Binance founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ) publicly burned 4,444 tokens of three meme coins—Binance Life, Bull Run (牛来), and MarsCoin—from his donation address, according to Arkham data. The move appears to be a statement against speculative meme coin culture that has proliferated on BSC and other chains. The burn removes these tokens from circulation permanently, though CZ did not explicitly state his reasoning. This action follows the recent volatility of Bull Run, a meme coin tied to a poorly received Chinese summer movie that briefly surged before correcting sharply.

BNB Chain announced that its Pasteur hard fork will go live on BNB Smart Chain on August 25 at 10:30 UTC+8, after running on testnet since July 21. The upgrade includes three proposals: BEP-682 and BEP-695 focusing on security and validator permissions, and BEP-675 changing transaction processing when preparing new blocks. Node operators must upgrade to BSC software version v1.7.7 before activation. The hard fork is part of BNB Chain's ongoing efforts to enhance network robustness and performance for its ecosystem.

Hong Kong police disclosed that in the first half of the year, the city recorded 20,613 fraud cases totaling about HK$3.5 billion in losses. Investment fraud accounted for 2,151 cases and HK$1.66 billion in losses, including one cryptocurrency scam that cost a victim HK$84 million. The victim was lured into transferring crypto to a wallet provided by fraudsters and later found they could not withdraw funds. Police also updated the JPEX virtual asset fraud case, which now involves about 2,800 victims and HK$1.6 billion in losses, with 81 arrests since 2023 and 29 charged with conspiracy to defraud and money laundering.

Bithumb, one of South Korea's largest crypto exchanges, reported first-half revenue of 168.8 billion won (about $109 million), down 48.7% year-over-year, with a net loss of 108.7 billion won (about $70.1 million). The exchange blamed prolonged high US interest rates that diverted investor attention and capital to AI and semiconductor stocks, reducing virtual asset trading activity. Bithumb's second-quarter revenue fell 35.8% to 86.3 billion won. The results reflect broader headwinds for Korean exchanges as the local crypto market cools amid macroeconomic shifts.

Chinese regulators plan to lift the exit ban on Manus CEO Xiao Hong and other management after the AI startup reaches a restructuring agreement with Meta, according to the Financial Times. The ban was imposed in March after Meta's $2 billion acquisition of Manus was halted by regulators. The deal is being restructured so that existing shareholders including Tencent, ZhenFund, and private equity firm HSG will buy back shares at a valuation close to $2 billion, with Tencent taking on stakes from US investors like Benchmark who are not participating. Xiao is expected to return to Singapore soon after the split is finalized.

Alibaba's open-source Qwen model family has exceeded 3 billion cumulative downloads over the past six months, surpassing Meta and Alphabet to become the most downloaded open-source AI model, Bloomberg reported. Alibaba has open-sourced over 460 models in the Qwen series, with more than 300,000 derivative models in the ecosystem. A Hugging Face report noted Qwen has become a default workflow for developers fine-tuning and deploying models. The milestone highlights China's growing prominence in open AI infrastructure as Western rivals face competition.

Apple has partnered with Alibaba to train a proprietary large language model for the Chinese market, which will power the upcoming Apple Intelligence features in China, Reuters reported. Unlike previous integrations of third-party models, Apple is developing its own model to strengthen control over AI on its devices in China. Chinese regulators recently completed registration for Apple's generative AI services, clearing compliance hurdles for iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Vision Pro. Apple will still integrate Alibaba's Qwen and other local models, but the self-developed model aims to boost competitiveness against Huawei and other local phone makers.

Rumors of off-exchange "scalper" trading in Unitree Technology's IPO shares at inflated prices have circulated, but multiple investment institutions, private funds, and brokerages say they have found no such transactions, according to Shanghai Securities News. CITIC Securities warned that securities trading must be conducted through legally recognized channels with real-name accounts. Legal experts said private agreements to buy or sell publicly offered shares or transfer subscription rights may violate securities laws, and such agreements could be deemed invalid with no protection for funds. Analysts noted these gray market quotes lack public matching and standardized settlement, posing risks of "no market, inflated prices" and regulatory scrutiny.

The Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) published a list of fraudulent websites impersonating Hash Blockchain Limited, a licensed virtual asset trading platform. The sites were reported by Hash Blockchain itself as fraudulent. The SFC clarified that these websites have no connection to the licensed platform. The warning is part of the regulator's ongoing efforts to protect investors from crypto scams that use fake websites to phish for credentials and funds. Hong Kong has seen a rise in such impersonation schemes as the crypto market grows.

YZi Labs (formerly Binance Labs) announced the fifth season of its EASY Residency early-stage acceleration program, with a focus on programmable capital and on-chain markets, stablecoin payment infrastructure, AI infrastructure and compute economy, AI interfaces and consumer layer, and AI x biology. The 10-week program includes 5 weeks of online courses and 5 weeks of in-person sessions in Thailand, with accommodation, meals, and workspace covered. Selected projects can receive up to $500,000 in investment, with eligibility for up to $2 million in additional funding from a token aggregation platform. The program culminates in a demo day for leading global investors.