launch

SpaceX's "Falcon 9" rocket has been erected and is ready for today's upcoming launch mission in Florida and California.

Recently, DeepSeek-V4 announced a price increase and the introduction of peak and off-peak pricing. On August 15, the B.AI platform announced the launch of a major benefits program to help developers use Deepseek without fear of costs.New users can log in through Binance Wallet, Bitget Wallet, or imToken wallet to receive 1 million free Credits. By entering an invitation code, they can receive an additional 300,000, for a total of up to 1.3 million; both new and existing users can also enjoy an extra bonus of up to $100 in Bonus Credits when recharging. Users can prepare their B.AI accounts in advance to unlock benefits early.

Bitget announced that it has upgraded its CFD products, further optimizing the leverage and margin mechanisms for XAUUSD and USDCNH. Specifically, when the nominal value of the XAUUSD contract is below $100,000, a maximum leverage of 800 times is supported; when the nominal value of the USDCNH contract is below $1,000,000, a maximum leverage of 100 times is supported. For positions exceeding the corresponding ranges, the platform will adopt a tiered margin calculation mechanism, with the margin rate dynamically adjusted as the nominal value of the position increases.This upgrade enhances the efficiency of capital use and strategic flexibility in CFD trading through a more flexible leverage and margin tiering mechanism, providing professional traders with more options for strategy allocation in different market environments.

Bitcoin News posted on the X platform that Block has updated its Bitcoin roadmap, launching several features in its products over the past year.Recently launched features include: Cash App supports purchasing Bitcoin via ACH, more readable Bitcoin addresses, paying in USD through the Lightning Network, Square merchants supporting Bitcoin payments and Tap to Pay, 5% Bitcoin cashback, increased withdrawal limits and reduced fees, and open-source mining management through Proto.Features currently under development include: automatic withdrawals to Bitkey, Coin Control, multi-account, and multi-beneficiary inheritance.

According to a report by Reuters, Robinhood's second venture capital fund, Robinhood Ventures Fund II (RVII), has been listed on the New York Stock Exchange, allowing ordinary investors to participate in investing in unlisted startups. RVII opened at a price of $22.5 on the New York Stock Exchange, raising approximately $225.5 million.The second fund will focus on existing and former participants of the Y Combinator startup accelerator program, which has funded over 5,000 companies since 2005, including 100 "unicorn" companies. Notable investments from Y Combinator include the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, the social media platform Reddit, and the developer of ChatGPT, OpenAI.

According to the official announcement from Bitget, the platform has officially launched Stock+ US stock margin trading services. Users only need to open a Bitget Stock+ account to use this feature. The first batch supports margin trading for over 3,800 underlying stocks and short selling for over 2,300 underlying stocks (currently only supporting short selling ETB), with a maximum leverage of 3 times. Among them, the annual interest rate for margin trading is 5%; during the promotional period for short selling, the annual interest rate is as low as 0%.The launch of this product further enriches the trading scenarios for US stocks in Stock+. Users can use margin trading to borrow funds to buy securities by using securities or assets in their accounts as collateral; they can also borrow securities to sell through short selling, and buy them back to return after the stock price drops, in order to meet the needs of both long and short trading and improve capital efficiency.

Lido tweeted that the NEST automated LDO buyback mechanism has been launched on the mainnet. NEST is a rules-based LDO buyback mechanism, where 50% of the surplus will automatically buy LDO through CoW Swap when the DAO's staking income exceeds the baseline of 40 million USD.If the income in a certain period does not meet the baseline, the corresponding gap will be accounted for in subsequent calculations and must be made up by new surplus before purchases can resume. The daily purchase limit is 50,000 USD, and the annual limit is 10 million USD, with all purchased LDO belonging to the DAO.

According to the official announcement from Bitget, the platform's dual-currency stock investment product has officially launched, covering over 20 popular U.S. stocks and ETFs, including rNVDA, rTSLA, rAAPL, rMETA, and more. This upgrade adjusts the product settlement time to 23:30 (UTC+8), aligning better with the market trading period after the U.S. stock market opens.In addition, Bitget has launched two limited-time activities. During the event, new users participating in Bitget's dual-currency investment for the first time who complete specified tasks such as net deposits will have the chance to receive dual-currency experience rewards, with a maximum of 3,000 USDT available. The event ends on August 21; at the same time, during the event period, purchasing dual-currency products will also grant limited-edition merchandise such as Bitget camping kits and commemorative coins. The event ends on August 28. For more details, please refer to the Bitget official website.

SpaceXAI launches the Grok 4.6 model in GitHub Copilot.

The crypto investment firm YZi Labs announced the launch of EASY Residency Season 5, a 10-week acceleration program for early-stage innovative projects, which includes 5 weeks of online phase and 5 weeks of offline residency in Thailand, culminating in a Demo Day. Accommodation, meals, and workspace are fully covered, allowing founders to focus on building.Priority investment directions include programmable capital and on-chain markets, stablecoin payment infrastructure, computing and trusted agent systems, embodied AI, emerging AI interfaces, and AI × Bio. Selected projects can receive up to $500,000 in investment (including a $150,000 SAFE for 5% equity and an additional $350,000 unlimited SAFE), with the opportunity to secure up to $2 million in additional investment. The application deadline is September 13 at 23:59 (GMT-7).

The digital financial platform ABFinance, founded by former Bybit co-CEO Helen Liu, announced on platform X that its original launch plan will not continue, and the project is currently undergoing an orderly shutdown and liquidation arrangement.The team expressed heartfelt gratitude to the participants, community members, and partners who have built together for their trust, support, and recognition, and thanked them for the direction previously pursued together.

According to PR Newswire, Bank Leumi of Israel announced a partnership with Galaxy Digital to provide customers with trading services for digital assets such as Bitcoin starting in 2027, initially supporting Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana. Bank Leumi will also become the first bank in Israel to offer digital asset trading services to its customers.At the same time, Leumi will integrate with Galaxy's digital asset custody infrastructure platform to provide underlying security architecture support for the bank's digital asset services.

Binance has launched a special trading competition for new users. Complete your first trade on Binance Spot or Instant Exchange to win up to 1,000 USDT vouchers. The event runs from August 14, 2026, 20:00 to August 29, 07:59.Eligibility to participate is for new users who register a Binance account and complete identity verification during the event period. Rewards will be distributed based on the total qualified trading volume of spot or instant exchange trades during the event.

Binance Alpha announced that it will be the first platform to launch KiiChain (KII) on August 14. Eligible users can go to the Alpha event page to use Binance Alpha points to claim airdrops after the Alpha trading opens. Specific rules and details regarding the quota will be announced separately.

BNB Smart Chain (BSC) announced that the Pasteur hard fork will officially launch on the mainnet at 10:30 AM Beijing time on August 25 (02:30 UTC on August 25). Node operators need to upgrade to client version v1.7.7 in advance. This upgrade includes three improvements: BEP-682, BEP-695, and BEP-675, focusing on enhancing cross-chain security, validator governance mechanisms, and network throughput capacity.Among them, BEP-682 will strengthen the cross-chain bridge validation mechanism of the BNB Chain, preventing the risk of permission bypass caused by duplicate calculations of validator signatures, thus improving the security of cross-chain asset transfers. BEP-695 optimizes the validator key rotation mechanism, ensuring that old keys no longer retain management permissions after exiting, while also fixing potential vulnerabilities related to penalties and governance voting. In terms of performance, BEP-675 reduces the time consumption caused by validators repeatedly executing transactions by optimizing the block construction process.In the internal QANet testing environment of the BNB Chain, this solution increased throughput from 1237 TPS to 2324 TPS, while maintaining a block time of 450 milliseconds and a block limit of 100 million Gas, with the average Gas usage per block rising from 46.35 million to 84.15 million.BNB Chain stated that this upgrade is primarily aimed at validators and block builders, intending to provide greater capacity during network peak periods and to promote the throughput expansion goals outlined in the BNB Chain roadmap for the second half of 2026.

According to the official announcement, Gate has officially launched SOL and XRP event contracts, simultaneously opening multi-cycle rise and fall trading channels. Users can log into the Gate App or the official website and enter the event contract section in the contract area to participate.Event contracts focus on rise and fall prediction trading, requiring no complex parameters such as leverage or margin, making the operational threshold low. The product covers four types of short cycles: 5 minutes, 15 minutes, 1 hour, and 4 hours, currently supporting four major cryptocurrencies: BTC, ETH, SOL, and XRP. Users only need to predict the rise and fall of the asset during the corresponding period, choose to place a bullish or bearish order, and the system will automatically settle at the end of the cycle. Positions can also be closed early for flexible profit-taking and loss-cutting.

According to ChainCatcher, Guangdong Province's first special financial product for the token economy, "Token Loan," was launched in the Haizhu District of Guangzhou. Taking Bank of China Guangzhou Branch as an example, a dedicated financing product specifically developed for small and micro enterprises in Haizhu's computing power sector—the Computing Power Token Loan—has been introduced. The credit limit is determined based on the contract/token consumption amount and can provide guarantees mainly through credit, accounts receivable pledges, and order financing. It can also combine guarantees, mortgages, and other forms of collateral to further expand the credit limit. New companies can apply for financing based on orders if they provide continuous operation proof materials from their original operating enterprises or offer guarantees. It is reported that the initial credit funding from Bank of China has reached 28 million yuan.

On August 11, the Binance contract platform launched four U-based perpetual contract trading pairs, including Kuaishou (KUAISHOUUSDT), Meituan (MEITUANUSDT), as well as the Southern Eastern SK Hynix Daily Leverage (2X) product (CSOPSKHYNIX2LUSDT) and the Southern Eastern Samsung Electronics Daily Leverage (2X) product (CSOPSAMSUNG2LUSDT). The Kuaishou and Meituan contracts support a maximum leverage of 20 times, while the two Korean semiconductor ETF products support a maximum leverage of 10 times, with a funding rate cap of ±2%, settled every eight hours, supporting a multi-asset model.Among them, CSOPSKHYNIX2LUSDT tracks the Southern Eastern SK Hynix Daily Leverage (2X) product listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (code 7709), and CSOPSAMSUNG2LUSDT tracks the Southern Eastern Samsung Electronics Daily Leverage (2X) product (code 7747), corresponding to the two major storage chip giants SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics with double long exposure. This is Binance's further expansion in the field of traditional asset perpetual contracts, bringing Hong Kong stocks and Korean tech stock leverage products into the crypto derivatives market. Binance reminds users that digital asset prices are highly volatile, and contract trading carries high risks; investors must bear the related risks themselves.

According to data from the official page, the Gate Launchpool's first project, DOS staking mining activity, is currently ongoing. At present, the total amount of liquid staking in the USDT staking pool exceeds 118 million USDT, with an estimated annual percentage rate (APR) of 7.26%; the total amount of liquid staking in the GUSD staking pool exceeds 81.39 million GUSD, with an estimated annual percentage rate reaching 7.31%. Adding the base 3.80% interest from GUSD's current subscription yield, the comprehensive estimated annual yield rate for the GUSD pool is approximately 11.11%. Currently, the cumulative staking scale of the two major staking pools has exceeded 199 million USD. This activity will last until August 24 at 19:00 (UTC+8), with a total reward of 1,410,000 DOS.In addition, the cumulative subscription scale of Gate's yield-generating stable asset GUSD has currently reached 256 million USD, setting a historical high and continuously expanding stable returns and ecological application scenarios.

Financial giant Charles Schwab announced that it has launched direct trading services for Bitcoin and Ethereum for approximately 40 million brokerage accounts. The product is named Schwab Crypto, covering 48 states in the U.S. (excluding New York and Louisiana), with a trading fee rate of 0.75%, operated by Charles Schwab Premier Bank and Paxos.Joe Vietri, head of digital assets at Charles Schwab, stated that the company aims to become the preferred platform for retail investors to allocate digital assets, supporting users to trade crypto assets alongside other investment types through its services, education, and research advantages. The company also maintains a risk warning, stating that even if Bitcoin or Ethereum only accounts for 1% to 3% of a portfolio, it can have a significant impact, and both have previously dropped over 70% in past cycles.