GOP | Grand Old Party Community

🤝 Zoomex hosts 'Trade the Tide' at Coinfest Asia 2026 Zoomex, a global cryptocurrency derivatives exchange, successfully concluded its official side event at Coinfest Asia 2026 on August 20 at Tropical Temptation Beach Club in Bali. As a Gold Sponsor, the platform engaged directly with traders, builders, and regional ecosystem partners from Southeast Asia. The centerpiece was a mini roundtable titled "Trading the Next Tide: Trust, Speed and the Next Wave of SEA Adoption," moderated by Christia…

🌐 ECB to issue euros on blockchain, positioning against stablecoins The European Central Bank is moving to issue euros directly onto blockchain through its Pontes project, launching in September 2026. ECB Executive Board member Isabel Schnabel argued at Jackson Hole that central bank money—not private stablecoins—should back tokenized settlement systems. Schnabel's case is rooted in financial stability. While stablecoins can be safe, their issuers cannot expand money supply during panics like …

🔧 OpenAI bulks up hardware: acquires thousands of Mac minis and Studios OpenAI has acquired thousands of Mac minis and Mac Studios for AI training, according to The Information. The move signals the company's strategy to diversify its computing infrastructure beyond traditional data center resources. The hardware expansion reflects OpenAI's ongoing effort to scale AI development capabilities. Mac-based systems could support specific workloads or provide cost-effective alternatives for certain …

📊 Saylor signals MicroStrategy may resume Bitcoin buying Michael Saylor posted "We're Back" after a 10-week pause in MicroStrategy's Bitcoin acquisitions. The signal comes as three financial metrics have shifted in the company's favor. MicroStrategy's dollar reserves ($6.69B) now nearly match its convertible debt ($6.71B), reducing net leverage to 0.1%—a threshold that previously constrained BTC purchases. The company last bought Bitcoin on June 22, acquiring 520 BTC at $67,068. August brought…

🚨 Cronos halts blockchain after $75M Tectonic exploit Cronos validators stopped the entire blockchain on Sunday following an exploit that drained Tectonic, the largest lending protocol on the network. Researcher Weilin Li estimates the total loss at approximately $75 million, with only $6 million reaching Ethereum before the network froze. Crypto.com confirmed its app and exchange remained unaffected and operational. Approximately $60 million of the stolen funds remain stranded on Cronos—about…

⚖️ Sony, Warner sue Anthropic over torrented music in Claude training Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Music filed a lawsuit against Anthropic on Friday, alleging the company used BitTorrent to download unlicensed music and songbooks for Claude's training. The complaint identifies two sources: roughly 5 million books from Library Genesis (June 2021) and 2 million from Pirate Library Mirror (July 2022). The publishers claim sheet music and songbooks were embedded in those collections, …

⚖️ US insurers face probe over $16B in retirement funds in private loans Delaware Life Insurance Company relabeled $16.4 billion in investments this year, placing the funds in private loans tied to affiliated companies. Federal prosecutors and SEC investigators are now examining whether these loans should have been flagged as related-party transactions. The money originated from annuities and life insurance policies sold to ordinary savers, most of whom are unaware of the underlying investment…

💰 High school coder sells Telegram NFT for $20,000 Jonathan He, a US high school student who placed seventh at the 2026 International Olympiad in Informatics, sold his Telegram Algorithm Cup NFT for 15,000 Grams—worth approximately $20,400. The sale price was roughly 40 times the average value Telegram guaranteed for the 235 prize-winning medals. Telegram promised 235 medalists a combined $117,000 in Algorithm Cups, averaging close to $500 per collectible. He competes for Team USA and interns …

📊 Ethereum ETF inflows surge past Bitcoin as Wall Street shifts Ethereum spot ETFs pulled in $103.9 million in the week ending July 24, marking their third consecutive week of positive inflows and outpacing all rival crypto ETFs by a wide margin. Bitcoin ETFs tell a different story. Weekly inflows shrank from $197 million to $75.6 million to $33.79 million, with two negative daily prints shedding $225 million on July 23 and $240 million on July 24. Trading volume fell to roughly $8 billion, th…

🤝 US State Department names Bitcoin Policy Institute as founding partner The Bitcoin Policy Institute (BPI) has been named a founding partner in the U.S. State Department's Freedom Tech Excellence Program (FTEP), launched July 24. The initiative brings private-sector experts into temporary diplomatic roles to support digital freedom and emerging technology projects. BPI will focus on online freedom of expression, privacy-enhancing technologies, countering digital surveillance, and responsible …

📊 XRP drops as oil and bond yields tighten financial conditions XRP fell 2.1% in 24 hours to $1.11 as rising oil prices and elevated U.S. Treasury yields triggered broad risk-off selling across crypto and equities. When crude jumps and the 10-year yield climbs, inflation expectations rise and discount rates on volatile assets compress—a macro headwind that hits altcoins like XRP harder than Bitcoin. The pattern is consistent: oil volatility (Brent near $76.30, WTI at $72.08 in early July) and …

🚀 Y Combinator's Scape raises $3.2M to reimagine email for professionals Swedish startup Scape has emerged from stealth with $3.2 million in funding to build an AI-powered email inbox. The two 23-year-old co-founders, Melvin Hagberg and Elis Hodzic, secured backing from Y Combinator, General Catalyst, and FundersClub, alongside investors including former Spotify CMO Sophia Bendz and operators from OpenAI, Google, and Meta. Scape addresses a fundamental problem: the email interface has remained…

💰 UK healthtech TidalSense raises $19M to scale AI lung disease test TidalSense, a Cambridge-based healthtech startup, has closed a $19M funding round to expand its AI-powered respiratory diagnosis technology across the NHS and into Europe and the US. The startup's N-Tidal Diagnose device reduces COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) testing from one hour to under five minutes. Patients breathe into a handheld device for 75 seconds, and AI models trained on 2.5M+ patient breaths analyse…

🚨 July 23 'Hackers' Day': $35.5M Lost Across Three DeFi Protocols Three major DeFi protocols suffered security breaches on July 23, losing a combined $35.5 million within six hours. AFX Trade lost $24.15M, Verus Ethereum Bridge lost $7.54M, and B² Network lost $3.86M. Attackers exploited cross-chain bridge infrastructure and off-chain verification systems rather than the underlying blockchains themselves. The incidents underscore that security threats extend beyond smart contracts to supportin…

🚀 SpaceX delays Starship Flight 13 to Friday due to weather SpaceX has rescheduled the 13th flight test of Starship to Friday, July 24, at 5:45 p.m. CT from Starbase, Texas. Weather conditions on Thursday prevented ground tracking of the vehicle's heat shield during ascent—a critical data point for the reusable rocket program. This marks the second delay for Flight 13. Engineers aborted a July 16 attempt after multiple Raptor engines on the Super Heavy booster misfired at ignition. The resched…

🚀 BloFin Wallet launches Visa card and perpetual trading BloFin Wallet has introduced two major features: perpetual contract trading and a Visa debit card, positioning itself as an all-in-one financial platform for digital assets. Users can now trade 100+ perpetual contracts directly within the wallet without moving funds to an exchange. The wallet also launched a Visa card with zero issuance and annual fees, supporting Apple Pay and Google Pay, allowing users to spend crypto anywhere Visa is …

🚨 Crypto exploits surge to $36M; Verus bridge drained $8M Security breaches across crypto networks have resulted in $36M in total losses, with the Verus bridge accounting for $8M of the damage. The incident underscores ongoing vulnerabilities in cross-chain bridge infrastructure. The exploit raises renewed concerns about bridge security as the ecosystem continues to scale. Multi-chain adoption remains a priority for projects, yet bridge protocols continue to face significant technical and secu…

🔧 Uber cuts 10% of customer service staff in AI efficiency drive Uber has eliminated 10% of its customer service roles, directly attributing the cuts to artificial intelligence efficiency improvements. The reductions hit the company's community operations team, with remote workers also required to relocate to hub offices under a return-to-office mandate. Megha Yethatika, Uber's VP of global community operations, said the organization had become "too complex and siloed" and needed a cleaner fou…

🚨 Verus-Ethereum bridge drained of $7.54M in second exploit A second attack on the Verus-Ethereum bridge in two months has resulted in a loss of $7.54 million, according to security firm Blockaid. The exploit leveraged the same vulnerability class that was used in a previous incident in May. The recurring nature of the breach raises concerns about the bridge's security protocols and whether adequate patches were implemented following the initial compromise. Both incidents exploited the same fu…

🚀 STARTRADER adds SK Hynix US listing to trading platform STARTRADER has launched SK Hynix Inc. (SKHY) as a US Stock CFD on its platform, following the semiconductor company's recent US market debut. SK Hynix's US listing raised approximately $26.5 billion. The move positions clients to access a key supplier of high-bandwidth memory critical to AI infrastructure. STARTRADER's decision to offer SKHY reflects its strategy of providing early access to significant new US listings as they attract i…