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According to Gate market data, on August 14, the Hang Seng Index continued its sluggish performance from the previous day, closing down 0.93% at 25,160.25 points, while the Hang Seng Tech Index closed down 1.79%.JD's stock price fell 10.08% after earnings, and CK Hutchison closed down 5.12%. The total market turnover reached HKD 135.724 billion.

According to a report by Reuters, influenced by multiple factors such as the tense Sino-U.S. relations, China's push for domestic software alternatives, and U.S. export controls, Microsoft has closed at least 15 branches and joint ventures in China over the past five years, executing a strategic contraction. In 2023, the company internally considered exiting the Chinese market, as some executives believed that "the geopolitical risks outweighed the limited economic returns," but ultimately did not proceed with the exit. Microsoft disclosed in 2024 that its business in China accounted for only about 1.5% of its global revenue.The report states that Microsoft's final decision to remain in China was primarily due to the establishment of a profitable path—providing Azure cloud and AI services to Chinese companies like ByteDance and Shein, helping them operate compliantly in overseas markets. Additionally, the company believes that retaining its business in China remains strategically significant for acquiring engineering talent. However, analysts question the sustainability of this AI business model: the service relies on third-party models like OpenAI, and Chinese companies are increasingly adopting domestic alternatives like Kimi, which offer comparable performance at lower costs.Microsoft's research and development presence in China is also contracting. Its predecessor, Microsoft Research Asia, has successively established new labs in Vancouver, Singapore, and Tokyo. In 2024, the company offered job opportunities to 1,000 top engineers to relocate to the U.S. and three other countries, but only about one-third accepted, with most senior engineers moving to domestic universities and tech companies. A Microsoft spokesperson responded that the company will continue to commit to the Chinese market but did not comment on specific decision details. ByteDance and Shein did not respond to related inquiries.

According to on-chain analyst Ai Yi's monitoring, a certain whale previously shorted Bitcoin with a scale of 114 million dollars. After three stop-losses, it added 330 BTC again in the early morning, pushing the long position to exceed 110 million dollars, reaching 1742 BTC, with an opening average price updated to 63709 dollars.Currently, the floating profit is 292,000 dollars, and it has earned 118,000 dollars through funding fees.

According to Gate market data, Reddit's US stock rose over 12% in after-hours trading.

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has announced the agenda for the inaugural meeting of the Innovation Advisory Committee (IAC). The committee will hold its first meeting on August 20, focusing on regulatory issues in emerging areas such as crypto assets, artificial intelligence, and prediction markets.CFTC Chairman Michael S. Selig stated that the U.S. has long been a global center for financial innovation and hopes to explore how emerging technologies and financial products can drive market development through discussions with innovative entrepreneurs, researchers, and industry builders, and to jointly explore the "new frontiers of finance." The meeting will be live-streamed on the CFTC official website. Committee members and attendees will discuss topics such as the regulatory framework for digital assets, the impact of AI technology on financial markets, and the development of prediction markets. The public can submit relevant opinions by August 27, and these opinions will be publicly released through the U.S. Federal Regulations website Regulations.gov. The CFTC indicated that the meeting agenda may be adjusted based on the committee's subsequent focus.The Innovation Advisory Committee aims to provide the CFTC with recommendations on emerging technologies, financial products, and trends in market innovation, covering important areas such as digital assets and artificial intelligence that may influence the structure of future financial markets.

Justin Drake posted on the X platform that Ethereum L1 will no longer use the SNARK-friendly hash function Poseidon, which has dominated since 2019, and will instead turn to traditional hash functions such as SHA2 or BLAKE2s.This adjustment is based on advancements in the field of SNARK design, shifting the focus from "SNARK-friendly hashing" to "hash-friendly SNARK." By aligning Boolean operations in traditional hashing with binary field native, the proof performance of traditional hashing in SNARK has reached 1 million per second, with an overhead of about 100 times.Research from Binius and Flock has driven relevant progress. The Ethereum Foundation's post-quantum team is advancing this route, with a roadmap that includes deploying production-level leanVM in 2027, and deploying in the consensus layer, execution layer, and data processing layer in 2028.Justin Drake also stated that the enhanced capabilities of AI in cryptanalysis have recently led to setbacks for the lattice-based scheme HAWK and the homomorphic scheme SQIsign, with hash-based schemes being used for post-quantum signatures on the blockchain. The trend of open-source automated research is also accelerating, with SNARK.fast achieving 1.8 million BLAKE3 proofs per second.

Garrett Jin released this week's market report, characterizing the rebound in the South Korean market as a wide-ranging fluctuation rather than a new trend. SK Hynix rebounded continuously after retesting the 1.42 million won area, closing up 5.9% at 1,593,000 won. The KOSPI has risen 20% from the July low, entering a technical bull market, but foreign capital has not shifted to long-term holdings, and the drag from leveraged ETFs remains. Garrett Jin set the first profit-taking level at $1,150 (approximately 1.63 million won), with the next target at $1,300 (1.85 million won).Garrett Jin also noted that gold recorded its strongest weekly gain since January this week at +7.8%, priced at $4,388. The driving factors were a decrease of 23,000 in July non-farm payrolls and a moderate CPI that dampened September rate hike expectations. However, it is currently overbought in the short term, and a pullback could present an opportunity for incremental accumulation. Bitcoin has shown no response to the same macro-positive factors, remaining trapped between the support at $62,500 and resistance at $65,000-$70,000, with the bottom structure since $57,700 gradually being built. Garrett Jin will wait for the next buying opportunity after a pullback.Regarding SpaceX, Garrett Jin believes the recent performance is a classic case of "bad news fully priced in + short squeeze," with the unlocking itself becoming a washout rather than the starting point of a decline. However, the unlocking window has not yet ended, with an additional 319 million shares to be unlocked, approximately 700 million shares each in September and October. The current range up to $160 is a profit-taking zone rather than a high-entry zone.

U.S. stock index futures were little changed after the economic data was released.

According to Gate market data, the Hang Seng Tech Index strengthened sharply in the afternoon, with an increase of over 1%. Lenovo Group (00992.HK) rose more than 16%, leading the constituent stocks.

Lenovo Group surged over 12% in the afternoon, as the company announced its performance at noon. In the first fiscal quarter, adjusted profit attributable to equity holders increased by 176% year-on-year, and revenue from AI-related businesses grew by 60% year-on-year, reaching 63.4 billion yuan, setting a new historical high.

BIP-110 received only about 2.5% miner hash power support when the activation deadline was reached and failed to activate. The nodes executing the proposal forked from the mainnet at block height 961632, and a minority chain subsequently stopped producing blocks.Bitcoin Mechanic, a supporter of BIP-110, stated that this outcome proves Bitcoin has encountered "protocol capture," where large mining pool operators coordinate to influence consensus rules and undermine node sovereignty. Since the minority chain received less than 3% of the total network hash power, its inherited mining difficulty led to a halt in block production. Some supporters are considering changing the PoW algorithm through a hard fork, and Bitcoin Mechanic indicated that they would wait to resume node operations after the Bitcoin Knots update.Cysic founder and CEO Leo Fan stated that the difficulty adjustment mechanism protects the main chain, and the mandatory activation design of BIP-110 is the main issue. The anonymous owner of 1win pointed out that the proposal only received 2.53% support, below the 55% activation threshold, and the main chain is still continuously operating.

According to Cryptopolitan, cybersecurity company Malwarebytes discovered that a user on a cybercrime forum is selling a "scam toolkit" for $500, which can set up a fake $TSLA token presale website with almost no technical background required.The scam process is as follows: after visitors enter an X username, the page displays their real avatar to create the illusion of a "targeted invitation," combined with a countdown and price increase warnings to create a sense of urgency. If victims choose the "15% reward link wallet" option, they will be asked to enter a 12-word recovery phrase, resulting in their wallet being emptied; if they choose to "invest" directly, they must send cryptocurrency assets to an address controlled by the scammers, and then see a fabricated balance on a fake dashboard. The toolkit's control panel allows operators to track victims in real-time, collect recovery phrases, and check wallet balances in advance to decide whether to strike. Malwarebytes discovered this toolkit on May 16, and recently IRS and Ledger users have also encountered similar phishing attacks.

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

According to Gate market data, oil prices fell slightly after rising for five consecutive trading days, with WTI crude oil dropping below $82 per barrel and Brent crude oil briefly falling below $87. Traders are awaiting progress on the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. The International Energy Agency stated that the global oil market faces a supply gap of 1.8 million barrels per day this quarter, more than double the previous forecast. Gasoline and diesel prices in the United States have reached new highs for this time of year.

The proposed soft fork BIP-54 (Consensus Cleanup) specification for Bitcoin was completed in May 2026, aimed at fixing four consensus rule boundary issues without adding new Bitcoin features. Wang Chun, co-founder of the digital asset mining pool F2pool, stated that they do not support BIP-54 and mentioned that if the proposal obtains the required majority through the standard BIP-9 process, F2pool will upgrade its mining nodes but will not issue a support signal in advance.BIP-54 has been tested in the Signet-based testing environment Bitcoin Inquisition, and the mining pools MARA and ViaBTC have voluntarily produced compatible coinbase transactions; the formal activation parameters have not yet been determined, and the mainnet voting is still incomplete. Previously, BIP-110, which attempted to restrict certain non-financial data in Bitcoin transactions, did not receive enough support from miners and stalled around block height 961635; BIP-54 does not involve restricting general script functionality.

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) requires the prediction market platform Kalshi to continue operating its exchange, executing in accordance with normal business practices and the core principles of the Commodity Exchange Act. The CFTC previously determined that New York's attempt to prevent the platform's operation constitutes a market emergency.The CFTC stated that forcibly liquidating a Bitcoin price position that extends until the end of 2026 could trigger traders to simultaneously unwind Bitcoin and other asset positions, exposing arbitrageurs holding opposite positions to one-sided risk. The order also enumerates contracts such as federal funds rates, traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, and the timing of economic recessions. A ruling signed by Judge Vernon D. Oliver of the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut concluded that Kalshi's sports contracts do not constitute swaps; even if they were swaps, federal law would not take precedence over Connecticut's gambling regulations.

After the Coldcard hardware wallet firmware vulnerability was exploited, approximately 2,100 bitcoins were stolen, resulting in a loss of nearly $130 million. On-chain data shows that long-term holders transferred about 233,000 bitcoins from their wallets in the days before and after the incident, worth approximately $15 billion.Casa CEO Nick Neuman stated that some of the transferred funds came from Coldcard users migrating to multi-signature wallets, and Ledger and Trezor users also took similar measures after the incident. During the same period, about 22,000 bitcoins were transferred to exchanges. Coinkite has requested that users who generated recovery phrases using firmware versions 4.1 to 4.1.9 consider the related wallets compromised and immediately migrate to new recovery phrases. The aforementioned versions cover from March 2021 to July 2026.

According to Catcher Predict monitoring, in the event "Kai and Speed complete the Minecraft challenge" on the prediction market Polymarket, the probability of the "yes" option in the sub-market "August 16" has experienced a sharp fluctuation, rising from 24% an hour ago to the current 41.5% (a fluctuation of 17.5%). Please note the impact of related breaking news.