prices

Supply chain sources say that TSMC's wafer foundry prices are set to rise again, with adjustments to Wafer Out prices based on different processes starting from January 2027, with an increase of about 3% to 6%. The utilization rate of 8-inch factories exceeds 100%, and processes below 45 nanometers are fully loaded, with order visibility extending to 2030. The increase for advanced processes is higher, while mature and specialty processes are negotiated individually based on products, utilization rates, and customer conditions. TSMC has not responded to market rumors.Supply chain sources indicate that TSMC's 2-nanometer and 3-nanometer processes are in short supply, and the pressure on advanced packaging capacities such as CoWoS has not been alleviated. Customers find it difficult to switch suppliers immediately even in the face of price increases. The factory in Arizona, USA, reflects higher manufacturing costs, and the foundry quotes remain high. After the price adjustment, quotes from foundries such as Samsung Electronics, Intel, United Microelectronics Corporation, and World Advanced, as well as testing and packaging factories and IC design customers, may also be affected. United Microelectronics Corporation, Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation, and World Advanced have announced price increase strategies, which will continue until 2027.The supply chain states that this wave of AI demand has increased the need for PMIC, MCU, driver ICs, analog ICs, and sensors, in addition to GPUs, ASICs, and HBM. IC design companies point out that after the wafer price increase, product costs need to be reassessed, with higher-end GPUs and ASICs having relatively larger pass-through space. TSMC Chairman Wei Zhejia has stated that customers do not switch wafer foundry partners just because they are dissatisfied today. Supply chain sources say that orders transferred from Google, Apple, NVIDIA, and others mostly involve non-core chips or limited-scale orders, with no significant changes observed in the high-end process customers' chip placements.

Due to the strengthening of the US dollar and hawkish remarks from Federal Reserve officials, market expectations for tightening monetary policy have increased, causing gold prices to decline within a range. The dollar has risen to a two-month high, making gold priced in dollars more expensive. Richmond Fed President Barkin stated that the threat of interest rate hikes and further increases in the future could suppress corporate inflation expectations.

CryptoQuant analyst Darkfost pointed out that although the price of Bitcoin is rising, sustained buying pressure is still difficult to rebuild, and market signals are mixed. The cumulative spot demand over the past 30 days is -180,000 BTC, still negative, while futures demand is +54,000 BTC, still positive but slightly declining. The total average demand improved from -188,000 BTC to -126,000 BTC, narrowing the gap but still remaining in negative territory. Recently, there has been a divergence between price and total demand; Bitcoin's price has risen, but total demand has not turned positive, indicating that the increase is more driven by reduced selling pressure rather than strong buying.Looking at different sectors, the demand recovery is not uniform. For institutions, the geopolitical and macro environment is poor, but the Coinbase Premium, weighted by trading volume, has briefly turned positive, indicating that U.S. spot prices occasionally have a premium over other markets, and institutional selling pressure has significantly eased. ETFs have seen the biggest change in this round, with demand completely reversing compared to this summer, having recently net purchased about 70,000 BTC. The cumulative net inflow for 2026 is still about -17,000 BTC, but it is close to turning positive. In terms of trading platforms, the entire month of September has been characterized by net outflows, leaning towards accumulation rather than distribution. Bitcoin leaving trading platforms usually means that short-term selling pressure is lighter. Analyst Darkfost summarized that the current price increase is not due to enhanced buying pressure, but rather because investors have not continued to increase selling pressure at higher price levels, and the market structure remains fragile.

Jurrien Timmer, Global Macro Director at Fidelity Investments, stated on platform X that trading in the AI sector has been in a "dead money" state for over three months, with the token spending and GPU rental rates he tracks remaining flat or declining, while only memory (DRAM) prices continue to rise.Timmer believes that AI will change life in the long term and may unleash a productivity miracle, raising the non-inflationary speed limit of the economy to a level sufficient to sustain global debt. However, before that, the current construction is inflationary, and the returns on the trillions of dollars invested in computing power remain uncertain, with corporate equity and debt capital demand growing at a rate of $3.3 trillion.

According to Caixin, on-chain perpetual contract platforms represented by Hyperliquid have quietly risen overseas for some time. The platform was founded by a former Wall Street high-frequency trading engineer, without external VC funding, relying on its self-developed dedicated L1 public chain and a full on-chain order book to stand out in the DEX track.The trigger that attracted the attention of the domestic market and regulatory authorities was the launch of popular perpetual contracts involving Chinese assets, combined with offshore derivatives such as oil contracts under the previous Iranian geopolitical conflict. While pricing diverse assets, the platform also challenges global financial regulation. Against the backdrop of the stalled progress of the Clarity Act in the United States, such offshore unlicensed derivative agreements continue to develop.

On September 22, OpenAI released two new models, GPT-6 Sol and GPT-6 Luna, just minutes after Anthropic launched Claude Opus 5.5. Both models are positioned below GPT-6 Astra and are cheaper and faster options aimed at everyday work. OpenAI also reduced the API prices for both models by 50% compared to the promotional price of GPT-5.6, with Sol's input and output prices set at $2 and $10 per million tokens, respectively, while Luna's prices dropped to $0.1 and $0.5.In terms of performance, OpenAI cited Zapier's AutomationBench benchmark, stating that GPT-6 Sol scored 33.2% under the highest inference settings, with a cost of $0.27 per task, while Claude Opus 5 scored 26.9% at its highest settings, with a cost over 11 times higher per task. In the Agents' Last Exam test, GPT-6 Sol achieved a top score of 56.4%. In the OSWorld 2 computer usage test, GPT-6 Sol nearly matched Claude Opus 5's moderate effort score at 60.5% to 60.3%, with costs approximately 80% lower.

Iran signals a possible reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, pushing oil prices down, while Eurozone bond yields fell for the second consecutive day, reaching their lowest level in nearly two weeks.Germany's 10-year government bond yield rose 4 basis points at the start before falling back 1 basis point, reported at 3.441%. Traders expect the European Central Bank to tighten policy by about 35 basis points this year.

PlanB posted on platform X that BTC is currently around $87,000, having surpassed all major realized prices, with the overall realized price at about $53,000, the 155-day realized price at about $72,000, and the 2-year realized price at about $86,000.He believes that the possibility of BTC dropping below $53,000 in this cycle is low, and the view that "BTC will retest the overall realized price like in previous bear markets" has lost its last relatively clear condition for establishment. He also stated that the trend from 2025 to 2026 aligns with the characteristics of historically smoother bull and bear cycles, expecting BTC to reach new highs during this halving cycle (2024-2028).

CryptoQuant analyst Axel Adler Jr. stated that the Bitcoin 30-day compression indicator has risen to an extreme range of 93.9%, marking the fourth occurrence of a similar situation since the current bear market phase.Over the past 20 days, the Bitcoin price has continuously tested the annual moving average line but has failed to establish a solid position, indicating that volatility compression is intensifying near key resistance levels, and a directional choice may be faced in the short term.

Micron Technology will announce its fiscal fourth-quarter results on September 30. NVIDIA CFO Colette Kress stated during the fiscal second-quarter conference call on August 26 that the company is seeing "extreme pricing conditions in memory," with price increases exceeding previous expectations, and that "will further rise next year." Pricing pressure has been reflected in NVIDIA's margins, with Kress guiding that gross margins will bottom out in the fourth quarter in the range of 71%-72%, before recovering to 72%-73% in fiscal year 2028.Kress indicated that the current memory shortage is largely driven by AI infrastructure itself. SK Hynix expects the memory market to reach supply-demand balance no earlier than 2030 and has invested approximately $38.3 billion to expand its two domestic bases in South Korea through 2031. SK Hynix holds about 50% of the high-bandwidth memory market share, leading Samsung's 33% and Micron's 18%.

Cryptocurrency KOL Ansem posted on platform X, stating that cryptocurrencies are experiencing the most severe relative weakness across assets in history, while U.S. stocks have surged significantly, and market sentiment has fallen to a multi-year low.He believes that OG investors waiting for the bottom of the four-year cycle will be forced to chase the rally, and for traditional financial institutions, cryptocurrencies are both an attractive momentum trading target and a long-term allocation option to hedge against the risks of U.S. fiscal irresponsibility.

The asset management company Grayscale's crypto research team stated that the Federal Reserve's interest rate hike on Wednesday is unlikely to impact Bitcoin prices. Grayscale's research director Zach Pandl wrote in a report on Thursday: "We believe yesterday's action is a mid-cycle adjustment rather than a cyclical change. We doubt that the one or two rate hikes expected in 2026 will lead to significant changes in capital allocation."Pandl added that when the Federal Reserve began raising interest rates in 2022 to curb inflation, it "may have put pressure on Bitcoin prices," as this "significantly affected the opportunity cost of holding non-yielding assets." However, he believes this situation is more akin to 1997, when the Federal Reserve made a one-time rate hike while the Nasdaq index continued to rise.The Federal Reserve raised interest rates for the first time since 2023 on Wednesday, causing Bitcoin prices to fluctuate sharply before stabilizing, with a slight increase of about 1% within 24 hours. Bitcoin prices recently approached $76,581, rising 18% over the past 30 days. Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh stated that the central bank is focused on reducing inflation. U.S. President Trump expressed on his Truth Social platform that U.S. interest rates should be 1% or lower.

European stock markets ended a two-day decline as oil prices fell and bond sell-offs slowed. Traders are awaiting the Federal Reserve's interest rate decision, with a 94% probability of a rate hike.Bill Dinning, Chief Investment Officer of W1M Wealth Management, stated that a 10-year U.S. Treasury yield reaching 5.5% would put pressure on the stock market.

According to the Economic Daily, in the past six months, CCL manufacturers have raised product prices by about 20% to 30% due to the overall increase in upstream material prices. Most PCB manufacturers have not been able to pass on these costs quickly enough, resulting in a time lag of 2 to 3 months, which has eroded profit margins. Institutional investors indicate that starting from the third quarter of this year, some PCB manufacturers will increase prices, and the benefits are expected to drive a rebound in the profitability of related manufacturers.Analysts state that in terms of substrates, electronic fiberglass cloth led by T glass and copper foil drilling needles are still in short supply, with T glass experiencing the most severe shortage, with some manufacturers facing a gap of up to 20%. This gap is expected to continue into next year. It is anticipated that in the second half of this year, substrate manufacturers will enter a supply-demand imbalance driven by the high demand for AI GPUs and ASIC high-performance computing, as well as the continued tightness of key raw materials. Substrate manufacturers will continue to adopt rolling price adjustments, with prices still having double-digit upward potential.Additionally, due to the sustained high demand related to AI and the specification upgrades driven by new generation products, there is continued optimism that CCL manufacturers will benefit from both price and volume increases. With raw material prices remaining tight and the delivery times for high-end CCL continuing to extend, the trend of price increases remains unchanged. There is continued optimism for the future development of Taiwanese CCL manufacturers such as Taiflex and Taisil. Meanwhile, as the substrate gap gradually widens, it benefits the bargaining power of substrate manufacturers, and the trend of price increases will continue, maintaining a positive outlook on the future performance of Taiwanese substrate manufacturers, including Nanya Technology and other supply chain partners.

According to Cointelegraph, Alice Liu, the research director at CoinMarketCap, stated in Cointelegraph's Trade Secrets program that Bitcoin may have reached its bottom, and it is unlikely to fall back to the low levels it hovered around for most of the year.She pointed out that Bitcoin dropped to about $59,000 in June, down approximately 53% from its historical high of $126,100 in October, while Bitcoin briefly reached $81,600 in early September, rising about 28% since mid-August, which pushed the CoinMarketCap Fear and Greed Index back into the greed zone.When discussing Hyperliquid, Liu mentioned that network activity does not necessarily translate into token prices. She observed that trading of RWA perpetual contracts, which are pegged to tokenized stocks, ETFs, and indices, had primarily taken place on Hyperliquid over the past two months, but after Binance launched RWA perpetual contracts, trading volume and liquidity quickly shifted, with Binance capturing about 50% market share; however, Hyperliquid still maintains its lead in the DEX space.HYPE recently set a historical high of $86, and Hyperliquid has spent over $400 million on token buybacks, with some price momentum supported by the buybacks. However, the price of HYPE relies on continuous inflows of network revenue to support the buybacks, which is a key observation point.

Renowned trader Killa posted about the potential impact of the upcoming FOMC meeting on the cryptocurrency market this week. He stated that many people are very focused on macroeconomics, policies, and economic data to predict the next moves of assets, but Killa believes that "most macro narratives are just distractions." Killa noted that BTC often starts moving before the reasons become clear. By the time the macro environment shifts and the herd realizes it, Bitcoin has usually already completed its move. Correlation is often lagging. The market does not move because most people understand it. Most people understand it because the market has already moved.As a quantitative trader focused on BTC, Killa predicted the peak of this bull market in May 2025 and has over 200,000 followers on platform X. In mid-April, he shorted Bitcoin at $74,688 and switched to long during the market-wide decline on June 5.