Apple’s Sept. 9 product event introduced the company’s first foldable phone, the iPhone Duo, priced at $1,999, while also lifting the starting prices of the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max to $1,199 and $1,299. In a daily market note, MSX argued that the launch matters less as a unit-volume story and more as a move to expand Apple’s average selling price and deepen its position in the ultra-premium segment. The report pointed to Apple’s continued reliance on the iPhone, which generated $54.252 billion in revenue last quarter, up 22% year over year and accounting for about 49.6% of total revenue. MSX also reviewed Apple’s stock performance around major iPhone launches. Across the past 16 events, the stock rose five times and fell 11 times on the day, with an average return of about -0.7%. Over the following 60 trading days, however, the shares rose 12 times on average, posting a mean gain of about 4.2%. The firm said investors will be watching whether Duo can extend Apple’s current hardware growth cycle through a richer product mix, while also feeding higher-margin services such as iCloud, the App Store, AppleCare, payments, advertising, and subscriptions. In that view, Duo is not just a new device. It is a test of whether Apple can turn a niche, high-end form factor into a broader ecosystem entry point.

South Korea recorded 423 cases of virtual asset inheritance and gifting in 2025, with a combined value of KRW 45.862 billion, according to data from the National Tax Service cited by JoongAng Ilbo. The figures were 2.4 times and 3.4 times higher year over year, respectively. Transfers involving minors also rose: 103 cases of crypto gifts to people under 18 were reported, totaling KRW 4.034 billion, up about 2.7 times from KRW 1.47 billion in 2024. South Korea is also preparing to tighten tax oversight of virtual assets starting in 2027. Under the plan, virtual asset service providers including Upbit and Bithumb will be brought into the unified inquiry system for financial assets related to inheritance and gifting. The latest numbers point to a sharp rise in the use of virtual assets in wealth transfers, including among younger recipients, as regulators move to widen reporting and verification tools.

The European Commission has passed a delegated act to extend the Central Contact Point, or CCP, framework to crypto-asset service providers (CASPs), according to Odaily. Under the proposed revision, crypto exchanges and other related firms operating in EU member states would be required to appoint a local contact person. The CCP mechanism had previously applied only to electronic money institutions and payment institutions. With the change, crypto service providers would be folded into the bloc’s anti-money laundering and compliance oversight network. The stated aim is to give regulators a fixed domestic point of contact in each jurisdiction, making information sharing and enforcement coordination easier inside member states.

A wide set of crypto, regulatory and corporate developments landed over the past 24 hours, led by a new post from U.S. President Donald Trump, fresh family-office investment data, enforcement action in Australia, and a string of market and infrastructure updates across Bitcoin, DeFi and payments. Trump said on Truth Social that he had made "hundreds of billions of dollars" for the United States through stocks and other assets and added that he was doing it "for our country, not for myself." Reuters had previously reported that ethics filings showed Trump disclosed at least $220 million and as much as roughly $750 million in personal securities trades in the first three months of 2026. On the investment side, FINTRX data cited by Jiaoban Xinzhi Dian showed that Binance founder Changpeng Zhao’s YZi Labs ranked as the world’s second-most active family office in August, taking part in 10 funding rounds with a combined disclosed round size of $42.1 million. The same dataset showed family offices participated in 109 deals during the month, with disclosed financing totaling $16.9 billion. Elsewhere, Australia’s AUSTRAC said it had canceled, suspended or refused to renew registrations for 45 crypto and remittance businesses over the past year. Market commentary from Two Prime and Wintermute focused on Bitcoin’s rebound, ETF inflows and key price levels, while other developments included Liquid Network fund returns, Cronos’ rollback after the Tectonic exploit, Circle’s deal for Tazapay, and broader stablecoin and banking moves in Brazil, Switzerland and South Korea.

The Taipei Exchange said it will hold a virtual asset forum in Taipei on Nov. 11, 2026, with online registration opening on Sept. 7. The event will be held under the guidance of Taiwan’s Financial Supervisory Commission and jointly organized by the Taipei Exchange, Taiwan Stock Exchange, Taiwan Futures Exchange, Taiwan Depository & Clearing Corporation, and the Virtual Asset Service Providers Association of the Republic of China. The program includes two keynote sessions and a panel discussion focused on Taiwan’s regulatory path for virtual assets, trading practices and risks, and the challenges facing the domestic market after the passage of the Virtual Asset Service Act on June 30, 2026. National Taiwan University law professor Yueh-Ping Yang is scheduled to speak on the development of Taiwan’s virtual asset regulatory framework, while MaiCoin Group general manager Ming-Hui Chen will discuss exchange operations, liquidity management, product design, user services, and trading-related risks. The closing panel will bring together representatives from prosecution, the crypto industry, digital finance, and banking, including BitoPro founder and CEO Kuang-Tai Cheng and KGI Bank senior vice president Chih-Jung Chen.

India’s Financial Intelligence Unit, FIU-IND, has sent non-compliance notices under Section 13 of the anti-money laundering law to 15 offshore virtual digital asset service providers, saying they offered services to Indian users without registering with the agency. The list includes Weex, Blofin, Rezorex, Bitunix, DigiFinex, Toobit, XT.com, Latoken, WOO X, Pionex, ChangeNow, SimpleSwap, Fixedfloat, WhiteBIT and Guardarian. India brought crypto platforms into an anti-money laundering regime equivalent to that applied to banks in March 2023. Under that framework, any platform serving Indian customers, whether or not it has a physical office in India, must register and comply with customer verification, record-keeping and suspicious transaction reporting requirements. FIU-IND also warned the public that crypto products and NFTs are unregulated and carry very high risk, with losses from such transactions potentially outside the scope of regulatory relief. The move comes after reports that Indian users were converting stablecoins such as USDT into gift cards through platforms in Sweden, Germany and Singapore to buy groceries, fuel and gold in India.

Bernstein’s WSTS tracker, published on Sept. 8, showed global semiconductor sales rose 131% year over year in July, staying elevated after June’s 144% gain. On a month-over-month basis, sales fell 9.5%, slightly better than the historical seasonal decline of 8.5%. Memory remained the main engine of growth, posting a 452% annual increase and contributing about $355 billion in incremental industry revenue through July, which accounted for nearly 70% of the sector’s 111% rise since the start of the year. Excluding memory, semiconductor sales still increased 35% from a year earlier, pointing to healthy demand in non-memory categories as well. The report also showed broad divergence by region. China posted a 28.0% month-over-month decline, while the Americas slipped only 0.4%. Shipment volumes were nearly flat in July, down 0.3% from June, but average selling prices remained heavily supported by memory. DRAM bit pricing rose 6.5% month over month and NAND pricing climbed 9.5%, even as memory shipment volumes fell more than 20%, underscoring the extent to which pricing continues to shape the industry’s growth profile.

Serenity, known in online communities as the "white-haired stock guru," has singled out Taiwan-listed ESMT as a company that could follow the kind of share-price move SanDisk previously saw during a memory upcycle. The thesis centers on operating leverage in older, low-cost memory products: a price increase of a few dollars may have little effect on the end product, but can materially lift margins for the chip supplier. Serenity used DDR2 as an example, noting that legacy chips priced around $0.96, or roughly $2.5 depending on specifications, could still leave end-device costs manageable even if average selling prices were to triple. TrendForce data cited in the report points to tighter supply in mature-node DRAM after large manufacturers shifted capacity to HBM and server DRAM. It estimated DDR2 contract prices rose about 55% to 60% in the second quarter of 2026 and could climb another 35% to 40% in the third quarter. The report also highlighted sharp expected gains in SLC NAND and continued strength in NOR Flash, while MoneyDJ said ESMT has already started prioritizing higher-priced orders and can meet only about 60% to 70% of customer demand with its current wafer capacity.