Coincamps

Translation: Peggy
Editor's Note: On August 19, the U.S. Treasury announced an expansion of long-term Treasury liquidity support repurchase agreements, increasing the single round of repurchase for 10-20 year and 20-30 year nominal coupon Treasuries from a maximum of $20 billion to at least $40 billion. The new arrangement will be effective from September 9. Before the announcement, the 30-year Treasury yield briefly rose to around 5.34%, hitting a post-2007 high; after the announcement, the long-end yield retraced momentarily.
$40 billion is not significant compared to the over $30 trillion U.S. Treasury market, and the repurchase itself does not equate to quantitative easing. What really sparked market discussion is the timing of the announcement: the Treasury had just concluded the quarterly refunding announcement two weeks ago but suddenly increased the size of long-term bond repurchase outside the regular window. This led investors to reassess how willing the Treasury is to actively intervene in the market as long-term yields spike.
The Heisenberg Report cited Nomura Securities' Cross-Asset Strategist Charlie McElligott and Rabobank's Strategist Michael Every's assessment, interpreting this move as a policy signal: the U.S. government may not be willing to let long-term funding costs keep rising, thereby constraining fiscal spending, geopolitical strategy, and private sector financing. This led the market to create the 'Bessent Put,' referring to the 'Bessent Floor Expectation.'
However, there is still a long way to go from expanding repurchases to yield curve control or even restarting quantitative easing. This article is not really discussing whether 'QE is back,' but whether the U.S. policy reaction function is changing: if fiscal pressures, inflation, AI financing, and geopolitical conflicts continue to drive up long-term rates, will the Treasury and the Fed be forced to take stronger actions?
Below is the translation of the original article:
After the U.S. Treasury expanded long-term Treasury repurchases, the market's initial questions were not about the scale but two more direct questions: why now? Does this imply that the U.S. government is starting to set an implicit floor for long-term yields?
Some investors have already dubbed this arrangement the 'Bessent Put,' or the 'Bessent Floor Expectation'; others have called it a 'lite QE' or a new round of 'Twist Operation.' These names are not formal policy concepts but market speculations on the Treasury's policy intentions.
On August 19, the U.S. Department of the Treasury announced that it would increase the liquidity support repurchase size for 10–20-year and 20–30-year Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS) from a maximum of $20 billion to at least $40 billion. The official reason given by the Treasury was that the long-term bond repurchase continued to receive a large number of high-quality bids, and therefore, they aimed to provide stronger liquidity support for these tenors.
This explanation did not completely dispel market doubts. A single $40 billion repurchase remains limited, but just before the announcement, long-dated U.S. Treasuries had just experienced a rapid sell-off, with the 30-year yield briefly spiking to around 5.34%. Therefore, investors were more concerned not with how much the Treasury actually bought but with what signal it chose to send at this point in time.
$40 Billion Is Not Large, Unexpected Announcement Itself Is More Important
Nomura Securities' cross-asset strategist Charlie McElligott believes that the specific size of the repurchase is not the key issue. More importantly, Powell seems to be telling the market that the U.S. government cannot accept continued disarray in the long-term Treasury market, and fiscal and monetary authorities may take a more proactive stance than before.
This is an analyst's interpretation of policy intent, not a confirmed yield level target by the Treasury. Officially, the Treasury still defines this adjustment as "liquidity support" and has not announced any yield level they are aiming to support.
However, the timing of the announcement reinforces market speculation. The U.S. Treasury usually communicates funding and debt management arrangements through the Quarterly Refunding Announcement (QRA). This adjustment came just about two weeks after the last QRA, outside of the regular communication window.
According to McElligott, this unconventional timing indicates that the speed of the rise in pressure on the long end of the bond market may have exceeded the policy sector's previous expectations. Consequently, the market interpreted the announcement as a "signaling operation": the Treasury aims to prevent further deterioration of liquidity from amplifying the rise in long-term rates, rather than just routine optimization of the bond structure.
This assessment still needs to be cautious. The subsequent decline in yields after the announcement only indicates that the market reacted immediately to the news, not that the Treasury has successfully lowered long-term funding costs. In fact, the subsequent pressure on long-dated yields also indicates that small-scale repurchases may not be enough to offset deeper factors such as fiscal deficits, inflation, and bond supply.
Long Bond Pressure Does Not Originate From a Single Variable
The article believes that the repurchase behind this is not a single liquidity issue, but that multiple adverse factors are simultaneously squeezing long bond demand.
First is the continued expansion of the US fiscal deficit and debt supply. When investors hold long-term bonds, they usually require an additional return to compensate for inflation, fiscal, and interest rate volatility risks. This part of the return is known as the term premium. The original text's referenced chart shows that the estimated 10-year US Treasury term premium has approached nearly 80 basis points, about twice the peak of the 2023 sell-off in long-end bonds.
Secondly, AI infrastructure development is bringing a large amount of corporate bond financing. Tech companies and data center operators need to raise funds for chip, power, and computing facilities. The increase in corporate credit bond supply will compete with US Treasuries for private sector balance sheets. McElligott summarizes this as a "crowding-out effect": when both government and corporate bonds are issued in large quantities, there is a limit to the long duration risk the market can absorb.
Japanese factors have also added to the uncertainty. Japan is a significant overseas holder of US Treasuries. The depreciation of the yen and its potential intervention needs make the market concerned that Japanese institutions may sell off some US Treasuries to raise dollars. The article links the recent US engagement in the foreign exchange market with the Treasury's expansion of long bond buybacks, suggesting that policymakers may want to avoid reinforcing exchange rate intervention and US Treasury sell-offs.
However, this is still a market interpretation. Public information can confirm that the US Treasury has expanded long-term bond buybacks, and pressure on long bonds, the yen, and corporate financing can be observed. Still, the Treasury has not provided a full explanation of whether these factors directly constitute the reason for this policy adjustment.
「Bessent Put」 Points to a New Policy Reaction Function
What the market is truly repricing is the US government's policy reaction function.
The so-called policy reaction function refers to investors' judgment of what actions policymakers may take under what conditions based on their past behavior. If the market believes that after long-term rates rise to a certain level, the Treasury will increase buybacks, adjust issuance maturities, or enhance coordination with the Fed, investors may begin to factor in this potential intervention into bond prices in advance.
The "Bessent Put" is precisely the market expression of this expectation. It is not an official policy, nor is it a Treasury commitment to support US bond prices. It refers to investors starting to speculate: when long-term yields threaten government financing, economic activity, or other policy objectives, Bessent might take more proactive debt management measures.
Michael Every further explains from a geopolitical strategic perspective that what the US government may focus on is not just "lowering yields" but avoiding long-term funding costs limiting its foreign policy, especially against the backdrop of ongoing tensions with Iran and rising energy supply risks.
Every believes that in the past, the United States could conduct external actions by controlling financing conditions and key supply chain support. However, the current situation is more complex. The United States does not fully control the energy and related physical supply chain, and even though some crude oil can still be transported through the Strait of Hormuz, finished oil supply may not be able to recover concurrently.
McElligott also raised similar risks: if the Gulf situation escalates again, the impact could spread globally through finished oil, manufacturing, and inflation. Crude oil inventories can be released, but refining capacity and finished oil supply cannot be quickly replenished simply by releasing inventories.
This means that policymakers may face two opposite pressures at the same time: geopolitical conflicts pushing up energy prices and inflation, requiring interest rates to remain relatively high; fiscal financing and economic pressure, yet demanding long-term rates not rise indefinitely. Expanding repurchases may alleviate market liquidity, but it cannot eliminate this policy contradiction.
Repurchase Is Not QE, Further Impact Is Needed for Yield Curve Control
Does expanding government bond repurchases mean that the United States has returned to the path of quantitative easing? The original text suggests that this may open up such a discussion, but it is still too early to draw conclusions.
The Treasury's repurchase is fundamentally different from the Fed's quantitative easing. Treasury repurchases are mainly debt management operations, buying back old securities with poor liquidity, coordinating with the issuance of other maturity bonds to improve market operations or adjust debt structure; while QE involves the Federal Reserve's large-scale purchase of assets and injecting reserves into the banking system, directly expanding the central bank's balance sheet.
Therefore, liquidity repurchases at the $40 billion level cannot directly be called QE, nor are they sufficient to prove that the Treasury is implementing formal yield curve suppression.
McElligott believes that this announcement is more like an "intention statement," prompting further market discussion on the possibility of YCC or QE. YCC refers to yield curve control, where the central bank commits to buying bonds to limit specific maturity yields near the target level; LSAP refers to large-scale asset purchases, which is also a primary form of quantitative easing implementation.
However, he also emphasizes that before these tools become the next policy choice, the market and economic environment must "deteriorate much further." In other words, the "Powell Put" currently changes investors' imagination about the policy boundary, rather than indicating that the United States has launched a new round of QE.
What needs to be observed next is not only whether the Treasury continues to expand the size of single repurchases, but also whether long-term yields can stabilize, term premiums fall back, the Treasury further shortens debt issuance duration, and whether the Fed will adjust its balance sheet policy accordingly.
If these measures continue to escalate, the market's perception of "Treasury backstop" and policy coordination will be strengthened; if long-term rates continue to rise under structural pressure, and the Treasury still limits repurchases to small-scale liquidity operations, then this announcement is more likely just an attempt to stabilize the market in the short term rather than the starting point for QE.
[Original Article]

On August 17, Xiami is back.
Alibaba has released the AI music model HappyShrimp 1.0, Chinese name "快乐虾米" (Happy Xiami). Users only need to write a sentence, and it can generate a complete song.
You don't even need to know what chords, time signature, or key it is in. You can tell it you want to write a song for your recent graduation, best suited for playing in a coffee shop; or you can say, it's almost time to get off work, suddenly raining outside the window, feeling a bit melancholic, but not too heavy. Words that used to describe feelings can now be turned into music commands. HappyShrimp will try to understand and then create accordingly.
Currently, it has launched a desktop web version for testing. Alibaba stated that HappyShrimp adopts end-to-end whole-track generation, incorporating style, emotion, era, and vocals into the same generative process. In actual tests, it is particularly sensitive to Chinese daily expressions. Many times, users are not clear about what kind of music they want, only knowing "lighter," "like a summer ten years ago," "not too bitter," and it can follow these vague descriptions to proceed.
This makes music production very cost-effective. Adding background music to a short video, creating a sample for an advertisement, finding background music for games or podcasts, no longer requires starting a whole production process from scratch. The standard membership price on the test page is about 30 yuan per month, which can generate 150 songs. On average, a song costs about 0.2 yuan.
On the day of its launch, HappyShrimp also announced a collaboration with Taihe Music. Alibaba also plans to have it appear at this year's Anaya Xiami Music Festival. It is also the third member of Alibaba's "Happy + Animal" series, with HappyHorse for video generation, HappyOyster for world models, and now, the third one is music.
Xiami Music took twelve years to become the later nostalgic Xiami.
HappyShrimp can generate a song in about a minute.
The Era of Handcrafting
The original Xiami started very small.
Wang Hao, originally an Alibaba programmer, also played in a band, using the online alias "Pumpkin," taken from his favorite band, Smashing Pumpkins. During college, he played the guitar and was in a band called "Black Water." During his sophomore year summer break, he was bitten by a dog on his finger in the rehearsal room, unable to play the guitar temporarily. With nothing to do, he started learning to code.
It started with HTML, then moved on to PHP. He even translated the PHP manual and built websites for others to earn some pocket money, charging 200 RMB for a static page. Later on, he created his own forum called "SoundNet," dedicated to sharing underground music and event information in Hangzhou. By 2001, the forum had tens of thousands of registered users, with hundreds online every day. A group of young musicians and rock music enthusiasts used the platform to organize gigs, find bandmates, and chat. When bands from out of town came to Hangzhou, Wang Hao would sometimes help them secure venues.
He eventually realized that he might not have the talent to become a professional musician, but he excelled at bringing music enthusiasts together.
After graduating from university, he shared an apartment with Zhu Qi, who would later co-found Xiami. During the week, they focused on their respective jobs, but on the weekends, Hangzhou's musicians and friends would gather at their place to eat, drink, and talk about music. Sometimes, the apartment would be filled with people. Wang Hao made a living selling musical instruments online during the day and helped bands find gig venues at night and on weekends.
In 2003, he believed that e-commerce could be a viable business, so he went to Alibaba to learn about the internet. He started with Java and later transitioned to requirements analysis. After a few years, he started thinking about music again.
Back then, people would use eMule, Kazaa, and BitTorrent to download movies. Wang Hao wondered if a P2P system could also work for music, but with a twist: organizing the messy files and ensuring both uploaders and music creators could earn some money.
In 2007, he left Alibaba. Initially, there were six people in total, with Wang Hao as the general manager, Zhu Qi in charge of content, and three programmers handling operations. Everyone contributed roughly the same amount of capital and held similar shares, paying themselves a monthly salary of 3,000 RMB.
They named their website EMUMO, short for Earn Music & Money. The name clearly reflected their initial ambition: listeners would get music, and music creators would get paid.
It was later rebranded as Xiami. Their explanation was, "We may be small shrimps, but we have big dreams."
In November 2008, Xiami.com officially launched.
The first office also resembled a "small shrimp" company. Located in the Longdoo Building in Gudang, Hangzhou, it was a 70-square-meter mixed residential and commercial space. They didn't do much renovation after the previous tenant left, just moved in a few tables and chairs to start working. With no place to store the servers, they set them up on the balcony. As soon as they entered the office each day, the constant whirring of the fan could be heard. Looking back, Wang Hao recalled one advantage of the office—the view of the Xiaoheshan Mountain from the window, surrounded by lush greenery.
That was 2008. The iPhone 3G had just been released, and smartphones had not yet consolidated all music into one app. In China, when people listened to music, they often searched for song titles on Baidu, navigated between forums, blogs, and resource sites, found an MP3, downloaded it to their computers, and then transferred it to an MP3 player. What they found was purely a matter of luck.
The file names were often garbled, with "320K" written in the name, but upon opening, the quality was blurry; behind one song title were over a dozen download links, and it was unclear which one was genuine. Album information was incomplete and riddled with typos, when multiple singers collaborated, they were simply labeled as "Various Artists," the track order was frequently mixed up, and few people cared about which album or year a song belonged to.
At that time, online music was already one of the most popular internet services among Chinese netizens. According to a 2008 CNNIC survey, 86.6% of internet users had listened to online music in the past six months, and 71.2% had downloaded music. Hundreds of millions of songs were circulating on the internet, most of the time, existing as just an MP3 file.
Xiami, however, aimed to transform these files back into "albums."
Albums had to be arranged in their original track order; for songs with multiple singers, each name had to be spelled out in full rather than simply listed under "Various Artists"; the audio quality aimed for 320K; different versions of the same song had to be separated; and details such as singers, albums, years, record labels, and genres, were all to be filled in if possible.
From its inception, editors made up the largest group of employees at Xiami. Their daily work involved researching, verifying information, and reconstructing complete albums. Even when the website only had 100,000 users, Xiami already employed six editors covering various languages, including Chinese, English, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Thai, and Spanish. Users could even search directly using these languages.
When the company's own staff was insufficient, they turned to users for help. Xiami recruited over 300 veteran music enthusiasts from around the world to collectively enrich their music library. Over time, a group of users specializing in data correction emerged, and they referred to themselves as the "Wiki Team."
This name was not an exaggeration at all. They would debate whether an album should be classified as a Studio Album, EP, or Live Album; what naming structure should be used for classical music tracks; whether composers' full names or aliases should be written; and how European and American singles should be cataloged. Some even dedicated themselves to writing rules, reminding editors to consult multiple classical music websites in the future and to "not disappoint the expectations of so many classical music enthusiasts."
For some information that couldn't be found online, they would resort to digging through CDs. Opening the album case, taking out the inner booklet. Who was the producer, who played bass, who arranged the strings, where was the recording studio—line by line, word by word, all entered into Xiami. Later, when someone asked where to find complete production information for a Chinese song apart from buying the original CD, Xiami staff mentioned that oftentimes even the digital materials provided by record companies were lacking, and they had to rely on users to extract data from the inner pages of CDs.
A user named Desperado once single-handedly contributed data for 943 artists, 214 album entries, and also led the Xiami Lyrics Group.
This group of people even established a complete set of informal academic norms for "music listening." Xiami's early community resembled a music BBS. Some curated playlists, some wrote in-depth music reviews, some corrected mistakes, some researched how to compress higher quality 320K MP3s. In the early days, music reviews were required to be at least 300 words. You couldn't just leave a comment like "it sounds good" and leave. Since you specifically clicked to discuss a song, you had to say something meaningful.
When users clicked into a genre, they could continue drilling down further. What was under Dream Pop, where did Shoegaze come from, what was the difference between Post-Rock and Progressive Rock. For many, Xiami was more like an ever-expanding map of music. They would journey from one record to another, from one band to someone they had never heard of, and eventually forget what they were originally looking for.
This classification system grew larger over time. The genre system left behind by Xiami was eventually organized by users into a 436-page document, with 24 primary categories and 548 subcategories. Many of these categories may only be explored by a few people in their lifetime, but Xiami still provided a space for them.
There was also a section called "Desert Island Discs."
This section posed an interesting question: "If one day you were stranded on a desert island and could only bring a few albums, what would you bring?"
Through this question, the editors recommended albums that were not so popular but deserved to be heard. Eventually, the section had its own slogan: "Don't let good music wander." In 2020, they even collaborated with Hema to open a "Desert Island Discs Bakery."
This name actually suits Xiami itself very well. A vast sea, with a small island in the middle. It's noisy outside, but on the island, there are some songs that no one is in a hurry to listen to. Those willing to swim over, just sit for a while.
Xiami's office later became more and more like such a place. Several former employees recalled that there was a small stage in the lounge area, with guitars, pianos, and keyboards nearby. During dinner, someone would get up to play the instruments and sing; someone who had just joined the company recently would pull colleagues together to form a band.
A group of people running a music website, to some extent, made personal use of public property. They brought their hobbies into the office and then found a very legitimate reason to continue listening to music every day.
Even the initial business model carried this idealism. Wang Hao wanted to create a closed P2P system. Users would download a song for 0.8 yuan. According to the early design, a portion would go to the copyright holder, a part to those who uploaded and distributed the music, and the platform would only take the remaining portion. After users downloaded the music, their computers would become nodes in the network, continuing to share the song with others.
Xiami even gave its own cryptocurrency a handy unit, the "Mi".
By uploading original albums and helping to spread music, users have the opportunity to earn Mi. The listeners are also distributors of the music. Wang Hao wanted to shorten the long chain in the record industry, allowing music to more directly reach the audience from the creators.
Looking back, this design seems a bit naive. But in the first few years, Xiami grew little by little following this vision.
Trouble was also embedded right from the start. P2P helped Xiami rapidly accumulate a large music library, but at the same time, it left behind a looming copyright issue. In 2010, dozens of musicians such as Li Zhi, Zhou Yunpeng, Wan Xiaoli, and Zuo Xiaozuzhou publicly protested against their works appearing on Xiami without authorization.
Occasionally
The old Xiami certainly used algorithms too. By 2011, Xiami's own recommendation system had taken shape. Employees later recalled that Wang Hao instructed the backend to create over thirty music tags for each user, while at the same time, Douban FM only recorded about four to five.
However, Xiami did not let the algorithm simply cater to the users. It would first give you mostly familiar things, then intentionally mix in a bit of the unfamiliar. In the early product concept, this ratio was roughly nine to one, with ninety percent closely following the user's established taste, leaving the remaining ten percent for those who hadn't listened to music before.
That 10% later became something many old users missed the most.
There was a user named "Qing" who usually listened to Japanese visual kei and hardcore music. In the daily 30 songs playlist Xiami curated for her, one day a very warm English song, "The High Road," was suddenly added. It didn't seem like something she would like at all. However, after she listened to it, she had it on repeat for three days.
Another user, Ah Cu, was briefly obsessed with black metal. Xiami sneaked in a German band, Empyrium, under "Similar Artists." When she clicked on it, it turned out to be folk music. A week later, she became a fan of Empyrium. Digging deeper, she discovered that this band had indeed done black metal in their early days, then transitioned to unplugged folk later on. The musical form changed, but the reclusive, hermetic quality remained constant. Ah Cu later recalled that her aesthetic sensibilities were influenced by this recommendation for the next year or two.
This was perhaps the old Xiami's understanding of algorithms. It tries to predict what you like while occasionally allowing itself to be a little unconventional.
On Xiami, there is a group of users who like to call themselves "Diggers," and they will click through an album's producer, label, and genre all the way down.
Xiami Music user "Throw Throw" stumbled upon an Italian musician's work in 2014, found the sound to be strange yet fresh. Following the trail, he learned for the first time that this thing had a name, called Vaporwave.
He continued listening, and eventually started creating his own. "Throw Throw" applied to become a Xiami Musician and uploaded his work. Several songs were discovered by editors, appearing on the Xiami homepage multiple times.
Such stories are not uncommon on Xiami. The Xiami editorial team refers to their work as "Music Pilots." Editors listen to a large number of new songs every day, create thematic recommendations, write music reviews and recommendations, and select those sounds that have not yet entered the public eye. In 2020, they were still producing programs such as "Deserted Island Records" and "Global Music Map."
The editor in charge of "Deserted Island Records," Feng Xia, used to drive two hours to the city center Livehouse to attend performances while in university. After joining Xiami, her job became listening to music every day, trying to find ways to pass on what she discovered to others.
In July 2013, the "Xiami Musician" platform was launched. Independent musicians and labels could upload their work, set their own prices for legitimate downloads, and receive 100% of the download income. In the first year, over five thousand musicians joined.
In the second year, Xiami launched the "Seeking Light Plan." Initially, the plan aimed to select musicians from the platform and help them further develop their demos. If they lacked a producer, they would help connect them; if they didn't have a recording studio, Xiami would fund it; from master tapes to album releases, music videos, and tours, Xiami helped with all preparations. In the earliest public plans, they even aimed to produce fifteen albums or EPs in a year, a volume that could match that of a professional record company.
The first season left behind 13 groups of musicians, 14 albums, accumulating about 160 million listens.
Cheng Bi was one of them. She later described Xiami as her "patron." The first three albums were all released on Xiami. At the beginning of the first Seeking Light Plan, she also became a Seeking Light musician. Later, people had the opportunity to get to know Cheng Bi from "Poetry Meets Song" and "I Want to Spend Time with You in Fantasy."
Such stories became more and more common. Eventually, Xiami attracted over 40,000 original musicians. The music library contains 30 million songs, over a thousand genres, and users have created over 500 million playlists. In industry data from February 2018, Xiami had 9.685 million daily active users. The scale was already considerable, but compared to the largest music platforms, it still resembled that small initial shrimp.
The Last Night
Then the times changed.
The copyright war escalated, with Tencent Music and Netease Cloud Music spending big money to secure exclusives, causing batches of Xiami's music library to turn gray. Music became the ammunition of a traffic war. In 2015, the "Iron Triangle" composed of Gao Xiaosong, Song Ke, and He Jiong took over Ali Music, transforming Tingting into Ali Planet the next year to venture into fan economy, transferring personnel from Xiami, and slowing down product updates.
In January 2016, Wang Hao left Xiami, which he had founded, and moved to Ali Dingtalk. He said the music industry had become outrageously absurd.
When he made that statement, Xiami was still operational. Five years later, it shut down. By 2020, Xiami had around one million daily active users. From 9.68 million to 1 million in just a few years.
On January 5, 2021, Xiami announced that it would shut down one month later, giving users time to export their playlists, which could be saved as static web pages or Excel files.
Two days after the announcement, Wang Hao was interviewed by PingWest and said:
"I don't think there's anything worth reminiscing about."
On February 4, 2021, Xiami had its final day.
On this day, the personalized daily recommendation feature lost its personal touch for the first time. When users opened Xiami, they all received the same playlist. Over the past twelve years, this section curated songs for individuals every day; on the last day, the editorial team selected thirty songs for themselves.
"Long Time No See," "You Have Always Been There," "I Don't Want to Leave You Alone," "When Love Has Become the Past," "I Finally Lost You," "Goodbye." The song titles were already blunt enough, and above each song was a short recommendation. These thirty phrases were connected in sequence and formed the last letter Xiami wrote to its users. It even included a very Xiami-like joke: "Although we still didn't manage to get Jay Chou's copyright (laugh)."
The real farewell began at 8 p.m.
At that time, the Xiami app had a feature called "Live Room," which could be understood as a music live broadcast room where a host played songs, and others came in to listen, request songs, or chat on the screen. Several Xiami user groups connected in advance and agreed to host a live event that night, naming the room "The Last Night of Xiami Planet." The event description read: "We may not be able to change fate, but we can accompany you in the countdown until the very last second."
Thousands of people crowded in.
Some requested songs, some left messages, some did nothing but kept the app open. People from Xiami's editorial team also joined. Editor Agu bid farewell one by one in the live room, thanking users and then thanking the editors who had worked at Xiami. He said that over the years, there had been dozens of editors at Xiami. Many users, for the first time, were in the same room with the people who had created those playlists.
What everyone was waiting for was midnight on February 5.
The official announcement had made it clear that from this moment on, song previews, downloads, comments, and profile exports would all cease. Some took the day off in advance, some left work and closed the door behind them, listening alone all night; and some refused to exit the app, thinking that as long as the page was still open, the music might continue playing a little longer.
Midnight arrived, but Xiami did not fall silent instantly like pulling the plug.
Some people's songs were still playing. So, instead of the expected farewell, excitement rose among users, and messages kept popping up on the screen:
“Do you still have sound?”
“I can still hear it.”
Some tried disconnecting from the internet, while others cautioned everyone not to close the app. Everyone was doing something a bit absurd, scattered across different cities, different phones, confirming whether a piece of software still showed signs of life. As long as one person could hear sound through their headphones, Xiami seemed as though it hadn't completely died.
Eventually, it did stop.
Songs that some were listening to suddenly cut off, and others' export progress halted midway. An hour later, there was no music playing, yet the screen kept flashing “someone has joined.”
In the month leading up to the shutdown, users had actually been moving out.
Xiami had enabled profile exports, while QQ Music and NetEase Cloud Music had provided song playlist migration. Some spent six hours rescuing over six thousand songs they had collected; some took screenshots of their personal page to save the exact number of minutes and songs they had listened to; and some meticulously sorted Xiami's almost paranoid-level complex music genres into an Excel sheet, giving this document a very solemn name: “Saving Xiami's Legacy.”
Some took more direct action. After the shutdown announcement, several users rushed to the Alibaba office in Wangjing, Beijing, unfurling two banners:
“Xiami, please don't go.”
“Xiami, please don't close.”
Xiami's founding team member and former Product Director Zhangstraw (稻草) only posted one sentence on social media: “The best farewell now is to say nothing at all.” Founder Wang Hao posted five Weibo posts that day, not one of which mentioned Xiami. He had left Alibaba several years earlier, long completing his own goodbye.
But the users hadn't.
Two years later, in February 2023, someone even wrote a “Xiami Music two-year Anniversary Memorial.” An app that no longer existed was still commemorated by people in a human way, anniversaries, two-year milestones, death anniversaries, eulogies.
The shrimp that people later fondly remembered had actually died many times before it was finally shut down. Batch after batch of copyright takedowns, the founder leaving, management changes, the entrance being moved, and the user base shrinking. The shrimp that was still alive in the end only had one million people opening it every day, which was no longer a significant player in the copyright war.
But when it did die for real, those one million people suddenly had a name.
They called themselves "music refugees."
After the shrimp died, the two words "Xiami Music" did not disappear. Seven months after the player was shut down, Damai established "Xiami Music Entertainment." The previous slogan "Hear a Different Voice" was changed to "See a Different World"; the shrimp that used to be in headphones began appearing in theaters, on stages, and at music festivals.
In 2022, the first Anaya Xiami Music Festival was held on the beach in Qinhuangdao, with the theme "Keep Swimming Until the Sea Turns Blue."
The crowd gathered again under the name "Xiami," but this time, they were not just listening to music through a player but were actually standing by the sea, watching the band on stage, watching the sun set. By the fourth annual music festival in 2025, six international musicians had made their mainland China debut here.
So, Xiami had a strange "afterlife." The product died, but the name remained. The original team disbanded, but the new business continued to use it. The small shrimp that used to be hidden in the player icon was plucked out from one place by Alibaba and put into another.
By 2026, this name appeared for the third time. This time, there was no player or stage; it was placed on an AI music model.
HappyShrimp, a joyful Xiami.
Ten years ago, the person who founded Xiami left Alibaba and even went to Phuket; ten years later, Alibaba picked up the name he left behind. However, this time, a new group of people were running Xiami, and even the concept of "music" had changed.
New Body
HappyShrimp is still very young. In version 1.0, the vocals occasionally had a robotic sound, singing complex Chinese lyrics in a muddled way, and the paragraph controls were not as precise as professional production software. But these are probably just a matter of time. What today requires drawing cards repeatedly more than ten times to get, the next version may be achieved by changing a few words.
What is truly noteworthy is that the act of writing a song is suddenly becoming too easy.
Suno can now generate over 7 million songs per day. In Deezer's peak in June this year, the platform received close to 90,000 fully AI-generated songs per day, surpassing half of all new music added to the platform for the first time.
The music industry used to rarely worry about "too many songs."
When the old Xiami was born, the internet certainly wasn't lacking in MP3s, but finding a song you really wanted to listen to was still not easy. It might be hidden in an obscure album, under a band no one knew, or you might not even know the genre. So Xiami spent a lot of effort doing one thing: searching.
Back then, music platforms were afraid of good content sinking, but the world of Joyful Xiami was just the opposite.
If you wanted a song to listen to on a rainy day, it could be made on the spot; if you wanted a female voice, a slower tempo, reminiscent of a summer ten years ago, that could also be arranged. Short videos lacking background music, ads needing a sample, games missing a soundtrack—previously, you had to search in a music library or find someone to compose, but now you can generate a song instantly.
So, for the first time, music shifted from "finding a suitable song" to slowly becoming "creating a suitable song."
These two actions may seem different by just one word, but the worlds behind them are completely different.
When searching for a song, there was always a stranger at the other end. It might be an Italian musician you've never heard of, a college student who just uploaded their first demo, or a German band that disbanded decades ago. Xiami was responsible for taking you there.
When generating music, human presence is not required at all. You describe the mood, and the model provides the melody; if you're not satisfied, you make another one. Music has become something that can be instantly produced as needed. It doesn't have to belong to anyone first, nor does it have to wait to be discovered by anyone.
That's why the name Joyful Xiami seems a bit strange here.
Eighteen years ago, Wang Hao named the website EMUMO, short for Earn Music & Money. One of the problems he initially wanted to solve was how music should be monetized in the internet age, how to help music creators earn more.
Today, Joyful Xiami is facing another problem. Whether good music already exists and is no longer even important.
As a result, copyright issues have reappeared, just in a different form. The previous dispute was about a song being uploaded to the platform without permission, and who should receive the money; now the issue has turned into which songs the model has learned from, and to whom does the new music it generates belong.
On August 17, the day Joyful Xiami was launched, the U.S. independent music publisher Round Hill Music sued Suno, accusing it of using hundreds of song lyrics without authorization to train its model.
The old Xia Mi helped people find songs, while the happy Xia Mi created songs for others.
In the former world, a strange song could change a person's aesthetic taste. Listeners would follow it all the way, and eventually, some even became musicians themselves. In the latter world, all a person needs to do is say what they want to listen to.
Then, wait for a minute, and the song arrives.
Swimming Until the Sea Turns Blue
Author Yu Hua lived in Haiyan, Zhejiang when he was a child, and the sea he saw was always yellow. However, textbooks said the sea is blue.
He wondered where the blue was exactly, so he swam into the sea. As the shore gradually drifted away and the water became deeper, he kept swimming forward. Children tend to believe in many specific things, such as reaching that kind of blue described in textbooks as long as they swim far enough.
In the end, of course, he did not find it. But many years later, he still remembered that he once swam in that direction.
I always feel that what the old Xia Mi left behind is a bit like this.
In the era it existed, many things were still distant. A song that one truly liked might not be liked at first listen. An unfamiliar name would not immediately become part of your aesthetic taste. People would continue on because of a faint sound they heard by chance, not understanding it today, but coming back in a few months; moving from one person to another, from one type of music to another.
In retrospect, it is realized that many of one's preferences developed during these detours.
Over the years, the Internet and AI have been shortening this distance. Search makes a song easier to find, recommendations bring unfamiliar music to your ears. With generative AI, this process has taken a step forward: a person can even describe a mood, have a suitable song written out without waiting.
One minute later, the music is here.
This has certainly changed many things.
In the past, there was a long road between the audience and the creators. Someone wrote songs, someone recorded, someone distributed, someone organized, someone recommended, and finally, someone stumbled upon it. Xia Mi spent twelve years, setting up many signposts along this road, making it easier for people to discover music they wouldn't have encountered otherwise.
Today, this road is getting shorter. Sometimes, even the audience can cross to the other side of the road. Someone who can't play an instrument or understand music theory can try turning the vague emotions in their mind into a song for the first time. Perhaps it's not perfect, maybe there are still clear machine traces, but the act of "creating music" has never been closer to ordinary people.
This may also be the interesting point between the Happy Shrimp and the Old Shrimp.
Eighteen years ago, Shrimp tried to make more music heard. Eighteen years later, another shrimp began trying to make more people make music. They are facing not the same music world anymore, nor is there a need to answer the same question.
Yu Hua didn't swim to the blue sea when he was a child. Later generations may not need to swim that far anymore. Technology keeps bringing distant things closer, putting in front of more people what only a few could do in the past.
But people still have to decide where to swim.
HappyShrimp can generate a song in about a minute.
But some things may just happen beyond that minute.
Original Article Link

要約
ベルンスタインは韓国の輸出データをHBM売上の指標として用い、サムスンの第3四半期のHBM売上が120億ドルに達する見通し（当初予想より約30%上回る）と推定しました。
7月、サムスンの関連地域の輸出は4月と比べて122%増加し、単価は2倍になりました。これにより、成長は主に高価格のHBM4の出荷量によって牽引されている可能性が示唆されます。
SKハイニックス関連の輸出は4月と比べて約27%減少し、ベースラインの回帰モデルでは第3四半期のHBM売上が四半期ベースで20%減少すると示されています。しかし、単月データや季節性の違いにより、結果には大きな不確実性が生じています。

翻訳：ペギー
編集者注：8月19日、米財務省は、10〜20年および20〜30年の名目国債に対する単日流動性支援の買い戻し上限（リパーチェス・キャップ）を200億ドルから少なくとも400億ドルへ引き上げると、予想外に発表した。新しい取り決めは9月9日から適用される予定とされた。ニュースを受けて、長期ゾーンの国債利回りは一時的に約9ベーシスポイント低下し、利回り曲線の明確なフラット化につながった。
しかし市場はすぐに売りへと反転した。翌日、10年国債利回りは4.71%まで上昇し、30年利回りは過去最高水準に接近した。そこで市場は次のように疑問を抱いた。もし買い戻し（リパーチェス）の規模が比較的限られており、まだ実際に実施されていないのだとしたら、なぜ財務省は四半期の償還（リファンディング）の発表からわずか2週間後に、計画に暫定的な調整を入れたのだろうか。

要約
·INTerpath-001の第III相は、モデナのmRNAプラットフォームが呼吸器ワクチンを超えて展開できる能力を、初めて裏付けた。しかし、完全な有効性データは開示されていない。
·モデナによる単日での前例のない177%の急騰は、パイプライン価値だけでは説明が難しい。プラットフォームの再評価、ショートカバー、そして「がんワクチン」という物語が、いずれも相場の上昇に寄与したためだ。
·黒色腫での成功は、肺がんや腎がんなどの他の適応症には直接的に外挿できず、プラットフォーム価値を実現するためには腫瘍をまたいだ再現性が重要であることを示している。

以前、欧州および米国における長期国債利回りの上昇の背景にあるロジックや、それに対処するために中央銀行や財務省が打ち出してきたさまざまな手法について、かなり長い時間議論してきました。そして昨夜、米国財務省が長期の政府債利回りを抑え込むために、レポ取引（repurchase agreements）を直接使ったのを目にしました。財務長官は「1回あたりの現在の最大規模は$2 billionですが、最低でも1回あたり$4 billionとする」と述べました。私が共有したい点がいくつかあります。1. これは伝統的に知られているいわゆる「イールド・カーブ・コントロール（YCC）」とはいえませんが、定義や運用主体という観点では違いが多々あるものの、そうした細かい突っ込みの議論は意味がありません。結局のところ、政府が自らの資金調達コストに直接介入しているのです。さらに、このやり方に長期的な効果があるかどうかを議論する必要もないと思います。核心は、政府がどこまで踏み込む意思があるのか、そしてどれだけの対価を払う覚悟があるのか、という点です。2. その数日後、ジャクソンホールでのFRBやウォーシュの発言は非常に微妙になりました。彼がベンソンと頻繁に連絡を取っていることは知られており、市場もずっと「FRBは利上げし、コミュニケーションを増やして政策不確実性を減らす必要がある」と言ってきました。とはいえ、ウォーシュがそれほど強硬（タカ派）ではないことが分かります。最新の議事要旨では、彼はコミュニケーションの頻度を引き下げ続けようとしているのです。この違いは非常に明確です。最終的には、これは短期と長期の問題だと私は思います。

8月19日の午後、米国財務省は公式ウェブサイト上の数値をいくつか変更した。
長期国債の買い戻し（レポ）についての一回限りの上限が、200億ドルから400億ドルに引き上げられた。
その日、新たな買い戻し（レポ）取引は行われなかった。財務省は追加で1ドルを支出しなかった。それでも、30年国債利回りは急速に約9ベーシスポイント低下した。
ここでいうベーシスポイントは、金利の小数第2位のこと。9ベーシスポイントは0.09パーセンテージポイントに相当する。債券利回りは、米国が資金を借りるために提示する金利であり、利回りが上昇するほど借入コストが高くなることを示す。

ブロードコムが提案する巨額の負債による資金調達は、AIインフラのキャッシュフロー制約を前面に押し出す。地域当局の承認と企業向けの導入は同時に、資金調達に加えて、電力、ライセンス、データガバナンスが拡大の境界であり続けることを示している。
1｜ブロードコム、AIインフラ向けに6000億ドル超の負債による資金調達を計画—与信の連鎖を拡張
ロイター通信によると8月21日、ブロードコムはアントロピックのAIチップのような企業向けに、6000億ドル超の負債による資金調達を行うための融資団と協議している。ブルームバーグは、この計画には約3000億ドルの劣後債と、6000億ドルから7000億ドルのシニア担保部分が含まれる可能性があり、総額は最大1兆ドルに達する可能性があるとした。取引はまだ最終化されておらず、ブロードコムとアポロはコメント要請に応じていない。ブラックストーンはコメントを控えた。

訳：ペギー
編集者注：8月19日、米国財務省は長期国債の買い戻し（リパーチェス）を拡大すると発表した。これにより、10〜20年および20〜30年物の国債に対する一回あたりの買い戻し上限額は、200億ドルから少なくとも400億ドルに引き上げられた。これまで30年債利回りは急騰し、約5.34%に達しており、2007年以来の高水準だった。ニュースが発表された後、長期側の利回りはすぐに後退した。
これは、市場に明確な強気シグナルを提供した。財務省が長期国債の流動性を積極的に改善しており、場合によっては何らかの「国債バックストップ」への期待が形成されつつある可能性がある。

翻訳: ペギー
編集者注: 今週、米国の30年国債利回りが約5.34%まで上昇し、2007年以来の高水準を記録しました。その後、米国財務長官ベセント氏は、長期国債の買い戻し（リパーチェス）を拡大する方針を発表し、10〜30年債の単回の最大買い戻し額を200億ドルから少なくとも400億ドルへ引き上げました。実施は9月9日から11月4日までの間に行われる予定です。発表後、長期利回りは低下し、ドルは弱含みとなり、リスク資産には一定の支えが入りました。

翻訳：ペギー
編集者注：8月19日、米財務省は長期国債の買い戻しの拡大を発表した。これにより、一部の10〜30年債について、単日での流動性支援の買い戻し規模が200億ドルから少なくとも400億ドルへと引き上げられた。これまで、30年国債利回りは一時的に5.337%まで上昇し、2007年以来の高値を更新していた。ニュースが伝えられた後、長期利回りは急速に後退した。
市場はすぐに次の疑問を抱き始めた。財務省は、長期金利の急上昇に対してより明確な政策感応を示しているのだろうか？

PolyBeats Newsによると、8月19日（北京時間）、ある個人が「ロシアが戦場のある地域を占領できるかどうか」を予測することで、わずか89秒で120%のリターンを達成しました。
この人物は、予測市場と呼ばれるプラットフォームで「ロシアは今月コンスタンティノフカを制圧する」という予測を買うために4,000ドルを投資しました。当時、この出来事が起こる確率はわずか43%でした。89秒後、その確率は92%にまで上昇しました。
この確率-価格プラットフォームでは、イベントが発生すれば確率は100%に固定され、それに応じてポジションの価値も増加します。不思議な人物が注文を入れ、突然の急騰を目撃した後、2分未満でテイクプロフィットで退出しました。さまざまな取引戦略があふれる時代において、取引におけるこのような幸運が珍しいことではありません。

メール、チャットの記録、プロジェクト文書、作業指示書——これらはかつて、会社が閉鎖された後に“後始末”を待つ単なるデジタルの残骸だった。だが今、それらは見直され、梱包され、売却され、そしてAI企業の学習パイプラインに投入されている。
葬儀業者は故人の最期の尊厳を守る。企業の死後における尊厳とは、彼らが残したものが今も価値を持っていることを証明することだ。
8月17日、破産資産のオークションでグーグルはスピリット航空の保有する企業データすべてを買い取るために1000万ドルを入札した。別の入札者であるメルコアは750万ドルを提示し、250万ドル届かなかった。

かつて、ソロスの助けによってイングランド銀行を揺さぶった人物が、同じ手口を使って米国債市場を守れるのだろうか？
今年の初め以来、米国の財務長官スコット・ベッセントは矢継ぎ早に打ち手を繰り出してきた。予想外の市場オペレーションの連続を用いて、米国の借り入れコストの抑え込みに手腕を賭けている。ブルームバーグによれば、彼は「金融市場に介入するうえで、数十年で最も積極的な財務長官」になったという。
円に関する米日共同介入の後、ベッセントの最新の動きは、米国債の買い戻し（リパーチェス）を拡大することだ。財務省は、10年〜30年物の米国債の買い戻し規模を「少なくとも2倍」にすると発表しており、しかもこの買い戻し計画は発表されたばかりで、わずか2週間前のことだった。ニュースが出された当日、10年物米国債の利回りはおよそ6ベーシスポイント下落し、30年物利回りはほぼ9ベーシスポイント下落、さらに米ドル指数も3か月ぶりの安値まで下がった。

要約
· 米財務省は、10〜20年および20〜30年セクターにおける名目クーポン証券の買戻し（レポ）を拡大し、1回あたり上限を200億ドルから少なくとも400億ドルに引き上げます。
· この操作は、長期の債券について流動性を一時的に改善し、限界的な期間プレミアムを抑えることを目的としていますが、FRBの量的緩和の一部ではありません。
· 関連商品：TLT、QQQ、金、BTC、そして長期金利に敏感な成長株。
8月19日、米財務省は長期債の流動性支援オペレーションの拡大を発表し、10〜20年および20〜30年セクターにおける名目クーポン証券の1回あたり上限を200億ドルから少なくとも400億ドルに引き上げました。

グーグル、株式オプションをチップ供給、臨床結果、レバレッジを効かせたショートスクイーズに連動させ、長期的な期待を株価に織り込もうとしている。ホムスードの最新動向では、供給が市場に対して安定的に到達できるかどうかが依然として厳しい制約となっていることが示唆されている。
1｜グーグルは株式オプションをマーベルと結び付け、同一契約に組み込まれた資本インセンティブで調達
マーベルは、普通株式の最大5,897万株を引き受けるために、グーグルに対してワラントを発行したと開示した。行使価格は1株あたり206.58ドルで、2033年8月までに行使可能。すべてが行使された場合、行使価格に基づき約122億ドルが算定される。これらのワラントは、カスタムチップの調達に関するグーグルの売上目標に連動している。

ビットコインは一晩で65,000ドルから70,000ドルへ急騰し、イーサリアムは約20%の上昇を見せ、史上最高値に迫った。熱狂は本物だ。
暗号資産市場は一晩で活況を呈し、おそらく米国での動きの影響を受けた可能性がある。
7月20日、トランプ大統領は首脳級の円卓会議を招集し、ワシントンD.C.のホワイトハウスで、公的スピーチを行った。アメリカの金融、暗号資産、テクノロジー企業のトップ経営者に加え、規制当局の当局者も参加した。