demand

South Korea plans to integrate five public power companies in October 2027 to accelerate investment and meet the energy demands brought about by the growth of the country's artificial intelligence and chip manufacturing industries.Seoul also plans to streamline public enterprises in the oil, gas, and port sectors.

Serenity posted a reminder that the fundamentals of storage shortages have not changed and may even become more acute. The market will shift from one bottleneck sector to another, but the companies themselves remain unchanged; what changes are the valuations and narratives. Serenity added several pieces of evidence suggesting that the storage supply-demand gap may be worse than the market expects: Nikkei reported that Japanese distributors claim the storage demand gap has reached 40% to 60%, and prices may rise by about 50% by the end of the year; SpaceX has not accounted for the approximately $1.3 trillion capital expenditure from ultra-large cloud providers, and total spending may exceed expectations; SanDisk's expected gross margin of 80% is expected to be maintained until 2030; and order visibility for companies like Samsung has extended to 2031.Serenity emphasized that storage stocks are highly volatile, with some of its positions showing unrealized gains of over 270%, making them easier to hold. However, the company's operational fundamentals and short-term stock prices often do not align. The same logic applies to other bottleneck areas such as optical modules, CW lasers, and substrates; after a rebound in stock prices, there is no need to assume that shortages have ended. Storage prices and supply-demand structures remain tight, and market sentiment and valuation narratives are rapidly rotating.

CryptoQuant analyst Zizcrypto stated that the Stablecoin Supply Ratio Oscillator (SSR Oscillator) 90-day reading quickly rose to the "strong stablecoin buying demand" zone, reaching 3.74 on August 21, close to the peak of about 4 expected in November 2024. Since then, the indicator has started to decline, while BTC is currently trading around $77,000.The rapid rebound of the stablecoin demand indicator coincided with a strong liquidity pulse that occurred earlier in the market. However, what is more concerning now is not the short-term spike itself, but whether this demand signal can be sustained. If the 90-day SSR Oscillator continues to decline and falls back below the "high" zone, the confirmation strength of this indicator regarding the sustained increase in stablecoin buying demand will weaken. Currently, this change appears more like a liquidity pulse rather than a formed persistent demand expansion cycle.The demand signals from the stablecoin side have indeed strengthened significantly recently, but the 90-day oscillation indicator has already started to cool down from its peak of 3.74. If it cannot maintain itself in the "high" zone, then whether this liquidity improvement can evolve into more lasting demand growth remains in question.

On September 2, TSMC Senior Vice President and Co-COO Dr. Wei-Chung Hou stated that the speed of change in AI demand far exceeds past industry experiences. Taking TSMC's equipment demand as an example, the estimated equipment needed for this year at the end of last year was calculated to be 1 times, but just one quarter later it increased to 1.5 times, and by July of this year, it had reached 1.9 times, with demand nearly doubling in just six months.Dr. Hou pointed out that the semiconductor industry has never faced such rapid changes in demand in the past 30 years. The entire industry needs to provide nearly double the original equipment, capacity, and resources in an extremely short time. TSMC is currently constructing 13 fabs in Taiwan and about 5 to 6 overseas, totaling nearly 20 fabs globally, with the scale of construction expanded to about 3 to 4 times that of the past, yet still unable to fully meet customer demand.He emphasized that in the AI era, the entire system or module needs to be optimized, and traditional collaborative models can no longer meet the demand. The supply chain must be restructured into a new cooperation model that is more closely integrated. The entire ecosystem is not yet prepared for such rapid growth, with equipment demand nearly doubling in six months, and almost no suppliers can completely avoid capacity constraints.

CryptoQuant analyst Darkfost stated that the demand for Bitcoin in the market has declined again. Although short-term holders are still taking profits, and selling pressure remains stable, apparent demand has turned negative again, indicating that demand has significantly weakened in the past few days.He believes that this change is also reflected in the price structure of Bitcoin, with the current trend tending to weaken. If demand does not recover in the short term, Bitcoin may face further downside risks.

According to ZEIT, the Berlin city government suffered a cyber attack two weeks ago, and the hacker group is suspected of implementing ransomware using the stolen data. According to Der Spiegel, the attackers are believed to be the long-active Rhysida hacker group, demanding a payment of 30 bitcoins (approximately 2 million euros) and threatening to release the data.The sensitive information involved may include records of violations and passwords. The Berlin state government has not yet confirmed the extent of the data breach and has not responded to the ransom amount or the identity of the attackers, stating that it will not comment "for reasons of investigative strategy." Berlin's mayor, Kai Wegner, has made it clear that Berlin will not yield to extortion. The main departments affected are transportation and construction management, which were temporarily isolated from the state government's network after the incident.

Cryptoquant founder and CEO Ki Young Ju stated that the peak of the current Bitcoin bull market cycle may be driven by institutional funds and ETF demand outside the United States. He pointed out that deeper stablecoin liquidity and tokenized asset infrastructure will expand global market participation. Using South Korea as an example, Ki Young Ju mentioned that the country currently does not have a spot Bitcoin ETF, retail investors cannot purchase overseas-listed spot Bitcoin ETFs, and most companies are unable to open trading accounts to buy BTC. South Korea has phased in corporate participation, with the Financial Services Commission (FSC) roadmap covering about 3,500 listed companies and qualified professional investors, but financial institutions and other companies are still excluded.Strategy's Bitcoin bank evaluated 25 major institutions covering trading, custody, digital asset products, financing, and corporate participation, with an overall adoption rate of 32%. RWA.xyz data shows that the global tokenized asset distributed asset value is $38.63 billion, an increase of 2.65% compared to 30 days ago. The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) stated that stablecoins have the potential to enable faster, programmable payments, but current designs may pose risks to financial integrity, liquidity, and currency. Ki Young Ju pointed out that the cumulative net inflow before the launch of the U.S. spot Bitcoin ETF was about $57 billion over two years, and the next phase will be global institutionalization, with more institutions adopting BTC as a strategic asset, and countries lacking ETFs will also improve related investment channels.

Market expectations for the Bank of Japan tightening monetary policy are heating up, with weak demand for Japan's two-year government bond auction, the bid-to-cover ratio at 2.97, lower than last time's 3.63 and the past 12 months' average of 3.74. The tail difference is 0.034, higher than last month's 0.007, marking the weakest since 2016. The government led by Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi supports an interest rate hike as early as September, with overnight index swaps indicating a probability of about 84% for a rate hike in September.

Analysis of the AI semiconductor and infrastructure cycle indicates that the demand for AI infrastructure will continue to exceed that of the internet era, as user penetration and per capita token are multiplied and converted into tokens, significantly raising the ceiling. User penetration has surpassed 50%, with growth primarily coming from the still-early per capita token; the median monthly AI spending per employee in U.S. companies is about $12, which could long-term approach around 10% of white-collar salaries, approximately $1,000 per month, leaving nearly two orders of magnitude of space in between. Unlike the flat subscriptions and extremely low marginal hardware consumption of the internet, the high costs of inference make the marginal cost of a single access higher, requiring greater infrastructure intensity.After developers program, the next ARR growth will still mainly come from broad programming: non-programmers use programming infrastructure to complete non-programming tasks across industries, with programming becoming the default execution kernel for agents. Tasks related to broad programming account for about 60% to 70% of ARR. As of June 2026, Codex accounted for 64% of the total output tokens from Codex and ChatGPT among OpenAI's enterprise clients; since February, Codex has seen a much higher weekly growth in verticals such as law, sales recruitment, and marketing compared to engineering. In Anthropic's revenue, narrow development/software accounts for about 40%, while finance and insurance exceed 20%, with law, life sciences, retail, and others also having considerable shares.The demand-side token growth logic remains, with a high overlap between funders and beneficiaries.

According to CNBC, Goldman Sachs analyst Jim Schneider stated in an interview with CNBC that Nvidia's latest announcement of its second-quarter performance for fiscal year 2027 exceeded market expectations, and the revenue guidance for the next quarter is also higher than analysts' estimates. Driven by the company's optimistic outlook for revenue growth in the next fiscal year, Nvidia's stock price rose about 4% in after-hours trading.Schneider pointed out that Nvidia expects revenue for fiscal year 2028 to still achieve about 70% growth, indicating that the demand for AI infrastructure remains strong. The current focus of the market has shifted from short-term performance to whether the AI computing investment cycle can be sustained, and whether Nvidia's high growth expectations for the next few years can be realized.

Apple's first 2-nanometer M6 chip officially debuts, equipped with a 12-core CPU, 12-core GPU, and dual 16-core neural network engines, with unified memory bandwidth reaching up to 170GB per second, initially featured in the new Mac mini. This chip is manufactured by TSMC using a 2-nanometer process and is the first to adopt gate-all-around (GAA) nanosheet transistors, making it the world's first consumer-grade 2-nanometer chip.The supply chain is focused on the subsequent high-end M series packaging architecture. Based on the Fusion Architecture of the previous generation M5 Pro, M5 Max, and the four-die design of M5 Ultra, Apple chips have transitioned from a single large die to a modular design. Future M6 Pro, Max, or Ultra are expected to enhance advanced packaging requirements such as SoIC-MH and WMCM, increasing interconnect density with SoIC-MH and integrating logic, LPDDR memory, and high-speed I/O with WMCM.TSMC is actively preparing for expansion, with Zhunan AP6 as the main mass production base for SoIC, Longtan AP3 upgrading to WMCM, and Chiayi AP7 taking on related capacity. Analysts estimate that WMCM's monthly production capacity will reach about 60,000 units by the end of 2026 and over 120,000 units in 2027. Equipment manufacturers such as Hongshuo, Junhua, Yinneng, and material manufacturers Changxing, Xinying Materials, and Yongguang are expected to benefit.

NVIDIA (NVDA.O) Chief Financial Officer expects that next year, demand from AI labs will contribute about a quarter of the company's overall business.

The price of Bitcoin has retreated after a cumulative increase of 23% over the past 7 days, currently maintaining around $79,000, with a drop of about 1.2% in the past 24 hours. The broader CoinDesk 20 index has fallen by 2.1% in the past 24 hours. The Crypto Fear & Greed Index from Alternative.me has risen from 27 to 74 in less than two weeks, followed by a slight retreat.However, underlying demand remains strong. According to SoSoValue data, the U.S.-listed spot Bitcoin ETF recorded a net inflow of $314 million on Tuesday, marking the seventh consecutive day of net inflows, bringing the cumulative net inflow for August to over $3 billion. Mercado Bitcoin research analyst Pedro Fontes views $82,000 and $85,000 as the next resistance levels and believes that some consolidation after such a vertical rise is natural.In terms of derivatives data, the taker long-short trading volume ratio has turned bearish, with shorts accounting for 51.64% of the 24-hour volume; Bitcoin futures open interest has dropped below 700,000 BTC, and the spot price has retreated to $78,500. The combination of these factors indicates that traders are closing positions rather than aggressively adding shorts. Traders on Deribit are chasing call options with strike prices ranging from $82,000 to $100,000. SUI futures open interest has reached a historical high of 838 million contracts, but its spot price has fallen over 5% in the past 24 hours, indicating that short positions are accumulating.

CryptoQuant analyst Axel Adler Jr. stated that the on-chain capital flow of Bitcoin showed directional improvement in the second half of August. The realized market cap relative net position change rose to +0.1% on August 24, marking the first positive shift since May 28, and has further increased to +0.21% as of today, indicating that the nearly three-month net capital outflow status has ended.Meanwhile, the 30-day apparent demand/new supply ratio for Bitcoin has been above 1 for six consecutive days, with the latest figure at 2.52, meaning the 30-day apparent demand is approximately 2.5 times the new BTC issuance during the same period. This indicator had dropped to -6.93 on August 2 and briefly rose to 3.16 on August 21. However, the absolute strength of both indicators remains relatively low. Since 2024, the median for periods of positive realized market cap has been +3.24%, while the current +0.21% is only at the lowest 3%-4% of positive samples; the historical median for the apparent demand ratio above 1 is 7.65, and the current 2.52 is also at the lowest 10%. It is believed that the more important signal currently is that the direction of capital flow has shifted from outflow to slight inflow, and demand has once again exceeded new supply, but a strong new demand cycle cannot yet be confirmed. Future observations are needed to see if the realized market cap can remain positive and if the apparent demand can further expand.

Strive CEO Matt Cole stated that the BTC/gold ratio is sending a strong signal, indicating that the next Bitcoin cycle could be the strongest in history.Currently, there are two major structural factors: the long-term structural depreciation of the dollar, and Bitcoin has never experienced a true secular dollar collapse; and in an AI-driven prosperous world, capital will increasingly chase "scarce assets" that cannot be replicated. If Bitcoin can perform stronger relative to gold, it will attract a disproportionate inflow of funds, creating a positive feedback loop.

Bitcoin recently rose to a monthly high, with Bitfinex analysts stating that this round of market activity is primarily driven by spot buying and short covering, rather than new leveraged funds, thus providing a longer duration compared to typical short squeeze scenarios. As investors who bought Bitcoin in the past five months are currently in a profit state, the main risk of the current upward trend comes from profit-taking chips flowing into trading platforms.Bitfinex believes that the U.S. Treasury's announcement on August 19 to expand the scale of long-term bond repurchases is an important factor driving the recent market activity. The initial phase of this rise was indeed driven by short liquidations. On the same day, the U.S. spot Bitcoin ETF recorded an inflow of $297.6 million. However, the subsequent price increase mainly came from spot buying. From the position structure, while Bitcoin prices rose by 10% to 11%, open interest (OI) only increased by about 4%, indicating that spot demand and short covering played a major role, while the impact of leveraged funds was limited.Bitfinex pointed out that the $68,000 to $69,000 range is currently an important support level, close to the average cost of buyers over the past five months. If Bitcoin maintains above this level, it will keep these investors in a profitable state, reducing the pressure of previously trapped chips selling during rebounds. In terms of funds, the U.S. spot Bitcoin ETF saw an inflow of $606.29 million on August 20, the largest single-day inflow since May 1, with BlackRock's IBIT contributing about 82%. Bitfinex stated that if fund inflows continue for a week, it will further strengthen the market demand structure.However, Bitfinex warns that the current biggest risk is a large amount of profitable Bitcoin flowing into trading platforms, which could trigger the largest profit-taking market since 2026. Analysts indicate that if real yields rise again to levels that previously suppressed Bitcoin from falling below $65,000, macro factors could still quickly impact the market.

CryptoQuant analyst Darkfost stated that this week, Bitcoin ETF net inflows reached 14,700 BTC, marking the second-largest weekly inflow since October 2025. Since August, the cumulative net inflow is approximately 21,958 BTC, indicating signs of a resurgence in demand are beginning to emerge.

On-chain data analyst Murphy stated that this round of BTC price increase is "a bit different": the scale of futures liquidations has reached a record, but the open interest (OI) has simultaneously decreased. The price increase is mainly driven by short liquidations or buy-ins to cover positions, which belongs to the clearing of existing positions rather than new leveraged net exposure. If driven solely by liquidations, prices often show a spike followed by a drop; this time, after the surge, the price has stabilized, indicating that there are other spot funds taking over.Murphy pointed out that if the contracts are dominated by long positions, OI usually rises and rates increase, but this round saw OI decrease almost throughout, with no large-scale new leverage entering the market. The exchange's spot relative trading volume (SRV) reached 2.94 from August 19 to 20, about three times the average of the past 30 days. Similar volume increases in the past two years have mostly occurred during panic sell-offs or bull market phases, which is different from the scenarios in January when it rebounded to about $96,000 and in May when it rebounded to about $82,000, where leverage was dominant.He emphasized that the demand for spot is only a potential sign that has appeared for the first time since entering a bear market, combined with the price challenging the short-term holder cost line (STH-RP) and the seller exhaustion index entering extreme zones, it is still insufficient to conclude a trend reversal.

Cryptocurrency analyst Darkfost stated that the apparent demand for Bitcoin in 2026 reached a record of 25,000 coins, indicating that the actual spot buying volume exceeds the newly mined coins, with market buying power stronger than supply.Apparent demand is calculated by subtracting the daily change in supply that has not been used for over a year from the daily block subsidy, used to measure whether structural accumulation can effectively absorb new supply.