Right now there is about a five-year gap between what TSMC is capable of and what Huawei together with its manufacturing partner Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. can produce. Huawei will start making 1.4-nanometer chips by 2031 with its own “LogicFolding” technology, Huawei’s semiconductor chief He Tingbo said in a rare public appearance during a chip conference on Monday, while TSMC has said that it will begin mass production of the same product in 2028.

The executive said that her team has found a way for “sustainable evolution.” She told reporters after her speech on Monday that Huawei can advance its chipmaking prowess significantly without the use of Dutch supplier ASML Holding NV’s extreme ultraviolet lithography machines, widely considered as essential for production of cutting-edge semiconductors that China doesn’t have access to.

He added that the Kirin mobile chips to be launched this fall will be the first to adopt the LogicFolding architecture, which helps boost performance of a chip by increasing the number of transistors it carries and optimizing data transmission speed.

“This year we have prepared a surprise for the whole industry. Not saturation, not continuation, but a big leap ahead,” she said.

The Star 50 Index in Shanghai, which includes several major Chinese chip firms, rose to a record after He’s announcement on Monday. Shares of SMIC rose more than 18% while foundry peer Hua Hong Semiconductor Ltd. surged by the daily limit of 20%.

If Huawei can manage to make 1.4nm semiconductors in large quantities, it means it’s defying the industry consensus that ASML’s EUV lithography machines are necessary to mass-produce chips that are 5nm or more advanced. Such semiconductors are used to power the most sophisticated AI technologies.

The nanometer measure is used to indicate the size of transistors on a chip. The smaller a transistor becomes, the more can be fitted on a chip, which in turn will become more powerful. ASML’s EUV machines are seen as essential in shrinking transistors, and they are used widely by leading global chipmakers including TSMC, Samsung Electronics Co. and Intel Corp. for mass production.

Huawei’s He added that the LogicFolding architecture is based on Huawei’s own Tau Scaling Law, a principle the Chinese company is adopting to rival Moore’s Law, the guideline for the global chip industry for decades. Moore’s Law, named after Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, is an extrapolation that the numbers of transistors in a chip will roughly double about every two years, though many in the industry including He say the cadence has been slowing down in recent years.

He said that Huawei’s scaling efforts based on Moore’s Law plateaued six years ago after U.S. export controls hit. Her team then proposed a new “time scaling” method to replace the global industry’s gold standard. Huawei’s new principle appears to focus on boosting data transmission speed by transistors to compensate for a lack of state-of-the-art equipment to shrink those components significantly further.

“We saw time scaling can deliver strong benefits across devices, circuits, chips and systems,” He said, adding that Huawei has designed and made 381 chips over the past six years based on the Tau Scaling Law. Huawei in a separate statement said that the company is dubbing its new principle “Her’s Law,” in a nod to its chip chief.

The Tau Scaling Law is a summary of some current trends in the semiconductor industry, but it appears to be the first attempt by a company to formulate these ideas into a coherent theory, according to Kitty Fok, managing director of research firm IDC China.

“It may also provide a new reference point for China’s semiconductor industry in overcoming process-node constraints,” Fok said.

The Shenzhen firm has previously filed for patents that show it is trying so-called self-aligned quadruple patterning, or SAQP, that may allow it to produce advanced chips without ASML’s EUV machines. Quadruple patterning is a technique for etching lines on silicon wafers multiple times to increase transistor density — and therefore performance.

While Huawei has continued to improve its technologies over the past few years, it is unclear whether it will indeed be able to reach the cutting edge of chipmaking by experimenting with a non-mainstream path.

Huawei has been at the vanguard of Beijing’s semiconductor self-sufficiency drive following a years-long U.S.-led, multinational campaign to tighten exports of advanced chips and gear that have somewhat curbed China’s AI progress.

In September, Huawei announced a three-year roadmap to roll out a series of AI chips to fill in the vacuum left by Nvidia Corp., whose most advanced semiconductors are banned for China.

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On-chain data shows the Ethereum network is nearing in on the 190 million holders milestone, hosting more than triple the userbase of Bitcoin.

Ethereum Has Been Widening Its Adoption Gap To Bitcoin

In a new post on X, on-chain analytics firm Santiment has shared how the various top networks in the digital asset sector like Bitcoin and Ethereum currently compare against each other in terms of the Total Amount Of Holders. This indicator measures, as its name implies, the total number of addresses on a given blockchain that hold a non-zero balance.

When the value of this metric rises, it means new wallets with a balance are popping up on the network. Such a trend can arise due to a number of reasons, like new investors coming into the market or old investors who had sold earlier making a return. Existing users creating new wallets for privacy purposes can also naturally contribute to the trend.

In general, whenever the Total Amount Of Holders goes up, all of these factors could be considered to be at play at once. In other words, some net adoption of the cryptocurrency could be assumed to have occurred.

On the other hand, the indicator going down suggests some users are clearing out their wallets on the blockchain, potentially because they have decided to exit from the market.

Now, here is the chart shared by Santiment that shows the trend in the Total Amount Of Holders for eight major cryptocurrencies:

Looks like ETH has a massive lead over the rest | Source: Santiment on X

As displayed in the above graph, the coin ranked the highest in terms of holders is Ethereum, with about 189.5 million in non-empty addresses present on the network. This is a massive amount, and it’s only been growing recently.

Meanwhile, Bitcoin has witnessed a flat trajectory in its Total Amount Of Holders over the last few months, implying that the adoption of the cryptocurrency has stalled while Ethereum has continued to attract users. Currently, BTC has 59.1 million wallets with a balance, which is less than a third of the size of ETH’s userbase.

Ethereum’s dominant position in the metric is down to the rich DeFi ecosystem that the blockchain hosts thanks to its smart contracts feature. Speaking of ETH’s ecosystem, stablecoins make a major part of it and the most dominant among them are USDT and USDC, both of which appear on this list with 13.6 million and 6.8 million holders, respectively.

Among the altcoins, Dogecoin beats XRP and Cardano with a Total Amount Of Holders value of around 8.3 million.

ETH Price

At the time of writing, Ethereum is trading around $2,270, down over 2% in the last 24 hours.

The price of the coin seems to have retraced from its weekend high | Source: ETHUSDT on TradingView

Featured image from Dall-E, chart from TradingView.com

Editorial Process for bitcoinist is centered on delivering thoroughly researched, accurate, and unbiased content. We uphold strict sourcing standards, and each page undergoes diligent review by our team of top technology experts and seasoned editors. This process ensures the integrity, relevance, and value of our content for our readers.

“One of the things we do with the bike company is we try and make a difference in the world,” he told Fortune.

Since its founding in 1976 in Waterloo, Wis., that philosophy has taken a measurable form. It came into full view between 2021 and 2025, when Trek paid out approximately $308,000 (about €263,000) to match prize money for women cyclists at races where female winners were awarded less than their male counterparts.

The company’s most pointed example came at the 2021 Paris-Roubaix Femmes, when the women’s winner received €1,535 (roughly $1,815 in 2018) while the men’s winner received €30,000 (about $35,490 in 2018).

Trek covered the difference, and since then, has continued doing so at other races.

Alex Broadway/Getty Images

The amount Trek needs to pay out has been decreasing, according to the company, because more race organizers have begun establishing equal prize purses for men and women. That’s in part due to publicity from Trek’s checkwriting and in part due to pressure. Trek’s intervention appears to be doing what it was designed to do: embarrass the old system into changing.

For Burke, the issue became obvious around 2017, when Trek CFO Chad Brown walked into his office after visiting women’s races in Europe.

“He goes, ‘Do you know what’s going on with women cycling?’” Burke said. “He said, ‘I was just over there in Europe, and it’s embarrassing. Most of the women are making less than $10,000 a year. They get secondhand bikes. They stay at s—-y hotels. They’re flown in the night before the race. Nobody cares.’”

Burke responded like anyone who may own a five-decade-old cycling company and who was outraged by the growing publicity surrounding the U.S. women’s soccer team’s salaries. At that time, they had just won the first of two back-to-back FIFA World Cup titles.

“Why don’t we just buy a women’s cycling team?” Burke recalled asking Brown. When Trek was unable to buy one, it started its own.

“We said we’re going to treat women the same way the men are treated,” Burke said. “We’re going to pay them livable wages, we’re going to give them the best equipment, we’re going to give them great coaching. We’re going to take really good care of them the same way we take care of men. And nobody was doing this. This was a revolutionary idea.”

One of the riders Trek signed was Lizzie Deignan, who was pregnant at the time and uncertain about her future in the sport, despite being ranked number one worldwide after getting crowned the 2015 world road race champion.

“I felt incredibly grateful to Trek for the opportunity to join the team, because when I announced that I was pregnant, I didn’t know what my future looked like in the sport,” Deignan told Fortune. “Despite being ranked number one in the world at the time, I didn’t have a secure team.”

What stood out to her, she said, was that Trek did not treat the move as symbolic.

Dario Belingheri/Getty Images

“Trek came in, and there was no tokenism about it,” Deignan said. “They really came in at the top level and gave me an amazing opportunity. And it was really special to be able to win some really iconic races with Trek on my jersey because of that.”

The equal-prize-money effort, Deignan said, was part of a broader set of initiatives that changed the culture around the team. She recalled being approached by a former Trek employee who told her she had received £50 because of Deignan. The employee explained that when the women won races, Trek employees would get money too.

“Because of that, it had this ripple effect of momentum and excitement amongst the Trek employees,” Deignan said. “Simple initiatives like that actually built a really strong foundation and fan base, even within the company.”

Ripple effects

Because men’s cycling teams have been around for much longer, some folks didn’t know about the logistics or even rules of women’s cycling, and have never had the experience of working closely in the sport.

“Old-school staff, who’ve been in the sport for years, who’ve never known anything about women’s cycling, knew that actually they had to get on board with this, because Trek were taking it incredibly seriously,” Deignan said. “So their attitude immediately was about welcoming us and understanding that this was a mutually beneficial relationship.”

Burke said he wasn’t even responsible for Trek’s prize-money matching program—evidence, he says, of the commitment that had become embedded in the company’s culture. He remembered learning that Trek had hosted a World Cup cyclocross race and offered equal prize money.

“We were the only event that did that,” Burke said. “I didn’t make that call, but the team did. Great idea.”

He only learned of Trek topping off prize money at professional races after receiving a note from cyclist Ellen van Dijk.

“She goes, ‘I just want to let you know this is really meaningful, not just in the money, but just in what Trek does,’” Burke said.

That distinction, between the financial value and the signal it sends, is central to Trek’s argument. Burke said companies often try to quantify the return on purpose-driven investments too narrowly.

“To me, you can’t quantify it,” he said. “There’s something about doing the right thing, and there’s something about what do you stand for as a company.”

Szymon Gruchalski/Getty Images

Burke rejected the idea that every initiative needs a direct return-on-investment calculation.

“At the end of the day, when I’m dead and gone, nobody’s going to say, ‘Well, his return on assets was blank,’” he said. “But they might look back and they said, ‘Trek took a long-term view, and they tried not only to build the best bikes in the world, but they also tried to make a difference.’”

Women’s cycling, he added, is one of the areas he is proudest of.

“The biggest thing that we do is be an example,” Burke said. “That’s how we multiply our impact. The impact that Trek’s made on women’s cycling isn’t the Trek team. It’s all of the teams who saw what Trek was doing, and they made big changes.”

Deignan says those changes are real, but incomplete. Prize money is only one part of the economic gap in women’s cycling. Media coverage, sponsorships, salaries, and the basic ability to train full time still lag behind the men’s side.

“There are definitely still gaps,” Deignan said. “This previous weekend, Paris-Roubaix, for instance, the race that I won, there still wasn’t full TV coverage. Although their fans are growing, they still only get to watch 50% of the race, and that only tells half the story.”

“It always takes, in every sport, the first person to do it,” she said. “I suppose I did similar to that in cycling on a smaller scale, but with the support of Trek from the very beginning.”

For women cyclists, pay is also directly tied to performance. Deignan said women’s cycling has only had a minimum wage in the last five or six years, and that the change is now beginning to raise the level of competition.

“To be a professional athlete in every sense of the word is transformative in terms of performance,” she said. “There’s no way that anybody who is managing all those extra things that come with a second job has the capacity to perform at the same level as someone who’s full time.”

At the end of the day, it was less about Trek doing something to get something in return, and more about the tenacity of being a professional athlete, as Deignan also put it.

“Too many people are focused on the short term and on what they get,” Burke said. “Doing good things builds a brand over a long period of time.”

Unlike luxury consumer goods brands such as Cartier or Louis Vuitton, Best Buy needs to appeal to a very wide swath of society. Consumer spending patterns since the pandemic, especially the growing gap in spending power in the U.S. between the most affluent and the least, have the CEO of an electronics mass retailer worried.