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Blockchain

OpenAI COO Exits After 8 Years in Shock Departure — Execs Keep Bailing as IPO Looms
Brad Lightcap is out at OpenAI, becoming the seventh exec to leave in 2026. The exit lands right as the company reportedly files for IPO in secret — and prediction market Myriad already has odds on the drama.

CFTC Invokes Emergency Powers to Keep Kalshi Running Amid New York Lawsuit
Prediction market platform Kalshi was sued in New York last month, prompting the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission to invoke emergency powers ordering the platform to keep operating. Details of the lawsuit and next legal steps have yet to be officially disclosed.

Robinhood Chain's Daily Transactions Hit 11.6 Million, But User Growth Isn't Keeping Pace
USDe has pushed Robinhood Chain's TVL higher and transaction volume has surged to 11.6 million per day, making the on-chain numbers look great. But the user base has barely grown over the same period, exposing a clear gap between the two trend lines.

Microsoft's Maia 300 Reportedly Debuting in September: From 116K to 300K Units, This Time It's Really Breaking Away from Nvidia
Reports suggest Microsoft will unveil its AI chip Maia 300 as early as September, with an initial order of over 300,000 units placed with TSMC and a long-term target of 1 million units—2.6 times the scale of its predecessor. The chip is seen as a key bargaining chip in courting Anthropic.

Miners Go Dark, Racks Light Up: Riot Platforms' $9.1B Deal Turns Bitcoin Mines Into AI Data Centers
Riot Platforms dropped news of a mysterious 20-year lease with a "frontier AI lab" and a quarterly loss on the same day—and its stock still popped 25% after hours. The mining company's answer: sell power to compute, not hashrate.

Congress Stalls, SEC Takes Matters Into Its Own Hands: Regulation Crypto Hits the Agenda
The Senate left the Clarity Act on the table before recess, but SEC Chair Paul Atkins isn't waiting around—he's scheduled an August 14 meeting to kick off the agency's first formal crypto issuance rulemaking process.

Binance Named on Taiwan's VASP Warning List: Biggest Exchange, Last to Be Called Out — And the Reasoning Raises Eyebrows
The trade association announced on August 10 that Binance had failed to complete anti-money laundering registration, adding it to a warning list alongside offshore exchanges like Bybit and OKX. Yet Binance's cooperation with anti-fraud investigations may exceed that of most member exchanges.

From 12-Day Church Occupation to Anthropic's 800-Seat Office: King's Cross's AI Glow-Up
London's King's Cross was once a hotbed of drugs and sex work — now it's ground zero for OpenAI and Anthropic thanks to the "DeepMind effect," with rents up nearly 20% in three years and a fierce talent war heating up.

Bitcoin ETFs Pull In $853M in a Week — But Nearly 80% Came From BlackRock Alone
Spot bitcoin ETFs posted their biggest weekly net inflow since mid-April in the week ending August 7, with BlackRock's IBIT alone accounting for $693 million. The flows are highly concentrated, and year-to-date, the category is still sitting on a net outflow of $4.5 billion.

An Unsigned Hawkish Memo Just Moved Up the BOJ's Rate-Hike Timeline
The summary of opinions from the July meeting, released on August 10, carries no names attached — yet it's forcing markets to recalculate the Bank of Japan's rate-hike schedule. The shift in tone, from "the risk of waiting is minimal" to calls for a substantial hike, matters more than the numbers themselves.

Payrolls Miss Big, S&P Hits Record High—But Bitcoin Can't Even Muster a 0.02% Move
July nonfarm payrolls unexpectedly shed 23,000 jobs instead of adding them, propelling the S&P 500 to a fresh all-time high—yet Bitcoin and Ethereum barely blinked. Instead, it was short sellers who got crushed hardest in $171 million worth of liquidations.

World Liberty Took $100M From a Backer Now Under UK Money Laundering Investigation
Businessman Guren "Bobby" Zhou wired $100 million to World Liberty, pulling the crypto project into an ongoing investigation. He hasn't been charged, but UK authorities confirmed the case was still active as of late July.

Bitcoin Crashes Through $62K to Two-Week Low, Analysts Warn August Could Echo 2022 Bear Market
Bitcoin tumbled 3.5% in a single day, breaking below $62,000, while South Korea's KOSPI posted its biggest single-day gain ever. U.S. stocks and crypto failed to catch the rally, even as July closed out as Bitcoin's best month in four years.