加密城市 Crypto City

China DRAM manufacturer CXMT (ChangXin Memory Technologies) has recently seen its market value surpass 500 billion USD, overtaking Tencent to become the highest-valued company in China. If calculated based on the retail subscription price of 8.66 yuan per share for its first public offering (IPO), then about one month after it began trading on the exchange, the investment return rate had already exceeded six times. This trend reflects that capital market funds are shifting away from internet platform companies that previously dominated the market, and toward hardware manufacturers that align with national strategies and AI infrastructure themes. Meanwhile, robot manufacturer Unitree Robotics is set to list on the Shanghai Stock Exchange; its retail subscription allocation received over 5,500 times the oversubscription, showing the market’s continued high level of interest in the AI hardware sector.

The world’s largest sovereign wealth fund has also become an “invisible whale” in the cryptocurrency market. According to K33, a cryptocurrency research firm’s latest analysis, as of the first half of 2026, Norway’s sovereign wealth fund’s indirect exposure to Bitcoin through holdings of “crypto-accumulating stocks” had reached 11,549 BTC, valued at approximately $725 million—an all-time high.
According to a report by research firm K33, in the first half of this year, Norway’s sovereign wealth fund saw a 21.2% surge in its indirect Bitcoin holdings. If you look at the past year as a whole, the increase is even more dramatic, jumping to over 60.5%, bringing the total to 11,549 Bitcoins (worth about $725 million). This growth momentum is mainly thanks to the fund’s sizable investments in publicly traded companies that hold Bitcoin, such as MicroStrategy (Strategy), Metaplanet, MARA, Coinbase, Block, and Tesla.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury has launched a new round of rulemaking to implement the (GENIUS Act)
U.S. stablecoin regulation has moved further into the implementation phase. On August 17, the U.S. Department of the Treasury issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) to solicit public comments on the implementation details of the (GENIUS Act) Article 3. The core focus is on the definitions of “issuance, offering, and sales” of payment-type stablecoins within the United States, and which providers can legally offer related products to the U.S. market.
Source: U.S. Department of the Treasury. On August 17, the U.S. Department of the Treasury issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) to solicit public comments on the implementation details of (GENIUS Act) Article 3.

Driven by the surge in demand for AI infrastructure, key optical-communication raw material indium phosphide (InP) substrates have already seen three rounds of price increases this year. The most recent round jumped as much as 10%, setting the record for the largest single increase in history. Upstream suppliers admitted, “Even if you have money, you might not be able to buy.” In this super InP price-hike wave, Taiwanese epitaxy manufacturers including New Optoelectronics (2455), United Photonics (3081), and Intech IET-KY (4971) have material advantages and expansion momentum, and are expected to be among the biggest beneficiaries.
The InP supply chain price-hike wave is here! Q4 gearing up for the fourth round of increases
Economic Daily News cited industry insiders saying that InP supply-chain upstream substrate prices first began rising in the fourth quarter of last year, and have increased three times consecutively so far. The “fourth consecutive increase” in Q4 is poised to kick off, with the latest quoted price increase expected to exceed 10%, far surpassing the previous rounds’ 3%-5% increases.

Crypto practitioners report: the account received an unexplained transfer from HTX, and it was then immediately frozen.
Crypto industry KOL “AB Kuai.Dong” posted earlier today (8/18) that multiple practitioners reported in the morning that their exchange addresses received small top-ups from the HTX exchange without any reason. After the payment was received, their accounts were immediately frozen.
Recently, major cryptocurrency exchanges such as Binance and OKX have issued announcements stating that, to comply with EU and UK sanctions requirements, they will no longer process deposits and withdrawals from HTX; otherwise, accounts may face forced freezing.
Image source: X. Crypto practitioners report: the account received an unexplained transfer from HTX, and it was then immediately frozen.

Lai Ching-te announced a NT$10,000 cash payout in 2027, saying the AI dividend will be shared by all
After President Lai Ching-te of Taiwan announced yesterday (8/17) that, following a second briefing on the “FY 116 central government general budget” proposal, next year (2027) will increase spending by NT$235.7 billion on the premise that revenues and expenditures will be balanced and there will be no real net borrowing. He also said cash payouts of NT$10,000 will be distributed to each person.
Lai Ching-te said Taiwan, leveraging its advantages in semiconductors, information and communications technology, and the manufacturing supply chain, has had its economic growth forecast for this year revised up to 11.05%, which is expected to be the highest in 39 years. Therefore, he said, “the AI dividend must be shared by all.” He emphasized that the government cannot only look at average figures; it must also see the people below those averages and take care of every household that is working hard to live their lives.

NVIDIA will invest up to $105 billion to help OpenAI build data centers.
AI giants are breaking ground on construction! OpenAI announced that chipmaker NVIDIA has pledged up to $105 billion in financial support for the construction of a massive data center campus in Pike County, Ohio, which will be leased by OpenAI under a future contract.
This collaboration is one of the largest infrastructure financing commitments NVIDIA has made to date. Under the plan, OpenAI will obtain a massive computing capacity of about 8 GW through this project, with the first phase of 800 MW expected to come online for operations in 2028.

Fake 1080p and Blu-ray movie files that actually hide malware
With the release of Christopher Nolan’s new film (The Odyssey), hackers have also begun using the film’s popularity to spread malware. Cybersecurity firm Bitdefender has found that multiple download files disguised as pirated copies of (The Odyssey) are already appearing online; their actual content is the Lumma Stealer trojan, designed to steal passwords, browser data, and information from cryptocurrency wallets.
Researchers found that the malicious files intentionally use common pirated movie tags such as “1080p,” “2160p,” “WEBRip,” “Blu-ray,” and “H264,” causing users to believe they are downloading high-definition movies. Some file names even include common Torrent keywords like EZTV to improve their credibility.

Goldman Sachs believes the Fed is “highly unlikely” to raise rates in September. If U.S. interest-rate policy stays unchanged or even turns toward easing, it could become an important tailwind for Bitcoin, which has recently been caught in a narrow trading range.
Based on CoinGecko market data, Bitcoin is currently around $63,366, up 0.5% over the past 24 hours. However, since early July, Bitcoin has consistently lacked a clear direction and has been trading sideways in the $62,000 to $66,000 range for more than a month.
(Bloomberg) reported that Goldman Sachs chief economist Jan Hatzius told clients that a recent string of weak economic data—including retail sales indicators reflecting consumer conditions and employment data—together with slowing inflation, has prompted Goldman Sachs to further reduce its estimate for the probability of a September rate hike.

Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, announced that in order to comply with the EU’s sanctions against Russia, it will fully stop processing funds transfers involving a range of cryptocurrency trading platforms and service providers. The list includes 16 entities in total, such as HTX.
Among the entities on this blacklist, most are small platforms with sluggish trading volumes and relatively limited recognition. However, it is surprising that the exchange HTX—led by Justin Sun, the founder of TRON (formerly known as Huobi)—is also included on the list.
According to Binance, it must comply with the regulatory requirements of the jurisdictions where it operates. The relevant measures are intended to meet local laws and to maintain a safe and reliable trading environment for users and their assets.

Countdown to shutdown begins; employees and users publicly demand an explanation of where the funds went.
The shutdown process of cryptocurrency exchange BitMart has continued to deteriorate. What was originally planned as an orderly liquidation has increasingly seen users’ withdrawals being blocked, employees demanding unpaid wages, and internal disputes within management. BitMart’s official Chinese X account published an open letter on August 17, requiring founder Sheldon Xia and his partner Nancy (Yi) Li to publicly explain the platform’s assets, liabilities, available reserves, and users’ fund status by August 19, and to propose a concrete repayment plan.
Source of image: X/@BitMart_zh BitMart’s official Chinese X account published an open letter on August 17, requesting that founder Sheldon Xia and his partner Nancy Li explain publicly by August 19.

Machi Big Brother has significantly increased his bets again, with his Ether long position rising to 4,290 coins
The high-leverage Ether trading by Taiwanese entertainer and cryptocurrency investor “Machi Big Brother” Huang Licheng (Jeffrey Huang) has once again undergone a major change. According to the latest Hyperliquid account data, as of the evening of August 17, Huang Licheng holds about 4,290 Ether long positions, using 25x leverage. The position’s notional value is approximately US$8.183 million, with an average entry price of about US$1,894.8.
Source: HyperDash Huang Licheng holds about 4,290 Ether long positions, using 25x leverage. The position’s notional value is approximately US$8.183 million, with an average entry price of about US$1,894.8.

“Everything is broken—Bitcoin is burning.” This quote comes from Calle, the core developer of a Bitcoin cybersecurity red team. He shared this work on X (Decrypt has also compiled it): a volunteer group called Bitcoin Red Team uses open-source code that leverages China’s AI models to scan Bitcoin ecosystems at large scale. Within a short time, it turned up thousands of vulnerabilities, exposing old code that had gone years without scrutiny.
Nearly 5,000 vulnerabilities: 85 critical, 635 high risk
This team is led by developers using the pseudonym Calle (@callebtc). Their approach combines AI tools with human re-review. They primarily use Moonshot AI’s Kimi K3 from China, along with another Chinese model, GLM 5.2, and they also benchmark against models from OpenAI and Anthropic. In August 2026, the team reported a total of 4,962 findings across 390 projects: 85 were classified as critical, and 635 as high risk (this is statistics at a specific point in time; as scanning continues, the numbers are still rising, and some reports have already been updated to more than 7,900 items). Calle said the developers indeed have a large set of real critical and high-risk vulnerabilities on hand, but in line with responsible disclosure principles, they will not publish the affected projects and technical details for now. Among them, software related to the Lightning Network is described as being more fragmented than average because its architecture is complex.

Share price plunges more than 40% in a year; Convano cuts losses and exits Bitcoin
FASTNAIL, a Japanese nail salon brand, and its parent company Convano (TSE: 6574). Last year, after boldly announcing that it would include Bitcoin in its corporate asset reserves, it once sparked a wave of investor enthusiasm and its stock surged dramatically.
However, as the cryptocurrency market has pulled back sharply, as of the time of writing today (8/17), Convano’s share price has crashed to 110 yen—down a cumulative 46.26% compared with a year ago. On August 13, intraday trading even pushed it below the 100-yen level to 99 yen.
Recently, Convano also completed the process of liquidating all its held bitcoins and lost about 300 million yen, effectively declaring the end of this cross-industry experiment in crypto asset reserves—ultimately ending in a disastrous exit after cutting losses.

OCC conditionally approves a trust bank—World Liberty clears a key hurdle
The Trump-family-backed crypto project World Liberty Financial ($WLFI) has made major regulatory progress. On August 14, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) issued a preliminary conditional approval to World Liberty Trust, agreeing to its chartering as a national trust bank, which in the future will be able to provide digital asset custody, issue and redeem USD stablecoins, and related asset conversion services.
This approval is still provisional and conditional; World Liberty has not yet obtained formal authorization to open for business. The OCC clearly requires the bank to complete all pre-opening conditions in order to obtain final approval and begin operations officially. Before then, the regulatory authorities may still revise, suspend, or revoke this approval depending on the actual circumstances.

Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG) of Japan announced that it will use blockchain technology to improve the settlement speed of Japanese government bond trading. In the past, traditional settlement processes often took anywhere from 1 to 3 days; in the future, it is hoped that blockchain can enable “24/7, year-round” real-time delivery.
In the traditional financial system, settlement and clearing of government bonds typically takes 1 to 3 business days. To break through efficiency bottlenecks, Mitsubishi UFJ is working on a proof of concept and plans to conduct on-chain testing via the enterprise-grade blockchain network Canton in order to speed up settlement.

Coldcard vulnerability exploited on a large scale; more than 8,600 addresses affected
The Coldcard hardware wallet explosion—an ongoing large-scale asset theft incident continues to unfold. A recent study by Galaxy Research indicates that the attackers exploited a seed-generation vulnerability affecting some Coldcard devices, and used it to derive the private keys of a large number of impacted wallets. It has already been confirmed that at least 1,778.84 BTC ($BTC) have been stolen, involving more than 8,600 addresses. Based on the Bitcoin price during the incident period, total losses may have already surpassed $150 million.
Image source: Galaxy. The attacker exploited a seed-generation vulnerability in some Coldcard devices, and derived the private keys of impacted wallets in large quantities. It has now been confirmed that at least 1,778.84 BTC were stolen

Crypto wallet SafePal hit with personal data breach, nearly 40,000 customers affected
Recently, multiple cryptocurrency wallet providers have reported data breach incidents. The crypto wallet provider SafePal, which was once invested in by Binance, confirmed in a public announcement yesterday (8/16) that a plug-in used to track customer orders had an authorization vulnerability, allowing unauthorized parties to access certain customers’ personal data.
According to an internal investigation, the affected parties were customers who placed orders on the SafePal official website during the period from March 2, 2025, to April 11, 2026. A total of 39,798 people had their names, email addresses, shipping addresses, phone numbers, and purchase details exposed.

Apple has broken from its previous strategy; it is rumored that it trained a dedicated AI model for China.
According to a report by Reuters, Apple has trained a dedicated large language model (LLM) for the China market. Three people with knowledge of the matter said that Alibaba provided support during the training process.
This is the first time Apple has trained a China-specific model on its own. Previously, when Apple rolled out generative AI features in the China market, it relied on models provided by local Chinese vendors, because U.S. models such as Anthropic's Claude and OpenAI's ChatGPT have not been available for use in China.
Analysts say that in the future, if Apple has its own models, it could gain more control in China's highly competitive market, where local brands such as Huawei are taking market share.

Harvard stops trimming; holds 3.04 million shares of IBIT in Q2
Harvard University’s endowment fund stopped trimming its Bitcoin ETF in the second quarter. The latest regulatory filings show that Harvard Management Company, which manages the endowment fund, as of June 30 still held 3,044,612 shares of BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT). The number of shares remained exactly the same as in the first quarter, and the market value at quarter-end was approximately US$101.4 million.
This change has drawn market attention mainly because Harvard previously reduced its Bitcoin ETF holdings for two consecutive quarters. In the fourth quarter of 2025, the fund trimmed its position by about 21%, and in the first quarter this year it cut it sharply by another 43%, bringing its IBIT holdings down to roughly 3.04 million shares. After entering the second quarter, Harvard did not continue selling or increase its stake, maintaining the allocation level as of the end of the first quarter.