$WATERWATER Price

On August 21, Samsung recently raised the prices of some 4nm, 5nm, and 8nm foundry services by 10% to 15%. TSMC also increased its capital expenditure forecast for 2026 to between $60 billion and $64 billion, reflecting that current capacity still struggles to fully meet AI demand. This round of price increases benefits memory, foundry, and packaging companies that control scarce capacity, but it will raise costs for server, PC, and consumer electronics companies. The market's next step will involve a race between profit upgrades and new capacity additions: the longer the supply shortages last, the stronger the pricing power of leading companies; if the pace of capacity expansion exceeds the actual growth in AI usage, price declines and inventory reversals will amplify the volatility of semiconductor stocks.

On August 21, Samsung recently raised the prices of some 4nm, 5nm, and 8nm foundry services by 10% to 15%. TSMC also increased its capital expenditure forecast for 2026 to between $60 billion and $64 billion, reflecting that current capacity still struggles to fully meet AI demand. This round of price hikes benefits memory, foundry, and packaging manufacturers that control scarce capacity, but it will raise costs for server, PC, and consumer electronics companies. The market's next move will be a race between profit upgrades and new capacity additions: the longer the shortage lasts, the stronger the pricing power of leading companies; if the pace of capacity expansion exceeds the actual growth in AI usage, price declines and inventory reversals will amplify the volatility of semiconductor stocks. (Jin Shi)

On August 21, Sun Yuchen, founder of TRON, disclosed on the X platform that his legal team successfully opposed World Liberty Financial's attempt to move their dispute into confidential arbitration and seal case materials during a hearing in a California federal court. The court supported Sun Yuchen's claim for a public trial. The judge ruled that all of Sun Yuchen's personal claims will proceed in open court, rejecting World Liberty's request to transfer all company-related claims to arbitration, and ordered both parties to negotiate the scope of claims to be handled by the court and submitted for arbitration. Sun Yuchen is the largest early investor in World Liberty, having invested $45 million to acquire WLFI tokens, which he claims helped the project achieve a token sale scale of $550 million. The lawsuit alleges that World Liberty embedded backdoors in the WLFI smart contract, allowing it to unilaterally freeze, restrict, or destroy tokens without notice or due process, and that it has already executed such actions against Sun Yuchen's assets, threatening to escalate the matter to criminal proceedings. The claim amount is in the hundreds of millions of dollars, and Sun Yuchen has obtained a court injunction prohibiting the project from disposing of the involved tokens. He further warned that the stablecoin USD1 issued by the project also has similar backdoor functionalities. In his tweet, Sun Yuchen listed several risk indicators, noting that nearly half of World Liberty's treasury WLFI tokens have been pledged to a lending platform co-founded by its CTO, Dolomite, which has lent out at least $75 million in assets, a model likened to FTX-style high-leverage operations in the industry. He also revealed that some core personnel of the project previously operated the DeFi project Dough Finance, which faced lawsuits related to suspected asset misappropriation. Sun Yuchen questioned World Liberty's solvency, stating that aside from the USD1 collateral assets belonging to users, there is no evidence that the project has the capital to cover a judgment of hundreds of millions of dollars. He also mentioned that there may be other affected investors preparing to file lawsuits, urging the market to be cautious of WLFI and USD1, and advising investors to conduct thorough due diligence.