The popular AI framework Virtuals Protocol will host an in-person meet-up in Hong Kong on Friday, January 17.

According to on-chain analyst Ai Yi (handle @ai_9684xtpa), address 0x90c…888ac spent roughly $1 million to purchase 12.25 million "Niu Lai" tokens over the past hour, re-establishing a position in the related token. During the buy, "Niu Lai"’s market capitalization briefly topped $90 million. This is not the address’s first trade of "Niu Lai": it opened a position 13 days ago, then sold out entirely at $0.03162 five days ago, marking a re-entry after liquidating its holdings.

Beating AI Express News: Whistleblower Leo states OpenAI’s next major model Astra has moved from internal dogfooding to early partner testing. A small number of partners are currently seeing it under the name “ultima-alpha”. If feedback this weekend is positive, OpenAI plans to expand early access next week and further widen the availability scope by the week ending September 3.

Beating AI Express: Anthropic announced it will permanently raise Claude Code’s standard weekly quota by 25% starting September 14, with the adjustment applying to Pro, Max, Team, and seat-based Enterprise plans. However, current users will see their actual available quota drop by approximately 17%. To clarify the numbers: If the original standard quota was set at 100, users received a temporary 50% increase (bringing their usable quota to 150). After September 14, the temporary boost will end, and the new permanent standard quota will be 125. This translates to a roughly 16.7% reduction from the current 150, a figure Anthropic confirmed in a follow-up post is equivalent to a 17% decrease compared to today’s available quota.

SVM Layer 1 blockchain network Fogo announced it has taken preventive measures to temporarily suspend its mainnet after detecting unauthorized activity, aimed at halting further transfers of affected assets. During the suspension, Fogo will upgrade its network and restrict addresses linked to the incident. The team stated it will release subsequent updates once more information is confirmed, and reminded users to obtain relevant details exclusively through Fogo’s official channels. To date, the cause of the incident, the scale of affected assets, and the timeline for mainnet recovery remain unannounced. Earlier reports noted that the Fogo Foundation was recently hacked by unknown attackers, resulting in approximately 400 million FOGO tokens being transferred to attacker addresses. The foundation said it immediately notified relevant trading platforms and is actively coordinating with law enforcement agencies and forensics experts.

Beating AI News Flash: SpaceXAI has integrated X into its Grok Bot. After users link their X accounts, the system will automatically create a developer account if they don’t already have one. Paid Grok Bot users also receive a free X API call quota. Post-integration, Grok Bot can directly search posts, read personal timelines, check mentions, summarize X’s latest trends, and view and manage bookmarks. Previously, accessing the X API required users to apply for a developer account and configure the API themselves—steps now largely handled by Grok Bot. Paired with Grok Bot’s continuous operation capability, users can have it monitor X long-term, automatically organize trending topics, track accounts, or periodically summarize bookmarked content. However, it currently can only read X content and manage bookmarks, and cannot post, reply, like, repost, or send direct messages. While the authorization page requests broader permissions like managing lists and blocking accounts, these operations are not yet available among the 25 tools open to X plugins.

Economists forecast that the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ monthly jobs report, due out Friday, will show nonfarm payrolls rose by 55,000 in August, following an unexpected decline in July employment. If realized, this figure will align roughly with the average monthly gain recorded so far this year. The unemployment rate is projected to hold steady at 4.1%. Analyst Anna Wong stated that Fed official Christopher Waller’s hawkish remarks at the Jackson Hole Symposium have increased the likelihood of a September interest rate hike and altered market expectations for how next week’s data should be interpreted. The August nonfarm payrolls report remains a key headline data point, but its projected weak performance may not carry as much decisive influence as usual. Waller characterized the labor market as being in good health, noting that slowing job growth is often a demographic issue rather than a sign of recession. (Jin10)