sap

According to token unlock data from the Crypto asset data platform RootData, Sapien (SAPIEN) will unlock approximately 19.58 million tokens at 0:00 Beijing time on August 20, worth about 1.52 million USD.

According to official social media news, Huobi HTX will hold a themed live broadcast today at 20:00 titled "Non-Farm Payrolls Surprise Ignites Rate Cut Trading: Which Will Break Through First Among U.S. Stocks, Gold, and BTC?" At that time, crypto KOLs such as Pump Pump Superman, Xiao Zhi, 77, and Grace will be invited to attend, discussing the unexpected changes in non-farm data, the rising expectations for rate cuts in the market, and the interlinked trends of the three major assets: U.S. stocks, gold, and BTC. They will analyze market trading opportunities and potential risks under changes in macro liquidity.

According to Business Wire, the AI agent infrastructure platform Sapiom has completed a $35 million Series A funding round, led by Dragonfly, with participation from Accel, Gradient, Coinbase Ventures, Operator Collective, Formus Capital, and VanEck Ventures. Existing investors Okta Ventures, Menlo Ventures, Anthropic, and Array Ventures continue to invest.Founded just 11 months ago, the company previously completed a $15 million seed round, bringing total funding to $50 million. Sapiom aims to eliminate infrastructure barriers for AI agents from demonstration to production environments. Sapiom simultaneously launched three products: Router, Agent Studio, and Runtime. Dragonfly managing partner Haseeb Qureshi will join the Sapiom board.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that Taj Tarsha, the founder of the NFT market project Few and Far, has been charged with securities fraud and wire fraud, accused of concealing the use of funds from investors and misappropriating financing for personal consumption.According to the indictment, Tarsha raised funds from investors starting in 2022 through a SAFT (Simple Agreement for Future Tokens), claiming that the funds would be used to develop a decentralized NFT trading market and the FAR token ecosystem.Prosecutors stated that Tarsha raised over $10 million from at least 67 investors by selling approximately 95 million FAR token rights. However, shortly after the fundraising, he allegedly used investor funds for personal purposes, including online gambling, purchasing high-risk crypto assets, paying for a Miami apartment loan, interior design expenses, and personal DJ activities.The indictment documents show that Tarsha also allegedly misappropriated nearly $1 million in company funds through two bonuses that were not disclosed to investors and co-founders, as well as through high salaries. After an audit revealed anomalies in the related funds, Tarsha was accused of providing false explanations to investors, claiming that the use of funds was in line with project development needs.

Citigroup Research stated in the U.S. Economic Weekly published on July 2 that the U.S. non-farm payroll data for June showed a significant weakening, strongly refuting the necessity for interest rate hikes. Citigroup believes that several factors that previously supported a hawkish stance, including rising oil prices, accelerated wage growth, and core PCE above target, have gradually faded, stating that "the reasons for rate hikes have disappeared."Data shows that in June, the U.S. non-farm payrolls added only 57,000 jobs, far below expectations, and the data for the previous two months was revised down by a total of 74,000 jobs. After revision, the average monthly growth of non-farm payrolls over the past three months has dropped to about 111,000, a significant decline from over 180,000 before the revision. The unemployment rate in June fell from 4.296% to 4.189%, but Citigroup believes this is mainly due to the labor participation rate dropping from 61.8% to 61.5%. If the participation rate remains unchanged, the unemployment rate would actually rise to above 4.5%.Regarding inflation, Citigroup stated that multiple factors are collectively suppressing price pressures. Oil prices have fallen back to pre-conflict levels, and July CPI and PCE data are expected to show a month-on-month decline; further slowing of housing rents will also drag down core CPI and core PCE. In addition, the revision of the core PCE methodology will adopt a more reasonable price adjustment approach for AI-related goods. Citigroup estimates that the year-on-year growth rate of the revised core PCE may be adjusted down by 20 to 30 basis points, which will be officially reflected in September.Citigroup maintains its baseline forecast, expecting the Federal Reserve to remain on hold at the FOMC meetings in July and September, with the first rate cut of 25 basis points occurring at the meeting on October 28, followed by another 25 basis points cut in December, bringing the federal funds rate range down to 3.0% to 3.25% by the end of the year. Citigroup also expects the Federal Reserve to cut rates three more times in 2027, with a terminal rate range of 2.75% to 3.0%.

CryptoQuant founder Ki Young Ju stated that the phenomenon of Bitcoin driving funds into altcoins, which once boosted altcoin markets, has basically disappeared. He pointed out that since 2021, the trading volume of altcoins paired with BTC has significantly shrunk, and the market structure has undergone noticeable changes. Ki Young Ju believes that the era of "Bitcoin rising leading to a general rise in altcoins" may have ended, and in the future, altcoins may rely more on their own fundamentals, application scenarios, and independent capital inflows to drive price increases.

Cuban stated, "Every time the dollar falls, Bitcoin should rise... but it just doesn't." He candidly expressed disappointment with Bitcoin but maintains a relatively positive attitude towards Ethereum, referring to most other cryptocurrencies as "garbage." Previously, Cuban had publicly stated that about 60% of his crypto asset portfolio is in Bitcoin, which he has held long-term without selling.

According to Coindesk, Hunter Horsley, co-founder and CEO of Bitwise, stated at the Miami Consensus 2026 conference regarding the "recent negative sentiment in the DeFi sector," "I believe DeFi is still doing very well." The recent specific event is operational security issues, not smart contracts being hacked. He also believes that the crypto industry is rapidly entering the mainstream, and DeFi and on-chain treasuries need to respond to this moment; treasuries have only been around for two years, "not all treasuries are equally reliable, and early entrants need to do more homework." Yoni Assia, co-founder and CEO of eToro, also stated that DeFi "is the inevitable future."In the roundtable discussion, several guests made predictions about DeFi TVL over the next five years: eToro CEO Yoni Assia gave a figure of $5 trillion; Bitwise CEO Hunter Horsley provided $500 billion; a16z Crypto partner Guy Wuollet declined to give a specific number, only stating, "My number is up and to the right."

According to Politico, Poland's major cryptocurrency exchange Zondacrypto is facing a serious fraud investigation. Its former CEO went missing in 2022, taking with him the private keys to a cold wallet containing 4,500 bitcoins (currently worth over $340 million). The current CEO has admitted to being unable to access the wallet and has recently been reported to have fled to Israel. Prosecutors estimate potential losses for customers to be around $97 million.On-chain data shows that the bitcoin balance in the platform's hot wallet has plummeted by 99.7% since mid-2024, with users generally reporting difficulties in withdrawing funds. Polish Prime Minister Tusk estimates that up to 30,000 users may be affected.Tusk publicly accused the platform of being funded by Russian-linked money, used to finance opposition lawmakers to obstruct Poland's cryptocurrency regulatory legislation. He bluntly stated that this is a "Polish version of a Ponzi scheme" and criticized the president for vetoing the localization of the EU MiCA framework twice, making Poland a "paradise for scammers."The platform's board stated that they failed to obtain "verifiable information" from the missing CEO and have collectively resigned. The founder has been missing since 2022, and the previously mentioned "suspect kidnapping allegations" case is still under investigation. This incident is expected to prompt Poland and the EU to strengthen regulatory scrutiny of cryptocurrency exchanges.

According to CoinDesk, Kraken's parent company Payward submitted a second amended complaint to the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado, suing former custody partner Etana Custody and its CEO Dion Brandon Russell, accusing them of misappropriating over $25 million in customer funds and operating a "Ponzi scheme."Payward claims that Etana mixed custodial assets with its own funds to pay for operational expenses and high-risk investments, and covered up the funding gap with false account reports.In April 2025, when Kraken attempted to withdraw about $25 million in reserve funds, Etana delayed the process citing false reconciliation issues and relied on new deposits to fill the gap. Among these, at least $16 million was invested in a promissory note from Seabury Trade Capital, which later defaulted.Colorado regulators subsequently issued a cease and desist order against Etana, which entered liquidation proceedings in November 2025 and is currently managed by a court-appointed receiver. Kraken is seeking at least $25 million in damages and triple civil theft damages.

According to Jinshi reports, U.S. President Trump stated that he would be disappointed if the new Federal Reserve Chairman does not cut interest rates.

According to Cointelegraph, Telegram CEO Pavel Durov called WhatsApp's end-to-end encryption a "huge consumer fraud." He pointed out that about 95% of private messages ultimately end up stored in unencrypted backups on Apple and Google servers.Durov believes that this situation puts users' privacy at risk. Although WhatsApp claims that its message transmission process uses end-to-end encryption, the actual backup mechanism fails to ensure the complete encryption of user information. This statement has raised industry concerns about the privacy protection measures of mainstream messaging applications.

Binance founder Zhao Changpeng (CZ) recalled in his new book that after the "9·4" regulatory policy was introduced in 2017, venture capital firms as a whole became more cautious, and Sequoia Capital, which had originally expressed investment intentions, also paused related cooperation. He stated, "Seeing the venture capitalists collectively silent during our most difficult September, I was actually quite disappointed."CZ revealed that prior to this, Sequoia had expressed investment interest at the beginning of He Yi's joining, but chose to wait and see in light of the policy impact. Subsequently, Binance achieved rapid growth from September to October, with the number of users increasing from about 20,000 in August to about 120,000 by late October, ranking among the top ten exchanges globally and becoming profitable.CZ stated that by the end of October, after the risk phase had basically passed, Sequoia re-expressed its investment intentions, but they had proposed to raise the valuation requirement. Ultimately, the two sides could not reach an agreement due to valuation differences. The other party then proposed to pursue legal proceedings, and a week later, four large boxes of legal documents were delivered. CZ said this was the "first time in his life becoming a defendant." CZ mentioned that he later learned that the lawsuit was led by Sequoia's legal team in the U.S., who are skilled at using the media to create public opinion, "the media reporters knew before I, the party involved."

According to a report by Xinhua News Agency, the latest poll results released by Fox News Channel show that about 59% of surveyed American voters are dissatisfied with President Trump's administration, an increase of 8 percentage points from a year ago, reaching a new high during his term; the satisfaction rate dropped from 49% to 41%.The survey is based on a random sample of 1,001 registered voters. Among different parties, the satisfaction rate among Republican voters is 84%, a year-on-year decrease of 8 percentage points; while the dissatisfaction rates among Democratic and independent voters reach 95% and 75%, respectively.

Yili Hua posted on platform X, stating that the current cryptocurrency market is in a bear market and the war is not over, lacking a significant rebound. The performance of the cryptocurrency sector over the past four years has been disappointing, with the crypto middle class, retail investors, and VCs all being harvested, while exchanges, market makers, and project teams continue to siphon off funds. Currently, the market's capital inflow mainly comes from Wall Street ETFs, DAT, and a few believers, and there has been no disruptive innovation in the cryptocurrency sector yet.