Marco Manoppo

Bitcoin slipped below $70,000 for the first time since August 19 as a Dollar Index above 103, its highest since April 2025, priced in a hawkish Fed after a hot October CPI print.

> BTC is down 17% this quarter, while ETH fell under $2,000, SOL broke below $80, and XRP hovered near $1.

> Markets are now pricing higher odds of a 50 basis point Fed hike in December, a direct headwind for liquidity-sensitive assets.

> Over $1.3B in futures positions were liquidated in 24 hours, with $677M from BTC and nearly $500M hitting right as it crossed $70,000.

> The largest single wipeout was a $31M long BTC position on Hyperliquid.

> Iran’s IRGC claimed a strike on a US radar site in Bahrain, adding geopolitical risk, though WTI oil held steady near $88.

MARA sold 13,597 BTC for $1.1B in six weeks, about 40% of its September holdings, abandoning the hold-every-coin strategy it championed in 2024 to fund a pivot from mining to AI datacenters.

> About $750M went to repaying bitcoin-backed loans taken in August, cutting pledged or lent holdings from 57% to under 5%.

> The sales were six times what MARA mined in all of Q3, pushing its 2026 total above 40,000 BTC.

> Q3 revenue fell 35% to $164M, and the reported $632M profit relied on an $885M accounting gain from bitcoin’s price rise.

> Further cash demands include bondholder early repayment rights starting next year and a buyback authorization of up to $500M.

> MARA expects to close Long Ridge, a 485MW gas power business, in coming weeks and targets two datacenter leases by year-end, though talks could slip into 2027.

Stock perps on Hyperliquid now trade 133% of Bitcoin's volume: $3.9b a day vs $2.9b (7-day avg to 9 Nov).

But busy isn’t bullish. A perp counts a buy and a sell alike. More volume means more attention on stocks, not a bet on which way they go.

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The NYSE chose Avalanche to clear and settle its planned tokenized stock venue, but it will run its own permissioned chain rather than the public network, which shows Wall Street adopting blockchain tooling while keeping control of the ledger.

> The NYSE-affiliated ATS will pair the exchange’s Pillar trading engine with onchain clearing, settlement and custody, aiming for 24/7 trading, instant settlement and stablecoin funding pending regulatory approval.

> The platform will accept stocks issued on other networks and settle them through the custom Avalanche chain, and six transfer agents including Broadridge, Computershare and Securitize are now signed on.

> AVAX rose 8% on the news, even though the deal uses Ava Labs’ custom-chain technology rather than activity on the public Avalanche network.

> Rivals are building competing stacks, with Nasdaq partnering with Kraken’s parent and DTCC launching a custody-focused tokenization service on its private Besu chain and the Canton Network.

> A separate track under the SEC’s innovation exemption lets select onchain venues trade tokenized stocks through AMMs, including a project between OKX and NYSE parent ICE.

Most “stable” DeFi lending money would count as overnight money on a bank’s scorecard.

We stress-tested the lenders behind Morpho’s vaults the way regulators test banks.

Who runs first, and who stays ↓