🇨🇳 Alibaba Adds to China AI Breakthroughs With New Qwen Model

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. released its biggest ever AI model, claiming performance on par with global leader Anthropic PBC in the latest Chinese breakthrough to challenge US rivals.

The new Qwen3.8-Max is built on 2.4 trillion parameters and ranks higher on several benchmarks than the headline-grabbing Kimi K3 from Moonshot that was recently unveiled. Alibaba shared results showing it delivering comparable or sometimes better scores than Anthropic’s Fable 5.

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⚡️🇺🇸The Trump administration has invited OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, and other AI companies to the White House to review a new voluntary AI oversight framework

The framework will establish a voluntary process for AI labs to submit their models to the government before releasing them to partners and the public. The Office of the National Cyber Director, an agency within the executive branch, will host the meeting.

The meeting is scheduled for several days after the initial Aug. 1 deadline for completing the framework, which was set by an executive order issued in early June. It remains unclear whether the White House will accept feedback at the meeting or present a final version of the framework.

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🔥 Robinhood wins UK crypto registration before new regulatory regime kicks off

Crypto-friendly trading platform Robinhood (HOOD) is now registered to offer cryptocurrency services in the U.K. 🇬🇧

❗️Robinhood’s U.K. arm was added to the Financial Conduct Authority’s (FCA) list of registered cryptoasset companies as of July 31.

The company’s existing FCA registration means it meets the regulator’s requirements where it comes to anti-money laundering (AML). A regime for crypto firms has been in effect since 2020 and now numbers over 50 approved companies, including Ripple, Kraken and traditional finance (TradFi) giants like BlackRock and BNY.

Winning the regulator’s permission to offer crypto services has added significance ahead of the inception of the more comprehensive framework for crypto regulation in the U.K. The authorization process opens at the end of September and closes at the end of February next year, ahead of the full regime coming into force in October. 🚀

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🇨🇳🇭🇰China’s Wu Vows Further Expansion of Market Links to Hong Kong

China is working closely with Hong Kong authorities to expand the Stock Connect cross-border trading link by adding yuan-denominated stock counters and real estate investment trusts, according China Securities Regulatory Commission Chairman Wu Qing.

Wu reiterated Beijing’s commitment to opening mainland markets and facilitating international investment through the city. Regulators on both sides are actively preparing technical frameworks to enable mainland investors to trade dual-currency counters and REITs via Southbound Stock Connect.

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📺 Samsung bans smart TV apps that share users’ internet connections with strangers

The security research by Norwegian cybersecurity company Mnemonic describes a perfect storm of problems that allows low-quality apps to proliferate across Samsung’s app store, containing code that puts users at risk of having their internet connections tapped by a rogue app. One of the smart TV apps was a simple Pac-Man game.

These apps contain software that funnels outsiders’ web traffic through ordinary home and office internet connections, known as residential proxy networks (or “resproxies”), which are increasingly being linked to cybercrime. When opened, apps with resproxy code can turn the smart TV into an always-on tunnel for outsiders to funnel their web traffic through, known as an exit node — even when the app is no longer open.

“We have already restricted new app registrations that incorporate such proxy functionalities on our Smart TV platform,” — said a Samsung spokesperson.

“We are currently implementing strict platform-wide developer policies explicitly banning residential proxy SDKs, and we are working to identify and remove all apps currently available in our store that contain these components.”

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⚡️🤑 Introducing the Stellar Ambassador Program

Today marks the launch of the Stellar Ambassador Program — a global program for the builders, educators, and community leaders growing the Stellar ecosystem from the ground up.

We built the program to solve a crucial problem. A developer who discovers Stellar at a local workshop and a team preparing to raise need completely different things, yet most ecosystem programs treat them the same.

The Ambassador Program is structured as a progression instead, with four tiers that match the support to the stage.

🧱 The Four Tiers:

🔜 Explorer is the entry point. Complete onboarding, join a local Chapter, and learn the ecosystem through open workshops and educational resources.

🔜 Contributor is for members producing real work: delivering workshops, creating technical content, mentoring newer members. Contributors unlock structured bootcamps, speaking opportunities, and advanced technical tracks.

🔜 Builder is where projects take shape. Deployed smart contracts, a working MVP, or contributions to an SCF-funded project qualify. Builders gain access to builder retreats, product integration support, milestone-based incentives, and conference representation. Via their chapters, Builders can also earn Instawards, awards of up to $15K that fund early experimentation and prototyping.

🔜 Ecosystem Leader is for members whose impact extends beyond their own projects: leading hackathon tracks, mentoring teams that ship, and running regional initiatives. Ecosystem Leaders take on leadership mandates and acceleration pathways, including founder-readiness support for teams preparing to raise.

📌 One Pipeline

The Stellar Ambassador Program is designed to help builders progress through the Stellar ecosystem as they grow. Chapter referrals and Instawards can lead eligible projects into the Stellar Community Fund Build Award pipeline, where they may receive up to $150K in XLM to go from validated concept to mainnet launch. A builder who starts at a chapter workshop and ends up running a funded company has moved through one continuous system.

🌎 Global Reach

Building the new global financial system starts locally.

Ambassador Chapters are live in Africa, Asia and Latin America, with builders participating from communities worldwide. Each chapter runs local events and mentorship with a regional community working on shared problems.

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🔥 BlackRock launches two tokenized money market funds for stablecoin reserves

BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, has expanded its tokenization footprint with the launch of two new onchain money market products.

The OnChain Shares of the BlackRock Select Treasury Based Liquidity Fund (BSTBL) and the BlackRock Daily Reinvestment Stablecoin Reserve Vehicle (BRSRV) aim to blend the liquidity and principal stability of regulated traditional money market funds with the operational efficiencies of blockchain technology, targeting institutional investors and digital-asset market participants.

❗️Both funds will invest primarily in cash, short-term U.S. Treasuries, and overnight repurchase agreements collateralized by U.S. Treasuries.

"As demand grows for high-quality reserve assets to support stablecoins and other tokenized financial products, these funds provide clients with additional choice in how they access and use money market fund investment solutions across traditional and digital markets," — said Jon Steel, global head of product and platform for BlackRock's cash management business.

The move comes amid a boom in Wall Street tokenization, including in no small part by BlackRock. 🚀

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🔥🤑 Franklin Templeton's tokenized funds are now live across 8 networks

Of the $2.5 billion in distributed value, 60% sits on BNB Chain, 22% on Stellar, and 10% on Ethereum, with the remaining 8% spread across Base, Polygon, Arbitrum, Aptos, and Avalanche.

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⚔️ Apple launched a new legal complaint over the UK government’s latest demand for access to encrypted user data

The UK government made a request to Apple to provide a “back door” to encrypted iCloud data belonging to British users (the order excludes U.S. users), according to an order issued by the court. In response, Apple filed a legal complaint last month at the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT), an independent court that has the power to investigate claims that the UK intelligence services have acted unlawfully.

The legislation compels companies to provide information to law enforcement agencies working on cases including terrorism and child sexual abuse. This can include forcing companies to provide the UK security services with access to customer data, even if such information is protected by secure encryption.

Apple is seeking to challenge the British government’s powers to issue TCNs under the UK Investigatory Powers Act.

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🏘 JPMorgan aims to funnel $750 billion into housing through 2035

JPMorgan is planning to deploy more than $750 billion into ​housing through 2035, in a push to increase supply ‌and support homeownership in the U.S. The planned deployment is part of JPMorgan's American Dream Initiative, unveiled earlier this year, which also ​aims to spur local economic growth through increased small-business ​lending and expanded access to healthcare.

❗️Under the ​plan, which marks a nearly 40% jump in capital ​deployed for housing from the last decade, JPMorgan will help produce ‌and ⁠preserve over 1 million affordable housing units.

JPMorgan will look ⁠to boost housing by increasing mortgage lending by more ​than 40%, aiming to help 500,000 customers buy homes. The largest U.S. bank by assets and market value will join the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's newly formed Housing Advisory Council as its chair. ​

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⚡️✈️ Telegram was reported to be missing from Apple App Store searches worldwide

Apple and Telegram CEO Pavel Durov have not issued an official statement on the reason for the removal or whether it was caused by a system error.

❗️Telegram has been restored to the App Store.

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🕵🏻‍♂️ FBI agent accused of stealing $1 million in crypto, allegedly turned to ChatGPT for vacation plans

FBI agent Patrick Yaroch was arrested Friday after allegedly confessing to stealing cryptocurrency beginning in late 2024 or early 2025. He was fired by the FBI on July 31.

According to an affidavit filed Aug. 1, Yaroch said he discovered keys that allowed him to transfer funds from digital wallets to himself. He told investigators he was frustrated that he could not do more to prevent someone from an "adversarial nation" from using cryptocurrency, and made about a dozen transfers.

He told a Department of Justice employee that he "made some very poor decisions related to cryptocurrency wallets," and in a separate instance freely told federal agents interviewing him that he had "f**ked up." 😁

⬇️Yaroch said that he had mixed his personal and crypto funds together. The FBI also said that Yaroch relied on ChatGPT to figure out what to do with the funds, including how to spend or invest a million dollars, and asked about leaving the U.S. to go to a country in Europe.

"ChatGPT responded, 'Given everything you’ve told me – [name of YAROCH’s child], your wife, the desire for a 2-5 hectare estate, interest in age-worthy red wine, and the goal of actually living there rather than just owning a property- I would not start by chasing citizenship…What I would do with $1 million Option 1: Portugal (my top choice for your specific situation),'" — according to the affidavit.

Yaroch had purchased a ticket to Portugal departing Sept. 3. He has been charged with interstate transportation of stolen goods and receipt of stolen goods, securities and money, according to a court document.

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💰 Visa beefs up cybersecurity offerings with $2.4 billion BioCatch deal

Visa would buy fraud intelligence provider BioCatch for $2.4 billion ​in cash. The deal would help the world's largest payment processor further bolster its existing cyber, fraud, risk and security offerings and enable it to help clients better protect themselves in ​an increasingly complex threat environment.

"Account takeovers and scams cost the ​global economy over $1 trillion annually and AI is enabling these attacks ⁠at unprecedented scale. BioCatch will help our clients stop fraud before it ​reaches the point of payment," — said Andrew Torre, president of value-added services at Visa.

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🔥 RedStone is rolling out SEP-40 price feeds on Stellar for six more asset issuers: Franklin Templeton, Ethena, STBL, Matrixdock, Etherfuse and Avant.

A tokenized bond or a tokenized gold bar is only useful onchain once a protocol can price it. 🚀

Soroban, Stellar's smart contract environment, charges a protocol for every cross-contract call it makes. The shorter the path to a price, the cheaper it stays.🔣SEP-40 is the standard that shortens it. Every asset sits in one contract, reachable through one call, in a format every Soroban protocol already knows how to read.

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🤑 XRP holders can now borrow RLUSD on Ethereum through $280 million lending pool

Flare, the blockchain that lets XRP be used in DeFi, wrapped version of the token has been accepted as collateral by Sentora, which manages a $280 million lending pool of Ripple's RLUSD stablecoin. Borrowers post the wrapped XRP, called FXRP, and take out RLUSD against it.

❗️The approval opens an isolated FXRP/RLUSD market on Morpho Blue where holders can borrow against XRP exposure rather than sell it. Access is permissionless with no whitelist required.

🔜 Users mint FXRP through Flare's FAssets system, bridge it to Ethereum via Stargate, deposit it into the market and borrow at their chosen loan-to-value ratio.🔣Flare says it is building a route through Smart Accounts that would let holders authorize the whole sequence from an XRP Ledger wallet, with direct XRPL-to-Ethereum minting also in development.

Sentora reviewed FXRP's market behavior, oracle design, liquidity and liquidation capacity under its institutional risk framework before signing off, and the asset will face the same ongoing monitoring as other collateral in the vault.

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⚡️🇷🇺 Vladimir Putin has signed a law regulating cryptocurrency in the Russian Federation

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⚡️🇮🇩 CoreWeave to Enter Asian Market With Indonesian Data Centers

CoreWeave, Inc., the essential cloud for AI, announced its expansion into Indonesia, the company's first data center presence in the Asia-Pacific region. The expansion adds three new facilities totaling 360 megawatts of contracted IT power, expected to come online in 2028.

"Indonesia is investing heavily in AI education and digital capacity, and it’s paying off – the country is becoming one of Southeast Asia's fastest-growing destinations for global tech investment," — said Sachin Jain, chief operating officer, CoreWeave. 🚀

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⚡️🇺🇸 Trump administration drafting ban on Chinese data center devices

The Trump administration is drafting a ban on U.S. imports of new models of Chinese data center components, as it seeks to protect the infrastructure that undergirds the AI boom.

The FCC is working on the measure to bar imports of new Chinese optical transceivers, which allow data to travel over fiber-optic cables at the speed of light within data centers. The move aims to prevent Chinese firms from stealing data, installing malware or disrupting service at U.S. data centers, which house the chips to train and run ​AI models.

"Transceivers definitely ⁠pose a risk," — said Divyansh Kaushik, an AI policy expert at Washington, D.C., advisory firm Beacon Global Strategies. "As the data center buildout scales up, you want to make sure the ​data center supply chain is secure from the get-go," he added.

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🧑‍⚖️ South Africa’s Treasury and central bank propose draft rules on cross-border crypto transactions

The National Treasury and the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) released a draft rulebook that proposes that sending crypto offshore must be conducted through an authorized provider and reported to the central bank’s Financial Surveillance Department (FinSurv).

“The proposed regulatory measures seek to minimize the risk of regulatory arbitrage between regulated entities conducting cross-border activities, and to enhance the ability of the FinSurv to detect, deter and disrupt illicit financial flows,” — Treasury and the Reserve Bank said.

❗️ The framework would not make crypto legal tender, nor do the rules distinguish between different digital assets. The two bodies have invited comments from interested parties with a deadline for submission of Sept. 30.

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