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TikTok's parent company ByteDance has signed a loan agreement totaling $29.6 billion with 28 banks, including HSBC and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China. The loan has a term of three years, extendable up to five years, with an interest rate 0.68 percentage points above the benchmark rate. This is the second-largest loan in Asia this year, following the $40 billion loan arranged by SoftBank in March.According to Bloomberg, ByteDance plans to use this loan for general corporate purposes to advance its artificial intelligence development goals. The company previously borrowed $10.8 billion from about 20 lenders in 2024, and the initial size sought for this loan was $20 billion. ByteDance was valued at approximately $550 billion in February this year, and Bloomberg reported in May that the company is considering investing up to $70 billion in data centers and other AI infrastructure by 2026.As the loan news was released, Elon Musk, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman called for a slowdown in the AI race, expressing concerns about safety issues. Additionally, a report from Bitcoin Suisse predicts that the largest hyperscale computing companies in the U.S. will spend over $800 billion this year, exceeding $1 trillion by 2027.

According to The Information, Anthropic has reached a $13.7 billion computing power agreement with Rum Group, which is associated with Trump.

According to the Iranian Tasnim News Agency, Iran and Oman have reached an agreement after intensive consultations, and both sides have agreed on new route arrangements for entering and exiting the Strait of Hormuz.Informed sources say that this agreement does not mean the Strait of Hormuz is open; the southern route that the United States requested to be opened will be closed. Iran has proposed seven conditions for reopening to the United States, which may only be opened after receiving approval from the highest levels.

According to the New York Times, regulators are investigating the licensing agreement reached between Nvidia and Groq.

The institutional lending agreement Maple announced that the revenue for August was 1.47 million USD, an increase from 1.37 million USD in July, marking four consecutive months of growth.Of this, 10% of the revenue was used for the SYRUP buyback conducted this month according to MIP-021, amounting to 147,098 USD, with a total of 676,294 SYRUP repurchased at an average price of 0.2175 USD.

The world's largest smartphone processor manufacturer Qualcomm announced that it has signed an agreement with Amazon to develop the latter as a data center chip customer. This collaboration will span "multiple generations" of products, and both parties will develop custom silicon chips to support Amazon Web Services (AWS) artificial intelligence infrastructure.According to the agreement, Amazon has the right to acquire up to $4 billion in Qualcomm shares. The two sides will also collaborate on developing chips for running AI services, as well as chips for connecting computer components.

According to Gate market data, Qualcomm surged over 7% in pre-market trading, as it is reported that it has reached a multi-generational product collaboration agreement with Amazon.

Circle announced that it has signed a final agreement to acquire Tazapay, a B2B cross-border payment infrastructure company headquartered in Singapore. The transaction is expected to be completed in 2027, subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals, including approval from the Monetary Authority of Singapore.Tazapay has an annualized payment volume of over $25 billion, more than 60 banking and fintech partners, and local payment channels covering over 100 markets. Approximately 60% of Tazapay's transaction volume includes stablecoins.

According to the Phoenix Veritas Foundation, the cultural token themed around Hunter Biden's laptop, LAPTOP, has been issued on the Base chain, with a total supply of 1 billion tokens. The initial circulation at TGE is 350 million tokens (35%). In terms of token distribution, the founders (including Hunter Biden) and the prediction mechanism each account for 30%, community airdrops account for 20%, liquidity and the foundation treasury each account for 10%, and charitable distribution accounts for 5%. The founders' tokens have a 6-month lock-up period and a 24-month linear unlock.LAPTOP has no utility and is positioned as a purely cultural digital collectible, with its value entirely driven by community sentiment. The token contract has been audited for security by Hacken in April 2026, with no major vulnerabilities. Regarding market makers, the foundation has signed lending agreements for a total of 20.5 million tokens with G20 and GSR.

According to Apnews, a young cryptocurrency scam gang stole over 4,100 BTC in August 2024 through "social engineering" attacks, which was worth over $240 million at the time.After the theft, gang members quickly began extravagant spending, including purchasing sports cars, renting luxury homes, flying on private jets, and hiring security personnel. Among them, the alleged mastermind, a 22-year-old Singaporean named Malone Lam, reportedly spent over $569,000 in one night at a nightclub in Los Angeles.Investigations revealed that the suspects impersonated employees from Google and the cryptocurrency trading platform Gemini to trick victims into giving up their Google Drive access and security codes, allowing them to transfer the victims' bitcoins. They then moved the funds through multiple trading platforms and money laundering intermediaries. Their lavish lifestyle eventually drew the attention of law enforcement.One suspect was exposed when their IP address was revealed while hiding nearly $30 million in stolen cryptocurrency assets, leading police to trace it back to the luxury home they rented in California. Another suspect was found with $37 million worth of stolen cryptocurrency assets. Lam was accused of using the stolen funds to purchase a $2 million watch and over 30 vehicles including Porsches, Lamborghinis, and Ferraris.Currently, 18 defendants have been charged, and Lam is expected to attend a plea agreement hearing this Tuesday. The U.S. Department of Justice has already issued rulings against several accomplices, and related cases are still ongoing.

AI Economic Settlement Agreement AEON announces the launch of Agentic Checkout, supporting AI Agents to complete product search, selection, checkout, and payment through natural language dialogue in the Shopify open merchant ecosystem. The payment process is supported by the AEON AI Card, a virtual card that can set predefined spending limits and authorization scopes, allowing AI agents to complete payments without directly accessing the user's main wallet or main card.AEON Agentic Checkout currently covers over 3 million active stores on Shopify and more than 1 billion products, and will later integrate with the Claude open-source e-commerce agent, expanding to shopping and payment scenarios such as Amazon and Travala.

Prospect Markets announced that it has signed a final agreement with OG Prediction Markets and Crypto.com to launch event-based prediction market services in the United States.The prediction market will be open to U.S. customers through CFTC-registered introducing broker Prospect Brokerage, with the partnership relying on Crypto.com’s CFTC-registered futures commission merchant Foris DAX FCM LLC (OG Broker). Prospect Markets plans to launch related products in the United States in the third quarter of 2026.

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.

According to CoinDesk, AI company Anthropic has reached a $35 billion computing power procurement agreement with Lambda, an AI cloud service provider supported by NVIDIA, part of which will be provided through Bitcoin mining company Hut 8's Beacon Point facility located in Nueces County, Texas.Hut 8 previously disclosed that the facility has signed two long-term leases for 15 years, covering 704 MW of IT capacity, with a total contract value of $19.6 billion, but the identity of the tenants had not been disclosed earlier. The facility spans 525 acres and has a maximum power access capacity of 1 GW with ready grid connections.According to the currently disclosed transaction structure, NVIDIA holds the lease for the facility, Lambda will deploy NVIDIA chips, and Anthropic will procure the computing power generated from this. Hut 8 has not confirmed how much of the 704 MW capacity is related to Lambda and Anthropic, nor has it confirmed whether NVIDIA is the previously undisclosed tenant.As the demand for power and computing resources in AI data centers surges, Bitcoin mining companies with ready power and grid access capabilities are accelerating their transformation into AI infrastructure. Mining companies including Hut 8, TeraWulf, IREN, and Bitdeer have all entered the AI data center market by selling or leasing computing power and power infrastructure.Hut 8's revenue for the second quarter of this year was $74.93 million, a year-on-year increase of 81%; its two leases at Beacon Point have a total value of $19.6 billion, and the facility is expected to generate approximately $1.31 billion in operating profit annually once fully operational.

tZERO has reached a series of agreements with the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) to help build the next generation of public securities market infrastructure. According to the new memorandum of understanding, tZERO will serve as the primary design partner for digital transfer agent and broker-dealer infrastructure, aimed at supporting ICE's upcoming on-chain settlement on the NYSE-associated tokenized securities platform.ICE has agreed to participate in tZERO's latest financing round. As part of the agreement, ICE will license tZERO's blockchain patent portfolio for the platform and other potential applications. Both parties will also explore the use of tZERO tokenized assets for collateral management at ICE's clearinghouse and affiliated institutions.

Kuaishou (01024.HK) announced that on August 31, 2026, Beijing Keling entered into joining agreements with the National Artificial Intelligence Fund and Charoen Pokphand Robotics.Accordingly, the National Artificial Intelligence Fund and Charoen Pokphand Robotics each agreed to become additional investors and parties to the capital increase agreement, injecting cash capital of RMB 1.4 billion and approximately USD 19.29 million (equivalent to approximately RMB 131.45 million) into Beijing Keling, respectively.

According to Axios, the Trump administration is negotiating with the interim government of Venezuela to seek ownership rights to some of the country's oil fields, involving more than a dozen productive oil fields.In exchange, private companies, including American enterprises, will participate in the development of the oil fields, increasing production and bringing more oil revenue to Venezuela. The negotiations are led by U.S. Secretary of State Rubio and Venezuela's acting president Delcy Rodríguez.

The fixed-rate lending protocol TermMax (parent company Term Structure Labs) announced a strategic investment from YZi Labs, with the amount undisclosed. TermMax is a selected project in the YZi Labs incubation program EASY Residency for the third quarter. The protocol has raised over $8 million in total financing, with previous investors including lead investor Cumberland DRW from the 2023 seed round, as well as HashKey Capital, Decima Fund, Longling Capital, MZ Web3 Fund, and other institutions.The TermMax mainnet is set to launch in April 2025 and is currently deployed on 10 EVM-compatible chains, operating 60 fixed-rate markets and 40 strategy vaults, with a total locked value of tens of millions of dollars and over 1.5 million registered wallets. The protocol achieves fixed-rate lending by splitting debt into three tradable tokens: FT (zero-coupon bonds), XT (interest and option value), and GT (leverage position certificates), with settlement using physical delivery.Its token $TMX completed its TGE on August 25, with trading on the first day across platforms such as Binance Alpha, Kraken, Bitget, MEXC, and KuCoin. It is reported that TermMax will subsequently advance in three directions: on-chain yield curves, interest and options markets for tokenized stocks, and the institutional financing platform TermPrime.

Anthropic has agreed to pay Nscale $45 billion over the next 6 years to rent approximately 460 megawatts of AI computing power at its Monarch data center in West Virginia. Nscale will use NVIDIA's Vera Rubin chips, which are expected to be operational by the end of next year. The project was originally planned to be rented by Microsoft, but after Microsoft withdrew, Anthropic became the tenant.

Bitdeer released the production and operation update for July 2026: the company has signed a 16-year co-location lease agreement worth $4.7 billion for the artificial intelligence data center (AIDC) at the Tydal site in Norway, and has configured 121 megawatts of IT capacity to operate NVIDIA GPUs.