chips

On-chain data analyst Murphy pointed out that BTC purchased in 2025 has been in a state of unrealized loss until now. Currently, there are about 4.77 million coins from 2025, a decrease of 41.5% from the peak in December last year. The decline slope shows two phases: a rapid decline before February and a slowdown after February, but it still maintains a certain slope. This group is currently the largest supply side in the market.Comparing the data from 2024, 2023, and 2022, it is found that the old coins with unrealized gains have basically passed the steep decline phase; the longer the time, the smaller the slope, and the curve has almost flattened after February. Even if the price drops further, the changes in the number of these coins are not significant, and those that should have changed hands have already done so. In terms of historical data, during the bear bottom in 2022, the high-position coins from 2021 decreased by 51%, and during the bear bottom in 2018, the high-position coins from 2017 decreased by 62%.Murphy believes that if we simply refer to history, the maximum decline of the 2025 coins in this bear bottom may be between 50%-60% (currently at 41%), and this does not yet account for the BTC purchased by institutions such as ETFs and MicroStrategy in 2025, most of which are in a locked state.

According to South Korean media ZDNet Korea, Samsung Electronics is adjusting the original purpose of its NRD-K Line 2 at the Giheung campus from a research and development facility to a wafer foundry line, with the main target product being the 2nm base chips required for NVIDIA's HBM. This production line is expected to be operational in the second half of 2028, adopting a "Send-Fab" model, which involves receiving wafers from other mass production lines and performing specific processes.NRD-K is the most advanced composite research and development campus built by Samsung Electronics to seize future semiconductor technology, with a total investment of approximately 20 trillion won, planning for three production lines, of which the first line is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2024. This adjustment aims to proactively respond to the expansion of HBM demand driven by investments in AI infrastructure. Samsung plans to first apply the 2nm process to custom HBM and HBM5 to maintain performance advantages.Industry insiders point out that the scale of NRD-K Line 2 is relatively small, making it suitable for operation in the Send-Fab format. However, there are still about two years until the production line is operational, and the final purpose may be adjusted again based on market conditions. Samsung had previously considered using this production line for DRAM production, but after modifications to the relevant plans this month, DRAM capacity will be more concentrated in the Pyeongtaek campus. Equipment procurement orders have not yet been officially issued.

On-chain analyst Murphy stated that currently, all chips bought in BTC in 2025 are basically in a state of loss. Therefore, apart from wallet migrations, the reduction in the scale of 2025 chips likely means that holders are cutting losses and selling. Data shows that as of now, approximately 4.77 million BTC chips bought in 2025 remain, a decrease of 41.5% from the peak in December last year.From the downward trend, this group has experienced two phases: a rapid decrease in chips before February this year, and a significant slowdown in the rate of decline after February, although it still maintains a certain slope. Murphy believes that the 2025 chips may be the largest potential supply side in the current market scale. In contrast, the BTC chips formed in 2024, 2023, and 2022 have basically completed the release of high-level locked positions due to still having unrealized gains, and the slope of the curve is gradually flattening, indicating that the selling pressure from long-term holders is weakening.Historical data shows that during the bottom phases of the past two bear markets, high-level chips have shown a significant decline: at the bottom of the bear market in 2022, the chips bought at high levels in 2021 decreased by about 51%; at the bottom of the bear market in 2018, the chips bought at high levels in 2017 decreased by about 62%. If we refer to historical cycles, Murphy believes that in this bear market bottom phase, the reduction of high-level chips in 2025 may be in the range of 50%-60%, and the current decline of 41.5% indicates that there is still some room for release. However, this judgment has not yet considered the BTC bought by institutional investors such as spot ETFs and MicroStrategy, as this portion of chips is mostly in a long-term locked state, which may reduce the actual market supply pressure.

The CEO of Lenovo stated that Lenovo will collaborate with NVIDIA (NVDA.O) and plans to launch AI PCs equipped with RTX chips later this year.

CoreWeave warns investors that transitioning from NVIDIA chips to other chips will be difficult and may require a significant investment of time and money.

The number of registered users on the Zhipu MaaS open platform (i.e., API users) has approached 7 million, an increase of about 2 million compared to early July, including 23,000 enterprise customers. The user count for the developer product ZCode, which competes with Codex, surpassed one million within one month of its launch.Since the beginning of this year, Zhipu's ARR has grown 15 times. It is understood that after the release of new models by Kimi and Alibaba, Zhipu's ARR growth rate has not been affected. Some investors have revealed that the current ARR has reached $2 billion, but Zhipu's official stance has denied this, with people close to the company indicating that the actual figure should be higher. On July 21, it was reported that Zhipu has built a domestic AI computing power infrastructure with a scale of 1GW. It is understood that more than 50,000 domestic computing chips have been activated to alleviate the growing inference demand. On July 31, Zhipu's long-term Coding Plan, which had significantly increased in price, was opened for purchase.

According to the latest supply chain survey by TrendForce, despite the United States implementing export controls on high-end GPUs, China's AI industry has not slowed down; instead, it is accelerating the construction of a domestic AI supply chain. The report points out that the supply structure of high-end AI chips in China is shifting from reliance on imported GPUs to a dual-track model of "domestic GPUs plus self-developed ASICs," with domestic solutions expected to capture nearly 90% of the Chinese high-end AI chip market by 2026.This year, the Chinese government is actively promoting the adoption of domestic AI chips, with policies prioritizing support for high-potential local manufacturers to significantly expand their market share in the high-end AI server market. Meanwhile, the domestic ecosystem is gradually maturing in key areas such as advanced processes, advanced packaging, and thermal management. TrendForce expects that, against the backdrop of an accelerated domestic substitution process, domestic chip manufacturers like Huawei Ascend, Cambricon, and Haiguang are likely to continue benefiting, and the related industrial chain will usher in structural growth opportunities.

SK Hynix stated in a recent article that the competition in AI is shifting from the performance of individual chips to the design and operation of the entire infrastructure architecture. The competitiveness of AI data centers no longer depends on individual components, but on whether the five key elements of computing, memory, storage, networking, and power cooling can be seamlessly integrated.The article points out that the continuous expansion of AI model scales has led to a surge in demand for computing power and data movement. Training requires repeatedly reading massive datasets, while inference relies on quickly retrieving user request information, both of which place higher demands on the system architecture of data centers. At the memory level, HBM, server DRAM, and others have formed a hierarchical system, each undertaking different bandwidth and capacity tasks. At the networking level, as large-scale training and inference rely on multi-server parallel processing, networking has become a key factor determining the scalability of data centers. System design is shifting from single-server to whole rack and cluster-level expansion.According to Omdia's forecast, the AI data center chip market will grow from $123 billion in 2024 to $207 billion in 2025, reaching $286 billion by 2030. SK Hynix also mentioned that Microsoft's Fairwater data center in Wisconsin is about the length of five football fields, indicating that infrastructure is being deployed on a larger scale. SK Hynix emphasizes that memory is becoming a key layer connecting computing and data.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Apple is testing memory chips from the Chinese DRAM manufacturer Changxin Storage (CXMT), planning to apply them to product lines such as the iPhone and MacBook. The background of this move is the AI demand driving up global memory prices; Apple has previously lobbied the U.S. side, stating that the current pricing from Korean and American suppliers is "unsustainable." The report states that Apple is seeking approval from the White House to conduct business with Chinese chip suppliers. Currently, the U.S. allows the purchase of commercial off-the-shelf chips but restricts customized products.Changxin Storage has recently rapidly expanded its market share, with second-quarter revenue growing more than 8 times year-on-year, and its global DRAM market share rising to 7%, completing its IPO on the Science and Technology Innovation Board last month. Meanwhile, PC manufacturers such as HP and Acer have begun using Changxin Storage memory chips in some devices sold in non-U.S. markets to alleviate supply pressure. If Apple ultimately reaches a procurement agreement, it may face political resistance from Washington.

Tesla stated that TeraFab will be built in Grimes County, Texas, and the number of chips required by Tesla and SpaceX will far exceed the current and future global production capacity.

U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren has requested the U.S. Department of Commerce to explain its policy towards the UAE, which involves granting the UAE-related entities more access to AI chip exports after the UAE invested in the Trump family-supported cryptocurrency project World Liberty Financial.In a letter to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, it was mentioned that an entity in Abu Dhabi invested $500 million in World Liberty Financial in January; another UAE-related company used World Liberty's USD 1 stablecoin to complete a $2 billion investment in the cryptocurrency exchange Binance. The U.S. Department of Commerce previously reclassified the UAE to Country Group A:5, allowing it to receive more license-free exports, including advanced chips. The department also stated that it would "actively review" license applications for exporting chips and servers to the UAE entity MGX involved in the $2 billion investment in Binance.Warren stated that the actions of the Department of Commerce raise significant questions about how the President's cryptocurrency business interests may affect institutional operations and national security. In June, several senators, including Warren, requested a hearing on the $500 million transaction involving World Liberty Financial.

According to Jinshi reports, German chip manufacturer Infineon expects fourth-quarter revenue for the period ending in September to reach approximately 4.7 billion euros (5.4 billion dollars), exceeding analysts' average expectations of 4.6 billion euros. This growth is mainly attributed to the increased demand for data center chips and rising prices.Infineon CEO Jochen Hanebeck stated that the demand for power solutions aimed at artificial intelligence data centers remains strong, becoming an important growth driver for the company.

According to Bloomberg, Blackstone Inc. is in preliminary discussions with investors to assess the feasibility of raising a second large-scale debt financing for Anthropic to support its plan to procure Google AI chips. Sources revealed that a preliminary proposal put forward by Blackstone had a scale of at least $36 billion.The scale, structure of the financing, and whether Blackstone will ultimately lead the deal are still under discussion, and relevant details may change. This financing plan reflects that AI companies are acquiring computing resources through large-scale capital operations. As the demand for training and inference of large models continues to grow, AI companies are seeking new financing methods to support the construction of expensive computing infrastructure.

Analyst Murphy stated that there have been consecutive transfers of over 65,000 BTC in a single day in the past two days (excluding internal transfers within the same entity), leading to a significant decrease in the net holdings of long-term holders (LTH). He pointed out that LTH net holdings have changed the previously continuous upward trend since May, remaining stagnant until July, which is a rare phenomenon in the past year.Murphy mentioned that nearly 14,000 BTC were transferred to exchanges, for example, a publicly listed company under Trump transferred 2,628 BTC to the Crypto.com exchange, which is part of this. The remaining destinations and purposes of the LTH net reduction are still unknown.He also listed current macro-level risk points that may impact BTC, including the Federal Reserve's recent interest rate cut with a 9 to 3 split vote, conflicts in the Middle East and oil prices, the highly concentrated valuation of the AI sector in the US stock market relying on debt and private credit financing, and the yen carry trade positions accumulating again to a nearly historically extreme net short state, while also noting that the sensitivity of the current BTC chip structure may amplify the above risks.

On-chain analyst Murphy pointed out that Bitcoin has accumulated up to 890,000 BTC at the single price level of $63,000, showing an extreme distribution. Excluding the 550,000 BTC locked by Coinbase in the $83,000 to $84,000 range, the accumulation at this price level may have exceeded 1 million BTC, accounting for about 5% of the total circulation. Historically, exceeding this scale has generally triggered significant volatility.Currently, the combined total of the two price levels, $62,000 and $63,000, accounts for about 8% of the circulation, and the concentration of chips within a 5% range of the spot price has simultaneously risen to 13%. Although it has not yet reached the historical high probability trigger line of 15%, it has surpassed the level that caused severe volatility in May, officially entering the alert zone.Analysts emphasize that a high concentration of chips means a sharp increase in price sensitivity. When overly concentrated chips are gathered in a narrow range, even a slight change in price may exacerbate the turnover of sensitive chips, leading to violent redistribution either upwards or downwards.The massive short-term chips accumulated near $63,000 are forming a potential trigger for volatility, and any external event could become the detonator. The market may have entered a tense state where a significant directional choice could occur at any moment.

Crypto analyst Murphy stated that the Bitcoin URPD (UTXO Realized Price Distribution) data shows that there are 890,000 coins concentrated at the $63,000 level and 710,000 coins at the $62,000 level, together accounting for about 8% of the circulating supply, which is significantly higher than usual.Murphy believes that this data is similar to the concentration seen just before the FTX incident in 2022. The high concentration increases Bitcoin's price sensitivity, making it prone to sharp fluctuations, ultimately leading to violent redistribution, which could be an important directional choice at the end of a bear market.In response, Jiang Zhuoer commented that if the CLARITY Act cannot be passed before Congress goes into recess, Bitcoin may complete its final drop to the bear market bottom.

According to Gate market data, U.S. stocks closed higher on Thursday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average initially up 1.19%, the S&P 500 index up 1.67%, and the Nasdaq up 2.78%. Micron Technology rose 18%, SanDisk rose 26%, SK Hynix rose 17%, and Nvidia rose over 2%.The Nasdaq Golden Dragon China Index rose 1.05%, and iQIYI rose 4%.