On-chain structured product infrastructure City Protocol has secured a total of $11 million in funding, with participation from investors including Dragonfly, Jump Crypto, and CMT Digital.

Meet a smart trader on @Aster_DEX who turned $24K into $275K in less than a month — an 11x return! He deposited $24K into #Aster and used up to 100x leverage to long $BTC, $ETH, and $LINK, making 10x+ on each. He has withdrawn $91K in profit and still has $184K on #Aster.

With the 2026 U.S. midterm elections entering the 10-week countdown, the Democratic Party currently leads by roughly 6 percentage points in generic congressional ballot polling, and markets are starting to assess the potential impact of its retaking control of Congress on financial markets. Analysts believe that if the Democrats take control of Congress, the U.S. could enter a "divided government" scenario, with major legislation potentially mired in prolonged political gridlock. Ed Mills, an analyst at Raymond James, noted that market volatility over the past two years has stemmed more from executive actions than legislation. If Trump faces congressional checks, the White House may advance policies—especially tariff measures—via more frequent and aggressive executive orders, which would heighten market uncertainty. Meanwhile, the U.S. debt ceiling has emerged as another major risk on Wall Street. Markets expect the U.S. government could hit the roughly $41.1 trillion debt ceiling by mid-2027. TD Securities warns that if the Democrats control Congress, they may use the debt ceiling to force the Republican Party to make policy concessions. A debt ceiling standoff could push up U.S. Treasury yields and intensify market volatility, with short-term Treasuries facing selling pressure as the "default trigger date" approaches. Additionally, if election results are delayed for a long time due to vote counting or legal disputes, markets could see a repeat of "election chaos," driving up risk aversion and boosting volatility. Analysts note that what Wall Street needs most right now is a clear, predictable election outcome.

Insight Beating AI Flash News: According to a report from The Information, DeepSeek is seeking a second round of financing at a valuation of approximately 500 billion yuan, with plans to raise an additional 50 billion yuan. Data shows that from January to July 2026, DeepSeek’s revenue reached 475 million yuan (around $70.7 million), roughly 10 times its full-year revenue in 2025; net loss narrowed to 715 million yuan in the same period, lower than the full-year 935 million yuan in 2025. In terms of profitability, DeepSeek’s overall gross margin stood at 44.6%, with its API business boasting a gross margin of 82.9%—a gain driven mainly by optimized AI infrastructure, which allows the company to run models with fewer chips while maintaining low inference costs. As its V4 series, especially V4-Flash, gains widespread adoption among global developers, the company’s revenue growth has accelerated; last month, its annualized revenue was reportedly between $400 million and $500 million. Additionally, DeepSeek recently raised API prices to boost commercialization: the peak output price for V4-Pro increased from $0.87 to $3.96, and the off-peak price is $1.98—still lower than Kimi K3’s $15 and Claude Opus 5’s $25. Meanwhile, the company’s AI infrastructure investment surged from 1.2 billion yuan in 2025 to 11 billion yuan in the first seven months of this year, mainly used for server leasing and purchases of AI chips and computing power equipment. DeepSeek completed its first external financing round in June this year, raising around 50 billion yuan, and has now hired investment banks to prepare for an IPO in Shanghai next year.

Binance Alpha becomes the first platform to list Teller (DEBIT). The initial launch and trading of Alpha will start at 10:00 UTC on August 26, 2026. Users holding at least 240 Binance Alpha points can claim an airdrop of 50 DEBIT tokens on a first-come, first-served basis. If the reward pool is not fully allocated, the point threshold will automatically decrease by 5 points every 5 minutes. Note that claiming the airdrop will consume 15 Binance Alpha points. Users must confirm the claim on the Alpha event page within 24 hours; otherwise, the airdrop will be deemed abandoned.

According to on-chain data, since August 23, BTC long positions have remained at a relatively stable level. Following the price rise, the overall market has shown a neutral consolidation trend. Meanwhile, BTC short positions have continued to decline since August 17, indicating that some short funds are still continuously exiting the market. Analysts believe that current long positions in the market have not increased significantly, and future trends will still depend on whether the short covering trend persists. Earlier, analysts stated that Bitcoin would need to meet three conditions to trigger a full-scale rally: Hyperliquid whales turning bullish, Bitfinex whales completing BTC long position accumulation, and the disappearance of negative South Korean kimchi premium and negative Coinbase premium. Currently, Bitfinex whales have finished building their BTC long positions, and both the negative kimchi premium and negative Coinbase premium have vanished, meaning two of the three conditions have been fulfilled. The core focus of the market going forward will be whether Hyperliquid whales shift to a bullish stance; once this signal emerges, it could act as a catalyst for Bitcoin to launch a new round of upward movement.

Beating AI News Flash: Anthropic has ordered all employees at its San Francisco office to work remotely on Monday and Tuesday. The decision follows an advance warning from security contractor Allied Universal that its security guards may stage a strike. To avoid having no on-site security, Anthropic opted to keep staff away from the office. However, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which represents the guards, said it has not issued any strike notice for this week, nor has a strike authorization vote been held. The two sides have indeed been negotiating a new contract since April, with the union demanding higher wages, improved medical benefits, and additional security training. Anthropic’s caution is driven by real recent incidents: In April this year, a man followed an employee into Anthropic’s lobby and claimed an executive would be killed; the same month, someone threatened an employee’s family members, and in June, another individual threatened to bring a handgun to the company over a refund issue. Last week, the San Francisco Police Department received a 911 call reporting that an Anthropic user threatened the company’s CEO and vowed to bring an AR-15 rifle to its office at 500 Howard St. to harm employees working there.