Analysis: Pressure on Risk Assets such as Bitcoin Due to Rising Oil Prices and Fed Pause on Rate Cuts

Following Tencent's release of its second-quarter financial report, Citigroup raised Tencent's target price to HK$765 in a report and reaffirmed its "buy" rating. The move is driven by Tencent's artificial intelligence (AI) initiatives showing clear results and its core business maintaining resilience. Citigroup also upwardly revised Tencent's capital expenditure assumptions to RMB 200.7 billion for this year and RMB 235 billion for next year.

BIP-54, officially named "Consensus Cleanup", proposes four limited modifications to Bitcoin’s core rules. The proposal aims to fix old vulnerabilities and unusual edge cases, rather than adding new use cases for Bitcoin. Supporters emphasize this distinction is critical: it serves as preventive maintenance for a network now worth far more than when many of its underlying rules were established. F2Pool co-founder Wang Chun stated he does not support the proposal. He explained that if BIP-54 secures the required majority via the standard BIP-9 activation process, F2Pool will update its mining nodes, though the pool will not issue advance support signals. Wang Chun’s objections center primarily on process and priority. He argues that bundling the four changes together is akin to tying unrelated measures into a single bill. He contends that several of the risks are too remote to justify the coordination, software upgrades, and community attention required for a soft fork, which modifies Bitcoin’s rules in a way older software may not enforce. Supporters hold a different view on the bundling approach. They argue every consensus change carries high social costs, so combining multiple defensive fixes reduces the number of full-network hard activations needed. They also note that Bitcoin’s rising value gives attackers greater incentive to exploit weaknesses that once seemed purely theoretical.

According to Bitget market data, Southern’s 2x Leveraged Long SK Hynix surged 13%, while Southern’s 2x Leveraged Long Samsung Electronics rose 9.78%.

According to market sources, Anthropic is reportedly set to acquire artificial intelligence startup Decart for $6 billion.

According to Bitget market data, South Korea’s stock market rallied sharply on Thursday, with the KOSPI index entering a technical bull market. The global AI trading boom has made a comeback, driving the South Korean market’s strong rebound after last month’s historic sell-off. The KOSPI index rose more than 4% at one point in morning trading, marking a roughly 23% rebound from its July 30 low. Heavyweight index stocks Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix led gains, with the two chip giants rising more than 4% and 7% respectively. Fundstrat Global Advisors noted that with South Korea’s major memory chip manufacturers regaining strength, the country’s stock market rally may have further room to run. The firm’s head of technical strategy, Mark Newton, said that driven by gains in Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, the iShares MSCI South Korea ETF has broken through key technical levels, improving the South Korean market’s short-term outlook. A more significant signal may come from memory chip stocks themselves. Fundstrat stated that memory chip stocks were among the hardest-hit sectors during the recent tech sell-off, and these stocks have now started outperforming the broader tech sector for the first time since June.

Insane! More than $50M has been stolen from whale "TLBL". Two years ago, whale "TLBL" lost $24M in a phishing attack. Today, the whale appears to have had its private key compromised, and over $26M in assets across 3 wallets were completely drained.