Iran to discuss new passage in Strait of Hormuz with relevant countries

Cathie Wood noted that David Sacks, co-chair of the U.S. President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), believes recent reports about "AI destroying humanity" may be orchestrated. The comments originated from a long-inactive X account belonging to an Anthropic employee who left the company just six weeks after joining, and the content quickly made its way into mainstream media. Sacks also named the parties involved in the incident and criticized The Wall Street Journal for its role. Recently, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published a lengthy essay calling for slowing the advancement of frontier AI capabilities, arguing that AI is increasingly involved in developing the next generation of AI. Paired with multiple recent incidents of AI agent malfunctions, he added, security research is failing to keep pace with capability growth. Sam Altman soon publicly backed the call, stating that OpenAI has also been discussing "pacing the frontier" in recent weeks, and announced the company will introduce similar long-term independent assessors. Sacks, former White House AI and crypto chief and current PCAST co-chair, then fired back: "If you truly believe internal models are dangerous, shut them down yourselves." He argued that requiring government approval for the largest AI firms to collaborate on setting speed limits would amount to a cartel, and also singled out METR, questioning whether it is fit to serve as an independent referee for the entire industry. METR has long conducted external evaluations for companies including Anthropic and OpenAI, and recently hired Joe Benton, an Anthropic security researcher who left the firm. However, METR clarified that it does not accept funding from these frontier AI companies, only model access and free tokens.

According to GMGN market data, the market capitalization of EMBER, the platform token of Solana-based token launch platform Ember Curve, briefly exceeded $40 million and currently stands at $35 million. The token has rallied 48.7% in the past 24 hours, with a 24-hour trading volume of $27.3 million. Ember Curve is a new token launch platform on Solana built on Meteora. BlockBeats reminds users that token prices are highly volatile, so investment requires caution.

According to on-chain analyst Ai Yi (@ai_9684xtpa)’s monitoring, today, the so-called "meme coin" LSK’s project-linked address deposited 3.29 million tokens to Binance five hours ago, valued at $3.79 million. The deposit came after LSK’s first sharp drop from $2 to $1, and shortly afterward, the token saw a second plunge, falling from $1.22 to $0.7 before rebounding to $1.17. Per Coinglass data, LSK’s liquidation volume over the past 24 hours hit $44.66 million, second only to ETH.

According to Bloomberg, the UK Labour government is advancing legislation to restrict large political donations from wealthy overseas-based individuals. Deputy Prime Minister and Housing Secretary Angela Rayner said the new bill proposes an annual donation cap of ￡100,000 for British citizens living abroad, applicable to those who have recently returned to the UK, and would also retroactively cover past donations, requiring non-compliant funds to be repaid within 60 days. On Saturday, two crypto billionaires each donated $48.7 million to the UK’s Reform UK, jointly setting a new record for individual political donations in Britain. Crypto investor Christopher Harborne gave ￡36 million (about $48.7 million) to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK on Saturday, matching the amount of a donation made the day before by BitMEX co-founder Ben Delo. The two crypto billionaires combined to contribute a total of ￡72 million (roughly $97.4 million) within 24 hours, making the two donations the largest individual political contributions in UK party history. Harborne is an investor in stablecoin issuer Tether and crypto exchange Bitfinex.

According to two sources familiar with the matter, U.S. President Donald Trump met with advisors on Friday (local time) to discuss a government ethics provision under consideration for inclusion in the Cryptocurrency Market Structure Act, also known as the CLARITY Act. The meeting came ahead of a procedural vote in the Senate next Tuesday, which will determine the fate of the CLARITY Act. Senate Democrats have demanded the legislation include ethics language applicable to government officials, aimed at limiting Trump’s ability to profit from his family’s crypto businesses. It remains unclear what the outcome of the meeting was, or which advisors attended. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday evening. Trump’s senior crypto policy advisor Patrick Witt posted a positive signal on X on Saturday, saying: “For the pessimists on the CLARITY Act, today is a bad day.” This comment suggests the bill’s advancement may be making progress. The ethics provision has been one of the key hurdles facing the CLARITY Act in the Senate, as the two parties have long held sharp disagreements over whether enforcement authority should be led by the Department of Justice or state attorneys general. The procedural vote next Tuesday will test whether the two parties can reach a compromise on this core dispute before the Senate adjourns.

South Korea’s government bill on the Digital Asset Basic Act is entering its final submission window this month. The Financial Services Commission (FSC) had originally planned to submit the parliamentary legislation under the name of National Assembly Legislation and Judiciary Committee Chairman Yoo Dong-soo within this month, but the schedule has been delayed. The ruling party plans to hold a hearing as scheduled in late this month, but if the government bill is not submitted, the hearing may devolve into a repeat of previous discussions. If this month’s window is missed, due to the overlapping impact of October’s state audit and budget deliberations, final passage could be delayed until the first half of next year. The Democratic Party of Korea has also proposed an amendment to the Capital Markets Act, which would allow non-monetary assets such as real estate, artworks, and intellectual property to be issued as trust beneficiary securities. The amendment is scheduled for discussion at the National Assembly Legislation and Judiciary Committee’s Bill Subcommittee on September 15. Separately, the party has called for a review of the January 2025 virtual asset taxation deadline, noting that information related to on-chain wallets, airdrops, and hard forks is difficult to automatically reconcile with tax authorities. It also proposes raising the basic deduction threshold and introducing loss carry-forward deductions.