Trump orders his team to suspend talks with Iran, pending Tehran’s readiness to sign a deal.

Hong Kong police recently disclosed a cryptocurrency investment scam targeting elderly individuals. In June this year, an over-80-year-old retired man clicked on a fake link in an online pop-up ad, downloading a counterfeit app posing as the crypto platform Trust Wallet. Scammers then impersonated platform customer service representatives, luring him to invest with promises of "high returns and big profits". The victim withdrew cash from his bank as instructed, then converted it into cryptocurrency via a crypto exchange. Over the next month and a half, he transferred multiple batches of ETH totaling over HK$5 million to the scammers’ designated wallets. He only realized he had been scammed when he could no longer withdraw funds from the fake app and the customer service contact went missing. Hong Kong police reminded family members to monitor the internet habits and financial situations of elderly people, proactively share anti-fraud information, and be alert to investment scams conducted through fake apps and high-yield promises.

According to market data from BIT (bit.com), the U.S. stock optical communication sector has deepened its declines, with the following assets posting losses: Roundhill Optical Module ETF (LYTE) fell 8.27%; Pure Photonics ETF (FOTO) dropped 10.07%; Optoelectronics (AAOI) declined 11.77%; Corning (GLW) fell 7.72%; Coherent (COHR) dropped 11.76%; Marvell Technology (MRVL) declined 7.65%; Lumentum Holdings (LITE) fell 9.05%; and Ciena Corporation (CIEN) dropped 9.94%.

According to MaxForAI, the AI project J-Space Cognition Suite, which went viral on X today, has faced community skepticism over its claimed DeepSeek V4 test results, which critics say cannot be reproduced. The project previously asserted that V4 Flash paired with J-Space could match GLM-5.3, while V4 Pro outperforms Fable 5 on multiple agent benchmarks, delivering a 2.53x speed boost and 2.21x improvement in token efficiency. GitHub user GoForceX ran a high-concurrency retest using the 87-question subset of Terminal Bench 2.1, confirming J-Space modules were loaded. The results showed that adding J-Space actually led to a slight drop in benchmark scores, alongside higher token usage and costs — the opposite of the project’s stated gains in performance, speed, and token efficiency. The community has since demanded the project disclose full evaluation configurations, per-question results, operation logs, original time and token consumption data. To date, the project has only published aggregated results and has not provided complete original experimental records to verify these metrics. Notably, the project’s author previously admitted the related data was “indeed exaggerated,” noting actual improvements are roughly between 1.6x and 3x. As of press time, the author has not issued an official response to the community’s queries, and some related skeptical GitHub Issues have been deleted.

Peer-to-peer (P2P) cryptocurrency trading platform NoOnes announced in a post yesterday that it will begin winding down operations after more than three years in business. The platform’s official statement said it had repeatedly sought to resolve and lift sanctions against NoOnes, but ultimately failed. NoOnes stated the sanctions led to the loss of key partners, while blockchain monitoring agencies labeled its transactions as high-risk, making normal operations increasingly difficult. According to the official schedule, business contraction started on August 17; its P2P market will shut down at 23:59 UTC on August 21. Services including Swap, NoOnes Visa, fiat withdrawals, gift card shops, and the Bitcoin Lightning Network will also be phased out. After that, the platform will only support withdrawals: users can still log in, view balances, and withdraw remaining assets. The team advises users to complete asset withdrawals as soon as possible, with the latest deadline being August 23. BlockBeats previously reported that on January 26, 2025, NoOnes disclosed a major security vulnerability earlier that month, causing losses of around $8 million in crypto assets. CEO Ray Youssef confirmed the news on on-chain investigator ZachXBT’s Telegram channel after ZachXBT revealed the hack.

Ripple has closed a private placement of senior unsecured notes upsized to $275 million. The notes are issued by its non-bank prime brokerage arm, Ripple Prime, with proceeds earmarked for working capital and expansion of Ripple’s U.S. business. The offering secured an investment-grade BBB rating from KBRA, and Ripple Prime plans to further expand its multi-asset clearing, financing, and prime brokerage services.

According to market data from BIT (bit.com), the US stock storage sector failed to reverse its downward trend after a sharp pre-market drop, with losses widening further at the opening. Specifically: Micron Technology fell 7.62%, SK Hynix dropped 8.44%, SanDisk declined 9.18%, Western Digital fell 8.21%, and Seagate Technology dropped 9.08%.