machi

On September 28, the WEEX AI Trading Hackathon "AI Wars II: The Era of Algorithms" officially launched its fourth round of competition, which will run from 9/28 to 10/2. You can choose to join Team AI or Team Human. The AI team can access automated trading tools such as AI Agents through the WEEX API, while the Human team will engage in manual trading. Both sides will compete in a real market environment, vying for rankings and a prize pool of 25,000 USDT based on PnL%.AI Wars II consists of five rounds of competition, and so far, the Human team is leading the AI team 2:1. The real-time battle status on the WEEX official website shows that in the fourth round, the AI team's return is currently 7 percentage points ahead of the Human team. According to the event rules, the winning team can share 70% of each round's prize pool, while the losing team will still receive 30% of the prize pool share.

Paraguayan authorities shut down two illegal cryptocurrency mining facilities in Upper Paraná province within a week, seizing a total of 35 mining machines. One mining site, which was discovered on September 17, illegally drew electricity through a line without an installed meter, resulting in the confiscation of 10 ASIC mining machines, with related costs and fines totaling approximately $30,000.Another operation on September 12 seized 25 mining machines. The Paraguayan House of Representatives has passed a resolution requiring the National Electricity Administration to submit a report on the electricity consumption, electricity prices, and regulatory situation of the cryptocurrency mining industry.

User Kevin Bass posted that he has audited the finances of the artificial intelligence company Anthropic and found shocking circumstances, thus calling for Congress to investigate. Bass stated: Anthropic not only seeks regulatory capture but has also built an unshuttable regulatory capture machine, with structural financial incentives making it impossible to shut down its AI doomsday loop. This loop begins with METR, which Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei proposed to be assessed for model risk by a third-party evaluation agency and suggested METR.Bass claimed that METR financially relies on Anthropic's success, particularly the explosive growth of Anthropic stock exceeding $7 billion. Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz invested this stock into Good Ventures Foundation, which constitutes the majority of the organization's portfolio, and GVF is the overwhelming funder of the entire Anthropic network ecosystem. This stock was worth $500 million earlier last year and is now valued at over $7.7 billion about 16 months later. METR cannot afford to interrupt this growth.Bass pointed out that the same organization funding METR also funds organizations promoting AI doomsday, such as the Tarbell Center, which has published articles in The Verge, Science, Los Angeles Times, and others. These organizations all rely on the same funding. Bass stated that METR and others are not independent of Anthropic and cannot provide independent assessments; Congress must investigate.

According to Decrypt, the Mexican federal prosecutor, in conjunction with the Navy and Puebla state police, conducted a raid on a property in the remote mountainous area of Tlaola, Puebla, seizing approximately 300 cryptocurrency mining machines, as well as transformers, medium-voltage terminals, and satellite internet antennas.The investigation revealed that the mining operation illegally tapped into the grid of the Nuevo Necaxa hydroelectric power station, and authorities have filed charges for "theft of electricity." Currently, forensic accountants are tracing the source of the hardware funding, and money laundering suspicions have not been ruled out. Data from the Mexican Federal Electricity Commission shows that from January to July 2024, non-technical electricity losses reached up to 6,346 gigawatt-hours, valued at approximately 13.8 billion pesos (about 817 million USD).

On September 8, TSMC announced that starting in 2030, it will adopt a new "high NA" extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machine manufactured by ASML from the Netherlands for mass production. Both parties also stated that they will carry out industry-wide improvements on the high NA machines. ASML monopolizes the supply of EUV lithography machines used to form nanoscale ultra-fine circuits and will begin shipping high NA machines capable of drawing finer circuits starting in December 2023. Intel has already introduced high NA machines, while TSMC previously delayed mass production due to high costs and other reasons.TSMC and ASML will launch an industry-wide project to enlarge the photomask, which serves as the original circuit pattern, from the current 6-inch (approximately 15 centimeters) square to a 12-inch square, and develop high NA machines and related components corresponding to the large masks. A large mask pilot production line is planned to be established before 2031, and the high NA machines corresponding to the large masks are expected to reach a state suitable for advanced semiconductor production before 2033. Major semiconductor manufacturers and mask companies have expressed interest in participating.High NA machines can draw finer circuits, but the area that can be drawn in a single exposure is reduced to half that of traditional models, requiring multiple exposures for large chip circuits, which complicates the process and increases costs. Enlarging the photomask can expand the exposure area and reduce costs. TSMC Chairman and CEO C. C. Wei stated that the company will gather expertise from the entire industry to continuously promote technological innovation that makes advanced technology widely usable and convey its benefits.

ASML stated that it plans to collaborate with its major customers to develop new solutions capable of producing advanced chip manufacturing equipment to meet the demand for large data center chips designed by companies like NVIDIA.Currently, the extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines produced by ASML, which are widely used, can manufacture chips with a maximum area of about 800 square millimeters. The next-generation "high numerical aperture" EUV lithography machine that ASML is about to launch will be able to produce finer chips. However, due to its use of smaller mask sizes, it is currently limited in the area of chips it can manufacture.ASML plans to showcase a pilot production line using larger mask sizes by 2031 and aims to enable this new technology for mass production by 2033.

The Financial Times of the UK reports that Huawei is becoming more deeply involved in the domestic photolithography machine supply chain, not only investing in related equipment and component companies but also coordinating suppliers, wafer fabs, and complete machine manufacturers to promote domestic DUV into actual production lines. Bernstein analysts describe Huawei as the "project manager" for China's DUV projects.The fastest progress is being made by Shanghai Yuliangsheng. The company is involved in the development of domestic advanced DUV, with equipment already tested at wafer fabs such as SMIC and Huawei's own production lines, planning to produce 12 units by the end of this year. At this stage, the focus is primarily on simpler chips, with the ultimate goal of being used for advanced AI chip manufacturing.Currently, domestic DUV has not completely eliminated reliance on overseas supply chains. The projection lenses used by Yuliangsheng still come from Germany's Zeiss, and high-power light sources are also a major bottleneck. Huawei has invested in companies such as Qiqi Photon and Keyihongyuan to supplement domestic lenses and light sources.

According to the Financial Times, citing informed sources, Chinese memory chip manufacturers Changxin Storage and Yangtze Memory Technologies have purchased enough deep ultraviolet lithography machines (DUV) from ASML to meet their expansion plans for the next three years.

According to TechCrunch, AI lab Thinking Machines, founded by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, is in talks to raise $1 billion at a valuation of at least $40 billion, with existing investor Accel leading the round. The company was established early last year and launched the open-source weight model Inkling in July, charging for computing power based on usage through the Tinker platform, with annual revenue exceeding $100 million.Previously, Thinking Machines completed a $2 billion financing round at a valuation of $12 billion, led by a16z, with participation from Nvidia, GV, and others. Since then, several co-founders, including Lilian Weng and Luke Metz, have returned to OpenAI. If this round is completed, the valuation will be lower than the rumored target of $50 billion at the end of last year.

According to the public account of Power Heart, Bitmain released two new water-cooled mining machines at the World Digital Mining Summit (WDMS) in Hong Kong: the flagship model S23 XP Hyd has a computing power of 600 TH/s, an energy consumption ratio of 8.9 J/T, a total power consumption of 5,340W, and a futures price of $25.5/T (total machine $15,300), expected to be delivered from November 2026 to January 2027.The 2U rack-mounted water-cooled mining machine S23e U2H, adapted for standard IDC cabinet modifications, has a computing power of 865 TH/s, an energy consumption ratio of 10 J/T, a promotional price of $11/T, and a total machine price of $9,515.

According to Lookonchain monitoring, Machi (@machibigbrother) (0x020...5872) currently holds over 100 million USD in ETH long positions, making it the largest ETH bull on-chain. After the market decline, Machi closed part of the position 7 hours ago, incurring a loss of 1.96 million USD.His current holdings include 41,000 ETH, valued at 100.01 million USD; 75,000 HYPE, valued at 6.03 million USD; and 45 bitcoins, valued at 3.5 million USD.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Barret Zoph, co-founder of Thinking Machines Lab, will join Google as Vice President of Research. Zoph suddenly left the startup to join OpenAI after a dispute with CEO Mira Murati earlier this year, and after a brief tenure at OpenAI, he changed employers again.Previously, Zoph served as Chief Technology Officer at Thinking Machines Lab and led efforts to sell artificial intelligence products to enterprises during his time at OpenAI. Google has confirmed this appointment. Recently, Google has lost several high-profile researchers in succession.

According to monitoring by Lookonchain, Machi (@machibigbrother, 0x020...872) was once liquidated to an account balance of less than $60,000. Currently, his account balance has increased nearly 200 times and has opened long positions in BTC and ETH worth $113 million, including 23,350 ETH valued at $59 million; 668 BTC valued at $54 million.

According to PRNewswire, Nasdaq-listed company BTC Digital Ltd. announced that its 10MW cryptocurrency computing power infrastructure project located in Georgia, USA has completed construction and is entering the deployment preparation stage.The company expects to deploy high-performance mining machines and start digital asset mining operations within approximately the next two months.

According to Arkham monitoring, trader Machi Big Brother recently turned approximately $100,000 into about $9.5 million in the Hyperliquid perpetual contract account, achieving nearly a 100-fold increase in the entire account, with profits of about $9 million in just two days.Last week, Machi Big Brother was still selling his last Bored Ape NFT to go long on ETH in Hyperliquid. Relevant data shows that his trading performance has quickly rebounded.

Bitcoin News posted on the X platform that the 256 Foundation has launched the 256 Red Team security project, which audits ASIC miner firmware through reverse engineering, real-time traffic capture, and reconciliation by share level. The team stated that 41 issue reports have been submitted regarding the original Bitmain firmware as well as third-party firmware such as LuxOS, VNISH, and Braiins OS.Identified issues include unauthenticated factory APIs, paths that allow root access, default credentials, built-in vendor SSH keys, and updaters that cannot verify installed content. After reverse engineering the Bitmain miner daemon and checking real-time connections, researchers reported that no evidence of hash power hijacking, remote kill switches, or hidden beacons was found in the original Bitmain firmware; the related risks are mainly concentrated in third-party "optimized" firmware.Researchers have submitted 3 responsible disclosures to VNISH, Luxor, and Braiins, granting each party 30 days to respond before public disclosure. MicroBT, Canaan, Auradine, Bitdeer, and ePIC will undergo follow-up audits.

According to Jinshi, the United States is seeking opinions on expanding the scope of metal tariff products, suggesting tariffs on products such as welding machines and cranes.

According to official news, Japanese convenience store giant Lawson will conduct Japan's first POS cash register stablecoin payment pilot experiment at two stores in Tokyo on August 6 and August 17. The experiment will use three stablecoins: JPYC, USDC, and USDT, with payments completed through HashPort Wallet and MetaMask wallet, and settlements processed by the PAYTREE multi-code payment gateway provided by Canal Payment Service, without the need for dedicated payment terminals.On August 6, the experiment will take place at the Takanawa Gateway City store using HashPort Wallet and JPYC; on August 17, it will take place at the Osaki Atrium store using MetaMask with USDC, USDT, and JPYC.

According to the New Straits Times, Malaysian police recently dismantled an illegal Bitcoin mining operation located in Tronoh, arresting two men aged 40 and 52, and confiscating 73 cryptocurrency mining devices and related equipment.