Serenity questions whether leading AI labs are overvalued, pointing out their valuations far exceed those of traditional consumer and physical enterprises.

According to GMGN market data, the meme coin microduck on the Robinhood chain has surged over 370% in the past 24 hours, with its market cap reaching $12.44 million and 24-hour trading volume hitting $7.9 million. The meme coin is inspired by Hugging Face’s real open-source small robot "Microduck" released on August 27, 2026 — a 25cm duck-shaped RL robot priced at around $399 — and also ties to NVIDIA-related acquisition rumors. It has no affiliation with Hugging Face, Pollen Robotics, or NVIDIA; it is an independent meme token launched by the community capitalizing on the trend. BlockBeats reminds users: Most meme coins have no practical use cases and are highly volatile. Please protect your assets and do not FOMO.

StoneX market analyst Fawad Razaqzada said that Christopher Waller’s Friday evening speech was deemed quite hawkish. Waller delivered what the market expected to hear on forward guidance: he does not believe in forward guidance, so he declined to pre-commit to a September rate hike. That said, it did not stop markets from speculating that a rate hike could actually be back on the table. On inflation, Waller stated that fighting inflation remains a clear priority, and he elaborated on this point, though he added that he is confident core inflation is moving toward the Federal Reserve’s target. Overall, his speech was more hawkish than market expectations. During Waller’s Jackson Hole speech, markets sharply repriced the Fed’s September policy decision: the probability of a 25 basis point rate hike jumped from 30% to around 50%. Ahead of the September Fed meeting, one non-farm payrolls report, one CPI inflation report, and several other minor data releases are still to come. Under the new Fed leadership, the central bank has grown more data-dependent. Given that recent U.S. jobs reports have consistently missed expectations by a wide margin, any further signs of weakness could significantly erode market bets on a September rate hike.

According to foreign media reports, on local time August 28, Chinese chip manufacturer Changxin Memory Technologies (CXMT) filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Defense, seeking its removal from a blacklist. Bloomberg reported that CXMT stated the chips it designs are used for civilian and commercial purposes, not military applications, and claimed it was incorrectly added to the blacklist. The lawsuit was submitted to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, with U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth also named as a defendant. In a statement issued after filing the suit, CXMT said it is not a defense enterprise, and its reputation and commercial interests have suffered continuous damage since it was first placed on the blacklist in January 2025. The company added that the action was taken to protect its business interests. Reuters noted that the U.S. Department of Defense said in a statement that per its policy, it does not comment on undecided or ongoing litigation.

CICC stated in a report that Federal Reserve Chair Waller’s speech at the Jackson Hole Symposium took a hawkish stance: He acknowledged inflation remains elevated, explicitly noted interest rates are still the primary policy tool, and signaled the Fed will “take actions as needed”; meanwhile, citing economic resilience, stable employment, and loose financial conditions, he explained current policy risks lean more toward the inflation side. He also attributed 65 months of above-target inflation to the central bank itself, correcting the vague July remark of “letting the market replace the Fed in raising rates”. CICC believes this speech helps rebuild the Fed’s credibility, and after the address, markets began pricing in marginal repair of policy credibility. In the long term, Waller still maintains AI may reshape the economic and policy framework, and continues pushing reforms such as reducing forward guidance. For markets, this statement has raised the probability of the Fed raising rates this year, but even so, it is not necessarily purely negative. Current markets are not short of liquidity; what they lack is policy discipline and predictability. As long as inflation is curbed in a timely manner, it will be beneficial for markets in the medium term. (Jinshi)

U.S. President Donald Trump unexpectedly called NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang this Thursday while the chipmaker’s all-hands meeting was underway. Huang, who was presiding over the event at NVIDIA’s headquarters in Santa Clara, California, stepped off the stage briefly to take the call. Attendees could hear Trump’s voice through the microphone, though the content of the conversation was unclear. Huang returned to the stage about a minute later to resume the meeting. Later that day, Trump took to social media to congratulate NVIDIA on its latest financial results, describing the company’s quarterly revenue as “incredible.” NVIDIA had previously reported Q2 revenue of $96 billion, a year-over-year increase of 106%. Notably, the timing of Trump’s direct call to Huang comes as NVIDIA continues to boost its policy influence in Washington, D.C. On the same day, the company announced the launch of a political action committee (PAC) funded by its employees. Currently, NVIDIA and the U.S. government remain at odds over issues including the sale of advanced chips to China and the regulation of open-source AI models. Meanwhile, market reports have circulated that NVIDIA is planning to acquire open-source AI platform Hugging Face for over $130 billion, a deal that would likely face U.S. antitrust scrutiny if it moves forward.

The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled that Nevada has the authority to regulate Kalshi’s sports event contracts as gambling, rejecting Kalshi’s core claim that it is exclusively overseen by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and that state governments lack the right to intervene. The court held that the relevant sports event contracts are essentially sports gambling, not "swap transactions" that should be fully regulated at the federal level. This ruling stands in sharp conflict with a separate federal appeals court decision in April this year that favored Kalshi and limited New Jersey’s regulatory power, marking the emergence of a "circuit split" among U.S. federal courts. The question of regulatory jurisdiction over prediction markets may ultimately need to be settled by the U.S. Supreme Court. Kalshi said it will seek further review, stressing that federal law still restricts states from regulating federally licensed exchanges. Meanwhile, Nevada’s regulatory agency stated that the ruling confirms sports contracts in prediction markets are essentially gambling and should be subject to state-level regulation.