production

SK Hynix Group Chairman Choi Tae-won stated that the company plans to double its storage chip wafer production capacity in the next five years, and it is expected that the bottleneck issue in storage chip capacity may persist until 2030.

The open-source data visualization tool Grafana has released the latest progress on the investigation of the security incident on May 16. The investigation found that this incident was limited to the GitHub environment of Grafana Labs, including both public and private source code as well as internal GitHub repositories, and did not affect customer production systems, operations, or the Grafana Cloud platform. The downloaded content, in addition to the source code, also included some repositories used by the team for collaboration and storage of internal operational information and business details, involving business contact names and email addresses, rather than data from production systems or the cloud platform.Grafana Labs has made it clear that the codebase was downloaded but not tampered with, and currently, customers and open-source users do not need to take any action. The incident originated from a TanStack npm supply chain attack conducted through the Mini Shai-Hulud campaign. Grafana Labs detected malicious activity on May 11 and initiated an emergency response, but a credential was overlooked, allowing the attacker to gain access. After receiving a ransom demand on May 16, the company decided not to pay the ransom and has rotated automated credentials, implemented enhanced monitoring, audited all commits since May 11, and significantly strengthened GitHub security configurations. The company has notified federal law enforcement, and the investigation is ongoing.

According to Fortune, Bitcoin mining pool giant Foundry has officially launched a new mining pool for the privacy coin Zcash.Foundry CEO Mike Colyer stated that this move aims to respond to the growing demand from large institutions for privacy coins. Currently, the mining pool has attracted several institutional miners, with its output accounting for nearly one-third of the newly added Zcash on the entire network.Zcash achieves transaction privacy based on zero-knowledge proof technology while supporting selective disclosure to meet compliance requirements, making it more favored by institutions compared to its competitor Monero.Boosted by this news, the price of Zcash has increased by over 75% in the past 30 days, with a current market capitalization of approximately $6.3 billion. Foundry currently controls about 31% of the global Bitcoin hash rate, making it the largest Bitcoin mining pool operator in the world.

According to the Wall Street Journal, energy analysts warn that if the Houthi armed group in Yemen resumes attacks on shipping in the Red Sea, the oil market could face even more severe turmoil. Renewed attacks could cut a significant amount of oil from global supply and drive up oil prices. Saudi Arabia has been transferring as much crude oil as possible from the Persian Gulf to its Red Sea port of Yanbu, with cargo primarily heading to Asia from there. Although this has not fully offset the amount of oil that cannot pass through the Strait of Hormuz, it has helped limit the rise in global oil prices.Analysts indicate that if Houthi attacks make it too dangerous for tankers to approach Yanbu, up to several million barrels of crude oil could be stranded in the Middle East each day. At that point, Saudi Arabia may be forced to cut production alongside Kuwait and Iraq.

Elon Musk announced on the X platform that SpaceX and Tesla will jointly unveil the TERAFAB project at around 8 PM Central Time (9:00 AM Beijing Time tomorrow) and will livestream it on the X platform.The goal of the project is to achieve over 1 terawatt of computing capacity per year (covering logic chips, storage chips, and packaging), with approximately 80% allocated for space applications and about 20% for ground applications.

According to Nikkei Asia, Japanese fiber optic cable manufacturer Fujikura announced that it will invest up to 300 billion yen (approximately 1.9 billion USD) in Japan and the United States, planning to triple its fiber optic cable production capacity to meet the strong demand brought about by the construction of artificial intelligence data centers.This investment is part of a series of actions by Japanese material companies in response to the Japan-U.S. Economic Cooperation Agreement and to accelerate their layout in the U.S. Meanwhile, several Japanese companies are also actively following up on investments related to AI infrastructure, including JX Advanced Materials expanding AI material production capacity and Japan promoting the construction of a domestic AI chip ecosystem.

According to foreign media reports, Kuwait has halted oil production due to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

The General Office of the State Council issued implementation opinions on improving the national unified electricity market system, which pointed out the need to enhance various functions of the electricity market, accelerate the establishment of a green electricity consumption certification mechanism, comprehensively introduce technologies such as blockchain, and carry out full-chain certification for green electricity production, consumption, and other links.

According to The Block, JPMorgan analysts have stated that their estimated production cost of Bitcoin—historically viewed as a "soft price support"—has decreased from $90,000 at the beginning of the year to $77,000, primarily due to a recent decline in network hash rate and mining difficulty.Analysts pointed out that the recent drop in Bitcoin's network hash rate has triggered the largest adjustment in mining difficulty since the Chinese mining ban in 2021, with a cumulative decline of about 15% so far this year. The decrease in difficulty provides breathing room for miners still in operation, as efficient miners are capturing market share lost by high-cost miners who have been forced to shut down. Analysts have observed a rebound in hash rate and expect that production costs may rebound during the next difficulty adjustment.The report attributes the decline in difficulty to two factors: first, the drop in Bitcoin prices has rendered high-cost miners unprofitable; second, winter storms in the U.S. have temporarily halted operations at large mining facilities in places like Texas. Some high-cost miners have maintained operations or transitioned to AI by selling off Bitcoin, exacerbating the price pressure since the beginning of the year. Analysts believe that the exit of high-cost miners has stabilized, and they maintain a "positive" outlook for the overall cryptocurrency market in 2026.

Bitcoin mining has entered a severe phase, with unit hash rate revenue dropping to a historical low of about $35/PH. Affected by a significant market correction, the price of Bitcoin has fallen over 50% from its 2025 peak of $126,000, currently hovering around the $60,000 range. Against this backdrop, the average production cost of a single Bitcoin across the network is approximately $87,000, about 45% higher than the current market price, marking the first large-scale "underwater operation" since the bear market of 2022.CryptoQuant defines the current phase as the "surrender phase," characterized by the accelerated shutdown of old mining machines and a noticeable contraction in overall network hash rate. As a result, the stock prices of listed mining companies such as MARA Holdings and Riot Platforms have dropped over 20% this week, with funds flowing towards more stable traditional assets like gold.Meanwhile, North America's mining hubs (especially Texas) are facing severe winter storms, forcing some mining farms to limit power usage to ensure the stability of the civilian power grid. Coupled with miner exits, the network experienced a historic difficulty adjustment of about 11% on February 9. However, due to the significant drop in coin prices, the profitability recovery effect from the difficulty adjustment is limited.The industry's "Miner Profitability Sustainability Index" has fallen to 21, indicating that, except for a few operators with low electricity costs and high efficiency, most miners have completely compressed profit margins. For companies with electricity prices above $0.05 per kilowatt-hour or those still using older model mining machines, this difficulty adjustment is unlikely to reverse the risk of total shutdown.To cope with the "2026 mining winter," leading companies are accelerating their transition to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC). IREN and Core Scientific have redirected some of their data center power capacity to support generative AI businesses to secure more stable long-term contract revenues. Recently, Bitfarms announced a complete exit from Bitcoin mining to focus on its AI strategic transformation.

According to Coindesk, data from Checkonchain shows that the current price of Bitcoin is around $70,000, which is below its estimated average production cost of about $87,000, a gap of approximately 20%. Historically, Bitcoin prices remaining below production costs is often a characteristic of bear markets, a similar situation was seen in the market cycles of 2019 and 2022.The total network hash rate reached a historical peak of about 1.1 ZH/s last October but has since dropped by about 20% due to the shutdown of less efficient mining machines, recently rebounding to 913 EH/s, showing initial signs of stabilization. However, at the current price, many miners are still in a state of loss. To maintain daily operations, pay energy costs, and service debts, miners are continuously selling their Bitcoin reserves, a phenomenon known as "miner capitulation," highlighting that the industry still faces ongoing financial pressure.

Stablecoin issuer Circle has announced plans to focus on building a more resilient stablecoin infrastructure by 2026 to drive further adoption at the enterprise and institutional levels.Circle's Chief Product and Technology Officer Nikhil Chandhok revealed plans to gradually transition its Layer 1 blockchain Arc, aimed at institutions and large-scale applications, from testnet to production environment. Meanwhile, Circle will continue to expand the use cases for USDC, EURC, USYC, and partner-issued stablecoins by supporting more blockchain networks to enhance the token's availability and reach. Chandhok stated that this includes deepening native support on key networks, strengthening integration with Arc, and making it easier for institutional users to hold, transfer, and programmatically use stablecoins as part of their daily business processes.

BNB Chain today underwent its third major upgrade, Fermi, named after the Italian-American physicist Enrico Fermi. The upgrade will increase the network's block production speed by 40% and reduce finality confirmation time to about 1 second, making transaction confirmations more predictable and reducing slippage risk in highly volatile markets.This upgrade also includes technical improvements such as optimizing the validator coordination mechanism, enhancing blockchain data access efficiency, and improving transaction execution efficiency. Previously, BNB Chain completed two upgrades named after mathematician Pascal and physicist Maxwell.

Crypto KOL @y_cryptoanalyst posted on the X platform that the L2 network Zero Network, incubated by the Web3 wallet company Zerion with a total financing of $22.5 million, has stopped producing blocks for over 3 weeks.

The Ontario Court of Appeal ruled in the case of "Binance Holdings Limited v. Ontario Securities Commission (OSC)" to revoke the OSC's previous large-scale document request against Binance, stating that its "scope is shocking" and violates Section 8 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms regarding "protection against unreasonable search and seizure."The court noted that although capital market participants have a lower expectation of privacy in regulated activities, they are still protected by the Charter. The OSC had previously requested Binance to submit "all internal and related party communication records involving Canada for a period of two and a half years," which the court found exceeded reasonable regulatory purposes. The ruling emphasized that regulatory investigations may proceed without evidence of wrongdoing, but must still be limited to "categories of documents reasonably related to the investigation's purpose," or they may be dismissed by the court.Additionally, the court commented on Binance's use of encrypted communication tools like Signal that feature "self-destructing messages," stating that the mere use of such technology is insufficient to infer an intent to "evade regulation," providing important clarification for financial institutions using privacy communication software. This ruling is seen as establishing the boundaries of Canadian securities regulatory authority and reminding companies that they can assert the privacy and due process rights granted by the Charter when faced with cross-border or overly broad investigation requests.

According to MarcoMicro data, the current production cost of Bitcoin has reached $112,084. Additionally, historical data shows that the production cost of Bitcoin peaked at $115,098.12 on October 9.Analysts believe that the recent increase in Bitcoin production costs means that most Bitcoin mining companies will face challenges related to sales and administrative expenses, necessitating cost reductions to maintain profitability.