Blue Star Capital has raised approximately $1.71 million to be used for its initial Bitcoin purchase.

CryptoQuant analyst Axel Adler Jr. noted in a post that Bitcoin is currently trading in the lowest range of the Rainbow Chart model — "basically a fire sale price". This represents an extreme discount relative to the cryptocurrency’s long-term price trajectory, and is not merely a measure of how much Bitcoin has declined. The Rainbow Chart model compares Bitcoin’s current price to its long-term trend, so the gap reflects the market’s deviation from historical patterns. The volatility-adjusted Z-Score now stands at -2.293, the lowest reading since 2016 and lower than the -1.979 recorded at the 2022 bear market bottom. This metric accounts for volatility differences across distinct market cycles, meaning the current downward deviation from the model is more severe than that seen at the last bear market’s trough. Bitcoin is now in an extreme discount zone, with the volatility-adjusted Z-Score hitting a 10-year low. This signals significant undervaluation relative to the model, but it does not alone confirm the final market bottom. Extremely low valuations point to a potentially attractive entry range, though a market reversal would need separate confirmation. Note: The Z-Score is a widely used standardized statistical metric that quantifies how far a data point lies from the mean, measured in units of standard deviation.

Google announced that users can now remove visible watermarks from its AI-generated content, including images, videos, and songs. The company clarified that this change does not impact invisible SynthID watermarks or metadata related to the C2PA standard. Josh Woodward, vice president of Google Gemini, stated in a post that this toggle will apply to the Nano Banana, Omni, and Lyria models. He added that the setting to turn off visible watermarks will be available in Gemini and Google’s Video Editor Flow, with support for Search launching soon. The feature will roll out gradually over the coming days; once live, users can access "Settings > Media Watermarks" to enable or disable visible watermarks. Google has also open-sourced a new library named Credentio, designed to help developers embed local verification mechanisms into their own applications.

DeFiLlama founder 0xngmi posted on social media that for months, he has been working to get Apple’s App Store to take down a fake app impersonating DeFiLlama, repeatedly reporting trademark infringement and unauthorized impersonation of the official app to Apple. The team then loaded a small amount of funds into a test wallet, downloaded the fake application, and as expected, all funds in the wallet were stolen. The incident was reported to Apple, and the app was removed from the store within days. 0xngmi noted that he hopes other cryptocurrency companies will learn from this to avoid wasting time on similar efforts, as his team did.

According to CCTV News, on local time August 15, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Baghaei said that despite US obstruction, talks between Iran and Oman are still advancing actively, and the two sides have reached an agreement on a navigation plan for the Strait of Hormuz.

According to Bloomberg, Joshua Kushner’s Thrive Capital has purchased approximately $215 million worth of Amazon shares, continuing the venture capital firm’s strategy of expanding into public market investments. The investment was disclosed in a regulatory filing on Friday, giving Thrive exposure to a large company that stands to benefit from artificial intelligence. Amazon gains from AI through offerings such as generative AI shopping tools and cloud computing infrastructure for other businesses. Earlier this month, Amazon’s market capitalization crossed $3 trillion for the first time, making it the fifth company to reach that milestone. Thrive declined to comment, while a representative for Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Thrive is known for early investments in firms including SpaceX, Stripe and OpenAI—OpenAI also has backing from Amazon. The VC firm’s other public market holdings include Figma Inc., StubHub Holdings Inc., and Oscar Health, which Kushner co-founded and incubated.

Wedbush reaffirmed its "Outperform" rating on SanDisk stock, setting a target price of $2,000. Wedbush analyst Matt Bryson stated that the firm believes its 2028 projections likely underestimate SanDisk's profitability. The company will repurchase a large volume of shares over the coming years; coupled with extended transaction cycles, these factors warrant a certain valuation premium.