News linked to this event type.
According to Trend Research, Goldman Sachs' August 21, 2026 research report notes that the MSCI Asia Pacific ex Japan Index (MXAPJ) posted Q2 net profit growth of 135% year-over-year and 52% quarter-over-quarter, with 46% of companies beating expectations and a median surprise of 4.3%. The information technology sector led the gains, with earnings up 390% YoY. The current MXAPJ forward P/E ratio stands at 11x, two standard deviations below its 10-year average, placing it in a deeply discounted range. Goldman Sachs has set a 12-month target price of 1,080 points, implying a 21% upside from the current level of 891 points, with an expected total return including dividends of approximately 24%. Goldman Sachs believes earnings resilience will drive valuation repair, recommending overweight positions in capital goods, healthcare, energy, tech hardware and semiconductors, and insurance, while suggesting underweights in autos, software & services, internet, utilities, and metals & mining. Key trading recommendations include going long on portfolios that outperform earnings revisions (launched in July 2021, with a cumulative return of 334%) and going long on AI infrastructure hardware and semiconductors (launched in June 2023, with a cumulative return of 63%). MSCI will adjust its index benchmarks on August 31, triggering approximately $42 billion in two-way capital flows across Asian markets, which could amplify volatility toward the end of the month. Downside risks to monitor include rising long-end US Treasury yields, escalating geopolitical tensions, and the pace of China’s economic recovery.
Odaily News - The Pakistan Virtual Asset Regulatory Authority (PVARA) has opened its licensing portal. Enterprises that provided virtual asset services on or before March 5 must apply for a No Objection Certificate (NOC) by September 5, or cease operations; continuing to operate without submitting an application after the deadline will constitute a violation of the law.The new regulations cover exchange, custody, broker-dealer, lending, derivatives, asset management, token issuance, and mining-related services. Service providers may first apply for an NOC, or enter PVARA's regulatory sandbox to test products before applying for a full license.Licensed institutions must segregate client assets from their own assets, and may not lend or stake customer assets without written consent, while also meeting requirements for governance, market conduct, cybersecurity, operational resilience, and anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing measures. PVARA has already issued NOCs to enterprises such as Binance and HTX. (Cointelegraph)
According to CoinDesk, newly established stablecoin bank Fasset has secured $68 million in funding led by SBI Group, achieving a valuation of $1 billion. The company reports an annualized trading volume exceeding $40 billion across 125 countries, with year-over-year revenue growth of approximately sixfold, and has been profitable for 12 consecutive months. Built on Arbitrum, Fasset operates its proprietary Layer 2 network, OWN, delivering stablecoin-settled cross-border payment services for institutional and individual clients. Additionally, it has partnered with SBI Remit to integrate with its remittance network spanning 200 countries.
According to Reuters, AI startup Hugging Face is exploring a sale, with its valuation expected to reach $13 billion or higher. The company has hired an investment bank to reach out to potential buyers. Hugging Face specializes in open-source large language models and dataset hosting, raising funding at a $4.5 billion valuation in 2023 with investors including Salesforce, Google, Nvidia, and others. Last month, the company was breached by an uncontrolled OpenAI model, sparking concerns over AI safety.
According to Bloomberg, UK fintech companies saw investment fall to their lowest level since at least 2016 in the first half of this year, as capital shifts toward AI-related firms demonstrating long-term growth.
According to Odaily, Blockworks Research analyst AJC stated that over the past 30 days, PONS ranked 13th in crypto market revenue, yet its FDV/Revenue multiple stands at just 0.7x—the lowest among the top 15 tokens by revenue.For comparison, CARDS, PUMP, CAKE, AAVE, HYPE, and LINK have FDV/Revenue multiples of approximately 2.8x, 7.7x, 9.6x, 45.2x, 168.5x, and 212.2x, respectively. AJC believes that PONS' current valuation relative to its revenue level is significantly lower than that of other high-revenue protocols.
According to Reuters as cited by Decrypt, Wang Xiaogang, chairman of Chinese robotics startup ACE Robotics, stated that with advances in world models and improved capabilities for collecting real-world environment data, embodied AI is poised to experience a "ChatGPT moment" similar to that of large language models by the end of 2027. Wang pointed out that one of the main bottlenecks hindering the large-scale commercialization of robots remains a shortage of real-world training data. Across the industry, cumulative data over the past few years amounts to approximately 100,000 hours—far from enough to train embodied foundation models. ACE Robotics plans to collect tens of millions of hours of real-world environment data over the next two years and aims to deploy the corresponding technology to 1,000 stores within the coming year. Established in July 2025, ACE Robotics focuses on developing AI models for humanoid robots. With support from Ant Group and SenseTime, the company secured over $100 million in funding in the first half of 2026 and intends to fast-track its IPO as soon as conditions allow.
Odaily News According to reports, venture capitalist Josh Kushner has seen his wealth grow significantly this year, driven by early investments in star tech companies like OpenAI and SpaceX. The asset scale of his firm, Thrive Capital, has also nearly doubled as a result of betting on the wave of artificial intelligence.It is reported that Josh Kushner's wealth has grown nearly threefold this year, placing him among the billionaires' circle. As the founder of Thrive Capital, he previously earned substantial returns by investing in companies such as Instagram, Spotify, and OpenAI, and has become one of the most successful venture capitalists in Silicon Valley in recent years.On August 12, news broke that the NBA's Los Angeles Lakers were being sold to former Disney CEO Bob Iger and Josh Kushner at a record valuation of $12.5 billion. However, Josh Kushner did not mention the Lakers deal on social media that day, instead celebrating another AI-related investment move. On the same day, Thrive Holdings, founded by Josh Kushner in 2025, completed a $2 billion funding round with investors including SoftBank, reaching a company valuation of $12.5 billion. The firm aims to acquire traditional service companies and leverage AI technology to drive business transformation.Josh Kushner said: "We are incredibly fortunate to be building during such a profound era of innovation."Over the past few months, Josh Kushner has frequently appeared at core events in the tech and capital circles. Not only has he continued to bet on the AI industry through Thrive Capital, but he has also maintained close ties with OpenAI executives. In July this year, he attended the wedding of Taylor Swift and NFL star Travis Kelce, and later participated in the annual Sun Valley billionaire conference in the U.S., where he was photographed alongside OpenAI President Greg Brockman.Market observers believe that as the AI investment boom continues, venture capital firms holding key AI assets like OpenAI are becoming some of the biggest beneficiaries. Josh Kushner, through his early bets on the AI ecosystem, has achieved massive wealth growth. (Forbes)
According to Bloomberg, as investment in AI infrastructure continues to intensify, data center developers are attracting an increasing number of "junk bond" investors to financing deals, even though some of the bonds themselves have already achieved investment-grade ratings. For example, data center operator QTS Realty Trust issued $3.9 billion in bonds this week to fund data center construction for its Microsoft-related projects. Although this issuance received investment-grade ratings, its yield stands at approximately 7.23%, exceeding the returns typically offered by some medium-grade junk bonds. Additionally, BlackRock also issued high-grade bonds in July for its data center project in Texas, with a yield of 7.53%.
According to on-chain analyst Onchain Lens (@OnchainLens), the Government of Bhutan transferred 10.779 BTC to two new addresses, valued at approximately $835,000 USD at current prices.
According to Bitcoin.com, Zach Pandl, Head of Research at Grayscale, stated that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) proposed regulations on crypto assets could increase network activity on Ethereum, Solana, and BNB Chain by reducing compliance uncertainties surrounding token financing, driving more U.S. issuers and investors to go on-chain, and potentially creating value for their native tokens ETH, SOL, and BNB.
According to TechCrunch, space computing startup Starcloud announced the closing of a new $250 million funding round led by Manhattan West Ventures, with participation from Nvidia, Cisco, Benchmark, EQT, and other investors; Nvidia invested approximately $25 million. The funds will be used to expand satellite manufacturing facilities and advance the R&D of the next-generation orbital data center satellite, Starcloud-3. Starcloud stated that it is already operating an Nvidia H100 data center GPU in orbit and has completed model training based on the chip; meanwhile, it is collaborating with Nvidia to provide test data for the upcoming Vera Rubin Space-1 GPU, which is designed for space environments. CEO Philip Johnston previously stated that the company plans to explore space Bitcoin mining.
Looking ahead, Jiang Zhuo'er believes the probability of the bear market ending has reached 90%. He plans to immediately go all-in if BTC pulls back to the $67,000–$72,000 range; otherwise, he will complete the remaining position at current prices no later than the end of October. He is also bullish on ETH's relative outperformance against BTC in this cycle, viewing the large-scale tokenization and on-chain adoption of U.S. financial assets as the core driving force.
Bridgewater founder Ray Dalio warned on Friday that the U.S. annual budget deficit is as high as $2 trillion, with approximately $10 trillion in debt urgently requiring refinancing. Without a change in course, a debt crisis could arrive "in three years, plus or minus two years." In terms of asset allocation, Dalio recommends that investors: • Reduce bond holdings to mitigate debt risks • Increase gold positions, raising the allocation to 10%–15% of the portfolio • Hold a small amount of Bitcoin to hedge against government credit risk Dalio also urged the United States to cut its budget deficit from the current level of approximately 6% of GDP down to 3%, through measures including spending reductions, tax hikes, and lower interest rates. Following these comments, gold prices rose on Friday to their highest level since May, while Bitcoin surpassed $77,000, marking its largest weekly gain since 2023.
As reported by CryptoBriefing, Texas-based bitcoin mining infrastructure company Bitari Inc. filed an S-1 registration statement with the SEC on August 21, 2026, proposing to issue 4.2857 million common shares on Nasdaq (ticker: BIAI) at $7 per share, aiming to raise approximately $30 million in gross proceeds and around $27 million in net proceeds after deducting fees. Regarding the use of proceeds, 40% will be allocated to acquisitions, 30% to expansion and brand building, 15% to new infrastructure construction, 10% to research and development, and 5% to general corporate purposes. Currently, Bitari operates a 20MW mining facility in Wheeler, Texas, and is developing two additional 20MW facilities in Dumas, Texas, and Marion, Indiana. Following the IPO, AI Power X Inc. will hold approximately 85.87% of the voting power, leaving public shareholders with limited governance rights.
: Galaxy's Head of Research posted on X, stating that on August 18, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission proposed the "Regulation Crypto Assets," abbreviated as Reg Crypto. The proposal aims to establish a legal pathway for certain tokens to be offered to the U.S. public and to set up a mechanism for terminating investment contracts. Its applicability is limited to crypto assets that are not themselves securities but were previously issued or sold as part of an investment contract; tokenized stocks, bonds, and arrangements bundling tokens with equity or other securities are not covered by the framework.The proposal sets out four stages: offering, disclosure, build-out, and exit. A one-time startup exemption allows issuers to raise up to $5 million over a maximum of four years; a higher-threshold exemption modeled on Regulation A permits raising $20 million or $75 million within 12 months. Such offerings must pass SEC qualification review and involve ongoing disclosure, with non-accredited investors capped at 10% of the higher of their annual income or net worth. Issuers are also required to disclose token supply and unlock schedules, minting and burning mechanisms, governance and smart contract permissions, source code, as well as project construction commitments and progress.Once an issuer completes or permanently ceases the relevant build-out obligations, makes no new construction commitments, and submits a transition report, the related investment contract will be deemed terminated, and the crypto asset will no longer be subject to securities laws under that investment contract. Issuers that did not use the above offering exemptions may also use this safe harbor. The SEC estimates that approximately 475 issuers per year would use the investment contract safe harbor, and about 130 issuers would use the two new exemptions. Offerings that qualify would not be considered restricted securities and could be resold immediately without contractual restrictions.The proposal also excludes covered initial offerings and certain secondary transactions from state registration and qualification requirements, but it does not address exchanges, brokers, dealers, or custody, nor is it a standalone innovative exemption for tokenized securities and on-chain transactions. The comment period is 60 days after publication in the Federal Register. SEC Chairman Paul Atkins and Commissioners Hester Peirce and Mark Uyeda all issued statements of support. The article was written by Alex Thorn.
Odaily News JPMorgan has warned that despite global major stock indices remaining in an uptrend, markets could face a pullback risk from late summer into early autumn. The bank noted that the internal structure of the U.S. stock market has been deteriorating recently, with capital rotating into defensive assets and investor confidence in artificial intelligence (AI)-related stocks weakening. JPMorgan strategist Jason Hunter pointed out that the current AI trading frenzy bears similarities to the tech stock bubble of 1999–2000, and that overheated positioning in the tech sector could heighten the risk of a correction.In addition, persistently rising U.S. Treasury yields, geopolitical tensions in the Middle East, and a slowdown in consumer spending were also cited by JPMorgan as potential sources of market pressure.JPMorgan believes that the current AI investment cycle still holds long-term growth potential, but in the near term, market valuations, crowded positioning, and investor expectations could expose tech stocks to greater volatility risk.
Odaily News: Bitcoin treasury company BSTR Holdings has announced an agreement with Cantor Equity Partners to terminate the business combination agreement signed on July 16, 2025. The termination is attributed to the continued valuation pressure on Bitcoin and listed Bitcoin treasury companies in the current market environment, which has led to a mismatch in the capital markets, limiting the amplifying effect of financing tools such as convertible bonds and perpetual preferred stock in Bitcoin treasury strategies. BSTR stated that it will continue to advance its institutional-grade Bitcoin asset management business once market conditions stabilize. (Businesswire)
Odaily News: Digital asset treasury company Strategy reported a net loss of $8.2 billion in Q2, mainly driven by an $8.3 billion unrealized loss on digital assets. Its software business generated $122 million in revenue for the quarter. The company's financial report adopts the fair value measurement model.Between August 3 and 9, Strategy sold 1,690 bitcoins, cashing out approximately $109 million and repurchasing STRC preferred shares. In the following week, the company did not sell any bitcoin but instead raised $334 million through common stock issuance, of which $52 million was used for preferred stock dividends, $132 million for buybacks, and $149 million went into its dollar reserves.Digital asset treasury company Twenty One Capital disclosed that as of June 30, each Class A share corresponded to 12,547 satoshis, down from 12,557 at the end of 2025. The company holds 43,514 bitcoins, valued at approximately $2.8 billion, with an equity market capitalization of about $1.6 billion, corresponding to roughly 0.57 times its bitcoin holdings valuation.Of the bitcoins held by Twenty One Capital, 16,116 are staked as collateral for $485 million in convertible bonds, corresponding to approximately $106 million in cash. Strategy's dollar reserves reached $4.8 billion as of August 16, which management says can cover approximately 2.7 years of debt and dividend expenses. (Forbes Digital Assets)
Odaily News UBS has raised its S&P 500 index target, projecting a target of 8,100 points by December 2026 and further increasing to 8,400 points by June 2027, citing strong corporate earnings growth and sustained economic resilience.UBS expects S&P 500 companies' earnings per share (EPS) to reach $350 in 2026 and $400 in 2027, driven primarily by performance in the technology, semiconductor, and energy sectors.The bank continues to hold a positive outlook on U.S. economic resilience, the Federal Reserve's patient policy stance, and the accelerating adoption of artificial intelligence, believing there is still room for the current bull market to extend.However, UBS also flagged potential risks, including rising oil prices, resurgent inflation, and AI investment returns falling short of expectations, which could weigh on market valuations and upward momentum.