On August 12th, Musk issued a statement questioning the ranking mechanism of Apple's App Store, stating that it refused to include X and Grok in the "must-have apps" category, despite their high rankings. He accused Apple of restricting competition from other AI companies, suspected of anti-monopoly violations, and stated that xAI will take legal action.
Bakkt released its Q2 financial report, showing a total revenue of $577.9 million, a year-on-year increase of 13.3%; Operating expenses amounted to 596.4 million US dollars, a year-on-year increase of 12.1%. The company raised $75 million to strengthen its balance sheet and advance its Bitcoin reserve strategy, while launching plans related to the Japanese market.
According to the US Department of Justice, law enforcement agencies from the US and multiple countries jointly seized four servers, nine domains, and approximately $1 million in Bitcoin assets related to a Russian ransomware group on July 24th. The operation targets BlackSuit and Royal ransomware, with the involved group extorting over $500 million since 2022 and illegally profiting at least $370 million. Part of the frozen Bitcoin assets came from a ransom of $1.45 million paid by the victim in April 2023. US officials stated that this move constitutes a significant blow to the operation of the gang, and further investigations are still ongoing, with the possibility of more charges being brought.
According to OnchainLens data, a certain whale increased its holdings of 59998 ETH on August 12th, valued at approximately $254 million, with funding sources including FalconX, GalaxyDigital, and BitGo. At present, the whale holds a total of 293184 ETH worth approximately 1.24 billion US dollars, distributed across 9 wallet addresses.
