The altcoin market continues to strengthen, with the sector posting a broad-based rally.

Beating AI News Flash: Microsoft has transferred its AI Frontiers lab from Microsoft Research to Microsoft AI (MAI), led by Mustafa Suleyman. Established in October 2023, the lab focuses on small models and agents. It has contributed to projects including AutoGen, FARA, Magentic-One, Magentic-UI, and Phi. The multi-agent open-source framework AutoGen was later merged with AI application development SDK Semantic Kernel into Microsoft’s unified agent development framework, Microsoft Agent Framework. AI Frontiers will continue its work on cutting-edge agent and model research. MAI is also training a series of models and has formed a Superintelligence team, aiming to develop the so-called "Humanist Superintelligence" – defined by Microsoft as a high-capacity AI that addresses specific problems, remains under human control, and serves people. Ece Kamar, former head of AI Frontiers, recently left Microsoft after 16 years with the company. She has cited founding AI Frontiers as one of the highlights of her Microsoft career, and has not yet announced her next move.

Trader BonkGuy (Unipcs) stated in a post that MARSCOIN reminds him of SAFEMOON on BNB Chain in 2021, which once hit a market capitalization of around $17 billion. BonkGuy noted that MARSCOIN boasts a stronger narrative, integrating multiple hot concepts including Elon Musk, CZ, Mars, and SpaceX, making it one of the key assets in the BNB Chain meme coin segment. Fueled by growing market attention, GMGN data shows that the market cap of MarsCoin, a meme coin in the BNB Chain ecosystem, has surpassed $110 million, currently standing at $105 million, with a 24-hour gain of 41.7%.

According to people familiar with the matter, the Bank of Japan (BOJ) is inclined to raise its benchmark interest rate by 25 basis points this month to address upside inflation risks, while adjusting the pace of future interest rate hikes flexibly based on economic and price conditions. The sources added that BOJ officials will discuss the possibility of raising the policy rate, and continue to hold the view that inflation risks are skewed to the upside. Rising service prices and the persistent weakness of the yen have further strengthened the case for action. Japan’s current economic development is generally in line with the BOJ’s earlier expectations. As no major changes have emerged in the economic situation that would require significant policy adjustments, a 50 basis point rate hike is unlikely. A source familiar with the matter noted that this has reduced market expectations for a "large rate hike". (Jinshi)

Beating AI News Flash: Wafer, an AI inference startup with an 8-person team, has raised $40 million in Series A funding, valuing the company at over $200 million. The startup previously turned down acquisition offers from multiple cloud providers and inference service firms. Wafer’s inference business reached $8 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) in just about three months. Unlike chipmakers, Wafer focuses on helping models run faster and cheaper on existing hardware. It uses AI agents to automatically adjust models, inference engines, kernels, caches, quantization, and scheduling, then optimizes for different hardware like NVIDIA and AMD. Historically, much of this work required manual tuning by inference performance engineers, a task Wafer aims to automate with AI. In internal tests, Wafer found GLM 5.2 running on AMD MI355X delivers ~80% of the throughput of NVIDIA B200 at less than half the cost. Current clients include Vercel and Inworld AI. Vercel has also independently published tests showing Wafer’s throughput for GLM 5.2 is roughly twice that of other serverless providers. Post-funding, Wafer is expanding its team immediately. It has recently opened four roles: engineering, growth, CEO office, and go-to-market (GTM), all requiring 5 days of in-office work weekly in San Francisco. Technical positions offer a $250,000 base salary plus equity.

Bitcoin is currently approaching the formation of a "golden cross" technical pattern, where the 50-day moving average crosses above the 200-day moving average. This indicator is widely regarded by the market as a signal of a long-term uptrend. While its historical performance does not accurately predict market movements every time, this golden cross may receive further support from USDT’s declining market dominance. Bitcoin has seen a total of 12 golden crosses in its history, with several periods delivering significant rallies. Statistics show that among the 9 measurable golden crosses, the average 3-month gain is roughly 24.9%; cases where the cross holds for a full year without being invalidated by a "death cross" are rare, but the average 1-year gain of the previous 3 such instances reached 250%. Meanwhile, USDT’s market dominance is approaching a "death cross"—its 50-day moving average has fallen below the 200-day moving average. The market typically views a decline in USDT’s market share as a sign of rising risk appetite, meaning funds may flow from stablecoins to Bitcoin and other crypto assets. Currently, Bitcoin’s golden cross and the signal of falling USDT dominance are emerging simultaneously, indicating recent market momentum is strengthening and risk asset allocation sentiment may be improving.

According to an official announcement from Term Labs, progress has been made in resolving the Term Vault incident. All fixed-rate loan positions in affected vaults have been fully restored, with the final recovery operation completed at 14:52 UTC on August 25. Term Labs said the incident is currently deemed to have only impacted liquid assets held in Term Vaults. Meta Vaults and related strategies remain offline. The team has not detected any attacks on Term V1 and V2 contracts during the incident, and the direct lending market was unharmed—supply, repayment, and liquidation functions are all operating normally. Per technical analysis, the attacker funded their operational wallet via Tornado Cash, exploited a governance proposal to reset the governance delay of multiple strategies to zero, bypassing the LP additional block window. The attacker then deployed fake controllers, price adapters, and fraudulent Repo tokens, manipulating strategy parameters and price mechanisms to siphon liquid assets from certain ETH and USDC strategies. Term Labs noted it is currently collaborating with law enforcement agencies and cybersecurity firms to investigate the attacker’s identity, and has provided information to relevant authorities to assist the probe. Affected Meta Vaults and strategies have been shut down, while remaining low-activity vaults are being processed. Fixed-rate loans on Term were not targeted by the attack, but to mitigate risks as they may redeem to affected vaults upon maturity, related contracts have been upgraded and migrated in advance.