ECB committee member Kazaks said that there is currently no reason not to continue with the plan to lower interest rates twice this year as previously forecasted, as the inflation trend in the euro area is consistent with expectations of further gradual rate cuts.

Sony Block Solutions Labs, a joint project between Sony Group and Singapore's Startale Labs, announced on Friday that it will launch a new 2-layer network called Soneium on the Ethereum blockchain. Soneium is expected to go live on the test network in the coming days and will utilize Optimism Rollup technology, which allows users to transact on the Ethereum network at lower costs. It will be built using the OP Stack of the Optimism blockchain ecosystem, a customizable toolkit that allows developers to create their own networks using Optimism's technology and connect to other networks in the ecosystem through "superchains".

OKLink data shows that 300,000 ETH was transferred from addresses starting with 0x701c and 0xfd89 to Coinbase deposit address 27 minutes ago, worth $791,082,004.

Lookonchain monitoring shows that after Binance announced the launch of POPCAT perpetual contracts, a whale withdrew 39,816 SOL ($5.73 million) from Binance to purchase 10 million POPCAT tokens.

According to on-chain analyst Yu Jin, decentralized stablecoin platform Reserve purchased 6.45 million CRV worth $2.03 million through market maker GSR Markets in the past 6 days. Reserve transferred $2.03 million USDC to GSR Markets' 0x0cD...a13 address and received 6,450,704 CRV at a buying cost of $0.314 per token. In addition, Reserve was also one of the buyers when Curve founder sold coins OTC in August last year. Reserve spent $1 million to buy 2.5 million CRV at a price of $0.4 per token from the Curve founder. Currently, Reserve holds a total of 19.41 million CRV ($6.38 million).

In an interview with Global Finance, former St. Louis Fed Chairman Brad stated: "The FOMC's last meeting and Powell's press conference were very clear that unless something dramatic happens, Fed officials are ready to act at the September meeting. I think they have expressed their intentions as central banks as clearly as possible. I think they will start cutting interest rates by 25 basis points in September. The question then is how quickly they want to reach a new monetary policy stance. Even if they slightly lower the policy rate, the rate will remain at a restrictive level. They need to continue to lower rates from that point. I think it may be a 25 basis point rate cut at each meeting, for several consecutive meetings, until the policy rate is lowered to a lower level, at which point they can decide whether inflation continues to move towards the 2% target and whether to continue normalizing policy rates. It is expected that there will be a 75 basis point interest rate cut from now until December."

In an interview with Global Finance, former St. Louis Fed Chairman Brad stated: "The FOMC's last meeting and Powell's press conference were very clear that unless something dramatic happens, Fed officials are ready to act at the September meeting. I think they have expressed their intentions as central banks as clearly as possible. I think they will start cutting interest rates by 25 basis points in September. The question then is how quickly they want to reach a new monetary policy stance. Even if they slightly lower the policy rate, the rate will remain at a restrictive level. They need to continue to lower rates from that point. I think it may be a 25 basis point rate cut at each meeting, for several consecutive meetings, until the policy rate is lowered to a lower level, at which point they can decide whether inflation continues to move towards the 2% target and whether to continue normalizing policy rates. It is expected that there will be a 75 basis point interest rate cut from now until December."

Whale Alert monitoring shows that a Polygon Staking address transferred about 70 million MATIC tokens worth approximately $36,403,662 around 22:33 today.

Bitcoin L2 project Ark Labs announced the completion of a $2.5 million Pre-Seed round of financing, led by Tim Draper and Draper Ventures, with participation from Fulgur Ventures, Axiom Capital, and Bitcoin angel investor Stephen Cole.

Babylon announced on the X platform that the upper limit of the first stage of 1000 BTC pledges has been reached. According to Babylon's pledge platform data, the confirmed pledge TVL is currently 1000.04549438 BTC, and the number of users participating in the pledge is about 12,700.

MakerDAO announced on X platform that the Endgame plan has introduced upgraded versions of DAI and MKR called NewStable and NewGovToken. However, DAI and MKR will still be available. Unless the governance department decides otherwise, these two tokens are expected to remain unchanged in the foreseeable future. Users can continue to hold and use these two tokens as before. DAI will remain available indefinitely. Users can upgrade to NewStable and choose to switch back to DAI at any time. 1 DAI = 1 NewStable (NST). The ecosystem will ultimately explore ways to differentiate between DAI and NewStable, with DAI focusing on native crypto use cases and NewStable targeting mass adoption. MKR can still be used to vote on governance proposals.

According to Turkish media reports, Andreas Szakacs, a co-founder of OmegaPro, which is believed to be involved in a cryptocurrency scam, was arrested in Turkey in July. The reports stated that Turkish authorities confiscated cold wallets and computers and traced $160 million worth of cryptocurrency transactions. Andreas Szakacs was arrested for his alleged involvement in a cryptocurrency Ponzi scheme that defrauded investors of $4 billion, according to Turkish media reports on Thursday.

According to on-chain analyst Yu Jin's monitoring, decentralized stablecoin platform Reserve has purchased 6.45 million CRV (worth $2.03 million) through market maker GSR Markets in the past six days. In addition, Reserve was also one of the buyers of Curve founder's OTC sale last August: it spent $1 million to buy 2.5 million CRVs from the founder at a price of $0.4 per CRV. Currently, Reserve holds a total of 19.41 million CRVs ($6.38 million).

BEBE ecosystem's GameFi key initiative, the BEBOX gaming platform, officially launched on August 10. As a significant player in the blockchain industry, BEBE FOUNDATION showcased its strong technological and market advantages at the 2024 Asia Blockchain Summit (ABS 2024), engaging in deep discussions with global blockchain experts, investors, and industry leaders about the future applications of blockchain technology in the gaming sector. On August 16, BEBE was officially listed on HTX, followed by a token launch event on Gate.io on August 17, with trading commencing on August 19. These strategic moves have not only significantly increased BEBE's market visibility but also provided users with more convenient trading options.