Samsung and ASML collaborate to develop next-generation EUV lithography photomasks.

22-year-old Singaporean national Malone Lam, alias "Greavys", pleaded guilty on September 8 to a federal charge of conspiracy to commit racketeering at Washington D.C. federal court, with the case involving $245 million. Prosecutors allege he organized a cross-border "social engineering" network that stole victims' crypto assets via tactics including impersonating customer support scams, database intrusions, and hardware wallet theft. The U.S. Department of Justice stated the criminal group has operated since at least October 2023, using social engineering tactics and occasional burglaries to obtain victims' personal information before transferring their cryptocurrencies. Stolen funds were used to buy luxury cars, high-end watches, private jet rentals, and nightclub spending, with a single night at a nightclub costing up to $500,000. Co-defendant Evan Tangeman was sentenced to 70 months in prison in April this year for money laundering. Lam faces a maximum of 20 years in prison, with a sentencing hearing scheduled for December 8.

According to Lookonchain’s monitoring, a whale address 0xEe0A has been selling HYPE daily over the past two weeks to book profits, transferring a total of 232,610 HYPE tokens to Bybit and Gate, worth approximately $19.67 million. Currently, HYPE transfers from this address are primarily flowing to Bybit and Gate.

Dongcha’s Beating AI Express News: AI programming firm Cognition has secured over $2 billion in Series E funding, pushing its valuation to $48 billion. The round was led by a16z and Accel, with existing investors including Founders Fund, General Catalyst, and Avenir participating in follow-on investments. Cognition had raised over $1 billion in funding back in May, when its valuation stood at $26 billion. In less than four months, its valuation has risen by roughly 85%. Over the same period, the company’s disclosed annualized revenue grew from $492 million to nearly $900 million, an increase of around 83%, almost in line with the valuation surge. Demand for this round far exceeded initial expectations: Cognition originally planned to raise about $1 billion, but received investment intentions totaling nearly $10 billion, eventually expanding its actual financing scale to over $2 billion. However, this rapid growth is capital-intensive: Cognition’s cash burn this year could reach $800 million, with servers required for developing and operating AI agents being one of its major cost drivers.

Beating AI Insight News: OpenAI releases ChatGPT Images 2.5. Compared to its predecessor, the new version cuts image generation latency by up to 50%, and better preserves the appearance and details of people and pets when editing photos. Editing is also more user-friendly: users can directly circle a specific area in an image and instruct ChatGPT on changes, such as replacing just one petal or modifying a single object’s color. When making multiple consecutive edits, it is less likely to alter unrelated areas by accident. ChatGPT now also supports drawing sketches to control composition, and has added common image templates for posters, merchandise, and more. Images 2.5 is now available to ChatGPT, ChatGPT Work, and Codex users. Two API versions, Flare and Sunburst, are also launched. Flare is faster, ideal for bulk image generation; Sunburst is more precise, suited for scenarios with higher visual standards. In the latest Arena benchmark, Sunburst ranks first and Flare ranks second, with both models taking the top two positions across all three categories: text-to-image, single-image editing, and multi-image editing.

Loracle, the largest PONS short seller on Hyperliquid, reached out to Robinhood founder Vlad Tenev via X, requesting his market makers boost liquidity for the PONS/USDG pair on the Lighter platform. Loracle previously drew market attention for its PONS short position, which once hit tens of millions of dollars and it kept adding to the bet. The community even launched a "whale hunting" campaign, executing reverse trades targeting its short position. Loracle later disclosed it has launched PONS-linked trading products. The fee routing function is not currently enabled but will be rolled out later; as it quickly hit the safe holding limit, new positions will be opened incrementally. It noted that the vault holds funds, uses a portion of profits and losses for buybacks, and authorizes off-chain keepers to execute trades via API keys. This move sparked heated discussions in the Robinhood Chain community, with some PONS bulls publicly calling for increased spot buying to squeeze Loracle’s short position, aiming to force its liquidation. According to Tradingbeats’ monitoring, Loracle currently holds a PONS short position worth approximately $21.83 million, with unrealized losses exceeding $3.37 million.

In its latest Real World Assets (RWA) report, CoinGecko notes that the synthetic pre-IPO market has emerged as an effective valuation indicator for traditional IPOs. On-chain perpetual contracts can provide continuous price discovery and market sentiment anchors for high-profile private companies ahead of their official exchange listings. The report cites SpaceX and ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) as examples: Ahead of SpaceX’s listing, perpetual contract prices across platforms fluctuated between $158 and $170 before gradually converging to around $157.40. When its first trade on Nasdaq hit $150.05, the price gap was approximately 4.9%. The deviation between CXMT’s pre-listing perpetual contract prices and its actual opening price was also around 4.6%. CoinGecko argues that even without real spot stocks serving as immediate arbitrage anchors, traders still form relatively concentrated quotes based on valuation, listing hype, and future liquidity. As a result, on-chain pre-IPO perpetual contracts will become an important reference price before traditional order books open, while also offering global investors a 24-hour channel to express bullish or bearish expectations.