BREAKING: Hedge funds bought +$6.8 billion in US equities last week, the largest weekly purchase in 18 years. As a % of the S&P 500’s market cap, this was the 9th-largest weekly purchase since 2008. This follows +$4.8 billion in purchases the week prior, bringing the total to +$11.6 billion over the last 2 weeks, the largest 2-week purchase on record. This also pushes the 4-week average of hedge fund purchases up to +$1.8 billion. Meanwhile, institutional investors sold -$1.1 billion, posting their 2nd consecutive weekly sale. At the same time, retail investors sold -$4.1 billion, bringing their 4-week average of sales up to -$500 million. Hedge fund demand for US stocks is skyrocketing.

JUST IN: Another top @OpenAI executive is out. CRO Denise Dresser is leaving after 8 months, joining Brad Lightcap (out Tuesday) and Fidji Simo (out last month) in a wave of senior exits ahead of the company's IPO.

A significant portion of US corporate software spending is going to waste. Companies are now spending close to $10,000 per employee per year on software costs in the US. Meanwhile, ~33% of these software purchases are never used. At a company with 1,000 employees, unused software alone can represent more than $3 million in annual waste. As software becomes a larger share of corporate spending, managing these costs is quickly becoming a major source of margin improvement. Software spending cuts are likely coming soon.

🤖 JUST IN: OpenAI says the top 10% of enterprises use plugins twice as often and skills six times as often as typical firms.

Yemeni armed forces targeted a vital center in Al-Hariqiyah, near the Bab al-Mandab Strait, with two ballistic missiles - IRIB citing Arab sources

US CENTCOM commander Adm. Brad Cooper tells senior IDF officials the US may have no choice but to resume fighting and would need Israel for joint strikes - Israel's Channel 13

KPMG signs off on Tether's first full financial statement audit The Big Four firm gave an unqualified opinion on Tether International's balance sheet, income statement and cash flows for 2025. Auditors physically inspected each gold bar rather than relying on custodian reports. @tether says reserves exceeded liabilities by $6.81 billion at year end. The issuer had never completed a full audit since 2014 and paid a $41 million @CFTC fine in 2021 over reserve claims.

BREAKING: The US federal government has posted a record July budget deficit of $432 billion

Kimi K3 Scan Uncovers Critical Vulnerabilities Across Bitcoin Open-Source Projects Bitcoin Red Team researcher calle said that after using Kimi K3 for two weeks, the team identified numerous critical and high-severity vulnerabilities across Bitcoin open-source projects, with maintainers validating the findings. The team has completed a basic scan of nearly the entire Bitcoin open-source ecosystem, with many of the easier-to-find vulnerabilities already discovered. Calle said AI is significantly lowering the cost of vulnerability discovery and verification, making unmaintained projects increasingly risky. He argued that projects will need to establish their own AI-driven security audit pipelines, while the speed of response to vulnerability reports has become an important indicator of project health.

NEW filing for five ETFs from Silvia, @APompliano's co: 1. Anti-Money Printer ETF (bitcoin, gold, land, guns) 2. Bitcoin Treasury mNAV Discount ETF 3. Jensen Interview ETF (holds cos that Jensen Huang mentions in intvs over past 30days) 4. Elon Must ETF (holds Tesla, spaceX and 15% in a private Elon co) 5. Best Ideas ETF (guests' stock picks from Phil Rosen's podcast)

BREAKING: Tether just completed the largest inaugural financial audit in history KPMG gave it a clean opinion, counted every gold bar and confirmed $6.814B more reserves than liabilities no other stablecoin has had an inaugural audit at this scale massive moment for stablecoins

Crypto Group Warns Fed Could Use Banking Access to Squeeze Digital Asset Firms

INSIGHT: $BTC's 30-day price range is now just 5.6%, one of the narrowest on record. "It's too quiet," says analyst James Check @_checkonchain, noting the pattern historically shows up in late-stage bear and early bull markets.

🚨BEARISH: Bitcoin falls for a 5th straight day to $63,094, fully unwinding its August bounce.

EtherFi relaunches its neobank app with tokenized stocks and portfolio-backed borrowing @ether_fi's app went live today with tokenized equities through xStocks, metals, and an Aave market on Optimism for borrowing against a full portfolio at around 4%. Ramps added more than 30 currencies. Payments now run through Cash App, Apple Pay and LemonPay, and every revenue line feeds programmatic ethereum:0xfe0c30065b384f05761f15d0cc899d4f9f9cc0eb buybacks. The token traded near $0.41, up 8.8% on the day.

🚨 UPDATE: $XRP closed near $1 on Aug. 12, its lowest level since November 2024, as active addresses rose roughly 33% month over month while new-wallet creation remained flat, according to Santiment.

"Americans have never paid this much for fuel so late in the year," per Bloomberg.

📊 DATA: BitGo posted $4.33B in Q2 revenue—but its largest business line kept just 17 basis points after direct costs. Digital Asset Sales generated $4.198B against $4.190B in costs, while adjusted EBITDA remained negative at $4.2M.

"Solana is well-positioned as the everything chain" – @mdudas

Lots of people are writing off Google in the AI race. I think that's a huge mistake. Yes, they are behind on frontier models, but Google's AI moat isn't frontier releases. It's mass distribution and launching genuinely useful AI tools for the average person (which they're already doing a great job of). 3.7 Flash is here, but I'm more excited to see what they cook up with 3.5 Pro.