PANews

PANews reported on August 8, citing CLS, that Morgan Stanley economists Seth Carpenter and Michael Gapen said in a report that the bank’s baseline forecast is for the Federal Reserve to reduce the size of its balance sheet by approximately $1.5 trillion over about two years, potentially starting as early as the first quarter of 2027; a reasonable reduction range is $600 billion to $2.5 trillion.

OFAC sanctioned Shelbit and Aban Tether, stating that the two exchanges were used to transfer large amounts of cryptocurrency, evade sanctions, and support groups including the IRGC. IRGC wallets sent more than $1 million to Shelbit, while Shelbit handled more than $2 million in transactions; wallets linked to Kayvanpour transferred more than $2 million to Nobitex, which was also sanctioned. Shelbit also laundered tens of millions of dollars for gambling websites promoted by Iranian influencers; Aban Tether processed millions of dollars in transactions with Nobitex and other sanctioned platforms.

PANews reported on August 8 that, according to CoinDesk, American Bitcoin (stock ticker: ABTC) board member Justin Mateen purchased a total of 306,981 shares of the company between August 5 and 6, worth approximately $1.93 million. After the transactions, Mateen held 492,297 Class A shares (adjusted for the company’s recent reverse stock split).

Trump Media, Crypto.com, and Yorkville Acquisition announced the termination of their jointly proposed CRO strategy, canceling plans to establish a publicly traded company focused on accumulating CRO tokens and earning profits through staking. The decision was attributed to current market conditions and changes in the parties’ priorities. The plan had originally called for spending $105 million to purchase CRO during the expansion phase and working with Crypto.com to integrate token rewards into its products. Following the announcement, CRO’s price fell by approximately 5%. In addition, the three parties terminated their agreement for Crypto.com to provide services for a related ETF plan under Yorkville America.

Bybit has filed a civil lawsuit against North Korea, its intelligence agency RGB, and the North Korea-linked hacker group Lazarus Group. The court has issued a preliminary injunction freezing some of the stolen assets and prohibiting their transfer or sale during the litigation. Bybit said it will seek further relief, emphasizing that the injunction covers the disposition of the assets at issue in the lawsuit. Last year, Lazarus Group stole approximately $1.5 billion from the Bybit exchange.

The Hong Kong government offers multiple support programs for tech startups. The four core ones are: CIP (Cyberport, $500k in cash plus up to $200k in market subsidies, 24 months, milestone-based), HKSTP incubation (up to approximately $1.29 million, 3–4 years, with relatively high entry requirements), RTH Research Talent Hub (monthly subsidies for STEM talent, up to $35k plus a living allowance for PhD holders, up to 4 people, with a relatively lengthy process), and TechTAS (Technology Talent Admission Scheme; no cash subsidies, quotas and visas required, applicable to specific positions). CIP or RTH is recommended as the priority; HKSTP is suitable for advanced R&D, while TechTAS can be used later for international recruitment.

PANews, August 8 — According to Bybit market data, all three major U.S. stock indexes closed higher, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average up 0.32%, the Nasdaq up 1.17%, and the S&P 500 up 0.63%. Crypto-related stocks broadly rose, with COIN (Coinbase) up 5.12% intraday and HOOD (Robinhood) up 2.73% intraday.

PANews reported on August 8 that, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), BlackRock (BLK.N) disclosed that as of June 30, it held 51 million Class A common shares of SpaceX (SPCX.O).

PANews, August 8 — According to ABC News, Trump continued his efforts to fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook after suffering a setback at the Supreme Court. Trump said the court’s ruling on the ballroom project must be fully overturned by the Supreme Court and that he would immediately appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

According to Axios, OpenAI clarified that Astra is an upcoming model and was not involved in the exploitation of a Hugging Face vulnerability, and that related internal work has been paused until security is improved. Stricter controls and isolated testing environments will be introduced for high-capability models, while safety guidance will be provided to third-party testing partners; monitoring for high-risk behavior and misalignment has been implemented for Astra. The current assessment has not ruled out the possibility that it possesses critical cyber capabilities, and testing will be conducted jointly with government agencies and AI safety organizations.

OpenAI said Astra may still possess critical-level cyber capabilities in internal evaluations, prompting expanded safety testing and the suspension of some internal activities that do not meet high-safety requirements. Before release, evaluations will be strengthened and development slowed in accordance with the 2023 Risk Preparedness Framework. Astra was not involved in cyberattacks outside the Hugging Face testing environment, and this is viewed as the first time a frontier lab has proactively slowed model development due to cyber risks. Previously, Anthropic pledged to pause training more powerful models if their capabilities exceeded control, but later adjusted that commitment following changes to its safety policy.

PANews, August 8 — According to Jin10, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said when discussing the Strait of Hormuz: “This strait will never return to its former state because Iran has used it, or attempted to use it, as a ‘chokepoint.’ Over the next two years, we will see the strait gradually lose its importance. It will become another ordinary body of water. I believe that more than 50%, or even 70%, of the energy currently transported through the strait will instead be transported via underground pipelines.”

PANews reported on August 8 that AI “stock-picking god” Leopold Aschenbrenner shared wedding photos nearly a year later. The Situational Awareness fund he manages had gained 439% cumulatively by June 2026, but suffered heavy losses during the July sell-off in AI stocks. Before his wedding, he sold most of the fund’s equity portfolio to Citadel, the investment firm owned by Ken Griffin.

Analysis shows that the Bitcoin options market is cautiously optimistic: short-term panic has eased and bullish positions dominate, but hedging demand remains over the long term. Implied volatility is about 10% higher than realized volatility, indicating a premium for future uncertainty. Short-term options skew has declined, while the long-term skew remains at 10–12%. Open interest is tilted bullish, with funds concentrated mainly in the $61,000–$67k range and active call buying at $65k.

EIP-8363 proposes gradually reducing staking rewards and cutting new issuance to zero when staking reaches 50%, seeking to enhance ETH scarcity by reducing issuance, but it has faced widespread opposition from the community. Supporters say it would strengthen ETH’s long-term monetary properties, while opponents and institutions worry it would weaken decentralization, harm the DeFi ecosystem, and undermine institutional confidence in the policy, arguing that the market will naturally limit staking growth and that changing the issuance curve would create governance risks.

PANews, August 8 — According to Onchain Lens monitoring, a trader on Hyperliquid just closed a short position of 15,760 SPCX, worth approximately $2.04 million, realizing a profit of approximately $1.13 million. The trader’s other recent trading gains include: approximately $301k in profit from a $SPCX short position and approximately $12k in profit from a $SAMSUNG long position. However, despite the strong recent trading performance, the wallet’s cumulative trading profit and loss remains an approximately $2.69 million loss.

PANews, August 8 — According to Fortune, prediction market platform Kalshi has launched an AI tool called Blanket, aimed at helping small businesses hedge operational risks such as weather, energy prices, tariffs, and elections through event contracts.
Blanket was developed by independent fintech entrepreneur Lauris Zminsky. It operates on Kalshi’s CFTC-regulated prediction market but is not an internal Kalshi product. The tool does not execute trades or handle funds directly; instead, it uses AI to analyze the risks faced by businesses and recommend Kalshi event contracts that can be used for hedging. For example, a Florida business can enter hurricane risks, while a restaurant can enter questions such as winter temperature changes or rising energy costs. Blanket then matches relevant prediction markets and provides businesses with risk management solutions.
Kalshi said small businesses are becoming an important incre

Hyperliquid burned approximately $1.12 million worth of its native HYPE tokens over the past 24 hours, while transaction fees totaled approximately $1.41 million during the same period. A cumulative approximately 47.57 million tokens have been burned, worth approximately $2.64 billion, accounting for 4.76% of the maximum supply of 1 billion tokens. The burn mechanism uses part of the fees to buy back and burn tokens, aiming to reduce the circulating supply and increase token scarcity.

Tom Lee said the market’s dovish reaction to rate hikes following the July employment data stemmed from an illusion about inflation, reflecting an inflation dysregulation syndrome, while the market had previously been hawkish and overly hasty. He believes U.S. inflation is continuing to decline and that the probability of a rate hike in September has fallen below 40%, reminding investors not to use experience from past periods of high inflation to navigate the current environment, but to adapt to the economic changes of the new phase.

PANews reported on August 7 that, according to CoinGlass data, 76,718 people were liquidated globally over the past 24 hours, with total liquidations amounting to $193 million, including $82.3207 million in long liquidations and $111 million in short liquidations.
During the same period, BTC liquidations totaled $38.5095 million and ETH liquidations totaled $30.4184 million; the largest single liquidation occurred on the BTC-USD trading pair on Hyperliquid, valued at $1.6681 million.