aci

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) has fully started production at its first wafer fab in Singapore, driven by demand for AI infrastructure.The factory is a joint venture with NXP and began trial production in June, achieving a yield rate of 99%. Mass production is planned for early 2027. TSMC holds approximately 19% of the shares.

According to the Economic Daily, major companies such as Apple, NVIDIA, AMD, Qualcomm, and MediaTek are racing towards AI and high-performance computing, recently increasing their orders for TSMC's 2-nanometer family capacity by 10% to 20%. As a result, TSMC is accelerating the expansion of its 2-nanometer family, with progress exceeding expectations. TSMC has consistently refrained from commenting on customer information and market rumors.The market originally estimated that TSMC's monthly capacity for the 2-nanometer family would be around 90,000 to 100,000 wafers by the end of this year, with expectations for continued double-digit growth to reach 110,000 to 140,000 wafers by 2027. Industry sources indicate that due to strong customer demand, the monthly capacity is expected to surge to 120,000 wafers by the end of this year, achieving the originally set 2027 target ahead of schedule. Sources say that in response to the demands from Apple and non-Apple customers, the speed and scale of new capacity for the 2-nanometer family are setting new records, far exceeding the ramp-up speed of the 3-nanometer family in its first year.TSMC's Senior Vice President and Co-COO, Wei Chen-Hao, stated at this year's North America Technology Forum that in response to strong demand from AI and other sectors, there will be five 2-nanometer fabs ramping up simultaneously for the first time this year, including two in Hsinchu and three in Kaohsiung; the wafer output in the first year of 2-nanometer will increase by 45% compared to the first year of 3-nanometer in 2023; the compound annual growth rate of 2-nanometer capacity from 2026 to 2028 will reach 70%. TSMC's 3-nanometer capacity in the Southern Taiwan Science Park is expected to reach nearly 180,000 wafers per month in the fourth quarter of this year, and three new 3-nanometer fabs are being established in Taiwan, Arizona in the United States, and Japan. The second fab in the United States is planned to begin mass production in the second half of 2027.

Real estate investment company Cardone Capital founder Grant Cardone stated that commercial real estate is facing a historic reset. He pointed out that in a high-interest-rate environment, commercial real estate prices have been driven down below replacement costs, which presents an opportunity to store wealth through Bitcoin. Cardone mentioned that his goal is to accumulate 25,000 Bitcoins while holding 25,000 apartments.Cardone referred to real estate as his "Trojan Horse" for allocating Bitcoin and introduced Cardone Capital's Bitcoin real estate trading model, which relies on property cash flow to continuously increase Bitcoin holdings, with a target of growing from 3,000 to 25,000 Bitcoins. He stated that traditional REITs cannot hold Bitcoin, which creates a competitive barrier for the company, and believes that Bitcoin and real estate are an ideal mixed asset. He also discussed Michael Saylor's related views and a $335 million transaction located in Boca Raton, and responded to questions about whether Cardone Capital would go public.

Two ChatGPT users from California filed a proposed class action lawsuit against OpenAI in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California this month, accusing the company of failing to adequately inform users that their real conversations were being handed over to external contractors for processing. The lawsuit was served to OpenAI on September 2, focusing on its internal initiative Project Lily. According to the complaint, "AI data reviewers" and "chatbot evaluators" recruited through a third-party staffing company read real ChatGPT prompts and complete conversations, summarize user intent, and score and comment on responses from four models on a scale of 1 to 7.This process is known in the industry as reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF), which is a fundamental method for enhancing chatbot capabilities. The complaint states that users were never explicitly informed that a person, rather than a machine, might be reading their conversations. OpenAI filters conversations through an automated system before human review, but the complaint alleges that the filters cannot intercept all content, and personal details sometimes still reach contractors. 404 Media first reported on the project on September 14 and found that the reviewers' dashboard included "user memory summaries," which could expose users' approximate locations, occupations, or private life information, even though usernames had been removed.OpenAI stated that such reviews aim to reduce two behaviors: chatbots behaving too much like humans and overly catering to users, referred to by researchers as "flattery." The complaint raises eight legal claims, including violations of California's Unfair Competition Law, Consumer Privacy Act, and common law claims for intrusion into private affairs, with the plaintiffs seeking damages, restitution of unjust enrichment, and punitive damages.

As Japan ends its holiday, the risk of yen intervention has once again become the focus. The yen has fallen for two consecutive weeks, approaching the 160 mark. Strategists believe that the 160 mark will once again test Japan's tolerance for yen depreciation.Strategists at the Commonwealth Bank of Australia stated that if the USD/JPY breaks above 160, it will increase the likelihood of official intervention, especially considering that Japan has recently conducted a currency check.

According to Bloomberg, the UK digital bank Revolut launched the UK's first facial recognition checkout system "Pay with Smile" on September 23, allowing customers to complete payments in-store through facial recognition.This feature operates on the Revolut Register terminal, where users can complete facial identity verification by clicking "Pay with Smile" on the screen during checkout, a process similar to unlocking a smartphone or accessing a banking app. Facial data is end-to-end encrypted, merchants do not store personal data, and users must actively choose to opt-in in the Revolut app settings, with the ability to withdraw consent at any time. Revolut charges a 0% processing fee for Pay with Smile transactions to alleviate the burden on independent merchants.The pilot will take place from September 24 to 26 at three Kiss the Hippo cafes in Bloomsbury, Chelsea, and Soho in London, with plans to roll out the feature to all 12 locations later this year. Sales promotion for the Revolut Register terminal will be launched at the appropriate time.

According to BBX data, yesterday, publicly listed companies in the U.S. and cross-border financial infrastructure disclosed the latest developments in the restructuring of cryptocurrency businesses and global compliance stablecoin settlements. The core information is as follows:Hyperscale Data (NYSE: $GPUS) established a subsidiary, Patriot BTC, to independently undertake mining operations and assets: Nasdaq-listed Bitcoin mining company and AI data center infrastructure company Hyperscale Data officially announced the establishment of a new wholly-owned subsidiary, Patriot BTC. The purpose of this subsidiary is to hold and operate the company's cryptocurrency mining business, mining machines, and related on-chain assets as a completely independent business entity, in order to further optimize the overall asset structure of the parent company and align with the implementation of the AI computing power center strategy.Reap plans to launch multi-national local currency stablecoins to build a 24/7 on-chain foreign exchange trading network: The multinational payment technology platform Reap, which has received strategic support from Kraken's parent company Payward and is a core partner of Visa, announced plans to successively launch local currency stablecoins in multiple countries and regions to achieve 24/7 on-chain foreign exchange settlements. Reap will first launch the Mexican Peso (MXN) stablecoin and is accelerating the exploration of issuing various local currency stablecoins, including the Hong Kong Dollar (HKD), Euro (EUR), South Korean Won (KRW), and Japanese Yen (JPY). This layout aims to completely break the physical limitations of traditional commercial bank operating hours, providing multinational companies with efficient and low-friction on-chain cross-border foreign exchange clearing solutions during nighttime and weekends.

According to TechPowerUp, Chinese DRAM manufacturer Changxin Storage (CXMT) expects to reach a monthly production capacity of approximately 350,000 DRAM wafers by the end of 2026, while Micron estimates around 375,000 wafers during the same period. The cleanroom construction cycle for Changxin Storage is about 12 months, shorter than the industry norm of 21 to 24 months.Due to U.S. sanctions preventing access to EUV, Changxin Storage is using older DUV lithography and multi-patterning technology. The company has begun shipping 16 Gb DDR5 chips at a speed of 8000 MT/s, with a chip area of 67 mm² and a density of 0.239 Gb/mm², where the G4 unit is 20% smaller than the G3. The 24 Gb modules are being mass-produced at approximately 6000 MT/s, and LPDDR5X-10667 modules (12 Gb and 16 Gb) have also entered mass production. The Chinese government is encouraging Changxin Storage to transfer DRAM IP to domestic manufacturers such as JHICC, Swaysure, and Yangtze Memory Technologies (XMC).

On Friday, Solana shortened the target slot time from 300 milliseconds to 250 milliseconds, increasing the network clock speed by nearly 17%. A slot is a short window designated for validators to add blocks. After the adjustment, Solana aims to produce about 4 blocks per second, up from about 3.3 blocks previously, allowing wallets, exchanges, and trading applications to obtain a more real-time network status.Validators will still lead for 4 consecutive slots, so each leader's control window has been reduced from 1.2 seconds to 1 second, and the transaction ordering rights will be handed over to the next validator earlier. For applications such as oracle-driven markets and automated market makers, stale prices or hundreds of milliseconds of uncertainty can affect trade execution, and a faster clock is expected to reduce failed transactions and price deviations. However, the speed increase did not result in a 17% increase in original capacity; according to SIMD-0525, the allowed computation and data volume per slot has decreased by the same proportion, and the overall processing limit of the network remains basically unchanged.This adjustment is the third phase of Solana's gradual reduction from 400 milliseconds to 350 and then to 300 milliseconds. Since the epoch is still fixed at 432,000 slots, its expected duration has decreased from about 36 hours to about 30 hours, leaving less time for offline signing and delayed approvals. There is currently no timeline for the proposed further reduction to 200 milliseconds to go live on the mainnet, and the network will advance only if the block skip rate remains acceptable at the 250 milliseconds stage.

Circle co-founder and CEO Jeremy Allaire posted on the X platform that the Circle x402 Facilitator service has launched on Arc, which supports the settlement of USDC on Arc, Base, and Polygon PoS through EIP-3009.In addition, with the launch of Arc, the market demand for cirBTC is increasing. Currently, Circle Mint customers can directly mint and redeem cirBTC natively within the app, with each cirBTC backed 1:1 by 1 native BTC and redeemable for native BTC at a 1:1 ratio.

According to Catcher Predict monitoring on-chain data, large capital movements are predicted in the Polymarket market. A large whale invested $456,170.43 in a single bet on the event "FC Barcelona vs. Real Racing Club" for "FC Barcelona." Based on the current transaction price, the latest corresponding winning probability for this bet is 92%.

According to on-chain analyst Yu Jin's monitoring, as ZEC rose by 12%, the largest short seller of ZEC, Garrett Jin, increased his short position by 5,000 ZEC at an average price of $1,252.5, worth approximately $6.26 million.Currently, this entity holds a total of 37,760 ZEC short positions (worth approximately $46.74 million), with an average short price of $665.8, and a current unrealized loss of about $21.6 million.

According to Hyperbot data, Huang Licheng has closed part of his long positions in BTC and ETH. The current positions are as follows: a 25x long position in ETH valued at 59 million USD, with an unrealized loss of 1.8 million USD; a 40x long position in BTC valued at 5 million USD, with an unrealized loss of 110,000 USD.The data shows that his total position loss is 4.42 million USD.

As we enter the late third quarter of 2026, TSMC's 3nm and 2nm advanced process and CoWoS advanced packaging capacity continue to be in high demand. NVIDIA and Apple continue to dominate the resources for advanced processes and packaging; Amazon AWS's Annapurna has recently increased its AI self-developed chip production, securing more 3nm capacity. MediaTek, in addition to mobile chips, is also competing for 2/3nm process and CoWoS-S/L capacity with large orders related to Google TPU.There are reports that TSMC has recently readjusted its capacity allocation. After MediaTek secured a large order from Google TPU, the next-generation TPU v9 will simultaneously use TSMC's CoWoS-L and Intel's EMIB-T, which has slightly adjusted MediaTek's 3nm and 2nm capacity arrangements. Currently, TSMC's main customer for 3nm is NVIDIA, which is expected to surpass Apple to become the largest customer by 2025; the demand for 2nm is primarily from Apple and others. After AWS increased Annapurna's production, its 3nm and CoWoS configuration priority has improved.Starting in early 2026, TSMC will accelerate capacity expansion, with the 2nm monthly capacity of Hsinchu Baoshan Fab 20 and Kaohsiung Fab 22 reaching 50,000 wafers each by the end of October, totaling about 100,000 wafers; by the end of October, the monthly capacity for 3nm in Tainan Science Park is about 185,000 wafers. As of the end of September, the overall capacity utilization rate is about 96.2%, with 100% utilization for processes below 16/12nm down to 2nm. The shortage of CoWoS supply has driven advanced packaging orders to overflow, with the priority for orders going to ASE Group's Siliconware Precision Industries first, followed by Amkor, and Chipbond, among others. Chipbond's related testing and packaging capacity is fully loaded, with order visibility extending to 2028.

TrendForce's latest research on the memory industry indicates that the NOR Flash market is experiencing the most significant supply-demand structural change in nearly a decade. AI-related products are absorbing a large amount of capacity, and suppliers find it difficult to significantly increase NOR Flash bit output despite the continuous growth in high-end application demand. Therefore, the supply-demand imbalance is expected to persist in the second half of 2026, with overall contract prices remaining high.Although suppliers in Taiwan and China have increased capital expenditures and expanded production, the new capacity cannot be immediately converted into market supply. New output must first go through process migration, yield ramp-up, product certification, and customer design integration, making it difficult to alleviate the supply shortage in the mid-to-high capacity segment in the short term. Winbond expects the strongest bit growth in 2026, driven by the full-scale production of 45nm NOR and the migration to 25nm and 20nm. GigaDevice is upgrading the process for products of 32Mb and above, with effective output limited in the first half of the year. MXIC will prioritize additional 12-inch capacity for NAND and eMMC, limiting the growth of NOR wafer input.In 2026, AI and aerospace communications will become the main sources of new demand. The NOR usage in AI servers is 3-5 times that of traditional servers, with high-density demand driven by edge AI, AI PCs, robotics, and low-orbit satellites. In the first half of 2026, the average cumulative contract price increased by 100-120%. In the second half, the average price of products of 256Mb and above may rise by another 90-110%, while prices for products of 128Mb and below are expected to increase by 10-20% in Q4 2026.

The supply chain reveals that TSMC has disclosed its expansion targets for 2/3 nanometers for the first time next year. The 2-nanometer production is expected to increase from 90,000 wafers at the end of this year to 110,000 wafers by mid-next year, an increase of 22%; the 3-nanometer production is expected to rise from over 180,000 wafers at the end of this year to 210,000 wafers by mid-next year, an increase of over 16%. TSMC did not comment on market rumors yesterday and emphasized that capacity-related statements are based on the company's announcements.It is reported that TSMC's monthly capacity for 3 nanometers reached 120,000 to 130,000 wafers at the end of last year and is expected to expand to 180,000 wafers by the end of this year, with a target of over 210,000 wafers by mid-next year. The monthly capacity for 2 nanometers is expected to reach 90,000 wafers by the end of this year. TSMC previously stated that capital expenditures in 2026 will range from $60 billion to $64 billion, with approximately 70% to 80% allocated for advanced processes, and plans to add three 3-nanometer fabs located in Taiwan, Arizona in the United States, and Japan, while converting 5-nanometer equipment in Taiwan to support 3-nanometer capacity.

The new regulations from the Central Bank of Brazil require virtual asset service providers to meet compliance requirements related to capital, auditing, anti-money laundering, and ongoing reporting, with capital requirements reaching up to 37.2 million reais, approximately 7.2 million US dollars. Currently, among about 300 related institutions, only 20 to 25 may meet the conditions to apply for authorization, and it is expected that only 10 will obtain licenses.Some small platforms have ended or restructured their retail operations, including Bitnuvem, NovaDAX, Digitra, and Coinext, but these platforms did not attribute their decisions to the new regulations. Institutions that fail to meet the requirements will also face ongoing compliance costs, and some businesses may struggle to maintain operations. Related institutions must apply for authorization by October 30, and those that do not apply will cease operations within 30 days and notify customers.Isabel Longhi, Head of Public and Regulatory Policy for Ripple Latin America, stated that market consolidation is expected to occur as the Brazilian crypto market matures, but the new regulations will limit innovation in the short term.

According to Defimon monitoring, the Ampleforth governance system Governor Bravo has a suspicious proposal 54, involving approximately 2.5 million dollars of treasury funds. This incident has been classified as an access control risk and a malicious governance proposal, and the related funds have not yet been transferred out.The Ampleforth time-lock contract currently holds about 2.538 million USDC, so this proposal involves nearly all treasury assets. The proposer disclosed that they wrote the proposal themselves and plan to vote through a delegated address holding 87,238 FORTH, which accounts for about 0.57% of the supply, slightly above the proposal threshold of 75,000 FORTH. The quorum for the proposal is 600,000 FORTH, which, at the current price of FORTH at 0.22 dollars, is worth approximately 132,000 dollars.

According to on-chain analyst Ai Yi (@ai_9684xtpa), the well-known trader @XXAntiWar's related addresses have currently completed 3 ZEC short positions, with a total profit of approximately $727,000 and a settled trade win rate of 100%. In addition, they still hold a 3x ZEC short position worth $4.5 million, currently facing an unrealized loss of about $23,000.Specifically, the address 0xfe5...5d850 previously shorted ZEC twice near $1273 and $1181, with a total profit of approximately $693,000; the address 0x0c4...5d516 shorted ZEC worth $3.56 million at an entry price of $1129, making a profit of about $34,000.The address 0x9bb...9bbf2 opened a 3x ZEC short position worth $4.5 million at 5 AM today, with an entry price of $1120.8, currently facing an unrealized loss of about $23,000.