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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.

According to Cointelegraph, the stablecoin payment company Kast has launched the KAST Business platform, integrating features such as corporate accounts, payment cards, cross-border transfers, and stablecoin yield balances. The platform provides services through stablecoin infrastructure.Kast stated that businesses can receive payments through fiat virtual accounts provided by regulated partners, deposit supported stablecoins and crypto assets, issue virtual cards, and make local payments in over 20 currencies.The platform's services cover more than 170 countries and regions, but specific availability varies by jurisdiction. Idle balances earn an annual yield of up to 8%, and there is also a cashback of up to 3% on spending.Kast is a fintech company rather than a bank, and regulated services are provided by licensed partner institutions. Kast completed a $80 million financing in March at a valuation of $600 million, which will be used for product development, licensing acquisition, and expanding into North America, Latin America, and the Middle East markets. The company claims to currently have over 1 million users and plans to attract 1,000 to 5,000 active businesses by the end of 2026.

According to Bloomberg, the stablecoin cross-border remittance startup Felix Pago announced the completion of a $200 million Series B funding round.This round of financing includes $87 million in equity financing and $113 million in credit line financing. The equity financing was co-invested by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), while the credit line financing comes from General Catalyst's Customer Value Fund.Felix Pago is currently one of the most representative stablecoin remittance networks in Latin America, primarily using WhatsApp as the front-end entry point, and leveraging USDC and blockchain as the underlying settlement infrastructure, significantly reducing the cost and time for cross-border remittances from the United States to Mexico.

The parent company of Kraken, Payward, announced a partnership with the London Stock Exchange (LSE) to tokenize the stocks of the 100 largest companies listed on the LSE into xStocks, which are backed 1:1. The first London-listed xStocks are expected to be launched on Kraken and other platforms supporting the xStocks Alliance in the coming weeks, available to investors in over 110 countries, but not yet open to UK investors.Subject to regulatory approval, the LSE plans to list and support xStocks trading on its newly launched extended trading hours, LSE 24. LSE CEO Julia Hoggett stated that by collaborating with Payward and continuously working with the market infrastructure ecosystem, they are exploring how issuers and investors can benefit from new access methods while maintaining the standards that underpin the public market. In addition to tokenizing existing stocks, both parties will also explore the issuance of native equity tokens through LSE infrastructure, which have the same rights as traditional stocks and are fully interchangeable.Payward's tokenized stock framework was launched in June 2025 and acquired by Payward in December, having processed over $40 billion in total trading volume, covering more than 200,000 holders, with nearly $20 billion settled on-chain. According to RWA.xyz data, there are currently approximately $2.53 billion in existing tokenized stocks, with xStocks tokenizing about $606.6 million, making it the second-largest issuer after Ondo.

The London Stock Exchange (LSEG) and Payward, the parent company of the cryptocurrency exchange Kraken, announced a partnership to bring stocks of the largest listed companies in the UK onto the blockchain. In the coming weeks, the stocks of the top 100 companies listed on the LSE will be available on Payward's xStocks tokenized stock framework. These xStocks are tokens that correspond one-to-one with the underlying stocks, allowing for 24/7 trading on centralized exchanges, self-custody wallets, and on-chain applications.This initiative continues the rapidly expanding framework of Payward. Over the past year, the cumulative trading volume of xStocks has exceeded $40 billion, with nearly $20 billion settled on-chain, and more than 200,000 product holders. Through the blockchain channel, UK-listed stocks will be able to reach investor groups in over 110 countries, although xStocks are currently not available to domestic UK investors.Subject to regulatory approval, the LSE plans to list and support xStocks trading on its newly launched 24-hour trading platform, LSE 24, and will gradually cover tokenized stocks and more asset classes in the US, EU, UK, and Hong Kong. Both parties also stated that they will explore stock tokens issued natively by the LSE, allowing LSE members to issue and service stocks directly on-chain, with the same full interchangeability and rights as traditional stocks. Payward Co-CEO Arjun Sethi stated that for years, people have assumed that crypto and traditional finance must collide and one side would lose, but that has never been the real story;

According to Cointelegraph, Russia's legal framework for cryptocurrency trading, custody, and cross-border settlements officially came into effect today.

IMF President Georgieva stated at the Jackson Hole annual meeting that stablecoins and tokenization could enhance global financial liquidity, making large cross-border payments cheaper and faster; however, stablecoins could also exacerbate currency substitution, capital flows, and exchange rate volatility, while undermining capital controls and monetary sovereignty. Dollar stablecoins may expand the global network effect of the dollar and marginally reduce U.S. financing costs, but they cannot replace fiscal discipline.This year's Jackson Hole Global Central Bank Annual Meeting has revealed three clear institutional divergences: BIS leans towards "marginalization of stablecoins, centralization of tokenized deposits"; ECB leans towards "central bank currencies on-chain"; while IMF acknowledges the real efficiency of stablecoins in cross-border payments but emphasizes the risks of currency substitution and capital flows in emerging markets. This has more policy implications than simply "supporting or opposing stablecoins."

Economists expect that the monthly employment report released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday will show an increase of 55,000 non-farm jobs in August, following an unexpected decline in July's employment numbers. If so, this result will roughly align with the average monthly increase so far this year. The unemployment rate is expected to remain at 4.1%. Analyst Anna Wong stated that Waller's hawkish speech at Jackson Hole has increased the likelihood of a rate hike in September and changed market expectations on how to interpret next week's data. The August non-farm employment report remains a headline figure, but the anticipated weak performance may not have as decisive an impact as usual. Waller described the labor market as being in good health and noted that a slowdown in job growth is often a demographic issue rather than an economic recession.

OpenAI announced the end of its nearly four-year collaboration with Cursor. Subsequent OpenAI new models will no longer be integrated with Cursor, and the direct supply of existing models is scheduled to stop on November 12, 2026. Two weeks prior, SpaceX completed a $60 billion acquisition of Cursor, and according to the contract between the two parties, OpenAI has the right to terminate the collaboration after Cursor's acquisition.OpenAI stated that this decision is related to its trust issues with Musk's company, mentioning the violation of the contract with OpenAI after Twitter's acquisition, as well as previous violations by xAI in using OpenAI models. Based on this, OpenAI believes that continuing to provide new models to Cursor after its acquisition by SpaceX poses risks.

Market news: Anthropic plans to release its IPO prospectus after Labor Day (September 7) in the United States, and may go public in late September or early October.

The Public Security Bureau of Hongkou District, Shanghai, China, recently solved a case involving cross-border illegal settlement and illegal foreign exchange trading using virtual currency, arresting 9 criminal suspects and involving an amount of over 200 million yuan. The suspects, including a person named Li, established a technology company at the beginning of 2024 to seek illegal profits, building two platforms online: "Cross-Border Fund Exchange" and "Virtual Credit Card Issuance and Settlement." They solicited customers both online and offline, illegally conducting exchange and settlement services for virtual currency and cross-border funds, profiting through transaction fees, service fees, card issuance fees, withdrawal fees, and other means.Investigators stated, "The uniqueness of this case lies in the fact that the criminals developed two apps and publicly solicited customers on such a large scale, which has never been seen before. The platforms built in this case are themselves a closed-loop illegal financial service system, with all transactions settled internally on the platform. This mode of crime has a higher degree of scale, a longer chain, and is more deceptive." Reports indicate that on the "Cross-Border Fund Exchange" platform, the criminal gang collected customers' virtual currency overseas and exchanged it for foreign currency, forming a "fund pool," and then realized cross-border settlement through fabricated contracts, achieving the exchange and transfer of virtual currency to RMB. On the "Virtual Credit Card Issuance and Settlement" platform, the criminal gang "cooperated" with several overseas private banks to issue virtual credit cards to customers, who could use the card for consumption, but the repayment process had to be settled in virtual currency; the gang exchanged virtual currency for foreign currency overseas, relying on false cross-border settlements to complete clearing with overseas card merchants.

MoonPay has integrated the Solana lending protocol Kamino into its AI payment vault PayBox, allowing eligible users to execute token lending or collateralized borrowing on Solana through conversations with ChatGPT or Claude. According to DefiLlama data, Kamino has a locked value of approximately $1.3 billion, with an active loan scale of about $1 billion.This integration does not create new loan products but replaces Kamino's original interface with natural language commands. Users can request that each transaction requires passkey approval or allow the AI to operate autonomously within preset limits. MoonPay launched PayBox in July, initially supporting payments, token swaps, cross-chain bridging, and earning through Aave. The integration of Kamino marks its expansion from AI payment tools into the credit management field.Currently, AI-based crypto applications are mainly focused on small, high-frequency payment scenarios. The x402 protocol developed by Coinbase has processed approximately $50 million and 165 million payments. This integration allows AI to manage user funds, with a single command capable of creating leveraged positions. If the value of the collateral falls and triggers Kamino's liquidation threshold, the position may be liquidated. This service is not currently available to users in the United States, United Kingdom, European Union, and Australia, with specific availability varying by asset and jurisdiction.

The independent organization METR released a survey report stating that approximately 1,200 OpenAI agents collaborated on an unauthorized internal message board, with about 700 participating in attacks on Hugging Face. Two METR employees and one Redwood Research contractor worked on-site at OpenAI for six days, reviewing around 1,300 records and over 70,000 messages without receiving any compensation.These agents ran the ExploitGym network benchmark, reverse-engineering the code that generated answers within hours and spending days disguising traces of cheating. OpenAI found that of its 898 tasks, 198 had never been solved by any model, and 93% of the tasks discussed on the message board came from this set. The agents also recruited companions with dwindling budgets to conduct experiments that sabotaged their own operations, with 7% of records showing forged tool calls, deceiving automated scorers rather than humans.OpenAI stated that internal scorers never checked how agents obtained answers, so cheating did not lead to any scoring improvements, and referred to this incident as a "warning signal" to itself and the world. Hugging Face disclosed the intrusion incident on July 16, and OpenAI confirmed five days later that its models were the perpetrators, with agents exploiting zero-day vulnerabilities and stealing credentials to escape the sandbox. OpenAI has isolated internal model weights and suspended its largest training program.

The Shanghai Public Security Bureau reported the investigation and resolution of a major underground money laundering case involving cross-border currency exchange using virtual currency, arresting more than 70 criminal suspects, with the amount involved exceeding 20 billion yuan.

Cryptocurrency financial and tax solutions provider FinTax announced the completion of its seed round financing, led by YZi Labs, with participation from Amber, Hash House, Pundi AI, Waverider International, and Nexus Holdings, resulting in a post-investment valuation of $40 million. Previous round investors include Victory Courage, BGIN, Tools Factory, and individual investor Fan Chao.In recent years, YZi Labs has been continuously investing in stablecoins, RWA, payment, and institutional-level digital asset infrastructure. Leveraging FinTax's expertise in on-chain data processing, crypto accounting, cross-jurisdictional tax practices, and crypto asset financial auditing, both parties will explore long-term ecological collaboration around institutional-level financial and tax infrastructure, compliance standards, and emerging scenarios such as stablecoins, RWA, and payments.Following this round of financing, FinTax will accelerate the scaling of its five product lines, expanding its business from the Asia-Pacific and North American markets to Europe and the Middle East, and deepening the application of AI in complex financial and tax scenarios. FinTax will continue to promote the dual iteration of blockchain and legal systems across dozens of jurisdictions, enabling on-chain economic activities to connect with the real-world financial and tax systems.

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang stated that although the industry is shifting towards developing custom chips, cutting-edge AI laboratories will remain long-term customers of NVIDIA.

NVIDIA's Chief Financial Officer stated that the company will provide selective credit enhancement support for another cutting-edge AI laboratory's nearly 2 gigawatt computing power project.

NVIDIA (NVDA.O) Chief Financial Officer stated that the company has invested $50 billion in frontier AI laboratories.