Federal Reserve's Harker: May Temporarily Hold Rates Steady

According to monitoring by Beating, Apple is seeking to acquire an artificial intelligence chip company. The tech giant’s self-developed M2 Ultra chip has proven insufficient to run advanced AI workloads, forcing it to rely on NVIDIA. The future version of Apple’s AI server chip, codenamed "Baltra", was originally scheduled to ship this year but has been delayed.

According to market data from BIT (bit.com), the storage sector in the US stock market saw its losses widen during intraday trading, with individual stock performances as follows: SK Hynix ADR (SKHY.O) fell 10.7%; SanDisk (SNDK) dropped 13.5%; Micron Technology (MU) declined 7.6%; Seagate Technology (STX) fell 9%; Western Digital (WDC) dropped 8.5%.

According to Arkham’s monitoring, the address holding seized FTX/Alameda funds under U.S. government custody transferred 4,815 ETH to Coinbase, worth $9.29 million, and is likely to sell the assets soon to repay FTX creditors.

The world’s largest private payments company Stripe and U.S. private equity firm Advent International have jointly proposed to acquire established online payments giant PayPal at $60.5 per share, valuing the company at over $53 billion. The offer represents a roughly 28% premium over PayPal’s Tuesday closing price, backed by approximately $50 billion in financing commitments from multiple banks. Under the proposed terms, Stripe and Advent will each hold a 50% stake in PayPal. Following the announcement, PayPal’s share price rose nearly 16% intraday to $54.935, with trading volume exceeding $2.1 billion. To date, PayPal has not responded to the proposal, and it remains unclear whether the deal will be finalized. The two parties held preliminary exploratory talks back in April this year but did not advance discussions at the time. PayPal was once the undisputed leader in digital payments, hitting a peak market capitalization of around $360 billion in 2021. However, amid ongoing market share erosion from rivals including Apple Pay and Google Pay, its market cap fell to roughly $36 billion in June this year, just one-tenth of its peak value. By contrast, Stripe was valued at $159 billion in a February share buyback this year, holding a global payments market share of between 20.8% and 29% in 2025, second only to PayPal. Industry analysts note that Stripe’s core motivation for the acquisition is the value of data and transaction flows tied to PayPal’s 434 million consumer accounts. Since the start of 2025, global fintech merger and acquisition (M&A) deal value has reached $64 billion, a 108% increase from 2024. Recent completed deals include FIS’ $13.5 billion acquisition of Global Payments’ card-issuing unit and Capital One’s $51.8 billion purchase of Discover, signaling a clear acceleration in industry consolidation.

According to monitoring by Arkham, a U.S. government-linked address has shown unusual activity again, transferring approximately $250,000 worth of SHIB from funds seized from FTX and Alameda, and the transfer is expected to be used to repay FTX’s creditors.

Fed Chair Waller: Recent inflation data does not perfectly reflect underlying inflation. Any central bank would be pleased when data moves in the right direction. In the short term, he views AI investment as beneficial for employment, while AI will trigger disruptive changes. He has exceeded the requirements of ethical agreements, having sold or is in the process of fully disposing of assets he acquired before becoming Fed Chair, and has converted his investments into cash equivalents and short-term Treasury bonds.