Telegram vs France Timeline:

2017: French reportedly spied on Pavel Durov and United Arab Emirates hacked his iPhone.

2018: French President Macron had lunch with Durov, proposing to set up TG's office in Paris.

2021: Durov obtains French citizenship.

2024: Durov is arrested upon arrival at a French airport, despite claiming he was expected to dine with Macron.

Midjourney officially getting into hardware

*Founder: To be clear we're not working on a headset right now (we're working on hardware related to data capture).

*TON Network Down again—not produced any block in the past 1 hour.

EU investigating Telegram over user numbers: ft

*EU legal and data experts suspect that the app has understated its presence in the EU to stay under a 45mn user threshold, above which large online platforms are subject to a swath of Brussels regulations designed to check their influence.

OpenAI in Talks for Funding Round Valuing It Above $100 Billion: WSJ

Pavel Durov, Telegram's founder indicted in France.

*He is placed under judicial supervision with the obligation to post a €5M bond, to report to the police station twice a week, and is prohibited from leaving the country.

Nvidia Earnings: Q2

*REV.: $30B
*EPS: $0.68
*DATA CENTER REV. $26.3B, EST. $25.08B

*NVIDIA APPROVES ADDITIONAL $50B IN SHARE BUYBACK

*NVIDIA SEES Q3 REV. $32.5B +/- 2% (EST. $31.9B)

*Nvidia falls 8% after Earnings

*Nvidia Sees ‘Several Billion’ in Blackwell Chip Sales in Fourth Quarter

*NVIDIA CFO: DEMAND FOR BLACKWELL PLATFORMS WELL ABOVE SUPPLY, EXPECT THIS TO CONTINUE INTO NEXT YEAR

U.S. GDP Q2: 3%, Est. 2.8%, Prev. 1.4%

Apple is in talks to invest in OpenAI: WSJ

*APPLE IN TALKS TO JOIN OPENAI FUNDING ROUND

*THRIVE CAPITAL IS LEADING THE ROUND AND WILL INVEST AROUND $1B

*NVIDIA & MICROSOFT IS ALSO IN TALKS TO JOIN THE OPENAI FUNDING ROUND

U.S. Core PCE July:

*MoM: 0.2%, Exp. 0.2%, Prev. 0.2%

*YoY: 2.6%, Exp. 2.7%, Prev. 2.6%

U.S. Headline PCE July:

*MoM: 0.2%, Exp. 0.2%, Prev. 0.1%

*YoY: 2.5%, Exp. 2.5%, Prev. 2.5%

NEW STUDY SAYS

"Crypto community is a mixed bag politically, but one thing's for sure - they LOVE their alternative social media!" OR as Bloomberg says "Crypto Owners More Likely to Have Psychopathic Traits"

Major Points:
> Study surveyed 2k American adults
> 30% of survey respondents said they own, or have owned, crypto.
> Crypto owners tend to be younger, male, more educated, have higher incomes, and be more religious.
> They More Likely to Believe Conspiracy Theories.
> Crypto owners are more likely to rely on alternative social media like Telegram for their primary news source.
> While showing some left-leaning tendencies, they hold a diverse mix of political views.
> They are more likely to report both +ve and -ve emotional experiences, score higher on "dark" personality traits (narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, sadism).
> They Believe they can impact politics and are MORE likely to be politically active (voting, contacting officials, etc.)

"You literally have to be crazy to be involved in something where your net worth is going up a million and down a million in one day—Call us whatever you want, We’re leading the way.”

Telegram Financials: 2023

*Revenue: $342.5M
*Operating Loss: $108M
*Crypto Rev. Share: 40% of total rev.
*Valuation: Durov claimed "$30B+"
*TG 100% owned by Durov
*$2.3B+ raised in convertible bonds
*$TON Holdings: ~$400M on balance sheet, far larger than its cash and cash equivalents.

North Korean hackers exploited a zero-day flaw in Chrome to steal crypto — Google patched the bug on August 21.

*They stole $3B in crypto from 2017 to 2023

*Hacker group creates fake websites masquerading as legitimate crypto trading platforms and uses them to distribute fake job applications or lure targets into downloading a weaponized crypto wallet or trading app—hackers’ attack started by tricking a victim into visiting a web domain under the hackers’ control. Then, because of another vulnerability in the Windows kernel, the hackers were able to install a rootkit on the target’s computer—At that point, it’s basically game over

Brazil's Supreme Court orders immediate suspension of X (Twitter). Users bypassing the ban using VPN could face daily fines up to R$50,000 [$8.8k]

The Week Ahead: Sept ☻

Macro:
⥼ BOC Meeting on 4
⥼ Fed Beige Book on 4
⥼ US Jobs Report on 6
⥼ Japan GDP (QoQ) on 8

Crypto:
∾ Cardano’s Chang Hard Fork, will introduce governance features (Sep 1)
∾ Arbitrum's Stylus Upgrade, will enable Rust, C, C++ smart contracts (Sep 3)
∾ MATIC to POL Migration (Sep 4)
∾ Russia begins trials of crypto exchanges and cross-border digital token transactions (Sep 1)
∾ Fantom's Sonic Testnet goes live (This week)

Event:
∾ Korea Blockchain Week, Seoul: 01-07
Speakers: Vitalik B., Richard Teng, Brad Garlinghouse and Founders from: Mysten Labs, BitGo, Polygon, Aptos, Aave, Animoca Brands, Berachain, LayerZero, Monad, MakerDAO, Worldcoin, Sahara AI, Ritual, MegaETH, Wintermute, Ethena, etc etc

Token Unlocks: $380M
⊷ TAIKO: $19M: 19% on 5
⊷ IMX: $43M: 2.1% on 6
⊷ MODE: $6M: 38.5% on 6

Note: What Bloomberg Economics Says: “Non-farm payrolls (data coming this Friday) will likely improve from July’s disappointing reading – but the 818k downward revision in the BLS’s early estimate for the March 2024 benchmark period probably leaves Fed officials less willing to take the initial prints at face value.”— payrolls report will give FED policymakers insight into the need for further interest-rate reductions after an all-but-certain cut in a little more than two weeks.

Earnings/Charts/Articles ⬎

SEC warns FTX against paying creditors back in stablecoins, other crypto — SEC says it reserves its rights to challenge transactions involving crypto assets: TheBlock

Ethena has partnered with EigenLayer and Ether.fi to introduce USDe as the first dollar-denominated token that can be used as security within its generalized shared security platform: link

Summary:
⊷ USDe will be available for deposit on ether.fi [restaking partner, in exchange for a new LRT called eUSD]

⊷ This USDe LRT will provide a dollar-pegged asset for EigenLayer restaking.

⊷ In the future, the potential addition of sUSDe as a restaking token would unlock the opportunity for AVSs to use it as an uncorrelated and less-volatile collateral asset for security that also generates rewards for restakers.

S&P 500 down 2.5%
Nasdaq down 3.10%
BTC down 2%
Gold stable
Apple down 3.30%
Nvidia down 10% — Biggest one-day market cap drop on record ⚠️

*JPY < 145.6
*VIX at 21 [+46%]