, and most crypto infrastructure has never been audited against this standard for systems actually integrated by customers. Type 1 confirms that the control design is correct, and Type 2 will confirm its daily operation.

PPP prediction market tool monitoring shows that the probability of Polymarket "OpenAI's Astra being released before September 11" has risen to 86%, up 41% in 24 hours; the probability of it being released before September 15 has risen to 91%, up 29% in 24 hours.If OpenAI publicly releases "Astra" before the specified date, or releases a product confirmed by official or credible media to be the same model as the previously announced "Astra," the event will settle as "Yes," otherwise it will be "No." Eligible models can use names such as Astra, Astra 1, Astra 6, GPT-6 Astra, etc., and can be renamed upon release. Models like GPT-5.7 and GPT-6 will only count if confirmed to be the same model as the previously mentioned Astra. The model must be publicly accessible, including public testing or open waitlists; closed testing and private access do not count. Settlement is primarily based on official information from OpenAI and references consensus reports from credible media.

According to The Block data panel, the combined trading volume of Kalshi, Polymarket, and Polymarket US in August fell by 14.5% month-on-month to $45.33 billion, marking the first monthly decline in a year. Among them, Kalshi's trading volume in August was $37.17 billion, down 7.3% from $40.1 billion in July; the combined trading volume of Polymarket and its US platform was $8.16 billion, down 36.7% from $12.89 billion in July.The decline in August occurred after a surge in summer prediction market activity driven by the World Cup (June 11 to July 19), but the August trading volume was still significantly higher than May's $25.66 billion. Meanwhile, Kalshi and Polymarket are facing increasingly stringent scrutiny from state-level regulators in the US, particularly regarding sports-related contracts, with more than ten states taking enforcement actions or filing lawsuits against the two platforms. Last week, Connecticut sued Kalshi, seeking to prevent the platform from offering sports contracts.Despite the escalating legal disputes with state regulators, Kalshi continues to expand its presence in the sports sector, recently signing an agreement with the United States Tennis Association to become the exclusive prediction market partner for the US Open. Additionally, earlier this week, Kalshi permanently banned former US Congressman George Santos, marking its first permanent ban, due to Santos violating rules by betting on whether he would attend the State of the Union address, resulting in a fine of over $71,000.

According to CoinDesk, U.S. Treasury Secretary Yellen has reportedly urged Japan to raise interest rates to curb the continuous depreciation of the yen, highlighting how traditional monetary policy is susceptible to government and external factors.In contrast, Bitcoin's monetary policy is pre-set by code, with new coin issuance following a fixed rhythm and halving approximately every four years, providing higher predictability. However, Bitcoin still struggles to escape the impacts of traditional financial markets in the short term.If Japan's interest rate hike leads to a rapid appreciation of the yen, long-accumulated low-interest yen financing trades may be closed out, potentially triggering sell-offs in stocks, bonds, and crypto assets. In August 2024, the Bank of Japan's interest rate hike strengthened the yen and put pressure on risk assets, including Bitcoin.From a technical perspective, the BTC 50-day moving average is currently trending upward and is close to crossing above the 200-day moving average, which may form a "golden cross." However, analysts believe that moving averages have a lagging nature, and the historical predictive effectiveness of the golden cross as an independent indicator is not stable.

According to a research report published by RootData Research, the total trading volume of mainstream cryptocurrency exchanges in the TradFi sector surpassed $1.3 trillion in the first half of 2026, nearly a tenfold increase compared to the entire year of 2025, with TradFi derivatives accounting for over 98%, becoming the core engine driving the explosive growth of the sector.The exchange landscape is shifting from "unipolar concentration" to multipolar competition. Binance, while maintaining a leading position in the TradFi sector with a cumulative share of 68.3%, saw its monthly trading volume share decline from 78.8% at the beginning of the year to 58.2% in August. Meanwhile, second-tier exchanges such as OKX, Gate, and Hyperliquid are rapidly expanding, with market shares of 18.2%, 10.7%, and 9.9% respectively in August.In the core submarket of stock derivatives, entering August, Binance still dominated with an average daily trading volume of $14.927 billion; OKX established an advantage in trading costs with the industry's lowest spread of 0.0091%, achieving a comprehensive score tied for second with Gate. Gate has recently shown independent growth, recording four consecutive months of triple-digit month-on-month growth from May to August, and in mid-August, its ±2% weighted depth ranked first in the industry for 11 consecutive trading days. The competitive logic of the TradFi sector may be shifting from a battle for traffic to a competition across comprehensive dimensions such as position size, market depth, trading costs, and variety coverage.

Venture capitalist Tomasz Tunguz posted on X that the cutting-edge AI market is splitting into closed camps, with labs choosing partners, cutting off competitors, and rationing access to the strongest models. Salesforce selected Anthropic as its dedicated AI partner, making Claude the default model for the world's largest CRM and Slack.OpenAI cut off its API access on November 12 after SpaceX acquired Cursor. Z.ai placed its flagship model under a security review after cumulative revenue exceeded $10 billion. Anthropic rationed Mythos 5 through Project Glasswing and restricted Fable to inference only in the United States. OpenAI first launched the GPT-5.6 variant to trusted partners.Nvidia is investing in an open ecosystem, including $13 billion for Hugging Face, $7 billion for Poolside, and a $26 billion commitment to Nemotron. Tunguz stated that access, rather than price, has become the new scarcity at the forefront.

According to sources cited by The Wall Street Journal, Donald Trump Jr.'s 1789 Capital plans to invest an additional approximately $300 million in the prediction market platform Polymarket, as part of a $1 billion financing round led by 1789 Capital. If completed, Polymarket's valuation will reach approximately $21 billion.1789 Capital has previously invested about $200 million in Polymarket, and after this round, it will become one of its largest investors. The largest investor in Polymarket currently is the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), which previously disclosed holding Polymarket shares valued at $1.6 billion, accounting for about 22% of the company's outstanding shares.

According to Businesswire, the cryptocurrency asset investment fund C1 Fund announced its performance for the second quarter of 2026, revealing that as of the second quarter of this year, its portfolio has expanded to 11 cryptocurrency companies, covering areas such as cryptocurrency payments, custody, compliance, staking, exchanges, infrastructure development, and prediction markets. Its two major investment exposures are Ripple (accounting for 17.5% of net assets) and Kraken's parent company Payward (16.9%), and it has also made a new investment in the prediction market platform Polymarket, although the specific investment amount has not been disclosed.C1 Fund also stated that as of July 31, it has repurchased and canceled 249,300 shares of the company's stock, with a total cost of approximately $824,000, and it is currently authorized to repurchase up to $3 million in stock.

According to a Reuters report, Polymarket's new Global Head of Research and Intelligence, Shana Bautista (former analyst at Coinbase, former investigator at the FBI), stated that as the U.S. midterm elections approach, Polymarket has established a system to identify unusual trading activities and will continue to prevent U.S. users from using its international platform to comply with the settlement agreement reached with U.S. regulators in 2022.In addition, Polymarket plans to launch a new webpage to publicly disclose the operational details of market integrity review mechanisms such as machine learning, blockchain analysis, and trading monitoring, and revealed that it has referred over 100 cases to law enforcement agencies.

According to official news, the Polymarket website is down, and users are unable to place orders. Polymarket has stated that they are working to fix this issue. Trading is expected to resume by 18:00 today (Beijing time) at the latest.

Polygon Labs disclosed that it has fixed a batch of security vulnerabilities in its proof-of-stake network through two hard forks, with the related fixes privately deployed before public disclosure. According to a forum post released on Wednesday, the team packaged the fixes into the Austin hard fork of the Bor client and the Kyoto hard fork of the Heimdall client, both of which followed the standard process for fixing issues that affect consensus: first validated on the Amoy testnet, and then publicly disclosed once the mainnet was activated and the network was secure.The Austin fork fixed two denial-of-service paths in block processing, including a vulnerability where malicious block producers could crash peer nodes by filling them with oversized field data. The Kyoto fork addressed a broader range of consensus hardening issues, with the most severe vulnerability allowing an attacker to force the entire validator set to perform costly and coordinated work with just one crafted transaction—the cost of constructing the transaction is low, but the network processing cost is high. Polygon emphasized that none of the vulnerabilities were observed to be exploited on the mainnet and have been proactively addressed. The two upgrades are now mandatory for node operators and have taken effect without the need for state migration or resynchronization.This disclosure comes at a critical transformation period for Polygon, which has completed the migration of the traditional MATIC token to POL as part of a comprehensive overhaul of its network architecture. The news did not boost the price of POL; according to CoinGecko data, POL traded at approximately $0.09983 on Sunday, down 2.3% in 24 hours, down about 6.8% over the past week, and down about 60.8% over the past year, with a market capitalization of approximately $1.07 billion.

Polygon disclosed multiple previously undisclosed security vulnerabilities recently fixed through two hard forks, Austin and Kyoto, which could affect its proof-of-stake network. The vulnerabilities involve Polygon's Bor and Heimdall clients, including denial-of-service risks, validator resource exhaustion, and defects affecting checkpoint and milestone processing.Polygon stated that the fixes were privately tested before being deployed to the mainnet and publicly disclosed. The most severe issue involved Heimdall, where carefully crafted transactions could force validators to perform excessive processing work, disrupting the network. The Austin hard fork also fixed two denial-of-service risks in Bor that could slow down block processing or cause node crashes. Polygon indicated that these vulnerabilities were not exploited on the mainnet, and the fixes were proactively completed before the details of the vulnerabilities were made public.

According to data from DefiLlama, Pons' revenue in the past 24 hours reached $693,125, surpassing Polymarket ($635,221) and fomo ($646,539), ranking eighth in protocol revenue, just behind Hyperliquid ($758,325).

PPP prediction market tool monitoring shows that the probability of Polymarket "ETH dropping to $2400 in the remaining period of August" has decreased to 30%, a 31% drop in 24 hours; the probability of dropping to $2300 has decreased to 4%, a 4% drop in 24 hours. This market is based on the Binance ETH/USDT trading pair.During the specified month in the title (from 00:00 on the 1st of the month Eastern Time to 23:59 on the last day), if the highest price of any 1-minute candlestick equals or exceeds the specified price in the title, it will be settled as Yes immediately; otherwise, it will be No. Only the 1-minute candlestick High price of Binance ETH/USDT is considered, and prices from other exchanges or trading pairs are not included.