Sources say Pakistan is still mediating, and the window for US-Iran talks may reopen.

Despite a sharp pullback in global chip stocks since late June, funds have flowed into semiconductor leveraged ETFs against the trend. Data shows Direxion Daily Semiconductor Bull 3X Shares (SOXL) attracted a combined net inflow of nearly $70 billion in July and the first two weeks of August, exhibiting a clear "buy the dip" pattern. As of August 24, SOXL traded at $111.16, down over 60% from its prior high of $302. The ETF tracks the NYSE Semiconductor Index, with holdings including Nvidia, Micron Technology, AMD, and Broadcom. Semiconductors remain one of the most crowded trades globally. Bank of America’s August global fund manager survey revealed that 53% of respondents opted to "go long on global semiconductors," a notable cooling from the 82% historical peak seen last month. Institutions are divided on the sector’s outlook. Fidelity warned that the semiconductor sector’s roughly 40-month earnings cycle may be nearing its peak, cautioning that daily reset leveraged products like SOXL could amplify losses if the sector cycle reverses. Goldman Sachs, by contrast, sharply raised its forecasts for global fab equipment spending from 2026 to 2028 to $150 billion, $218 billion, and $281 billion respectively, arguing that the AI-driven semiconductor supercycle is set to continue through 2028. JPMorgan Chase also maintains a bullish stance, noting that the semiconductor sector, following its recent pullback, is attractive.

Beating AI (Dong察) News Flash: Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke has publicly stated that if Claude Code continues to refuse to read AGENTS.md and the.agents/skills directory, he is considering disabling Claude Code internally at Shopify. Tobi noted that as AI coding tools like Codex, Cursor, and Claude Code are simultaneously adopted by enterprise teams, an increasing number of coding agents now support configuring project specifications, testing workflows, and agent instructions via the unified AGENTS.md file. However, Claude Code currently relies primarily on CLAUDE.md and the.claude/skills directory, which may cause the same code repository to be read with different rules by different agents, resulting in the so-called "split brain" problem. He argued that maintaining multiple sets of configuration files has limited impact on individual developers, but for enterprises like Shopify with a large engineering team, multiple agent contexts require continuous synchronization; any discrepancies could cause agents to deviate from team norms in their execution. This controversy is ostensibly a dispute over configuration file formats, but at its core revolves around a key question: after AI coding agents enter enterprise environments, should project specifications, skills, and contexts adopt vendor-specific standards, or establish cross-agent universal standards?

According to Arkham’s monitoring, Bitwise clients have been net buying Solana (SOL) for five consecutive days, with the latest purchase totaling around $25 million. Data shows that since the launch of Bitwise’s BSOL ETF, its clients’ cumulative net purchases of SOL have reached approximately $948 million. If the current buying momentum continues, Bitwise clients’ weekly cumulative net purchases are on track to exceed $1 billion.

The US Blockchain Association is urging U.S. federal regulators to limit Know Your Customer (KYC) requirements to stablecoin issuers and their direct customers when implementing the stablecoin regulatory framework under the GENIUS Act, and refrain from extending KYC obligations to downstream peer-to-peer (P2P) wallet transfers. In a comment letter submitted on August 21, the association stated that issuers should not be required to conduct identity verification for P2P stablecoin transactions they did not participate in, facilitate, or approve, warning that such mandates would be "nearly unenforceable" and could even "kill the industry". The association also recommended that regulators allow issuers to use modern technologies like digital identity and zero-knowledge proofs for customer identity checks, and grant issuers adequate liability protection when they reasonably rely on regulated financial institutions to fulfill KYC duties. Furthermore, the association called on regulators to align the implementation timelines of the GENIUS Act with FinCEN’s anti-money laundering (AML) rules and OFAC sanctions regulations, to avoid forcing stablecoin issuers to repeatedly upgrade their compliance systems amid phased rollouts of regulatory requirements.

Citrini analyst Jukan published an analysis stating that OpenAI’s "Jalape?o" AI chip may not scale to the level of NVIDIA’s Rubin platform. Jukan argued that if OpenAI’s HBM4 high-bandwidth memory relies entirely on Samsung for supply, its capacity scaling will hit a certain ceiling. To further expand the deployment of "Jalape?o", OpenAI may need to lower requirements for HBM4 specifications such as transfer speed, so that it can adopt HBM4 products from other suppliers simultaneously, thereby easing supply chain constraints. Earlier today, BlockBeats reported that OpenAI unveiled the latest test results of its self-developed AI inference chip Jalape?o (literally: jalape?o pepper), which beat NVIDIA’s GB200 and GB300 superchips in the InferenceX benchmark. On models including GPT-OSS 120B, DeepSeek R1, and Kimi K2.5 1T, the chip delivers 1.5 to 1.9 times the AI workload per watt of competing products, with end-to-end latency reduced by 1.7 to 3.6 times.

Crypto analyst CW stated in a post that Bitcoin will need to meet three conditions to kick off a full-scale rally: Hyperliquid whales turning bullish, Bitfinex whales completing their BTC long position accumulation, and the elimination of negative Korea Kimchi Premium and Coinbase Premium. So far, Bitfinex whales have finished building their BTC long positions, while both the negative Kimchi Premium and negative Coinbase Premium have disappeared—meaning two of the three conditions are already satisfied. The market’s core focus moving forward will be whether Hyperliquid whales shift to a bullish stance; once this signal emerges, it could act as a catalyst for Bitcoin to start a new upward trend. It’s worth noting that the above assessment primarily reflects the analyst’s personal views, and related premiums and whale position changes are generally only used as reference indicators for market sentiment and capital flows.