A federal appeals court has ordered President Donald Trump’s administration to halt construction on a $400 million ballroom project at the White House. President Trump has vowed to appeal to the US Supreme Court. Aljazeera’s Mike Hanna reports.
Published On 7 Aug 2026
Gold has rallied 28% over the past year from $3,400 to $4,330, outperforming digital rival $BTC by over 70 percentage points.
Over the same time period, $BTC has suffered an embarrassing 44% decline from $117,000 to $65,000.
In fact, across the past three years, owning so-called “digital gold” instead of the real thing would have returned a couple fewer percentage points despite 36 months of patience.
$BTC has crashed off a financial peak, not just a psychological one. It hit an all-time high near $126,200 on October 6, 2025 but has since declined 48%.
Gold achieved its own record shortly after. Spot prices surged to $5,589 per ounce on January 28, 2026, a nominal high that also sat well above the metal’s inflation-adjusted 1980 peak.
The precious metal has since pulled back from that spike, but it never came close to giving up its year-over-year gain. $BTC, in stark contrast, halved.
Evangelists have spent a decade comparing $BTC to a global store of value. Its performance over the past few years has certainly stalled that pitch.
The comparison is nowhere close to a financial reality over the past year. Indeed, a dollar saved in gold a year ago is worth about $1.28 today. A dollar saved in $BTC is worth about $0.55.
The metal $BTC was supposed to dethrone maintained its strength.
Bitcoin dropped to $0.019 on Revolut today
Michael Burry wrote in February, “$BTC has been exposed as a purely speculative asset, and is not near the debasement trade hedge that gold and other precious metals are.”
$BTC traded near $77,000 that day, already down sharply from its October peak, and it’s fallen another 16% since.
Central banks didn’t sit the trade out. They added 863 tonnes of gold to sovereign reserves in 2025, a historically elevated total albeit a slower pace than the prior year.
None of those purchases flowed into $BTC, whose loudest institutional champions had long argued central banks would eventually buy it in the same way.
Gold ETF investors reversed course too. Holdings swung from a small net outflow in 2024 to inflows of more than 800 tonnes in 2025, per the World Gold Council.
Crypto investors used to celebrate that type of demand shift when capital rotated into $BTC ETFs, not gold ETFs.
While gold sat in vaults and preserved its value, the $BTC community fractured. Michael Saylor’s Strategy sold $BTC for the first time since 2022 while critics of Bitcoin Core v30 proposed a hard fork of the blockchain and a proof-of-work change.
Coldcard, the most popular $BTC-only hardware wallet, experienced a catastrophic bug.
Coldcard co-founder is deleting X posts as losses top $130M
As usual, there are two sides to every story. $BTC has had shorter stretches and prior time periods when it outpaced its rival. Certainly since its formative years in the 2010s, $BTC has far outperformed gold.
Nevertheless, over the past 12 and 36 months that matter most to anyone who bought either asset recently, gold hasn’t just beaten $BTC but trounced it by 70 percentage points.
“Digital gold” now describes what $BTC was supposed to be, not what it actually accomplished.
Prolific filmmaker Werner Herzog will receive the San Sebastián Film Festival’s prestigious Donostia Award during its 74th edition in September.
The German director will be honored at the Spanish festival’s opening gala and will screen his latest film “Bucking Fastard,” following its world premiere at Venice Film Festival.
“Over a career spanning six decades, Werner Herzog has become one of the most influential figures in contemporary cinema, building an extraordinary body of work ―around 80 films― shaped by obsession, extreme situations and the contradictions of human nature,” San Sebastián Film Festival said in a statement. “His films, both fiction and non-fiction, are populated by dreamers and conquerors confronted with extreme landscapes and forces beyond their control. Guided by his concept of ‘Ecstatic Truth,’ Herzog advocates a cinema that transcends the mere observation of facts to reveal a deeper, more poetic dimension of reality.”
Regarded as a pioneer of New German Cinema, Herzog’s credits include “Aguirre, the Wrath of God” (1972), “Fitzcarraldo” (1982), “Grizzly Man” (2005) and “Cave of Forgotten Dreams” (2010). He was nominated for a best documentary Oscar in 2008 for “Encounters at the End of the World” and has won prizes at the Cannes, Berlin and Venice film festivals.
Starring sisters Rooney and Kate Mara, “Bucking Fastard” tells the “unusual story of twins whose extraordinary bond leads them to speak in unison, love the same man and share the same dreams,” according to its official synopsis.
The San Sebastián Film Festival will take place from Sept. 18 to 26.
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Luca Guadagnino will receive the Cartier Glory to the Filmmaker Award at this year’s Venice Film Festival.
The Italian director, who is premiering his seven-hour Bernardo Bertolucci documentary “Joie de Vivre” at this year’s festival, is being honored as “a personality who has made a particularly original contribution to the contemporary film industry,” according to a press release. Guadagnino will be presented the award in a ceremony on Sept. 8 before the premiere of “Joie de Vivre.”
“It might seem like a rhetorical gesture to say I am honored to receive the Glory to the Filmmaker award, but it is the plain truth for many reasons,” Guadagnino said in a statement. “To be honored for one’s craft or life as a filmmaker is an ambition that no one who makes films could ever presume to imagine achieving — especially by joining a group of filmmakers who have received this prestigious honor before me and to whom I owe so much of my development. So, I want to emphasize once again what an honor it is to receive this award, especially from Alberto Barbera and La Biennale di Venezia. Thank you, thank you!”
Added Barbera: “The Glory to the Filmmaker Award celebrates in Luca Guadagnino an author who has managed to transform his curiosity into a form of creative freedom. Defying alignment with any single school or movement, he has established himself as a global director, capable of working with leading international actors and producers. He has navigated diverse genres — from melodrama to horror, coming-of-age to psychological thriller — while maintaining a consistent and recognizable voice, without ever losing a deeply Italian identity in portraying bodies, settings and history. His is a vital cinema that does not shy away from risk: nomadic, sensual, sophisticated yet widely accessible, where intellectual provocation and emotion, memory and modernity coexist brilliantly. Glory to the Filmmaker honors the originality of a vision that has succeeded in renewing the language of contemporary cinema, celebrating a career that has brought Italian auteurship into a true dialogue with the entire world.”
Guadagnino is no stranger to Venice Film Festival, and most recently presented his film “After the Hunt,” starring Julia Roberts and Andrew Garfield, at last year’s edition. His other credits include “Challengers,” “Bones and All” and “Call Me by Your Name,” and he recently wrapped “Artificial,” a drama about OpenAI founder Sam Altman (played by Garfield) that was dropped by Amazon MGM after they struck a deal with the tech company. The film was then picked up by Neon, which is planning a campaign for the upcoming awards season.
OKX has scheduled the removal of six GODS, PRCL and DUCK spot trading pairs while suspending deposits for the affected tokens from Aug. 7 and setting Nov. 7 as the withdrawal deadline.
According to an OKX announcement, the exchange will remove three margin-settled spot pairs GODS/USD, PRCL/USD, and DUCK/USD, between 16:00 and 18:00 UTC on Aug. 14. Three additional spot pairs quoted in $USDT and EUR will follow three days later, with GODS/$USDT, PRCL/$USDT and DUCK/$USDT scheduled for delisting during the same two-hour window on Aug. 17.
The exchange has also introduced a phased timeline for the affected assets. Deposits for GODS, PRCL and DUCK stopped at 16:00 UTC on Aug. 7, while withdrawals for the three tokens will remain available until 16:00 UTC on Nov. 7.
Rather than removing all markets at once, the exchange has divided the delisting into two stages.
On Aug. 14, users will lose access to GODS/USD, PRCL/USD and DUCK/USD trading pairs. Three days later, OKX will remove GODS/$USDT, PRCL/$USDT and PRCL/EUR alongside DUCK/$USDT, completing the process for all six spot markets listed in the notice.
At the same time, the exchange has already halted deposits for the related assets, preventing users from transferring additional GODS, PRCL or DUCK tokens onto the platform. Withdrawals remain available for another three months before closing in November, giving holders additional time to move their assets elsewhere.
The announcement did not state the reason for removing the trading pairs.
The published timetable separates trading, deposits and withdrawals into different stages.
Deposit services for the affected cryptocurrencies ended first on Aug. 7. Trading activity will continue until the scheduled delisting windows in mid-August, after which the listed spot pairs will no longer be available.
Withdrawal support, however, will continue until Nov. 7, providing a longer period for customers who still hold the affected tokens after trading ends.
Crypto exchanges commonly separate delisting from withdrawal deadlines, allowing users to transfer assets after markets have been removed. In this case, OKX has provided nearly three months between the end of deposits and the final withdrawal cutoff.
The latest asset removals come during a period of operational updates across several regions.
Earlier in July, Digital Asset reported that the OKX Android application had returned to South Korea’s Google Play Store after a four-day suspension, making it the first recently restricted overseas crypto exchange to regain access on the platform. The restoration followed Google’s temporary removal of the app, while exchanges such as Bybit remained unavailable in the Korean Play Store.
Digital Asset had previously found that dozens of overseas exchange applications became inaccessible on Google Play as South Korea tightened oversight of overseas virtual asset service providers operating without local registration.
Although some exchanges had been identified by the country’s Financial Intelligence Unit as unreported VASPs, the publication reported that Google’s restrictions also affected several platforms that were not included on the FIU’s published enforcement list.
Outside South Korea, OKX has continued expanding regulated services in Europe. In July, the exchange launched a one-way $USDT-to-$USDC conversion service for eligible customers across 30 European Union and European Economic Area countries operating under its Markets in Crypto-Assets license.
The service allows users to deposit $USDT and voluntarily convert their holdings into MiCA-compliant $USDC as European exchanges reduce support for Tether’s stablecoin following the regulation’s implementation.
Operational changes have coincided with new corporate developments at the exchange.
Last month, OKX appointed former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to its board of directors after he had advised the company on U.S. regulatory and institutional strategy since 2023. According to the company, the appointment formalized an existing relationship as OKX continued expanding its U.S. operations following the relaunch of its U.S. exchange and self-custody wallet in 2025.
The company has also continued working with Intercontinental Exchange through a planned joint venture focused on blockchain-based financial products. According to OKX, Cuomo will remain co-chair of the initiative, which is intended to combine ICE’s market infrastructure with the exchange’s blockchain technology, subject to regulatory approvals.
Starz saw total revenue slide again in the second quarter of 2026 — but the media company reported its first year-over-year growth in streaming revenue in 18 months. Company execs believe the business is turning around, and they’ve raised their outlook for adjusted OIBDA (operating income before depreciation and amortization) growth for full-year 2026 from low single-digits to mid single-digits.
Total revenue in the second quarter was $307.9 million, down 4% year over year. OTT revenue as reported was $221.3 million, up ever so slightly from $221.1 million in the year-earlier period. However, Starz said, streaming revenue would have increased 1.4% in the June 2026 quarter excluding $3 million of OTT revenue related to Canadian operations that was recorded in Q2 2025. (Starz transitioned its Canadian operations from a distribution partnership with Bell to a content-licensing model at the end of 2025.)
Net loss ballooned to $189.4 million, compared with a loss of $42.5 million in Q2 2025. Starz reported an operating loss of $175.5 million (vs. $26.9 million a year earlier).
Taking a big bite out of Starz’s earnings: The company took a restructuring charge of $147 million in the second quarter of 2026 in association with the termination of its pay-2 film output agreement with Universal Pictures in April. The wind-down of the Universal deal was previously announced by Starz president and CEO Jeff Hirsch, who cited “lower viewership than we originally projected.” In prepared remarks Friday, Starz CFO Scott Macdonald said, “We continue to expect this to be the final content restructuring charge of this magnitude going forward, which sets the company up for meaningfully lower restructuring activity from here.” Given the timing of Starz’s final cash payments to Universal in 2028, Macdonald said, “we believe 2029 is shaping up to be a significant year for free cash flow growth relative to the trajectory we see across 2026 through 2028.”
In Q2, Starz’s stop-performing titles were the finale of “Outlander”; the premiere of “Power Book III: Raising Kanan” Season 5 (pictured above); and “The Housemaid,” Lionsgate’s psychological thriller starring Amanda Seyfried and Sydney Sweeney, which debuted April 1 on Starz.
In prepared remarks, Hirsch said “Raising Kanan” Season 5 grew its audience from the first season five years ago, “a rare achievement in today’s television landscape.” In addition, he said, the July 31 premiere of “Fightland,” the boxing crime drama series produced by 50 Cent, was Starz’s No. 2 best-rated original IP launch of all time (after the Season 1 premiere of “BMF” in 2021).
“Our second-quarter results reflect the momentum we are building across the business and the strength of our content portfolio,” Hirsch said in a statement. “We delivered another quarter of strong audience engagement and OTT revenue growth, and the success of the ‘Fightland’ premiere validates our ownership strategy.”
Hirsch said the company’s improved visibility into the second half of the year and the early performance of “Fightland” have served to “increase our confidence that 2026 is shaping up to be a more significant inflection year for Starz than we initially anticipated.”
During the second quarter, Starz launched a new partnership with NBCUniversal’s Peacock that makes Starz available as an add-on subscription to the platform for the first time. And last week, Starz announced a new discounted bundle with Crunchyroll on Prime Video.
Upcoming programming coming to Starz includes the return of “P-Valley,” the continued expansion of the “Outlander” universe through “Blood of My Blood” Season 2, and the upcoming biopic “Michael” following its record-breaking theatrical run. Further out, Hirsch said, “we continue to build our owned content pipeline beyond ‘Fightland’ with the ‘Untitled Black Rodeo Show,’” which is starting production this month. and several other Starz-owned projects in development.
Adjusted OIBDA was $60 million for the quarter, ahead of Starz’s expectations and up from $33.4 million in the year-ago period. The company expects Q3 adjusted OIBDA to be in the mid-$30 million range. That “will be our lowest quarter of the year due to higher programming amortization” from the airing of “Raising Kanan” S5, “Fightland” S1 and “Blood of My Blood” S2 all during Q3, according to Macdonald. Starz expects Q4 to “finish the year strongly in the mid-60s.” As such, the company is raising 2026 adjusted OIBDA growth guidance from low single-digits to mid single digits, “and we remain confident in achieving our 20% adjusted OIBDA margin target in the back half of 2027,” the CFO said.
In the second quarter, Starz’s unlevered free cash flow was negative $15 million and equity free cash flow was negative $33 million “given the timing of content payments,” Macdonald said. Free cash flow still came in ahead of expectations, he added.
Cash content spend was $182 million for the second quarter. With the exit of the Universal agreement, Starz expects to report full-year 2026 cash content spend below $600 million.
Net debt was $566 million as of June 30, 2026, and adjusted OIBDA leverage ratio was 2.9 times. Starz has obtained commitments to increase its credit facilities by $100 million, comprised of a $67 million increase to its Term Loan A and a $33 million increase to its revolving credit. Even after incorporating the additional $67 million of debt, Starz continues to expect to end 2026 with adjusted OIBDA leverage of approximately 2.7 times.
Upbit and Bithumb, two leading cryptocurrency exchanges in South Korea, have announced differing decisions regarding the popular meme coin Bonk ($BONK). Upbit announced it will end support for $BONK trading on its platform, while Bithumb announced it has removed the token from its delist watchlist.
According to an announcement by Upbit, $BONK will be delisted from the exchange on September 7th at 09:00. Following this decision, users will need to follow the processes related to $BONK transactions and asset transfers. Delisting means that the trading pairs for the cryptocurrency are removed from the platform, and users will no longer be able to trade with that asset.
Cryptocurrency exchanges in South Korea regularly evaluate the digital assets they list based on specific criteria. Factors such as trading volume, liquidity, project activity, investor protection, technical developments, and market conditions can influence listing and delisting decisions.
On the other hand, Bithumb took a more positive step regarding $BONK, unlike Upbit. The exchange announced that it had removed $BONK from its delisted watchlist. This marks a step towards ending the trading warning previously applied to $BONK on Bithumb.
The fact that two major South Korean exchanges made different decisions about the same asset reveals that cryptocurrency projects are evaluated individually by exchanges. A delisting decision by one exchange does not automatically mean that the token will be removed from other platforms.
$BONK, as one of the leading meme coins in the Solana ecosystem, particularly attracts the attention of individual investors. Since meme coins generally exhibit high volatility in price movements, listing or delisting decisions on major exchanges can have significant effects on token price and trading volume.
As Upbit’s delisting decision on September 7th approaches, market participants are expected to closely monitor $BONK’s trading status on other South Korean exchanges and any potential new announcements. Bithumb’s decision to remove it from its watchlist indicates that the token’s current trading support on that platform continues.
*This is not investment advice.
The U.S. Senate’s decision to postpone a vote on the Clarity Act until September has drawn a measured response from the Crypto Council for Innovation (CCI), with CEO Ji Kim emphasizing that the setback will not derail the industry’s push for clearer regulations. The delay, first reported by The Block, marks a procedural hurdle but not a change in the broader legislative trajectory, according to Kim.
The Clarity Act, formally known as the Clarity for Digital Assets Act, seeks to define which federal agency—the SEC or the CFTC—has jurisdiction over digital assets, a long-standing ambiguity that has created compliance headaches for crypto firms. The bill’s proponents argue that clear rules would foster innovation while protecting consumers, and its progress is closely watched by industry stakeholders. The Senate’s decision to push the vote to September reflects the crowded legislative calendar, but Kim stressed that the CCI’s advocacy efforts remain active.
Kim’s statement, “our efforts will not stop here,” underscores the crypto industry’s resilience in the face of legislative delays. The CCI, which represents major players like Coinbase and Circle, has been a vocal advocate for tailored regulation. While the delay is disappointing, it does not signal a loss of momentum; rather, it provides additional time for lawmakers to refine the bill and for industry stakeholders to engage in further dialogue. The postponement also comes amid broader global discussions on crypto regulation, with the European Union’s MiCA framework serving as a comparative model.
Regulatory clarity is critical for institutional adoption and mainstream confidence. The ongoing uncertainty has led some firms to relocate or pause operations, and each delay extends that period of ambiguity. However, the fact that the bill is still on the legislative agenda indicates bipartisan interest in addressing the issue. For everyday users and investors, the outcome of the Clarity Act could influence everything from trading platforms to tax reporting requirements.
The Clarity Act’s postponement to September is a tactical delay, not a strategic defeat. Ji Kim’s reaffirmation of the Crypto Council for Innovation’s commitment signals that industry efforts will persist, with the goal of achieving a regulatory framework that supports innovation while ensuring consumer protection. As the legislative process moves forward, stakeholders will be watching closely for any amendments or new developments that could shape the final outcome.
Q1: What is the Clarity Act?
The Clarity Act is a proposed U.S. law designed to clarify whether the SEC or the CFTC has regulatory authority over digital assets, aiming to reduce uncertainty for crypto businesses and investors.
Q2: Why was the vote delayed?
The Senate postponed the vote to September, likely due to a crowded legislative calendar and the need for further deliberation, though the exact reasons were not specified in the initial reports.
Q3: How does the delay affect the crypto industry?
The delay extends the period of regulatory uncertainty, but industry leaders like the CCI remain committed to pushing for clear rules, and the postponement provides more time for advocacy and refinement of the bill.
Six women roam the neon-lit city of Paris after dark. Over the course of a single night, their journeys intertwine reality, dreams and fiction. Whether at bus stops or corner shops, in restrooms or in bars, they give voice to their dreams, sexual desires and uncertainties about the future. Welcome to British filmmaker and artist Beatrice Gibson’s full-length feature debut, an experimental and “autofictional” film called, simply, At Night.
The movie will world premiere at the Locarno Film Festival on Saturday, Aug. 8, in the Filmmakers of the Present competition program of the Swiss fest’s 79th edition, which runs Aug. 5-15.
Written and directed by Gibson, At Night features cinematography by her long-time collaborator Ben Rivers and editing by Liyo Gong. The film is produced by Somesuch and Norte Productions.
“A filmmaker struggles to understand the film she is making,” a synopsis says about the women we meet in At Night. “A Black single mother refuses the categories imposed on her. A former sex worker reflects on her past. A poet gives up trying for a child.”
The film features an array of Gibson’s non-professional actor friends and influences as they discuss and explore such topics as sexuality, money, motherhood and mental health. “This isn’t simply a feminist story, but a love letter to friendships, relationships, and the quiet yet poignant stories women share together but rarely to an audience,” the press notes highlight.
A thread that runs through the movie is poetry, with U.S. poet Alice Notley reciting one of her own poems for the film, recorded just months before her death in 2025. Inspired by her writings and the texts of such other cult literary figures as June Jordan and Kathy Acker, Gibson takes us on nocturnal searches for answers.
‘At Night,’ courtesy of Night Films
Courtesy of Night Films Ltd.
“I was interested in the structure of the journey, of a woman just walking through the night,” explains Gibson. The idea for At Night came to her after she read two feminist takes on the epic quest narrative, namely Notley’s book-length poem, The Descent of Alette (1992) and Acker’s gender-flipped knight’s tale, Don Quixote, Which Was a Dream (1986).
But scenes and narratives also emerged from the creative’s thinking about the kinds of encounters and conversations that can only take place at night. “Who really occupies the night? And what kinds of labor take place there?” she wondered. That is why At Night also features “undervalued work done by those who keep the city fed, clean, and moving,” according to the press notes.
“My casting process is one I’ve developed over time and is folded into the writing process. I don’t follow the traditional structure in which I’m writing and then casting,” Gibson explains. Instead, she casts her characters first, thinking about who might produce an interesting performance, and then collaborates with them to develop the material.
“It’s a collectively written film, in many ways,” Gibson emphasizes. “People write their own material for their scenes, depending on what they want to develop.” She concludes: “It’s autofiction really, so generating that material is a delicate and sensitive process, and it takes a lot of time and revision. People need to feel comfortable with what they’ve authored, where it’s placed and with whom it’s in dialogue. It’s quite a deep process.”
No surprise then that it took six years to make At Night.
As with all of Gibson’s work, the film emphasizes a working process that is collaborative and improvisatory. “I’m utopian at heart,” Gibson says. “I wanted to make a film about trying to be together at a time when everyone is divided. Maybe it was a naive and misguided thing to do, although, that said, I would do it again.”
That theme of being together also applies to Gibson appearing in front of the camera in At Night. As for her decision to do so, she says she felt a responsibility to delve into her own sense of privilege: “I didn’t realize the extent to which race and class would play out during the process. That’s why I’m in the film,” she explains. “I wasn’t supposed to be initially, but I felt I had to take responsibility somehow, in relation to my positionality. I come from a deeper place of privilege than most of the characters in the film; there was critical tension in that, and I felt like I had to take responsibility for it and explore it.”
The relationships and shared thoughts, as well as the sights, sounds and rhythm of the film, are what At Night is really all about. You can watch an exclusive clip for the film, which THR can premiere, right here: