ARK Invest sold $14.8 million worth of Coinbase shares on Thursday ahead of the exchange's earnings report.

Cathie Wood's investment firm ARK Invest sold $14.8 million worth of shares of crypto exchange Coinbase (COIN) on Thursday, the largest one-day asset sale since May 7, ahead of the exchange's second-quarter earnings announcement.

The withdrawal means the company sold more Coinbase shares on the first day of August than in the previous two months combined. She sold $2.88 million in shares in June and $7.93 million in July.

After the market closed, Coinbase reported second-quarter revenue that beat Wall Street analysts' expectations. However, earnings were below consensus. Shares of the exchange, which fell 5.2% to $212.64 in regular trading, rose briefly after the report and were little changed in pre-market trading.

 

AEVO crashed to 90% of its high.

Since its launch in March, the native L2 token of crypto derivatives platform Aevo (AEVO) has plummeted from a high of $3.7 to $0.43, a drop of almost 90%.

According to CoinGecko, the coin's capitalization has fallen from a peak of $900 million to $373 million.

The asset is listed on almost all major centralized crypto exchanges, including Binance, OKX, Gate.io, Bybit and MEXC.

The situation with a sharp drop in coin prices was noticed by OKX CEO Mingxin Xu, known online under the pseudonym Star, asking what the purpose of CEX was in issuing tokens.

 

Microsoft declares OpenAI to be both a "strategic partner" and a "competitor" in its SEC filing.

Microsoft wants the feds to view its relationship with OpenAI as more of a frenemies (friends and foes) situation than a true partnership, according to a report filed with the SEC in July.

 

In the filing, its periodic statement of financial results and conditions on Form 10-K, Microsoft identified OpenAI as a competitor in several places and also stated repeatedly throughout the document that OpenAI was its "strategic partner."

 

The Ronin hacker has returned almost all the funds and will receive a reward from the project team.

The Ronin project team announced that the hacker returned 3991 ETH. He will receive a $500,000 reward for discovering the exploit.

Let us remind you that information about the hacking of the bridge appeared on August 6, 2024. The loss was estimated at 4,000 ETH, just over $9.3 million at that time.

Some experts suggested that the attack was an accident and that a MEV bot was allegedly behind it. Project co-founder Alexander Larsen noted that a possible hacker contacted the team.

He turned out to be an ethical hacker (white hat), notifying the developers about the exploit. On the evening of August 6, he returned 3,991 ETH, according to Etherscan.

 

The court ordered Ripple Labs to pay a $125 million fine in a lawsuit filed by the SEC.

On August 7, 2024, Judge Analisa Torres issued a decision in the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) lawsuit against Ripple Labs. She ordered the company to pay a fine of $125 million and also imposed a ban on further violations of industry legislation.

Please note that this process was exclusively for institutional sales of XRP (XRP). Previously, the judge ruled that retail transactions with the token do not violate securities law.

The papers indicate that a total of 1,278 transactions were recorded that resulted in an offence. Taking this into account, the amount of the civil fine was $125.03 million.

In the ruling, Judge Torres expressed concern that the company could "cross the line" in the future. This is the reason for the second part of her decision regarding the ban on violating industry legislation.
 

Metaplanet arranges a loan for the purchase of BTC in the amount of $6.8 million.

Japanese investment adviser Metaplanet (3350) arranged a 1 billion yen ($6.8 million) loan to buy more Bitcoin (BTC) after adopting the largest cryptocurrency as a reserve asset earlier this year.

The Tokyo-based company said it borrowed the money from British Virgin Islands shareholder MMXX Ventures "with the entire amount committed to purchase Bitcoin," in a statement on its website. The interest rate on a six-month loan is 0.1% per year.

In May, Metaplanet said it would accept Bitcoin as a reserve asset to hedge against yen volatility. At the beginning of July, she had a total of 161.3 BTC ($9.2 million).

The company's strategy mirrors that of software developer MicroStrategy (MSTR), which has been acquiring Bitcoin for more than four years and holds more than 226,000 BTC, more than 1% of all Bitcoin that will ever be issued.

Metplanet shares closed at 893 yen ($6.10) on Thursday, up 20% on the day, as Japanese shares extended their recovery from last week's sell-off following an interest rate hike by the Bank of Japan.

 

Xiaomi 15 will feature Google's Gemini AI.

Chinese electronics giant Xiaomi is integrating Google's Gemini AI into its new 15 series lineup of flagship smartphones. SCMP writes about this.

The upcoming Xiaomi 15 smartphones are expected to be launched later this year.

The statement concerns the international market; there is no talk of integrating large language models into smartphones for mainland China. Artificial intelligence Gemini and other foreign neural networks are not available in the country, SCMP points out.

Another Chinese smartphone maker Oppo also uses Gemini on Android devices targeting the international market.

In January, Samsung launched new Galaxy S24 smartphones powered by Google's AI, later saying it was partnering with Baidu to integrate its large Ernie language model for the Chinese market.
 

Do Kwon's extradition from Montenegro has been postponed again.

The expected extradition of ex-CEO Terraform Labs (TFL) Do Kwon from Montenegro to South Korea has been postponed. This happened at the request of the Supreme Court, which granted the request of Justice Minister Andrei Milovich, writes Vijesti.

The latter is also the country's chief prosecutor. The department under his control filed a petition for protection of legality with a proposal to delay Kwon's extradition to South Korea.

The Supreme Court will render a verdict regarding the legality of the decision of the Court of Appeal of Montenegro “within the time limits established by law.”