TSMC, Samsung and SK Hynix now make up nearly 30% of emerging markets
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (NYSE: TSM), Samsung Electronics (KRX: 005930) and SK Hynix (KRX: 000660) now make up more than 30% of the MSCI Emerging Markets Index. Their combined share is close to the Magnificent Seven’s weight in the S&P 500. Technology now covers about 45% of the emerging-market gauge. These three chipmakers are worth $4.4 trillion, giving a very small group enormous influence over emerging-market stock returns. Some funds are spreading money beyond AI. JPMorgan Asset Management and Grantham Mayo Van Otterloo are studying gaming, energy and consumer companies, including a Vietnamese dairy producer. JPMorgan is also searching across India and China to rely less on one Taiwanese company and two South Korean giants. Fund managers broaden their bets as Samsung and chip shares lose steam Chip stocks have been falling because investors think cloud companies may have built more AI systems than the market needs right now. Some AI firms are also working on their own chips, which could reduce future orders for outside suppliers. Spending could keep climbing even if real demand does not grow at the same pace. Samsung posted strong earnings last week, but its shares did not take off. Investors were more worried that companies are spending too much on AI before usage catches up. South Korea’s Kospi is now down 20% from its June high. Selling became so intense that circuit breakers stopped trading several times. GMO still owns SK Hynix, but the stock is also one of the biggest positions the firm holds below the index level in its $1.9 billion Emerging Markets Equity Strategy. Portfolio manager Tom Chiang said the fund owns less SK Hynix than the benchmark does. The memory-chip company is now worth close to $1 trillion, and its share price has climbed about thirteen times since the start of 2025. Tom said that rise is much bigger than the company’s business results support. SK Hynix depositary receipts began trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market on Friday. They climbed 14% above the sale price after the company raised $26.5 billion, the largest US listing ever completed by a foreign company. Retail cash is still entering emerging-market funds. The Avantis Emerging Markets Equity ETF (NYSE Arca: AVEM), which manages about $25.4 billion, recorded its biggest weekly inflow in four months. It is the largest actively managed ETF tracking emerging-market shares. In Hong Kong, Alibaba Group (HKEX: 9988; NYSE: BABA) gained more than 13%, while Tencent Holdings (HKEX: 0700) rose over 4%. Chinese shares rise while Zhipu trades on a very small public float Regional rankings have flipped. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index is the top performer this month, while the Kospi sits last. The Korean gauge had gained about 116% this year at its peak, but that increase has now narrowed to roughly 72%. Hong Kong spent much of the year under pressure. Worries about China’s economy and weak e-commerce earnings pushed several indexes into bear markets. Lower prices left Chinese shares cheaper. The Hang Seng China Enterprises Index trades at about 8.9 times expected earnings, compared with 13 times for the MSCI Asia benchmark. Tencent earlier traded at a record-low multiple of 11. Despite the fact that the Kospi continues to appear cheap from certain perspectives due to revised upward earnings forecasts for chip makers, investor caution was heightened following the 200%-plus runs made by Samsung and SK Hynix at their respective peak levels this year. The problem with Zhipu lies in its own area. The Chinese artificial intelligence firm, officially called Knowledge Atlas Technology JSC Ltd., aims to generate $4 billion by offering its shares on the stock exchange, but this offering won’t add much to the available shares to trade. Zhipu announced 19.8 million shares on Thursday, after almost 26 million locked shares had also became available last week, though only about 13.5% of issued stock will trade freely. The shares rallied as much as 20% on Friday and closed 19% higherm cinching a 1,650% surge since January, the biggest gain in the entire Hang Seng Composite Index. Now this rally depends on few available shares while global doubts grow over whether AI companies can turn their products into lasting profit. Only about 4% of Zhipu’s shares could be traded before its six-month IPO lockup ended. More shares usually become available once that restriction expires, but major early investors said they would keep what they own. The smartest crypto minds already read our newsletter. Want in? Join them.
Kevin Warsh faces Congress for the first time as Federal Reserve chair
Kevin Warsh will face Congress for the first time as Federal Reserve chair while lawmakers press him on rates, prices, and central bank independence. His first month in the job has been quiet. Kevin has said little about the economy. The House Financial Services Committee will question Kevin at 10 a.m. in Washington on Tuesday, after the Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes June consumer inflation figures. On Wednesday, he will appear before a Senate panel after the agency releases producer price data during both scheduled appearances this week. Lawmakers press Kevin for answers as rate expectations climb The Atlanta Fed Market Probability Tracker puts the chance of a rate increase by September at 70%. Treasury yields have risen since January, while traders have priced in higher borrowing costs. Kevin has refused to give the usual clues. Earlier this month, he said, “I said I’m not going to give forward guidance because we’re meeting in six weeks, but I have an update for you, we’re meeting in four weeks.” He said debate inside the Fed would stay behind closed doors. “I want us to have a good family fight … When we get into that room and shut the door, we’re going to have a good debate, but I don’t have much more for you than that.” Friday’s Fed report said inflation is still too high. Higher energy costs linked to the Middle East conflict remain part of the problem. Tariffs have raised prices for household goods. Strong demand for chips and other parts used in data centers has added more pressure. Service prices have gone up too, though officials said they do not expect that rise to last. One Fed policy formula points to a federal funds rate above the current 3.5% to 3.75% range because inflation has climbed. Officials warned against reading it literally. “However, the prescriptions shown here ignore that the economy would have evolved differently if the policy rate had followed one of the paths prescribed by the rules, and, hence, these prescriptions should be interpreted with care,” the report said. Congress questions Kevin on inflation, AI, and Fed independence The June Consumer Price Index is expected to show annual inflation at 3.8%, down from 4.2% in May. Lower oil prices are expected to help. Those prices fell after Trump reached an agreement with Iran, though that deal now appears to have lost much of its value. Core inflation, which removes food and energy, is expected at 2.8%, compared with 2.9% a month earlier. Kevin will almost certainly be asked what those figures mean for rates. His recent style suggests he may keep the answer narrow. Minutes from the Fed’s June meeting showed two possible paths for the rest of the year. If inflation cools, officials could keep rates where they are or cut them. If price pressure stays stubborn, they could raise rates again. Kevin can be more relaxed talking about the five task forces that he set up. One will evaluate the communication strategy of the Federal Reserve with the public. The other one will look into the balance sheet policy. The other three will evaluate data quality, inflation forecasting, and the impact of artificial intelligence on employment and productivity. Lawmakers are expected to test Kevin on whether the White House can influence the central bank. Trump has pushed for lower rates, while the Fed is trying to control inflation. Kevin addressed that issue last week. “We’ve been an independent central bank for a very long time. We’re going to be an independent central bank at this moment, and you’re going to see no changes on that.” AI will be another topic. Congress may ask whether spending on chips, power, and data centers could add to inflation. Kevin did not give a firm answer last week. He said AI is already showing up in demand and added that he is “confident we’re going to see it in supply at some point.” If you're reading this, you’re already ahead. Stay there with our newsletter.
Vitalik: Humanity stuck between 'naive and naive squared' choice in the ASI transition
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin argues that a lot of the public argument over advanced AI comes from both sides holding assumptions they never actually share. Buterin’s kill switch proposal for all AI applications has been met with criticism as the tech community engages in yet another debate regarding how fast AI will progress and what that means for the workforce. What is driving the AI debate? In a post on X, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said the clash between supporters of the “AI 2040” scenario and its critics comes down to how fast and how significant AI progress will be. The AI 2040 framing assumes superintelligence of some kind will appear by 2040 unless strong measures stop it. Meanwhile, the critics believe that AI 2040 supporters are underestimating the capacity of human coordination and threatening freedom, but they do not see superintelligence itself as a power concentration risk. Buterin admitted he does not know which scenario is closer to reality. “If I was confident that (present-day-style) AI is normal technology, I would be in the detractor camp. If I was confident that superintelligence is coming in 2030 by default, I would be closer to the AI 2040 camp,” he wrote. But the cofounder remains open to slowing or pausing AI development if risks become significant. The debate pulled in AI researcher Yann LeCun, author Daniel Jeffries, and policy analyst Adam Thierer. Yann LeCun, Meta’s (NASDAQ: META) chief AI scientist, argues that AI safety is fundamentally an engineering problem that can be solved through careful iterative design, much like jet engines were made reliable. LeCun pointed out that “it took 50 years” to make aircraft truly safe, and that the fear of AI is premature when we are yet to create a system capable of human-level intelligence. He has consistently argued that large language models are limited “autocomplete machines” that lack reasoning and causal understanding. Harry Hawk, posting as @hhawk, said he aligns with Yann LeCun and believes future AI systems would be engineered for safety like aircraft are. He also said he does not believe AI and robots will do everything, leaving no work or jobs. Buterin replied that that perspective denied the existence of an “AI so powerful that AI alone can perform any task,” which he calls ASI. How can powerful AI systems be controlled? Buterin suggested a “plan A,” which proposes a wide-reaching rule that forces everyone to be open about what they are building, plus an emergency off-switch that can slow down or stop large AI training if things get dangerous. He added that “naive well-meaning intellectuals” who think they can pick and choose which AI uses are okay and which are not will push back against this plan. Romeo Dean, who prompted part of Buterin’s thread, called the approach “pretty reasonable” but said its triggers would arrive too late under his worldview. He added that he does not grasp the “massive downsides” critics attach to plan A. Buterin admitted there is no perfect solution. “I see zero plans for how to deal with an ASI transition that are not naive,” he wrote. “Perhaps humanity is stuck with a choice between naive and naive squared.” The AI 2040: Plan A report came from former OpenAI employee Daniel Kokotajlo’s AI Futures Project. The report says the US and China should work together to push back superintelligence until 2040. Both countries would have to share all their research openly. It also includes a system based on nuclear war logic, where both sides can destroy each other’s computing power if needed. They call this “mutually assured compute destruction.” Richard Ngo, an AI researcher, said the report is too worried about AI arriving soon. He also said it does not think enough about how much political trouble AI could cause inside each country. Are open source models the solution? Running underneath the whole debate is the status of open source models. LeCun wrote on July 9 that AI’s biggest risk is the “concentration of power” in a few dominant companies. He also wrote that “the only solution to AI sovereignty is open source foundation models.” His post drew more than 2,900 likes and over 430 reposts. Author Daniel Jeffries, writing the same day, said open source models underpin American technology and warned against “short-sighted safetyists and hawks” seeking to restrict it. Policy analyst Adam Thierer, a senior fellow at the R Street Institute and author of a prominent House AI Task Force report submission, has warned that US AI governance is at a “critical crossroads.” He pointed out that Congress currently employs a messy, random, and secretive process for reviewing AI. He warned that if this informal system grows and progress is blocked behind special approvals, it will destroy open source AI. Instead of heavy rules, Thierer proposes a “permissionless innovation” approach, where people will be allowed to build and release AI freely. He suggests that existing laws should be used to punish harm when necessary, and also supports things like testing zones for new AI, requiring some models to stay open, and putting more money into AI research. If you're reading this, you’re already ahead. Stay there with our newsletter.
米国の中央銀行デジタル通貨(CBDC)を禁じる条項を含む、住宅に関する超党派の法案が、トランプ米大統領が署名を見送ったことにより、金曜日(7月10日)に法律として成立しました。これは、暗号資産の支持者やプライバシーの擁護者にとって大きな勝利であり、彼らはすでに1年以上にわたりこの法案を求めてきました。 「21世紀の住まいへの道(ROAD to Housing Act)」は、上下両院で圧倒的な超党派の支持を得て可決された後、議会を通過してホワイトハウスに到達しました。下院では358対32、上院では85対5という大差で可決されたのです。この差が決定的でした。合衆国憲法では、会期中の議会の下であれば、大統領が署名または拒否権を発動しなくても、10日後に法案は法律になります。そして、ここでまさにそうなりました。
Lighter burns 15.6 million LIT as crypto’s buyback trend gathers pace
On July 10, Lighter burned 15,638,702 LIT tokens it had amassed through its automated buyback program by the end of the second quarter of 2026. The importance of the action stems not from the quantity of tokens that are being destroyed, but from the fact that it signifies a bigger trend within the crypto industry. After having practically vanished amid years of regulatory uncertainty, templates for revenue-based buybacks and the burn of tokens have regained popularity in 2025 and 2026. A report by Tiger Research published in November 2025 cites Hyperliquid and Pump.fun as among those working on similar approaches. Lighter’s buyback model Lighter has joined that exclusive group after successfully completing a buyback cycle. After confirming the burn on X, the protocol also made the Ethereum transaction public, so anyone can check on-chain that the tokens purchased through trading revenues are now permanently out of circulation. We’ve executed the burn of 15,638,702 LIT, permanently removing these tokens from circulation.https://t.co/nPt4gZlNYr https://t.co/tSY5WTs7tZ — Lighter (@Lighter_xyz) July 10, 2026 The tokens were neither minted nor allocated by the team in any way. Lighter, instead, gradually bought LIT from the public markets using trading profit, executing purchases via the continuous 24-hour time-weighted average price (TWAP) order process. The day prior to the burn, the protocol assessed that it would be able to burn approximately 15.5 million LIT tokens, which accounted for everything it repurchased during Q2. Ultimately, the final burn scorched a total of 15.64 million tokens. LIT was launched on the market on December 30, 2025 with 250 million tokens, which is 25% of the total supply, distributed to early users of the protocol via an airdrop. The recent burn significantly cuts the amount of tokens circulating. As per an earlier report by Cryptopolitan, Lighter had already bought back approximately 12.5 million LIT, which was about 5% of the total amount of LIT that was in circulation back then. Accordingly, the completion of the burn in Q2 elevated the total amount of tokens removed from circulation. What distinguishes Lighter from others is its buyback mechanism. Instead of buying tokens sporadically, the protocol utilizes its trading fee income to make buy-side limit orders at the market price or 10 percent below, per the same report by Cryptopolitan. After the tokens are bought, they are neither distributed, nor staked, nor kept in custody, but simply destroyed. This methodology stands in contrast to that of other perpetual futures protocols, where buybacks are typically designed mainly for recycling purposes within the token ecosystem. In this respect, Lighter generates buying advantage as a result of trading activity and reduces token supply via burning the tokens on a regular basis. Why the market is watching perps The timing is particularly significant for the decentralized perpetual futures platforms, which seem to be one of the fastest-growing sectors in crypto. Lighter works on its proprietary zero-knowledge rollup (zkLighter) and competes with Hyperliquid, Aster and edgeX with its offering of self-custodial perpetual trading with execution speeds comparable to centralized exchanges. As of May, the total value locked in the protocol came to more than $488 million, with over $1.6 trillion completed in perpetual futures volumes. Its annualized revenues reached $26.3 million. These figures help to explain how Lighter has been able to sustain its buyback program. More trading activity leads to higher volume of fees and therefore more tokens bought ahead of each scheduled burn. The approach taken by this model is representative of a bigger trend occurring in perpetual exchanges. This trend is one where incentives for users are not limited only to staking rewards and token emissions, but also operational revenue to improve the token economy. Lighter implements this trend in a more effective manner by permanently removing every repurchased token from circulation, with the buybacks and burning process being verifiable as well. Big-time investors also own substantial amounts of LIT. According to a report, a wallet, which is reputed to be owned by the founder of Tron, Justin Sun, was estimated to possess around 13.2 million LIT back in January. There were also plenty of other whales that were holding sizable amounts of tokens. High concentration can help stabilize prices, but it may also have an adverse impact in case someone with a big amount of tokens decides to offload them. Why buybacks are back The re-emergence of revenue-driven buybacks also reflects an evolving regulatory landscape. According to Tiger Research, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) used to believe that the use of token buybacks funded by protocol revenues was similar to that of dividends, which raised questions as to whether these activities would qualify as securities transactions. The early report elaborates that the U.S. agency’s latest initiative, named Project Crypto, which is based on the level of token decentralization, led to the revival of interest in buyback programs in the market. The return of revenue-funded buybacks is an indication of the changing regulatory environment. Tiger Research points out that the SEC used to consider token buybacks financed by revenue generated by a protocol as equivalent to dividend payments, thus raising concerns that they could cause tokens to be regarded as securities. However, with the SEC’s implementation of the Project Crypto initiative, which focuses on the degree of decentralization of a token, interest in buybacks has been revived across the industry. As the transaction conducted on Ethereum has already been made public, the investors have the chance to check the burn process themselves by seeing on-chain data, which once again confirms the transparency of Lighter’s buyback process. The next point of concern is whether Lighter continues to burn tokens quarterly and whether competing perpetual exchanges will take similar initiatives as competition grows. Don’t just read crypto news. Understand it. Subscribe to our newsletter. It's free.