Aster announces an increase in the ASTER Buyback and Burn Ratio to 198%

According to Bloomberg News, a U.S. Army soldier accused of using confidential information about a raid to place profitable bets on prediction market platform Polymarket has asked a judge to dismiss the case, arguing his betting activity did not constitute a crime. Prosecutors allege that special forces soldier Gannon Ken Van Dyke participated in the planning and execution of the raid targeting then-Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. His lawyer, meanwhile, called the U.S. government’s prosecution “excessive” and stated that the case is built on untested legal theories.

According to the New York Post, a blockchain entrepreneur is accused of embezzling over $5 million from his own company and deleting 194 expense records before abruptly resigning. Dionysios "Dean" Karakitsos, 57, is charged with siphoning funds from Bitquery Inc., a firm that tracks cryptocurrency values and fund flows. The related lawsuit has been filed in Manhattan Supreme Court. Karakitsos was Bitquery’s co-founder, serving as its CEO, director, and treasurer until 2025. He is accused of diverting the company’s funds to his personal accounts over multiple years. Karakitsos later operated Assymetrix, a prediction market platform. Bitquery filed the lawsuit in June, seeking the return of at least $5 million in allegedly stolen funds. The company added that it is pursuing additional compensation to cover its legal costs.

According to Yuqing Monitoring, a whale’s long position of 1.38 million HYPE (valued at approximately $72.15 million) is now only 9% away from liquidation, with the liquidation price standing at around $47.6. Per HTX market data, HYPE is currently trading at $52.1, down 5.04% over the past 24 hours.

According to Reuters, a German court ruled on Friday that AI music firm Suno has infringed copyright and must disclose its illegal revenue. The case is part of a broader legal fight by artists and publishers against tech companies. The Munich Regional Court stated Suno had no right to use songs by artists represented by Gema, Germany’s statutory licensing body. The ruling can be appealed to a higher court, and Suno must pay an undetermined amount in damages.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Bessent stated on July 31 local time during a cabinet meeting held at Camp David in Maryland that, in accordance with President Trump’s directives, the Treasury Department has continued its economic offensive against Iran and is tracking Iranian assets worldwide. He also specifically listed so-called “economic victories” against Iran in front of Trump: after advancing relevant operations in March 2025, Iran’s largest private bank declared bankruptcy by the end of that year, the Central Bank of Iran was forced to print massive amounts of currency, continuously driving up inflation. Bessent claimed that Iran is now even unable to pay military salaries.

Strategy founder Michael Saylor posted that in the current Bitcoin difficulty adjustment cycle (946 blocks had been mined as of block 960,561), only 24 blocks set the BIP-110 support flag in their block header’s version field. All miner signals originated from DATUM miners that share rewards via OCEAN; signals from non-OCEAN sources were zero. The voluntary 55% threshold for this cycle is mathematically unachievable, and this does not reflect miner consensus. OCEAN has set BIP-110 signaling as default for its existing endpoints. The BIP-110 guidelines direct node operators to use Bitcoin Knots and miners to use DATUM. Regardless of intent, BIP-110 has effectively become a vertically integrated marketing campaign for Knots and OCEAN/DATUM. BIP-110 remains voluntary until block 961,632; from blocks 961,632 to 963,647, the software will reject all blocks that do not signal support. Any "100% signaling" observed during this window is merely the result of rule enforcement, not voluntary miner backing or Bitcoin consensus.