expansion

Future Asset Securities analyst Kim Young-gun stated that the expansion of Samsung Electronics' HBM shipments for AI applications is expected to offset the impact of the slowdown in growth of general-purpose memory chips next year. It is anticipated that Samsung Electronics' HBM shipment capacity and average selling price will soar by 57% and 49% respectively by 2027, expected to surpass the projected growth rates of 16% and 20% for general-purpose memory chips.Future Asset expects Samsung's earnings to be weighed down by the strengthening of the Korean won against the US dollar, but overall, it will remain robust. The agency has lowered its operating profit forecast for Samsung in 2026 by 5.7% to 370.057 trillion won and reduced it by 4.2% to 535.682 trillion won for 2027.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Micron, and other companies are increasing capital expenditures to expand production, driving the combined orders of the top five semiconductor engineering firms—HanTang, Axiom, FanXuan, Yankee, and ShengHui—to exceed 880 billion yuan, a record high. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company recently stated at a semiconductor exhibition that it is building up to 20 wafer fabs, with the overall capacity expansion scale increasing multiple times compared to the past, but it still cannot meet customer demand. The U.S. tariff policy has driven the demand for manufacturing plants in the United States. Axiom has the largest order amount of 440.73 billion yuan, and Chairman Yao ZuXiang pointed out that the cumulative amount of turnkey projects undertaken in Singapore over the past four years has reached 600 billion yuan, with expectations for new projects to follow. HanTang's order amount is approximately 193.937 billion yuan, setting a new record, benefiting from continued plant construction by major clients like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company and Micron.FanXuan's order amount reached a new high of 135.1 billion yuan, and Chairman Gao XinMing revealed that order visibility extends at least to 2028, with related projects for clients planned for 2029 and 2030. FanXuan has deployed materials, manpower, and local construction teams to support clients in Taiwan, Arizona in the United States, Japan, and Germany in synchronizing production expansion needs, and is investing in the development of technologies such as CoPoS. ShengHui's order amount exceeds 60 billion yuan, with Taiwan accounting for 68% and semiconductor orders accounting for 63%. In the first half of the year, the after-tax net profit was 2.944 billion yuan, with earnings per share of 23.73 yuan, setting a new high for the same period. Yankee's after-tax net profit in the first half of the year was 2.317 billion yuan, with earnings per share of 17.46 yuan, and the order amount is approximately 51.77 billion yuan, with order visibility reaching the end of 2027.

According to the Chosun Ilbo report on September 7, SK Hynix is accelerating the increase of the production share of 10-nanometer sixth-generation (1c) DRAM. Industry data shows that its 1c DRAM share rose from about 10% in the first quarter of this year to about 13% in the second quarter, and is expected to reach about 24% in the third quarter and about 34% in the fourth quarter; it may rise to about 35% in the first quarter of next year, surpassing 1b (about 33%) for the first time and becoming the main process. The share of 1b (10-nanometer fifth-generation) DRAM peaked at about 43% in the second quarter of this year and has since begun to decline.By the end of the second quarter, Samsung Electronics had a 1c share of about 16% and Micron about 19%, both higher than SK Hynix's approximately 13%. Reports indicate that SK Hynix is accelerating the transition in the second half of the year, and in the fourth quarter, it may exceed Samsung Electronics' approximately 31% with about 34%. SK Hynix stated in its second-quarter earnings call that the supply of DRAM using the 1c process will substantially begin from the second quarter, and in the second half of the year, with the ramp-up of HBM4 and increased shipments of 1c general DRAM, the bit growth rate will be higher than in the first half.Samsung Electronics will use 1c DRAM starting with HBM4, with a running speed of about 11.7Gbps; SK Hynix previously prioritized ensuring mass production stability with verified 1b DRAM and advanced MR-MUF packaging, and will use 1c DRAM for the first time as the core chip for HBM starting with the next generation HBM4E. Counterpoint Research and others estimate that this year, the market share of HBM4 under the combined metrics of Nvidia, Google, and AMD is approximately 50% for SK Hynix in the mid-range, 20% for Samsung Electronics in the later range, and 10% for Micron in the later range.

Vitalik posted on the X platform, stating that recent research on transaction formats has led to a clearer understanding of "actions" and "dependencies" in Ethereum transactions, both of which can be optimized separately; signatures, UTXO's Merkle proofs, and ZK-SNARK or STARK belong to dependencies, while the call to send ETH belongs to actions.Dependencies can be processed in parallel, with state-related dependencies handled by the memory pool, while pure dependencies can be processed once at the memory pool layer and may be replaced by STARK proofs, thereby reducing execution and data processing. Vitalik pointed out that Ethereum's current scaling strategy needs to clearly distinguish between dynamic flexibility and static analyzability, with the latter achieving lower Gas costs; based on transaction volume, over 90% of Ethereum activities do not require dynamic flexibility. The EIP-8141 transaction type is developing towards a universal and minimalist call list, with new state types, recursive STARK memory pools, and key-controlled nonces also belonging to this direction.

Arthur Hayes stated that investors should be prepared to buy Bitcoin and expect it to perform well in the coming years. He believes that if the U.S. continues to expand its money supply, the price of Bitcoin could eventually rise to $250,000. Bitcoin has risen about 20% since mid-August, increasing its total market capitalization by $300 billion in just a few hours.Scott Bessent had previously committed to supporting the bond market, and this week the Treasury is reported to potentially tap nearly $1 trillion from the Treasury General Account to fund bond purchases. Xapo Bank investment manager Gadi Chait noted that Bitcoin rose about 23% last week, marking the largest weekly gain since March 2023; during the same period, net inflows into U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs were approximately $1.9 billion, with record short liquidations further driving the upward trend.

According to The Block, research and brokerage firm Bernstein stated that Bitcoin mining company IREN plans to invest $25 billion to $30 billion to expand its AI cloud business in fiscal year 2027. This scale of capital expenditure may "scare the market," but analysts believe investors are overlooking the improving economic benefits.Bernstein analyst Gautam Chhugani pointed out in a report to clients on Friday that the payback period for GPU capital expenditures has shortened from about three years under the 2025 Microsoft contract to about two years. IREN's fiscal year 2026 performance released on Thursday showed that AI cloud service revenue grew nearly eightfold from $16.4 million the previous year to $128.8 million, while Bitcoin mining revenue reached $578.2 million, a year-on-year increase of 19%. Total revenue rose from $501 million to $707 million, but the company recorded a net loss of $702.6 million, partly reflecting a $638.8 million impairment due to the retirement of Bitcoin mining hardware to support AI cloud expansion.Bernstein stated that IREN currently has an annualized run rate revenue of $1 billion from operating cloud and $4 billion in contract revenue, with its 2026 capacity nearly sold out. In addition to the expected $700 million related to the Nvidia contract in 2027, IREN's total contract cloud ARR amounts to $4.7 billion. Over the past 12 months, IREN has raised $19 billion through customer prepayments, GPU financing, convertible bonds, and equity issuance.

According to Bitcoin.com, Strategy (MSTR) Executive Chairman Michael Saylor proposed the concept of "Bitcoin Reform" in a published article, advocating that Bitcoin should break free from the dogmatic understanding of early concepts such as Satoshi Nakamoto, the white paper, and "must self-custody," and further integrate into banks, exchanges, enterprises, securities markets, and government systems.Saylor stated that self-custody remains an important right for holders to freely exit the intermediary system, but it should not be a mandatory obligation for everyone; users can also evaluate institutional services based on dimensions such as custodial isolation, collateral, audits, insurance, and withdrawal rights. He believes that Bitcoin has gradually evolved from peer-to-peer electronic cash and "digital gold" into "digital capital" that can support credit, equity, currency, and machine economies.

Amazon and NVIDIA announced that Amazon will deploy approximately 2 million high-end NVIDIA chips in 2027 and 2028 for training and running artificial intelligence models. Additionally, Amazon stated in March this year that it would install 1 million NVIDIA chips in AWS data centers. The chips involved in this transaction include Blackwell Ultra, Rubin, and Rubin Ultra graphics cards.

The Barclays strategy team stated that the rapidly expanding AI infrastructure is triggering a backlash among bipartisan voters in the United States, which could pose political risks to the currently popular AI trades.The construction of data centers has made AI a cost of living issue, and voters are dissatisfied with rising electricity costs. Barclays warns investors that AI trades lack new upward catalysts, and related stocks may face policy pressure.

Web3 fitness application BRTFit announced that it is preparing for significant expansion in the Southeast Asia region and reiterated the arrangement for the distribution of 1 million BRT genesis airdrops. The final weighting will be 50% tBRT snapshot and 50% valid invited users. The genesis airdrop is not only aimed at early users; new joiners can also improve their ranking by staying active, exercising continuously, and inviting real users.Regarding the testnet rules, according to the latest iOS application version, if users stop exercising and do not meet the specified activity conditions, the testnet mechanism may deduct 10% of their total tBRT holdings. BRTFit calls on users to exercise more, invite more, and stay active to compete for shares of the genesis airdrop, and it states that the Southeast Asian market is coming soon.BRTFit is an application based on the BNB Chain's Move to Earn and DePIN direction, combining exercise data with token incentives, allowing users to join the ecosystem by searching for relevant entry points.

According to Fortune, Bitcoin surged significantly this week, breaking through the previous range of $62,000 to $67,000 that lasted for several weeks, and rising above $77,000 on Friday. The important turning point in the market occurred after the U.S. Treasury announced an expansion of its long-term Treasury bond repurchase program, leading to a decline in long-term U.S. Treasury yields and the dollar, while alternative assets like Bitcoin and gold strengthened simultaneously.The U.S. Treasury stated that it would at least double the scale of long-term Treasury bond repurchases to alleviate the ongoing selling pressure in the bond market. Meanwhile, the total amount of U.S. Treasury debt surpassed $40 trillion, combined with inflation and energy price pressures, raising concerns in the market about the purchasing power of the dollar and long-term fiscal conditions. Funds began to flow into the so-called "debasement trade," with Bitcoin accumulating a rise of over 20% this week.Previously, many traders bet that BTC would continue to be constrained around $67,000, but after the Treasury's actions pushed yields and the dollar down, Bitcoin broke through that price level, forcing short sellers to cover. Since covering positions requires buying BTC, this further drove up the price and triggered more liquidations. According to CoinGlass data, over $4 billion in cryptocurrency short positions have been liquidated during this rally as of Friday.Additionally, Trump urged Congress to advance the CLARITY Act at a cryptocurrency conference held at the White House this week. CFTC Chairman Mike Selig subsequently stated that he would use existing authority to promote the government's cryptocurrency policy agenda, which also provided a policy-level catalyst for this market rally.

According to the Industrial and Commercial Times, driven by the long-term growth in demand for memory and advanced packaging due to AI, Winbond Electronics has proactively initiated expansion plans for its Kaohsiung Luzhu plant, merging the originally planned phases two and three into Module B for simultaneous development. Construction of the cleanroom is expected to start in 2027, with equipment installation beginning as early as the beginning of 2029, and equipment will be phased in according to customer demand forecasts and LTA. Currently, there are already customers negotiating for capacity in 2029 and 2030.Industry sources indicate that Winbond's niche DRAM and SLC NAND are in short supply in the third quarter, with a quarterly price increase estimated at about 50%; NOR Flash benefits from large cloud service provider customers stocking up, with a quarterly price increase estimated at about 30%. The price increase for memory in the fourth quarter is expected to converge to 2% to 5%, but thanks to increased DRAM capacity and growing shipment volumes, revenue and profits can still maintain a quarterly increase. Winbond's consolidated revenue in the second quarter was NT$59.843 billion, a quarterly increase of 56.4% and a year-on-year increase of 184.7%. DRAM prices increased by about 100% quarter-on-quarter, while Flash rose by about 43%, with consolidated gross margin rising to 66.2% and after-tax earnings per share of NT$5.40.The Module B product plan includes Standard DRAM, CUBE DRAM, Wafer-on-Wafer (WoW), and silicon capacitors (Si-Cap), which will support 14-nanometer and future 12-nanometer DRAM processes, with plans to introduce EUV equipment in the future.

According to the Dong-A Ilbo, Samsung Electronics plans to expand the core project of the P5 1·2 factory (Fab 5·6) in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province, from a dual-layer wafer factory to a three-layer wafer factory to respond to the global artificial intelligence semiconductor and memory supercycle and maximize production capacity. Samsung Electronics has recently submitted a plan to change the industrial park, proposing to increase the floor area ratio from 350% to a maximum of 490%. This change must be reviewed by the Gyeonggi Province governor and approved by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport's industrial site policy review committee before it can be finalized.The Pyeongtaek P5 1·2 factory is the largest semiconductor factory in the world under a single standard, which began construction in 2022 and aims to be completed by 2030. It will produce high bandwidth memory (HBM), high-end DRAM, next-generation V-NAND, and advanced foundry products. The currently operational Pyeongtaek P4 uses a dual-layer structure with four clean rooms in a single building; if the change is approved, P5 will be configured with up to six clean rooms, and the number of clean rooms and production capacity is expected to increase by about 1.5 times. SK Hynix also plans to use a three-layer structure for all newly constructed wafer factories in the Yongin semiconductor cluster.Market research firm Counterpoint Research expects the global memory market size to increase from approximately 360 trillion won last year to 1,500 trillion won this year and 2,100 trillion won next year. In the context of increasingly difficult access to electricity, water, and land, increasing the floor area ratio to build three-layer wafer factories has become an important path to overcome the physical limitations of limited space and rely on the existing semiconductor industry ecosystem.

According to CoinDesk, as crude oil prices retreat, refined oil prices continue to rise, with the "crack spread" between U.S. diesel and crude oil reaching $102.2 per barrel, a record high.Due to disruptions in global energy supply from the Iran and Ukraine conflicts, diesel supply is tightening, and with the current agricultural harvest season, the demand for fuel for agricultural equipment such as tractors is strong, further pushing up diesel prices, which may transmit inflation through food, transportation, and heating costs.Meanwhile, WTI crude oil prices have broken through the downward trend line formed since the peak in April, indicating that the four-month downward trend may be coming to an end. If oil prices continue to rise, market inflation expectations may heat up again. The combination of energy prices and inflation risks, along with concerns about government debt, is driving up U.S. Treasury yields and the yields of other developed economy bonds, increasing the opportunity cost of holding risk assets like Bitcoin, which may limit further upside for BTC.However, the weakening dollar still provides some support for Bitcoin. The dollar index fell to 99.29 on Monday, a two-and-a-half-month low, and broke below the previous upward trend line. Currently, Bitcoin is being influenced by multiple factors including oil prices, bond yields, and dollar trends, with the macro environment showing clear divergence.

According to ChainCatcher information, in a recent LinkedIn post by Gate Europe CEO Dr. Giovanni Cunti, as digital assets, online banking, digital payments, and tokenized financial products continue to develop, digital identity is gradually becoming the core infrastructure connecting users with financial products and services, moving away from traditional compliance processes such as KYC and risk assessment. In the face of users' dual demands for efficient access to financial services and the security of personal information, the industry needs to enhance service efficiency while also considering security, privacy, and trust. The next generation of identity infrastructure should go beyond a single verification function, incorporating security, privacy, compliance, and user experience into a unified framework. This can reduce unnecessary operational costs, such as redundant information submissions, through reliable identity verification, while also enhancing transparency and protection regarding the collection, storage, and use of personal data.Dr. Giovanni Cunti further pointed out that regulatory standards are also the cornerstone of building a digital financial trust system. For digital asset platforms, as business expands from cryptocurrency trading to stablecoins, tokenized assets, payments, and multi-asset financial solutions, the importance of trustworthy infrastructure continues to rise. Gate Europe has completed the dual licensing layout of MiCA and PI under the regulation of the Malta Financial Services Authority (MFSA) and emphasizes that secure access, robust compliance processes, and responsible handling of user information are key conditions for promoting the long-term development of financial services. Digital identity is becoming an important part of the financial ecosystem, and Gate Europe will continue to explore more possibilities in diverse financial scenarios, bringing users a more convenient and reliable digital financial service experience, and helping accelerate the integration of global financial markets.

According to Bloomberg, Singapore hedge fund Dymon Asia Capital has received approximately $1 billion in tranches from the Abu Dhabi Investment Council (ADIC) for expansion into markets from London to Hong Kong. Dymon’s assets under management have increased to about $9 billion as of July, far exceeding the previous expectation of $5 billion by the end of 2026, with its multi-strategy fund yielding about 7.5% this year.Dymon is focusing on expanding its commodities and London team, bringing in Amir Ravan from Jain Global as head of commodities, Jay Radia from BlueCrest as chief operating officer of commodities, and recruiting former Schonfeld macro trader Manas Baveja in London. ADIC is systematically increasing its allocation to global hedge funds, planning to raise its related exposure to about $15 billion.

IREN Co-Founder and Co-CEO Daniel Roberts stated that each new AI data center will further increase rather than decrease AI demand.Roberts believes that simply comparing the current AI infrastructure cycle to past technology booms is misleading. More powerful AI requires more computing power, and lower-cost AI will drive more users and applications to use AI.He pointed out that each leap in AI capabilities creates a large number of new application scenarios that did not exist before, so demand can grow rapidly at the pace of software development, but the supply of computing power cannot expand at the same speed.The construction of computing power infrastructure is limited by real-world conditions such as power access, transmission lines, concrete, steel, and construction personnel, making it difficult to quickly increase the speed of supply expansion.Roberts stated that in past technology boom cycles, technological advancements often helped the supply side catch up with demand, but the current AI technology itself is driving demand to grow exponentially, while the speed of infrastructure construction in the real world struggles to keep up.

According to Bloomberg, EdgeConneX Inc., a data center operator supported by EQT, is seeking banks to provide a power cost guarantee of up to $2.5 billion to support its global data center expansion plans.EdgeConneX is negotiating a letter of credit financing arrangement with several banks, including France's Natixis and Spain's BBVA. This arrangement will help the company lock in power supply costs for its data center projects.With the rapid growth in demand for artificial intelligence training and inference, global data center construction has entered an accelerated phase, and operators are exploring new financing tools to cope with rising power procurement costs and infrastructure investment needs. EdgeConneX's request for bank support reflects that AI infrastructure companies are shifting from traditional real estate and equipment financing models to establishing new financing structures around energy supply, long-term power contracts, and other assets.In recent years, major cloud computing companies and AI infrastructure firms have increased their investments in data centers, while power supply has become a significant bottleneck constraining the expansion of AI computing power. Securing future power costs through bank credit support is becoming a new way for data center operators to obtain expansion funding.

On August 12, institutional digital asset lending technology provider Digital Prime Technologies announced a strategic investment from global institutional digital asset prime broker LTP. LTP will become its chief strategic partner in the Asia-Pacific region, helping the Tokenet platform expand institutional participation in the Asia-Pacific market.Tokenet is Digital Prime Technologies' institutional-grade digital asset and tokenized asset lending platform. Following this investment, LTP will work alongside previously joined EquiLend, Galaxy Digital, and Marex to promote the global institutional infrastructure development of Tokenet. LTP stated that it will leverage its network of institutional clients, prime brokerage capabilities, and financing expertise to accelerate the adoption of Tokenet among financial institutions in the Asia-Pacific region.

The issuer of the Japanese yen stablecoin, JPYC, announced the completion of its Series B expansion financing, raising approximately 6 billion yen in total. The company stated that the funds will primarily be used to expand the financial and Web3 ecosystem, accelerating the social application of the yen stablecoin "JPYC."