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U.S. Treasury Secretary Becerra stated at a press conference in Washington yesterday that the Trump administration may target digital assets, the aviation industry, and the shipping industry as new sanctions in the process of further pressuring the Iranian economy.

According to Crypto Briefing, Colombian fintech company Plenti has completed a $3 million seed round financing, led by Tether with participation from Verda Ventures. The new funds will be used to support existing operations in Colombia and expand into Peru and Bolivia.Founded in 2022, Plenti provides multi-currency account services for freelancers and remote workers, allowing users to hold US dollars, euros, and Colombian pesos, earn balance yields, and invest in US stocks, ETFs, digital gold, and crypto assets. The company has served over 150,000 active users, with an annual transaction volume exceeding $3.1 billion, and has processed over 680 million USDT since 2023.

Berkshire Hathaway CEO Greg Abel stated in an interview with CNBC that the company plans to hold its stakes in Japan's five major trading companies as a long-term investment, expecting to hold them for decades. Currently, Berkshire holds over 10% of shares in each of the five major trading companies and is continuously exploring other cooperation opportunities in Japan and overseas with these enterprises. Abel also mentioned that despite the 10-year Japanese government bond yield rising to about 3%, the five major trading companies do not view the rise in interest rates as a fundamental challenge, and Berkshire still plans to issue yen bonds as needed.Regarding AI investments, Abel stated that the rapid development of artificial intelligence and the practical applications of AI by Berkshire's subsidiaries are among the important reasons for the company's optimism about Alphabet. On the construction of AI data centers, he believes that energy supply and related infrastructure development remain major constraints, which also presents significant opportunities for Berkshire and Berkshire Energy. Abel pointed out that the company is willing to provide energy services for large tech companies' data centers, but on the condition that it does not harm the interests of other customers and should bring net benefits to the local community.In terms of the U.S. housing market, Abel stated that Berkshire takes a long-term view of the housing industry, believing that the "American Dream" will continue, but there will not be a rapid recovery in the short term, and the industry may still face fluctuations for some time. Regarding the overall economy, he noted that most of Berkshire's large businesses performed strongly as of the second quarter, with demand still robust, but American consumers are under significant pressure and need to be more cautious in managing their income; overall, the economic fundamentals that Berkshire currently sees remain "very strong."

According to DIGITIMES, at the Semicon Network Summit 2026, industry representatives pointed out that the bottleneck in the silicon photonics industry has shifted from materials to packaging precision and heterogeneous integration. Marvell's CTO stated that copper interconnects are nearing their physical limits, and end-to-end optical interconnects are inevitable.TNO/Holst Centre pointed out that the real challenge for CPO is integrating optical materials such as LiNbO3 and InP with the CMOS platform. TSIA indicated that the packaging stage now requires micron-level fiber alignment precision, and Taiwan has a globally leading advantage in the chip and packaging fields. TNO further noted that panel-level packaging is a key opportunity for Taiwan, leveraging large-size glass substrate processing experience to support the large-scale demand for optical interconnects in data centers, but there are still technical gaps in equipment such as Chip-to-Wafer bonding. Marvell stated that its reliance on the Taiwanese supply chain for silicon photonic chips is increasing.

According to The Information, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is reviewing relevant rules to address potential conflicts of interest between prediction market exchanges and their affiliated trading companies.

Morpho co-founder and CEO Paul Frambot stated in a post on X that over the past six months, the team has received many opportunities to acquire cryptocurrency companies.He mentioned that Morpho rarely acquires companies for intellectual property or technology. If they want to build a certain capability, they prefer to hire the right talent and develop it end-to-end themselves, following their own engineering, auditing, and formal verification processes. Talent acquisition may be attractive, but the valuation will be purely based on a comparison of the cost of the talent acquired versus hiring an equivalent team.

According to two informed sources, Payward, the parent company of cryptocurrency exchange Kraken, has postponed its highly anticipated initial public offering (IPO) to as early as the second quarter of 2027. CoinDesk reported in March this year that the company had shelved its multi-billion dollar IPO plans due to a challenging market environment; this delay further extends the much-watched listing process.Payward confidentially submitted its S-1 registration statement draft to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in November 2025, shortly after the company completed an $800 million funding round at a $20 billion valuation, which included a $200 million investment from Citadel Securities. After Circle and Bullish successfully went public last year, the cryptocurrency industry originally expected a wave of listings in 2026, but weak coin prices and trading volumes, along with the lackluster market performance of some newly listed digital asset companies, dampened investor enthusiasm, leading companies like Grayscale, Consensys, and Ledger to also postpone their listing plans.During the IPO hiatus, Payward continued to expand beyond its core exchange business, venturing into traditional and crypto derivatives, tokenized stocks, and payment infrastructure through a series of acquisitions and product launches. The company's adjusted revenue for the second quarter was $508 million, a 17% year-over-year increase, with the number of funded accounts rising to 6.6 million and platform assets reaching $40 billion.

Crypto KOL Rune posted that his previously disclosed idea of "acquiring a Nasdaq-listed company and tokenizing equity on the Robinhood Chain" is actually a post generated by Claude, and the related data is all fabricated or exaggerated.Previously, Rune claimed to have acquired a 37.4% stake in a certain Nasdaq-listed company for $1.8 million and planned to pair the tokenized stock with a Meme coin.

According to Bloomberg, G42, an AI company supported by Microsoft, has had preliminary discussions with potential investors about raising billions of dollars, potentially becoming one of the first government-affiliated AI companies in the UAE to expand its capital scale through external financing.Insiders revealed that the scale of financing and transaction structure have not yet been finalized, and discussions are still in the exploratory stage. G42 has previously advanced data center projects in Abu Dhabi with Microsoft and OpenAI, and has received support from companies like Microsoft.

According to a report from Circle's official blog, Circle's cross-chain infrastructure CCTP has officially expanded to support the native cross-chain transfer of the euro stablecoin EURC.EURC adopts the same "burn-mint" model as USDC, with the first phase supporting cross-chain settlement between Ethereum and Base chains. Developers can transfer both USDC and EURC through a unified interface without needing to connect to multiple bridging service providers, effectively reducing integration complexity and enhancing liquidity efficiency. EURC is issued by Circle's regulated subsidiary, and CCTP does not hold or manage user assets.

According to Bloomberg, the physical AI company Lyte announced the completion of a $165 million Series C financing round, led by Maverick Silicon, with participation from Fidelity Management & Research, Atreides Management, Key1 Capital, and Ora Global, bringing the post-money valuation to $1.6 billion.Founded in 2021 by former Apple and PrimeSense engineers, Lyte focuses on providing a complete perception technology stack for robots, including custom chips, multimodal sensors, and spatial software. To date, the company has raised a total of $272 million.The funds from this round will be used to expand the production scale of perception chips and its LyteVision platform, as well as to advance AI perception capabilities and the commercialization of robotics.

According to The Block, the Wyoming Stablecoin Committee announced the adoption of Chainlink Proof of Reserve to provide near real-time on-chain reserve verification for the state’s official stablecoin, Frontier Stable Token (FRNT). This follows the migration of cross-chain infrastructure from LayerZero to Chainlink CCIP, further establishing it as the sole on-chain asset verification infrastructure.The auditing firm The Network Firm will review the reserves and token supply of FRNT according to the standards of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA). The verification data will be recorded on-chain via Chainlink, reducing information gaps between reporting periods.The committee will also introduce the Chainlink Proof of Reserve Secure Mint mechanism, requiring that verified reserves must be no less than the total supply of FRNT for any minting to occur, in order to prevent risks associated with "unlimited minting." FRNT is fully backed by reserves of U.S. dollars and short-term U.S. Treasury securities, with related earnings used to diversify state finances and support local education funds.

According to on-chain analyst @ai_9684xtpa, a whale that went long on 45,000 ETH sold 1,500 ETH on-chain two hours ago, worth approximately 3.75 million USD, realizing a profit of about 618,000 USD, and deposited the proceeds in USDC as margin into Hyperliquid.Currently, the whale's long position of 107 million USD has further expanded its unrealized loss to 4.8 million USD, with the latest liquidation price at 2,173.36 USD, leaving approximately 207 USD of space before liquidation.

U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo said on Wednesday that the Trump administration is considering a new round of import tariffs on semiconductors, which could further increase taxes on foreign chips to attract more semiconductor manufacturing to the United States.However, these tariffs may be implemented alongside tax relief measures for investments in domestic manufacturing companies, following the approach previously taken by the Trump administration in the pharmaceutical industry.Raimondo stated, "This is the principle that the semiconductor industry should follow: If you produce in the U.S., we will give you tariff relief; if you do not produce in the U.S., you will pay tariffs. This is a very wise approach and it works."Trump had previously imposed a 25% tariff on some advanced semiconductors and ordered additional import tariffs on these chips in January of this year after the U.S. Department of Commerce completed relevant trade investigations. However, the scope of the new round of tariffs may expand from semiconductors themselves to products containing chips, thereby affecting imports of data center servers and consumer electronics.

According to market news, the UK-listed company The Smarter Web Company (SWC) has increased its holdings by 35 bitcoins, currently holding 2,747 bitcoins, ranking 29th in bitcoin holdings.

Strategy CEO Phong Le stated in an interview that Strategy does not make decisions based on the specific price of Bitcoin. Over the past two months, Strategy has not purchased Bitcoin but has strengthened its balance sheet. Currently, Strategy's total assets amount to $72 billion, which includes $65 billion in Bitcoin and $7 billion in cash reserves, with cash reserves increasing by 34% over the past two months.Meanwhile, Strategy has reduced its net liabilities from approximately $7 billion to zero. Phong Le mentioned that by strengthening the balance sheet, Strategy has enhanced its equity value, making the sale of MSTR and the purchase of Bitcoin more profitable. Previously, Strategy increased its Bitcoin holdings again last week after a two-month interval.

The Japanese listed company Remixpoint disclosed that to promote the selection and concentration of its investment portfolio, it has sold all of its holdings in altcoins. In the future, it will focus its holdings and operations on a single asset, Bitcoin.As of the end of August, the company held approximately 14.92 BTC (about $1.0258 million), with ETH staked at about $68,400 and SOL staked at about $118,500. The sold assets included 901 ETH, 13,920 SOL, 1.19 million XRP, and 2.8 million DOGE, with a total sale amount of approximately $5.5 million and total profits of about $736,800.

Rapha Zagury, CEO of Twenty One Capital and founder of Elektron Energy, stated during his speech at Bitcoin Asia 2026 that the Bitcoin network is experiencing its first-ever bear market in hashrate. The hashrate of the Bitcoin network was close to 1.3 ZH/s at the end of last year, but has since been slowly declining, with the duration of this decline from the historical peak now setting a record. Zagury believes that Bitcoin mining is not simply a "good business" or "bad business"; it largely depends on where the mining company stands on the cost curve. Mining companies with lower energy costs and higher machine efficiency can maintain higher profit margins, while those with high energy costs and low equipment efficiency may be forced to shut down.Currently, while the Bitcoin hashrate price has improved compared to before, it is still at a relatively low level when measured against historical standards. When the price of Bitcoin rises faster than the growth of the network's hashrate, mining is more likely to outperform BTC. For companies, he believes that the best risk-adjusted allocation is not simply choosing to "buy BTC" or "mine," but rather a combination of both; however, if only $1 can be allocated, he suggests prioritizing the purchase of BTC. Regarding energy issues, Zagury stated that energy consumption itself does not imply waste; energy is the foundation of economic development and human progress. He believes that one of the greatest characteristics of Bitcoin mining is its highly flexible load, as mining machines can quickly turn on and off based on energy supply, thus helping the grid absorb idle or surplus electricity and enhancing grid stability to some extent. Additionally, he believes that Bitcoin mining is generating "option value" that was not previously apparent, including aspects such as energy utilization, market share, proximity to the Bitcoin protocol, and infrastructure. With the growing demand for AI and high-performance computing (HPC), the existing energy and data center infrastructure of mining companies may also gain additional application scenarios such as AI computing power. Currently, among large publicly listed mining companies, there are fewer and fewer that can continue large-scale Bitcoin mining, and the industry is at a critical stage where the energy revolution intersects with the Bitcoin revolution.

Stablecoin issuer Circle and cryptocurrency exchange OKX announced a partnership to jointly expand the liquidity and trading utility of USDC on the OKX platform.This collaboration supports broader access to USDC-denominated markets, covering spot, margin, and futures trading. Circle stated that as the digital asset market expands, trusted dollar stablecoin liquidity becomes a core trading infrastructure, providing eligible users with more ways to trade using USDC.

Hyperliquid's native treasury company Hyperliquid Strategies announced that it has expanded its equity purchase agreement with Chardan Capital Markets from $1 billion to $2.5 billion.After the initial $1 billion is sold, further stock sales below $12.02 will be subject to the Nasdaq 19.99% exchange cap limit, unless approved by shareholders.