■ XRP can be fine even below its 2025 price, with fundamentals over speculation

XRP has fallen sharply from its 2025 peak, but an analysis says the current $1.39 range is backed by stronger network activity than at the time.

CryptoQuant analyst YJ said in a recent analysis that the XRP market is moving away from speculation-driven flows toward a more stable fundamentals range.

The key indicator cited was the network value to transactions (NVT) ratio. NVT compares the network’s total value with actual transaction volume and is used similarly to the price-to-earnings ratio in traditional finance. A high reading suggests market value is rising faster than network use, signaling possible overheating, while a low reading means network activity is relatively strong versus price.

YJ said the current XRP price aligns better with actual network activity. XRP rose as high as $3.6 in July 2025, but the price then ran ahead of real usage. Now, even at a lower price, network participation is stronger, he said, meaning the fundamentals backing has increased.

The NVT trend has also shifted. In 2025, repeated spikes in NVT were seen, a signal that price was moving ahead of real-world use. From late 2025 to early 2026, valuations cooled and the spike pattern eased. NVT now stands at 170.2, falling into a neutral-to-low range compared with 2025’s elevated levels. YJ said the figure shows the current $1.39 price is supported more by transaction volume than before.

Trading data point in the same direction. When XRP mainly traded between $2 and $3 in 2025, daily transactions were about 1.1 million to 2.2 million, spiking to 2.6 million only in some periods. From February to December 2025, daily transactions never exceeded 2.8 million.

■ Is bitcoin’s bottom still ahead? Cowen sees a low in autumn 2026

A forecast says the cycle low for bitcoin is likely to form around October 2026.

Benjamin Cowen (벤저민 코웬), CEO of Into The Cryptoverse and a former NASA researcher, said a similar time structure appears to be continuing this time when compared with the past 2 cycles.

Cowen said this cycle’s peak formed within about a week of the peak timing in the previous 2 cycles. If that pattern holds, he said, a low is also likely to come about 1 year after the peak. He cited October 2026 as his base scenario.

He did not completely rule out an earlier low. Cowen said bitcoin could bottom as early as May, but that would require a much larger sell-off first than the usual pattern seen in midterm election years. He also said that as long as bitcoin’s year-to-date return in 2026 stays within the standard deviation range of past midterm-year averages, it is unlikely to break out of that range at an early point.

Cowen said the way this cycle’s peak formed differed from the past. In 2017 and 2021, bitcoin peaked amid retail investor enthusiasm and money then moved into altcoins. This time, he said, bitcoin formed a peak while public interest in cryptocurrencies has weakened since 2021, and as a result the usual altcoin rotation did not appear.

Bitcoin has risen more than 12 percent since Feb. 28 despite the war between the United States and Iran. It now trades at $73,831, more than 40 percent below the record high of about $126,000 set in October 2025. Cowen said he still sees the 4-year cycle holding.

■ Anthropic launches latest model Claude Opus 4.7

Anthropic (Anthropic) has launched Claude Opus 4.7, the latest model in its Opus series.

The company said Opus 4.7 strengthens software engineering capabilities, with especially notable performance gains in high-difficulty coding tasks.

It features improved vision capabilities through support for high-resolution images, higher completeness and creativity in professional work such as interfaces, slides and documents, and stronger instruction-following ability.

Opus 4.7 is not a cybersecurity-specialized model. In cybersecurity capability, it falls short of the recently announced Claude Mythos Preview, and experiments were also conducted alongside training to intentionally lower security capabilities.

With the launch, a new safeguard was introduced to automatically detect and block prohibited or high-risk cybersecurity-related requests. The company said this is also the first case of applying in a real environment the approach presented in Project Glasswing, announced last week.

Mythos Preview is Anthropic’s top-performance model and is being offered on a limited basis only to cyber defense experts and critical infrastructure partners. Opus 4.7 is Anthropic’s top-performance model among those generally accessible. Pricing is the same as Opus 4.6: $5 per 1 million input tokens and $25 per 1 million output tokens.

■ Not only Samsung Electronics: Samsung group shares surge across the board

Samsung group shares are showing strength, led by Samsung Electronics. The market sees investor sentiment recovering quickly as Samsung Electronics posts strong earnings and the risk from the recent Middle East war moves into an easing phase.

The Korea Exchange said Samsung Electronics rose 3.08 percent on April 16 to 217,500 won, while Samsung Electro-Mechanics gained 4.07 percent and Samsung SDI rose 1.59 percent. They are among the Samsung group’s major listed companies ranking near the top in gains so far this year.

Samsung Electronics announced preliminary first-quarter results on April 6. On a consolidated basis, revenue was 133 trillion won and operating profit was 5.72 trillion won, each a record high for a quarter. As demand for AI semiconductors expands and the memory market improves, an analysis says Samsung Electronics’ strong results are leading to a re-rating of valuations across Samsung group affiliates.

Developments in the Middle East that had recently weighed on the stock market are also showing signs of calming. Expectations for easing Middle East risks spread after U.S. President Donald Trump mentioned the possibility of ending the war, and foreign funds were seen flowing in.

Within the Samsung group, stocks with large gains since the start of the year are drawing particular attention. The Korea Exchange put year-to-date gains at 136.67 percent for Samsung Electro-Mechanics, 116.77 percent for Samsung E&A, 81.90 percent for Samsung SDI and 69.07 percent for Samsung Electronics. The average year-to-date gain for 14 major Samsung group listed companies was 40.96 percent.

The broad rise across group shares has also lifted market value. The combined market capitalisation of 18 Samsung group listed companies stood at 1,646.35 trillion won as of that day, equal to 32.24 percent of the KOSPI market capitalisation. Samsung Electronics accounted for about 78.4 percent of the Samsung group’s total market value.

Samsung group-focused ETFs also rose over the period. Year-to-date gains were 52.06 percent for TIGER Samsung Group, 48.19 percent for ACE Samsung Group Sector Weighted, 48.01 percent for KODEX Samsung Group, 44.66 percent for KODEX Samsung Group Value and 34.01 percent for ACE Samsung Group Equal Weighted.

■ Chipflation drives up console and PC prices in sequence, making gaming an 'expensive hobby'?

A shortage of memory semiconductors driven by a surge in demand for AI servers, known as "chipflation", is shaking the wider games market. Console and PC prices are rising in succession and pressure is spreading to software prices, shifting gaming from what was once seen as a representative "value-for-money hobby" into an "expensive hobby". A forecast says South Korean game companies preparing the next wave of PC and console titles will struggle to avoid a direct hit on both demand and costs.

The root cause of chipflation is a supply-demand imbalance stemming from a sharp increase in AI infrastructure investment. As chipmakers focus resources on high bandwidth memory (HBM) and server DRAM production, supply of consumer memory used in PCs and consoles has fallen. In the first quarter, server DRAM and HBM accounted for 60 percent of total memory revenue.

The pace of price increases is unprecedented. Counterpoint Research said first-quarter contract prices for DRAM rose more than 50 percent from the previous quarter and NAND flash climbed more than 90 percent. TrendForce forecast additional increases in the second quarter of 90 to 95 percent for DRAM and 55 to 60 percent for NAND flash. Gartner expects overall PC prices to rise 17 percent by the end of this year along with a sharp jump in DRAM and SSD prices.

The fallout is directly pushing up prices of finished products. Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) raised PS5 prices from April 2. The base model and the Digital Edition each rose by $100 to $649.99 and $599.99, and the high-performance PS5 Pro was increased by $150 to $899.99. It was a further hike after about 8 months. If domestic prices reflect the increase, the base model is expected to be around 1 million won and the Pro model to exceed 1.3 million won.

Microsoft (MS) has also raised Xbox Series X and S prices in stages, with the possibility of additional increases also being discussed. Nintendo Switch 2 has not had an official price increase announced, but shortages from immediately after launch have pushed actual market selling prices above 700,000 won. The market view is that if chipflation persists, Switch 2 will also struggle to avoid price-hike pressure.

■ AI-driven shortage of circuit boards spreads to defence and aerospace

Supply shortages of high-layer multi-layer boards (MLB) caused by a surge in AI demand are continuing, and new markets are opening in defence and aerospace. MLBs are boards made by stacking multiple circuit layers and, unlike boards for general electronics, are high-reliability products required to operate without failure for long periods in extreme environments. They are key components for AI accelerators and network equipment that process large volumes of data at high speed.

The industry says demand for MLBs is clearly expanding beyond AI. Boards for military equipment must operate for decades under extreme temperatures and in environments involving vibration, shock and impact. Satellite boards must endure more than 10 years without repair amid space radiation and extreme temperature swings. Defence and aerospace markets that require such high reliability are emerging as a new growth axis for MLBs.

The aerospace market will grow in earnest starting this year. Hanwha Investment & Securities said that, by the Korea AeroSpace Administration’s count, domestic launches of nano and small satellites are projected to surge from 14 last year to 100 in 2028 and 185 in 2030. Low Earth orbit (LEO) small satellites have a short lifespan of 3 to 5 years, structurally generating repeat manufacturing demand for constellation operations. Considering a 1 to 2 year satellite production lead time, mass-production orders are likely to begin from 2026 to 2027.

Defence demand is also on an expanding trend. South Korea’s military is pushing to deploy up to about 130 low Earth orbit reconnaissance satellites by the early 2030s, and follow-on work to the 425 project and a nano-satellite system project are set to proceed in sequence. Based on export performance of weapon systems such as Cheongung-II, it is likely to expand the defence export domain to satellite and ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) systems.

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