According to BlockBeats, on August 28, the Hongkou Branch of the Shanghai Public Security Bureau recently cracked a case involving illegal cross-border settlements and illegal foreign exchange trading using virtual currencies, arresting nine suspects and involving more than 200 million yuan.

Since the beginning of 2024, criminal suspects Li and others, in order to obtain illegal profits, established a technology company and built two platforms on the Internet: "cross-border fund exchange" and "virtual credit card issuance and settlement". They recruited customers online and offline and illegally carried out virtual currency and cross-border fund exchange and settlement business. They obtained illegal profits by charging transaction fees, consumption service fees, card processing fees, and cash withdrawal fees.

The investigators stated, "What makes this case special is that the criminals developed two apps and openly solicited customers on such a large scale—this is unprecedented . The platform in this case is itself a closed-loop illegal financial service system, with all transactions settled within the platform. This criminal model is more large-scale, has a longer chain, and is more deceptive."

The report states that on the "cross-border fund transfer" platform, criminal gangs collect virtual currency from customers overseas, convert it into foreign currency to form a "funds pool," and then use fabricated contracts and other methods to conduct cross-border foreign exchange settlement, thereby realizing the exchange and transfer of virtual currency and RMB. On the "virtual credit card issuance and settlement" platform, criminal gangs "cooperate" with multiple overseas private banks to issue virtual credit cards to customers. Customers can use these cards for spending, but repayments must be settled in virtual currency. The gangs then convert the virtual currency into foreign currency overseas and rely on fraudulent cross-border foreign exchange settlement to complete clearing with overseas card merchants.

According to a Reuters report on August 28, Anthropic had planned to acquire AI chip startup MatX for $7 billion, but ultimately abandoned the plan.

MatX is currently seeking approximately $4 billion in new funding. Anthropic is in talks with several chip startups, planning to accelerate the hardware development of its AI model Claude by developing its own custom chips, in order to reduce its reliance on Nvidia chips.

According to BlockBeats, on August 28, DTCC (American Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation) has listed the 21Shares Polkadot pledged ETF with the trading code TDOT.