The popular AI framework Virtuals Protocol will host an in-person meet-up in Hong Kong on Friday, January 17.

The Kobeissi Letter stated that the U.S. is experiencing an unprecedented ETF boom. Data shows that year-to-date 2026, U.S.-listed ETFs have attracted over $1 trillion in inflows, and at the current pace, they are on track to exceed $2 trillion by year-end, setting a new all-time high. If annual ETF inflows surpass $2 trillion, this will mark the fourth consecutive year of growth in annual ETF inflows, 33% higher than the 2025 record, an increase of roughly $500 billion. Meanwhile, 700 ETFs have launched so far this year, also on pace for an annual record. June alone saw 186 ETFs listed, the highest monthly issuance figure in history. The ETF industry is expanding at a record pace.

Base engineering team released a post-mortem report on the June 25 block production outage, noting that Base mainnet suffered two separate block production interruptions on June 25 and June 26. The first incident occurred at 11:47 ET on June 25, lasting 116 minutes; the second took place at 11:28 ET on June 26, lasting 20 minutes. Both events shared the same root cause. Chain integrity remained unharmed, and all funds on Base are secure. Block production resumed safely after the team mitigated the issues. The root cause was a bug in the sequencer’s block construction logic: after a transaction validation failure, expired log states were not cleared. An invalid transaction was received by the block builder and failed as expected, but the system incorrectly retained log states including accessed accounts and storage slots. A subsequent valid transaction was processed before the log states could be properly cleared, leading to a gas fee calculation mismatch and a sequencer block containing invalid state transitions. Other nodes rejected this block, causing the entire chain to halt. During the outage, Base could not produce new L2 blocks, sequencer and validator nodes could not advance past the invalid block, and new transactions could not be posted on-chain. The team fixed the interruptions by deploying a patch to the sequencer to ensure proper log state updates during execution. Base stated it will strengthen protocol fuzz testing and load testing tools to more easily identify adversarial transaction patterns that could expose similar vulnerabilities, and will continue to improve operational and monitoring capabilities.

According to HTX market data, Ethereum has broken through $1,600, posting a 1.6% gain in the past 24 hours.

The Kobeissi Letter stated that retail investors appear to be shifting away from gold and Bitcoin toward semiconductor stocks. Data shows that since April, U.S. gold ETFs and Bitcoin ETFs have recorded a combined net outflow of $12 billion; over the same timeframe, U.S. semiconductor ETFs have pulled in a total of $20 billion in inflows. This trend accelerated in mid-May, with outflows from gold and Bitcoin funds surging more than threefold, while inflows into semiconductor ETFs doubled. On the price front, GLD, the largest U.S. gold ETF, has declined 13% since early April, while IBIT, the largest Bitcoin ETF, has fallen 12% over the same period. By contrast, semiconductor ETFs SOXX and SMH have gained 81% and 60% respectively. Retail investors are driving the market in an unprecedented manner.

U.S. stocks closed lower this week, weighed down by the ongoing slump in chip stocks, Bloomberg reported. While a University of Michigan survey showed long-term inflation expectations came in below forecasts, easing some concerns about interest rate hikes, that failed to offset selling pressure in chip stocks. Steve Sosnick, chief strategist at Interactive Brokers, noted the S&P 500 briefly turned positive during the session before erasing gains quickly, mirroring multiple failed rebound attempts investors have seen this week. Worries over AI valuations have spread from Asian markets to U.S. trading. Two prominent Chinese hedge funds said AI stocks are in a bubble that could burst. Shares of Japan’s SoftBank Group fell after The New York Times reported OpenAI may delay its IPO until 2027. South Korea’s KOSPI index triggered a trading halt for the second time this week due to a sharp drop in chip stocks, later paring some of those losses. In the U.S., data from Bank of America showed investors pulled capital out of U.S. stocks for the first time in three months, with outflows hitting $8.5 billion. Cameron Dawson, chief investment officer at Newedge Wealth, said a key question is whether the market has the patience to wait for returns on investments from hyperscale cloud providers. Richard Reyle, chief investment officer at Questar Capital Partners, said he will not buy large-cap tech or AI stocks at current levels, as their dominance is weakening; the Magnificent Seven and Bitcoin peaked nine months ago and have yet to recover. Separately, crude oil prices extended declines as tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz remained steady. Brian Jacobsen, chief economic strategist at Annex Wealth Management, said the peak in energy prices is behind us, leaving room for headline inflation to cool, though price pressures have not fully vanished.

According to HTX market data, Maple Finance (SYRUP) has surged over 31% in the past 24 hours, currently trading at $0.155.