US stocks set fresh record closing highs overnight after July producer prices came in flat, easing concerns about near-term Federal Reserve tightening and reinforcing expectations that the central bank will keep interest rates unchanged next month. The strength spilled over into Japanese equities on Friday. The Nikkei 225 rose 0.59% to close at 68,713.80, a record closing high, and ended the week 4.7% higher. The broader Topix advanced 0.51% to 4,197.20, also a record close. Nomura equity strategist Wataru Akiyama said rising US share prices are transmitting to Japan, with lower crude oil prices and cooling inflation also supportive of Japanese stocks. Among Nikkei 225 components, Nexon surged 19.85%, its biggest one-day gain since February 2024, while Shift added 7.57% and Nintendo rose 6.91%.

SanDisk’s upbeat long-term forecast boosted sentiment for AI-driven earnings, lifting Asian memory chip stocks. Kioxia rose up to 8.7% in Tokyo, while SK Hynix gained 6.5% in Seoul. The Bloomberg Asia Semiconductor Index climbed 1.6%, heading for a fifth straight day of gains. SanDisk expects 15% to 20% annual revenue growth between 2028 and 2030, driven by long-term pricing agreements with customers.

Microsoft has shut down at least 15 branches and joint ventures in China over the past five years amid US-China tensions, Beijing's push for domestic software alternatives, and US export controls, according to Reuters. The company considered exiting the Chinese market in 2023, with some executives arguing it was "taking on excessive geopolitical risk for limited economic returns," but ultimately decided against it. Microsoft disclosed in 2024 that China accounted for only about 1.5% of its global revenue. The company chose to stay after finding a profitable path: providing Azure cloud and AI services to Chinese firms expanding overseas, including ByteDance and Shein. Analysts, however, question the sustainability of this model as it relies on third-party models like OpenAI while Chinese companies increasingly adopt domestic alternatives such as Kimi, which offer comparable performance at lower cost.

Solana came close to losing transaction finality early Wednesday after a routing misconfiguration at hosting provider Teraswitch knocked 28.83% of staked SOL offline, according to staking platform Marinade. The firm said Solana stops finalizing at 33.34%, leaving the network about 86% of the way to a freeze during the incident. Marinade traced the issue to a default route from Teraswitch’s Miami site that spread across facilities in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region. It said autonomous system AS20326 alone carried 118,890,767 SOL, more than a quarter of all staked SOL and above the 25% cap used by the Solana Foundation’s delegation program, with 94% of that stake going dark at the same time. Another 14.1 million SOL dropped offline across latitude.sh, Limestone, Butterfly Research and Allnodes for reasons Marinade said it could not explain from the available data. Marinade added that failover barely activated, Helius was down for the full 33 minutes, and only three of 74 operators it could measure recovered cleanly. Solana Foundation VP of Tech Jacob Creech disputed the framing, saying the chain kept producing blocks, 597 of 699 staked validators kept voting, affected validators recovered within 40 minutes, and validators in the Foundation delegation program were not affected.

CoinDesk’s Aug. 13 Daybook excerpt centered on the risk tied to concentrated bitcoin treasury strategies after two of the largest listed holders disclosed massive unrealized losses. Tokyo-listed Metaplanet said its 43,000 BTC position carried a $1.5 billion paper loss as of the end of June, while Strategy, described as the world’s largest public digital asset treasury company, reported a comparable $8.2 billion unrealized loss last month. Together, the two figures come to nearly $10 billion. CoinDesk framed that amount by saying a hypothetical token representing those losses would rank as the 11th-largest digital asset by market capitalization, behind DOGE and ahead of ONDO, ZEC and AAVE. The report said the figures highlight both bitcoin’s growing financialization and the risk of concentrating exposure in a single token, especially as many digital asset treasury firms have relied on debt issuance to fund BTC purchases. Even so, the market has not shown obvious concern so far, with bitcoin holding in a $62,000 to $66,000 range for weeks and trading mostly below $64,000 during the session discussed in the report. Analysts cited by CoinDesk remained divided between technical optimism and macro-driven positioning ahead of Jackson Hole and upcoming economic data.

Metaplanet, a company listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, has introduced a new continuous bond issuance program called BitBonds. The company has completed the first private placement under that program, which consists of the 21st through 24th series of unsecured ordinary corporate bonds. The issue date is August 13, 2026. The total amount is approximately 200 million yen, or around $1.25 million, and the issuance is divided into four tranches. Each tranche has a maturity of roughly three years and carries an interest rate within a range of 4.0% to 4.3%. Metaplanet disclosed the placement in a post on its official X account; Foresight's 7X24 flash news service carried the update. These are Japanese yen-denominated unsecured ordinary corporate bonds issued under the BitBonds program. The first private placement under the BitBonds program has four series being offered together, with a term of about three years and a coupon range spanning 4.0% to 4.3%.

Japan's Nikkei 225 and South Korea's KOSPI both closed higher on Thursday, Aug. 13, according to Bitget market data. The Nikkei 225 added 784.53 points, or 1.16%, ending the day at 68,308.59. The KOSPI climbed 210.97 points, or 3.21%, closing at 6,790.01. Among large-cap stocks, SK Hynix rose 5.9% and Samsung Electronics gained 3.9%. The data was reported by BlockBeats, citing Bitget quotes. Both benchmarks finished in positive territory for the session, with the KOSPI posting a sharper gain than the Nikkei 225. The closing levels of 68,308.59 and 6,790.01 reflect the day's advances in Tokyo and Seoul, respectively.

Google has opened what it describes as the world’s largest AI experience flagship store in Tokyo’s Omotesando district, turning the location into a hands-on space for consumers to try the company’s latest artificial intelligence features in person. The store spans from the basement level to the second floor, with AI-focused zones built around Pixel devices, Gemini applications, image and video generation tools, and interactive demos. According to data cited from Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, Apple currently leads Japan’s smartphone market with a 59% share, while Google holds 10%, placing the new store in a highly competitive market. The Omotesando site includes a workshop area for regular seminars on Google’s newest products and services, sales of official merchandise including Japan-exclusive canvas bags and tableware, and a customer support desk in the basement. Visitors can use Google Lens to scan products for specifications, reviews, and live price comparisons, create AI photo booth images in the Pixel Studio zone using Veo and Nano Banana, and try an immersive space powered by Google DeepMind’s in-development AI system, Genie 3. The store also offers on-site repair, warranty applications, Pixel Care+ extended warranty service, one-on-one consultations, and startup assistance for eligible devices, with same-day repairs available in some cases for Pixel 6a and newer phones and Pixel Watch 4 and newer watches.