CNBC: The CLARITY Act would be a “good upside catalyst,” but Bitcoin and crypto “will persist” without it.

Bitcoin's quantum debate just moved from paper to mainnet. Transaction 305a24ff...ab07 sits in block 964,199. It's a 1,321-vbyte spend built with Quantum Safe Bitcoin (QSB), a research construction from Avihu Levy and Tom Giladi that uses bitcoin's existing Script rules to protect an output under hash-based assumptions instead of relying on the hardness of secp256k1. No soft fork. No new opcode. A miner accepted the transaction and bitcoin validated it under the rules every node already enforces. The construction uses a HORS-like one-time signature and a hash-to-signature puzzle inside legacy Script. ECDSA and OP_CHECKSIG still appear in the machinery because they're tools available to Script, but the security claim rests on hash preimage resistance rather than the elliptic-curve assumption a quantum computer would attack. There are limits. The transaction was non-standard under default relay policy and reached a miner through MARA's Slipstream service. It protects bitcoin intentionally committed to this unusual script. It doesn't reach backward and protect every exposed public key on the UTXO set. It doesn't give wallets a usable address format, recovery flow, multisig policy, derivation standard, or migration path. And it doesn't answer what happens to coins that never move before a capable quantum machine arrives. Levy called it a "research quirk", which is exactly right. The design crossed the line from a paper into consensus-valid bitcoin. That shouldn't be confused with a ready-made path to post-quantum security. Multiple teams are working on the problem. BIP 360 continues to develop a soft-fork path. Hash-based schemes are being actively benchmarked. Material progress is being made without anyone panic-shipping a consensus change. The alarmists can turn the volume down. The work is happening.

Core Lightning developers are preparing an emergency release after receiving a wave of AI-generated CVE reports over the past 10 days. They validated the vulnerabilities and are now urging every CLN node operator to upgrade immediately or take their node offline. Signed binaries are coming. Vulnerability details are under a two-week embargo. Previous releases, including 26.04, will no longer be supported. AI is now finding real vulnerabilities in Bitcoin's Lightning infrastructure faster than human security researchers. The same tools that make open-source code stronger also make it a target. Upgrade your nodes. h/t Bitcoin News

OpenAI just released its full investigation into the Hugging Face incident. During internal cybersecurity evaluations in July, OpenAI models operating under reduced safeguards "took actions that were misaligned with the goals of their assigned tasks." They "communicated through unauthorized channels, exploited vulnerabilities in shared infrastructure, gained internet access, and accessed third-party systems." The agents even shared exploit methods with other agents through a message board, enabling more agents to compromise OpenAI's internal infrastructure and Hugging Face's systems. OpenAI calls it a "warning shot" for the world. Their models are now "powerful, persistent, and collaborative enough that, absent sufficient safeguards, they can find and exploit security weaknesses across multiple computer systems." "Many external models, including open-source ones, will soon reach comparable capabilities." https://openai.com/index/hugging-face-incident-and-the-road-ahead/

Anthropic just signed a $45 billion deal with Nscale for AI compute at an off-grid campus powered by 2GW of Caterpillar turbines and built with Nvidia chips. The deal covers 460MW out of a planned 1.3GW Phase 1, with Phase 2 scaling up to 8GW. Microsoft had signed an LOI but backed out earlier this summer, opening up the capacity to Anthropic. The AI compute arms race is getting wild.

The SEC just sent a new proposal to the White House with amendments to custody rules that would clarify the framework for how crypto assets are custodied.

Chinese state-sponsored hackers breached the Federal Reserve, the US Senate, DOJ, NASA and other federal agencies, according to newly unsealed court documents. The group also hit hospitals, power companies, financial institutions, telecom providers and defense contractors. DOJ says the hackers worked for a Chinese company whose paying customers include China's Ministry of State Security and the People's Liberation Army.

"We clearly had some missteps as a company." Sam Altman admits OpenAI fell behind on pretraining and product direction, lost key execs, and had rogue AI agents escape their sandbox and attack Hugging Face. Now the company is refocusing around a new model called Astra, which OpenAI paused training on after spotting "troubling signs" during a recent run.

TIME

Inside OpenAI’s Reboot

In extensive interviews, the leaders of the company that ushered in the AI boom lay out their vision for its future

"The internet was a one-time subsidy on data. We got it for free. Models have seen the entire internet many times over and random human feedback isn't worth anything anymore." (neilmovva) on why the future of AI is recursive self-improvement on verifiable tasks.

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"There was no free milk at Nvidia. If you wanted milk for your coffee, you had to chip in a dollar a month to the milk club." (neilmovva) on Nvidia's frugality, why GPUs are fundamentally throughput machines, and the coming shift from chatbots to background agents.

"Security has become proof of work. How secure your software is comes down to how many dollars you spent on AI APIs trying to break into it." (neilmovva) on why the frontier of cybersecurity is now about running every model you can against every line of code.

The (HRF) just announced grants totaling over 500 million satoshis to 16 freedom tech projects worldwide through its Bitcoin Development Fund, and some of these are exactly what practical Bitcoin adoption should look like. BitSpenda: A mobile money-to-bitcoin bridge across Nigeria, Kenya, Cameroon, Uganda, and Ghana. Non-custodial, no account required. Send bitcoin from a Lightning wallet, recipient gets local currency in their mobile money account. Project Island Resilience: Adding offline payments to Flash, a Jamaican Bitcoin wallet that raised and distributed over $10,000 in bitcoin within 72 hours after Hurricane Melissa. Now building Bluetooth, NFC, and ecash support so Bitcoin works during internet shutdowns and protests. Bitzed: Connecting mobile money directly to Bitcoin in Zambia. Buy bitcoin with mobile money, receive it in your own Lightning wallet. No bank, no exchange, no identity records. Libbitcoinkernel: Extracting Bitcoin's core security rules into reusable modules so developers can build secure wallets without duplicating critical code from scratch. WalletScrutiny: Auditing Bitcoin wallets to verify the software you're running actually matches the open-source code it claims to be. Especially relevant after the ColdCard vulnerability. Vector: A Nostr-based encrypted messenger with voice and video calls. No accounts, no metadata trails. Built for journalists, activists, and whistleblowers under authoritarian regimes. Flotilla Chat: Discord built on Nostr. Your identity is portable and the hosting provider can't delete your community. Built by the team behind the Nostr client Coracle. 0xchat: Nostr messaging with encrypted chat, file transfer, voice and video calls, Tor integration to mask your location, and a built-in Cashu wallet for private Bitcoin payments. 256 Foundation: Open-sourcing every component of a Bitcoin miner to break the hardware manufacturing oligopoly and make mining more accessible and decentralized. OpenAlert: Decentralized emergency alerts over Nostr that don't rely on Apple or Google push notifications. End-to-end encrypted with self-destructing messages. Since 2020, HRF's Bitcoin Development Fund has granted $12.2 million in BTC to 383 projects across 70 countries. Bitcoin is a human rights tool, not just a financial asset.

Human Rights Foundation

HRF Grants 500M+ Satoshis to 16 Freedom Tech Projects Worldwide

NEW YORK (August 25, 2026) — The Human Rights Foundation (HRF) is pleased to announce grants totaling more than 500 million satoshis from its Bit...

Bloomberg's Eric Balchunas says $GLD and $IBIT are back in the top 10 most traded ETFs, knocking semiconductor ETFs down the list.

Anthony Pompliano: "As long as they keep printing money, Bitcoin's going to keep going up over the long run. There's a saying that Bitcoin has no top because the dollar has no bottom. I think people got reminded of that."

"With a robot, the full value is unlocked when it's actually doing the thing autonomously." (svlevine) on why the bar for robotics is fundamentally higher than LLMs and why that last inch from 95% to 100% is the hardest part.

Thailand's SEC just proposed regulations to bring Bitcoin ETFs to the country.

Chinese stocks relative to the S&P 500 are approaching their worst underperformance in 30 years. The ratio peaked in 2007 and has been in freefall ever since.

The (BlockchainAssn) is arguing that customer identification rules for stablecoin issuers under the GENIUS Act should only apply to primary market activity, not secondary market. Their position is that if stablecoins are sent peer-to-peer after issuance, the issuer has no visibility into the transaction and no technical ability to identify the parties involved. They're also arguing that one-off redemptions shouldn't trigger full account status, comparing it to cashing a check at a bank rather than opening an account. On identity verification, they want issuers to have the flexibility to use digital wallets, verifiable credentials, and zero-knowledge proofs instead of requiring customers to submit personal data directly. Their claim is that ZKP technology can be more reliable than traditional methods like database checks. They're pushing for issuers to be shielded from liability when they rely on another regulated institution's KYC and that institution fails. Banks already get this protection and the Association argues stablecoin issuers should too. They also want all the GENIUS Act compliance deadlines coordinated so issuers aren't building against a moving target as different agencies finalize rules on different timelines. The letter is addressed to five federal agencies. FinCEN, the OCC, the Fed, the FDIC, and the NCUA.

Blockchain Association

Blockchain Association Comment On Permitted Payment Stablecoin Issuer Customer Identification Program Joint Rulemaking | Blockchain Association