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The so-called AI CapEx bubble—at least at OpenAI, reality might be just the opposite: last year, they spent less money.

OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar recently said that the compute power they acquired a year ago would be worth 3 to 5 times as much if they were to sell it on the market today.

But OpenAI won’t sell, because what they lack most right now is compute power. Friar even said they should have bought more at the time.

For years, the market has questioned the logic behind AI giants pouring in tens of billions of dollars into data centers and GPUs: with how fast the technology iterates, won’t the compute power bought today turn into a pile of depreciating assets tomorrow?

At least the results seen so far are nothing like that.

The compute that OpenAI locked in early last year didn’t rapidly depreciate—instead, due to tight supply it generated a scarcity premium of 3 to 5 times. At the same time, the company still lacks compute power itself.

Proud of the ADHD era for us

Looks like we don't need to get a new phone.

Uniswap has started to go after the money of arbitrage bots.

On September 10, Uniswap Labs launched the StablePair Hook on Ethereum mainnet. The first pairs were USDC/USDG and USDC/USDT. In Q2, Uniswap’s stablecoin swaps totaled $43.4 billion—more than all the next three on-chain trading venues combined.

Previously, stablecoin pools had a very consistent loophole. After the USDC/USDT price deviated from 1:1, arbitrage bots would come in and push the price back. In the meantime, most of that price gap went to the bots, while LPs only earned a single fixed fee.

StablePair Hook now directly targets this money.

When the price is within the normal range, it dynamically adjusts fees to maintain a fixed bid-ask spread. When the price runs out of the range, any trade that pushes the price further outward is charged 0 fees. Arbitrage that truly pulls the price back starts an auction.

At first, the fee rate is set high, then decreases block by block, until an arbitrage bot thinks there’s enough profit to act. Bots can still earn, but they no longer have to take all the correction profits for themselves—what remains is left for LPs.

In reality, this is already very close to the logic of on-chain market makers: the fee rate isn’t a fixed number—it changes with the price position, and even “who will correct the price, and how much profit the correction can generate” is dynamically priced.

By this point, Uniswap v4 Hooks are getting more and more interesting. In the past, AMMs only had curves and fees; now, even how arbitrage profits are split can be written directly into the pool’s rules.

MOO surged suddenly yesterday—up more than 80% roughly every 24 hours. Its market cap is now about $42 million, with trading volume around $6.4 million.

What it corresponds to is Micron MU, and the name is very straightforward too: MU sounds like “moo,” and when you pair it with the hottest storage-chip行情 (market trend) lately, it’s turned directly into “Memory Cow Moo.”

Over the past few days, on the Robinhood Chain, these “US stock + meme” coins have already been pumped through a round—MOO with MU, Artificial Inu with NVDA, BONER with HIMS. The gameplay isn’t new. What allowed MOO to break out this time was mainly that Micron and the storage sector line itself has been hot.

And its MOO/MU pool has already grown quite sizable. In the past 30 days, out of about $107 million of on-chain trading volume on Robinhood Chain involving MU, MOO/MU contributed about $31.4 million—nearly 30%.

Now the meme-and-stock gameplay is already pretty simple: whichever US stock is hot, go find the matching meme next to it.

These past two days, it’s MU’s turn.

CLARITY has been changed again, and this time there’s a line that’s definitely worth a serious DeFi project taking a close look at.

A newly leaked draft from the latest Republican proposal in the U.S. Senate is set to clarify something that used to be rather vague: talking about being DeFi isn’t enough—you have to look and see whether anyone in the background can actually be in charge.

If a protocol still has a team—or a group of people—behind it that can modify features, change operating rules, or has the power to restrict or review users’ usage, then it may be deemed “non-decentralized DeFi,” requiring registration with the CFTC.

Going forward, whether a project counts as DeFi may no longer depend on how it describes itself on its website, whether it has a DAO, or whether it has issued governance tokens. Instead, it will hinge on several very specific questions: Who holds the upgrade authority? Who can change the rules? Who can keep users out?

Many protocols that today call themselves DeFi can’t survive questions like these.

The new draft also makes two additional changes: the DeFi-related provisions have been narrowed to spot and cash transactions involving digital commodities, mainly to address disputes arising from prediction markets; at the same time, it also adds permissions for credit unions to participate in business related to digital assets.

According to Lummis, this draft has already included more than 100 amendments proposed by Democrats. But that doesn’t mean the bill is secured.

On September 15, the Senate will first hold a procedural vote, requiring 60 votes. The Republicans have 53 seats—so even if they all support it, they would still need at least 7 votes from Democrats.

So what’s truly worth watching right now isn’t whether someone else is out there shouting that CLARITY must pass.

The bigger shift has already been written into the text: the U.S. is trying to turn “decentralization” from a term defined by an industry itself into a set of standards that regulators can use to check item by item.

Once this is truly written into law, its impact on DeFi will likely last much longer than a few points’ worth of up-or-down movement on the day of a vote.

Tonight’s CPI could directly determine whether the U.S. Federal Reserve will raise rates next week.

Beijing time 20:30, the U.S. will release August CPI—also the last major inflation data set before the FOMC on September 15–16. Market consensus from a Reuters survey is:

CPI month-over-month +0.4%, year-over-year +3.4%;
Core CPI month-over-month +0.2%, year-over-year +2.4%.

What really matters is the core monthly rate of 0.2%.

Waller recently made his position very clear: if inflation runs “too hot,” he would consider supporting a September rate hike. Reuters’ view is that if tonight’s core CPI comes in at the expected 0.2%, it would likely be enough for the Fed to hold steady.

After yesterday’s PPI release, market pricing for a 25bp hike next week has already been pushed to roughly 70%.

What’s more troublesome now is oil.

WTI and Brent both surged above $100 yesterday: WTI closed at $102.48 and Brent at $107.63. Of course, this newly unfolding spike in oil prices won’t be directly factored into tonight’s August CPI. But the market will be watching for one thing: have the energy price increases already seen in August started to feed through and lift prices for other goods and services as well?

If the core monthly rate comes in at 0.2%, there may still be room for rate-hike expectations—which rose after last night’s PPI—to come down a bit. But if it’s 0.3% or even 0.4%, the probability of a rate hike next week will keep moving higher.

BTC is still hovering around the $78,000 range. If tonight’s CPI is hotter than expected, it will be even harder for BTC to get back above $80,000. If it’s cooler, then last night’s selloff triggered by the PPI release would have a chance to catch its breath.