December 9, 2025 • 32 mins
In this high-stakes installment of the Crypto News Rundown, the hosts unpack a week that feels like a genuine turning point for how traditional finance treats digital assets. What starts as a “quiet” stretch on the charts quickly reveals itself as a watershed moment: SEC-approved index products landing on NYSE Arca, a major U.S. bank rolling out integrated spot Bitcoin trading, and derivatives markets opening the door to tokenized collateral. Before they touch a single price chart, the hosts lay out a clear, no-nonsense disclaimer on risk, volatility, and why nothing in the episode should ever be taken as investment advice. From there, the episode dives into the institutional wave. The Bitwise 10 Crypto Index Fund (BITW) wins approval to trade as an ETP on NYSE Arca, giving pensions, endowments, and family offices a familiar, regulated way to access a diversified basket of top-10 crypto assets. PNC Bank then steals the spotlight as the first major U.S. bank to offer direct spot Bitcoin trading to private banking clients via its own app, powered on the back end by Coinbase’s infrastructure. The hosts connect these moves to a broader shift in portfolio thinking as banks quietly talk about low-single-digit allocations to digital assets. The “market plumbing” story gets just as much attention. The CFTC launches a pilot allowing futures commission merchants to accept tokenized Bitcoin, Ethereum, and USDC as margin collateral, backed by a new legal framework for non-security digital assets. The discussion expands into tokenized treasuries and real-world assets, highlighting fresh guidance around custody, segregation, and valuation that brings on-chain assets into the heart of regulated futures markets. In parallel, Hong Kong’s HashKey pursues an IPO and launches a fully on-chain tokenized security, underscoring Asia’s aggressive push to build a compliant crypto hub. On the price action front, Bitcoin rips back above $94,000 on heavy spot volume just ahead of an expected Fed rate cut, while Michael Saylor’s Strategy doubles down with nearly a billion-dollar BTC purchase funded largely by stock sales. The hosts weigh the bullish “digital gold” narrative against sobering data from Bitfinex on ETF outflows, negative cumulative volume delta, and millions of coins sitting at an unrealized loss, arguing that Bitcoin often behaves more like a high-octane tech asset than a safe haven. They stress that sizing, not prediction, is what really matters and repeat the old rule: only invest what you can afford to lose. Ethereum gets its own deep dive after an 8% short-squeezing rally back above key technical levels and the 200-day EMA. The episode examines Bitmine Immersion Technologies’ huge ETH accumulation, the billions in unrealized losses on its balance sheet, and how that makes the company both a conviction play and a high-wire act. The hosts then cover BlackRock’s twin ETH products – a plain spot ETF and a staked ETF designed to capture yield – along with Robinhood’s rollout of ETH and SOL staking to U.S. users, including in tightly regulated New York. The spotlight then shifts to XRP and Solana. XRP enjoys a breakout week in Asia with new HKD trading pairs on a licensed Hong Kong exchange and an expanded payments license for Ripple in Singapore, while U.S. spot XRP ETFs race past $1 billion in AUM. Analysts’ “coiled spring” thesis is explained in plain language. Solana, meanwhile, holds key Fibonacci support and heads toward a critical resistance zone, all while its social media team ignites tribal drama by tweeting the culturally loaded “589” meme and a castle graphic that puts SOL above BTC and XRP, sparking huge engagement across crypto Twitter. In the altcoin lightning round, listeners get quick but nuanced takes on Cardano’s mysterious $21 million ADA transfer and the launch of the privacy-focused Midnight token, BNB’s stability amid Binance’s regulatory win in Abu Dhabi, and Zcash’s stunning 13x rebound on renewed interest in privacy tech. The hosts also cover Hyperliquid’s HYPE token and a controversial presale called Deep Snitch AI, using it as a case study to explain red flags around 100x marketing promises, weak tokenomics, and anonymous teams. The episode closes by zooming out. From PNC’s spot Bitcoin offering and CFTC pilots to HashKey’s IPO and global regulatory moves for Tether, Binance, Bybit, Circle, and Robinhood, the institutional rails are being laid at full speed. Yet underneath that progress, the market remains brutally volatile and structurally fragile for everyday investors. The hosts leave listeners with one final, uncomfortable question: as corporations raise capital from the public to accumulate vast crypto treasuries, what does this accelerating centralization mean for the long-promised decentralized ethos of the industry? As always, they sign off with a reminder to stay safe, stay skeptical, and keep learning.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Crypto News rundown. We are diving into
a week that I think really changed the game for
how traditional finance looks at digital assets.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Oh absolutely.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
If you thought we were just kind of coasting in
a quiet period, last seven days just completely blew that
idea up. Institutions are clearly on a very different schedule.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
It was a watershed week. There's really no other way
to put it. We saw regulated pathways just open up
across the board, from products on the NYSE, to major
US banks getting into spot trading, and even a huge
shift in how derivatives markets are thinking about digital collateral.
All of this happening while the market itself is just
whipping around Bitcoin back over ninety four thousand dollars, some
(00:42):
serious moves in the alt coins.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
It's a massive amount to cover. We've got the SEC's
latest ETT approval, that huge bitcoin surge which we need.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
To unpack, and the corporate buying behind it exactly.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Then there's the Ethereum treasury market and this almost geopolitical
drama playing out between Solana and XRP. Our job, as
always is to connect the dots for you from all
the sources.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
But first, and this is more important than any price
chart or prediction. We absolutely have to start with the
investment disclaimer.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Yes, absolutely, So let's be crystal clear. Everything we discuss
here today, the news are analysis, the commentary we're pulling
from experts. It is all strictly for informational and educational
purposes only.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
We are not licensed financial advisors. This is not in
any way, shape or form investment advice.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
And you have to understand the crypto market is and
will continue to be extremely volatile. It carries a huge
amount of.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Risk, and just because you see big institutional names entering
the space, that does not mean the risk has disappeared overnight.
If anything, it can sometimes add new layers of complexity.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
I mean, we've seen market leaders, the biggest assets suffer
drawdowns of eighty percent or more. It's not a question
of if that kind of volatility comes back, it's just.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
When your capital is at risk. So please do your
own deep, comprehensive research and more in certainly talk to
a licensed independent financial advisor before you make any decisions.
Our goal is to give you the analysis, but the
decisions are and must be entirely your own.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
Okay, With that critical warning front and center, Let's get
into what you called the institutional tsunami, because it really
feels like traditional finance isn't just testing the waters anymore,
not at all.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
They're building bridges, huge regulated, multi lane bridges. And it
starts with the SEC and a new ETP.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
Right, the Bitwise ten crypto index fund bitw It got
SEC approval to trade as an exchange traded product on
nyse ARCA.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
And that's the key. This isn't just another fund. It's
the second US listed multi asset crypto index ETP. Grayscale
got one back in July. So this shows it wasn't
a fluke, it's a pattern.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
Okay, So let's unpack that. The CEO of Bitwise, Hunter Horseley,
called it a water shed moment. Why is moving from say,
an over the counter product to a fully regulated nyse
ARCA listing. Why is that such a game changer.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
It's all about who can buy it and how they
account for it. When bitw lands on the nyse ARCA,
it suddenly looks and feels exactly like some of the
most established financial instruments in the.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
World, like a gold etf for an oil fund exactly.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
It uses the identical regulatory structure for a big institutional allocator,
that familiarity is everything. It removes the scariness, the operational headache.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
So you're talking about pension funds and Dowmans, big family offices.
They might have rules that stop them from holding, you know,
a token directly on a hardware.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
Wallet, right the legal and compliance departments would never sign
off on.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
That, but they can absolutely buy a NYSE listed ETP.
It just slots right into their existing custody and reporting systems.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
It strips away the two biggest hurdles custody risk and
regulatory ambiguity and bitw itself. It's a one point twenty
five billion dollar fund that gives you diversified exposure to
the top ten crypto's, BTC, eth, sol, XRP, all the
big ones. It's rebalanced monthly, so.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
Let's them bet on the growth of the entire asset class,
not just try to pick the one winner.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
That's what Matt Hugan, the CIO at bitwise, emphasized, it's
a structural shift, and it's a gateway for potentially billions
of dollars of capital that has been sitting on.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
The sidelines and building on that. We saw a major
US bank just decide to skip the ETPs altogether and
go straight to offering spot bitcoin.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
This one, to me was maybe the most shocking development
of the week. PNC Bank the first major US bank
to offer direct spot bitcoin trading to its private bank
clients right inside its own digital platforms.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
So we're talking buy hold, cell all integrated. That is
a huge leap from just offering custody.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
A massive leap. But they're being smart about it. They're
not trying to build all the complicated crypto plumbing from scratch.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
They're using a partner for that. Right now.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
They are the actual trading, the custody, the settlement, all
of that is handled by coinbases crypto as the service infrastructure.
But and this is the crucial part, PNC keeps the
direct client relationship, They keep the regulatory oversight. The buck
stops with them.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
Okay, but does using coinbase for the back end create
a new kind of risk, a third party risk? I'm
sure regulators are looking at that very closely.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
Oh, they're hyper focused on it. But the structure is
designed for that. PNC layers its own bank rade risk
management framework on top of what coinbase provides. It lets
them get to market fast while still owning the client trust,
which in private banking is everything.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
And this is aimed at their top tier clients.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
Exactly, high net worth individuals, family offices. This move comes
right after Bank of America started telling its advisors to
think about a one to four percent allocation to digital assets.
The client demand is clearly there, and PNC is the
first to really meet it head on with an integrated solution.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
So let's connect this institutional push to the derivatives market.
Because the CFTC, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, just made
a really big move on token is collateral.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
This is where it gets really interesting. Down in the
plumbing of the financial system. The CFTC launched a pilot program.
It allows what are called Futures Commission Merchants or fcms, the.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Guys who process all the futures.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
Trades exactly, It lets them accept tokenized digital assets as
margin collateral. This is a massive step. It's integrating crypto
directly into the backbone of regulated trading.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
So you could use bitcoin or ethereum to back a
traditional futures position.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
Bitcoin ethereum and for the first three months USDC and yes,
that's exactly what it means what was holding them back
was this old memo from twenty twenty, an advisory that
basically put up a bunch of roadblocks for fcms because
of worries about volatility and custody.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
And to launch this pilot, they had to get rid
of that memo.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
They formally withdrew it, and they said the reason they
could was because of not just better technology, but a
change in federal law, the Genius Act.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
The Genius Act, what did that do?
Speaker 2 (06:53):
It basically created a legal framework that clarified how to
classify and regulate non security digital assets. It gave the
CFTC the legal confidence they needed to say, Okay, we
understand the standing of these assets. Now we can build
a supervised framework around them.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
So it's about bringing all this activity that's happening offshore
back into regulated US markets.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
That's the goal. Make it safer, make it more transparent.
And this brings up the next big question everyone is
asking about.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
Real world assets RWAs.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Yes, tokenized treasuries. For example, the CFTC put out brand
new guidance on this. They clarified how things like tokenized
t bills can be used under the existing rules.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
And what are the key requirements.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
It's all about segregation, custody, and valuation. The tokenized asset
has to be held in a way that the FCM
can liquidate it instantly. If there's a margin call and
the underlying asset has to meet super strict quality standards,
it shows the regulator is focused on the risk of
the asset, not the digital wrapper it comes in. That's
a fundamental mindset shift.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
Okay, so that's the infrastructure being built now for the
market reaction saw a really decisive move in bitcoin, a
huge surge back over ninety four thousand dollars.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
Yeah, it swored back over ninety four k and US
morning trading that was a more than four percent gain
in twenty four hours, and it was on heavy volume
forty six billion dollars.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
And what was so significant about this move was the
pattern it broke.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
It completely reversed the trend for weeks, every time the
US markets opened, Bitcoin would sell off. It's adjusted there
was this big wall of institutional selling pressure. This rally
felt different. It felt like maybe those sellers were finally exhausted.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
So what was driving it? Was this just a bunch
of leverage bets or were people actually buying coins.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
The data really points to spot demand. Analysts looked at
the price gain versus the growth and open interest on derivatives,
and the price moved way faster. That's a classic sign
of spot buying. Actual coin accumulation fueling the rally.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
And this wasn't happening in a vacuum. The macro timing
was pretty much perfect right.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
It couldn't have been better. This rally happened one day
before the Federal Reserve was expected to announce a twenty
five basis point.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
Rate cut, right looser financial conditions, which is generally good
for risk assets exactly.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
Even if the cut was priced in, it just reinforces
that narrative shift away from rate hike fear and towards
a more accommodative policy. That's the kind of environment where
an asset like bitcoin can really run.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
And as the market was running, we saw the biggest
bull of them all, Michael Sailor's company Strategy, make another
absolutely massive purchase.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
They are just relentlessly accumulating. They bought another ten thoy
six hundred and twenty four bitcoin for about nine hundred
and sixty two million dollars. The average price was ninety
six hundred and fifteen dollars.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
Almost a billion dollars. And the wild part is how
they paid for it. It wasn't just cash on hand, No.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
They funded most of it by selling nine hundred and
twenty eight million dollars of their own common and preferred stock.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
That's that's just an incredible level of conviction to dilute
your own shareholders to buy more bitcoin.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
It shows they're not just a software company with some
bitcoin anymore. They have completely re engineered their corporate tree treasury.
Their total stash is now six hundred and sixty six
hundred and twenty four btc.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
But isn't that a huge risk. Yeah, they've essentially become
a leveraged bitcreen ETF. What happens to their stock if
bitcoin crashes back to fifty thousand?
Speaker 2 (10:13):
That is the multi billion dollar question, and it's the
central debate around the company. Critics say they've abandoned their
core business. But Sailor's argument, which he was actually pitching
to sovereign wealth funds in Abu Dhabi this week, is
that he's just acquiring digital capital.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
He calls it digital gold right, and.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
His pitch is that twenty twenty five is the year
that idea was validated because now you have big banks
willing to hold it and lend against it. For him,
the risk is an owning bitcoin, the risk is owning
fiat currency that's being devalued.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
So you have these huge corporate buyers on one hand,
but on the other analysts at Biffinex put out a
pretty serious warning about structural softness in the market.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Yeah, that Biffine's report was a really important reality check.
They pointed out this big divergence, Y S and P
five hundred is hitting record highs, but Bitcoin was until
this latest pop, just stuck in a range.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
That relative weakness points to a problem.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
It points to what they called a fragile setup. The
underlying spot demand just isn't that strong.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
So what specific signals did they point to? What's the
evidence for this fragility?
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Three main things. First, persistent outflows from the US spot
bitcoin ETFs. This means the people using these new easy
access products are actually selling into strength, They're not accumulating.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
On the balance, That seems counterintuitive. If the institutions are
building bridges, why are the flows going out.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
It could mean that the early money in those ETFs
was more tactical, you know, hedge funds taking short term
profits rather than long term strategic money from pensions.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
Okay, what was the second signal.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
A sharply negative cumulative volume delta or CVD.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
Right, break that down for us. What is cumula volume
delta and why is a negative number a bad sign?
Speaker 2 (11:58):
So? CVD basically tracks what the aggressive buyers or aggressive
sellers are in control. A positive number means buyers are
hitting the asked price to get in. A negative number
means sellers are hitting the bid price to get out.
Even during this price bounce, the CVD stayed negative, which
means that underneath the surface, sellers were still more aggressive.
They were draining liquidity from the order books.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
And the third signal sounds like it's about investor psychology.
It is.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
They noted that over seven million bitcoin are currently sitting
at an unrealized.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
Loss, meaning a huge number of coins where bought at
price is higher than where.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
We are now exactly, and that creates a kind of
psychological resistance. Every time the price goes up, there's a
whole group of people who are just desperate to sell
and get back to even It creates a heavy ceiling
on any rally. You put all three of those things
together and you get that fragile setup.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
This all leads directly to that big portfolio debate. Is
Bitcoin still digital gold or is it just a very,
very risky tech stoc.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
The data since twenty eighteen is really challenging that whole
digital gold story. Financial advisors are getting much more skeptical
about its role as a portfolio hedge.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
And the two big problems are volatility and correlation exactly.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
First volatility, people compare it to a high beta tech
stock like Nvidia or Tesla, but it's not even in
the same league. Why not, because while those stocks can
swing wildly, Bitcoin has had multiple drawdowns of over eighty
percent from its hies. That kind of risk can completely
wreck a traditional portfolio. It's just a different beast entirely.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
And then there's correlation. As a hedge, it's supposed to
zig when the stock market SAgs.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
And it just doesn't. In fact, it does the opposite.
The data shows its correlation to the S and P
five hundred actually increases during times of market stress.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
So right when you need the diversification to work, it
breaks down.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
It breaks down and often makes the losses worse. It
acts more like a risk accelerant than a shock absorber.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
So given that reality, what's the practical advice? How should
someone even think about allocating to it?
Speaker 2 (13:57):
The consensus advice now is that sizing matters more than prediction.
Treat it as an asymmetric risk asset. The potential upside
is obviously huge, but the chance of losing everything is
also very real.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
So the old advice holds true. Only invest what you
are fully prepared.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
To lose one hundred percent. The institutional infrastructure might create
a high long term floor, but the journey there is
going to be incredibly violent.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
All right, Let's move from Bitcoin to the second largest asset, ethereum,
which had a really impressive week of its own, both
technically and in terms of corporate buying.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
Ethereum showed some incredible strength. It jumped eight percent in
twenty four hours back above thirty three fifty, and this
came right after a pretty brutal twenty one percent drop
in November.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
And the speed of that move basically triggered a classic
short squeeze.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
Oh it vaporized the shorts. The move started right as
the New York session opened, and the liquidation data from
coin glass showed two hundred and sixty million dollars in
short positions were liquidated in just four hours.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
So the bears were just completely cut off guard.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
They were betting on more weakness and they were forced
to buy back Eth to cover their positions, which just
threw gasoline on the fire and pushed the price up
even faster.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
And technically this move was really significant. It broke through
a couple of key resistance levels, a.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Very clean breakout, It pushed out of its descending price channel,
and more importantly, it reclaimed the two hundred day exponential
moving average the EMA and.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
Getting back above the two hundred day is a big
deal for technical traders right.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
It's a huge signal. It suggests the long term trend
might be flipping from bearish back to bullish. The next
major level everyone is watching now is thirty five hundred dollars.
If it can hold above that, it would really confirm
a full trend reversal.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
And just like we saw with strategy and Bitcoin, there's
a corporate giant on the ethereum side that's just as.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
Convicted Bitmine Immersion Technologies or BM and R. They're the
largest ETH treasury firm and they just went on a
buying speed. They picked up another one hundred and thirty
eight thousand eth last.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
Week, wow, which is that in dollar terms.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
About four hundred and thirty five million dollars one of
their biggest weekly buys.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
Ever, that's a staggering amount of capital. What's their total
holding now?
Speaker 2 (16:08):
It's at three point eighty six million eth To give
you some context, that is over three point two percent
of the entire circulating supply of ethereum held by one company.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
Incredible and their chairman, Thomas Lee, what's his reasoning for
such aggressive buying right now?
Speaker 2 (16:22):
He pointed to two things. First, on chain fundamentals, specifically
the recent Fusaka upgrade that improves scalability, and second, the
same macro factors we talked about with bitcoin, the expected
FED rate cut and the end of quantitative tightening.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
So he's calling this the cryptos supercycle is intact, and
he sees this going strong into twenty twenty six.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
That's his view. He's incredibly bullish on tokenization and adoption.
But and this is a really important but the source
material also points out a harsh reality, which is, despite
all this buying, bitmin is sitting on nearly three billion
dollars an unrealized loss on its ETH stash at current
prices three billion.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
What does that kind of paper loss due to a
publicly traded company's balance sheet.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
It's a huge risk. It doesn't affect their day to
day cash, but it hammers the perceived value of the
company and can make it really hard to raise more capital.
It makes their stock incredibly volatile. It just shows that
this high conviction strategy is also a high wire act.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
And beyond the corporate buyers, we also saw black Rock
and Robinhood making moves that really cement Ethereum's case in
the institutional world.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
Yeah, Blackrock is really expanding its offerings. They already filed
for a standard non staked spot ETH ETF. Now they
filed an S one for a second product, the I
shares stake Ethereum Trust.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
Okay, so what's the difference between a STEAK and a
non state BTF and why would they offer both.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
A non staked ETF just holds the eth its value
tracks the price. A stake DTF, on the other hand,
takes the ETH it holds and actively participates in securing
the network through staking. In return, it earns a yield
paid in more ETH.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
So it's a way to get total return price appreciation plus.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
Yield exactly, and Blackrock is offering both because different institutions
have different rules. Some can't take on the extra smart
contract risk that comes with staking, so they'll want the
plain vanilla version. Others will want that extra yield. It's
about giving institutions maximum choice.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
And Robinhood is bringing that same choice steaking to the
retail market in the US.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
Correct, They just launched Ethereum and Solana staking for US customers,
starting with users in New York, which is a big
deal because of the state's tough bit license rules. It's
a major step in making crypto yield accessible to everyone
through a platform they already know and trust.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
All Right, let's pivot now to two ecosystems that were
all over the news this week, XRP and Solana. And
XRP had an absolutely fantastic week, especially in Asia.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
Yeah, Asia is really becoming the key jurisdiction for xrp's
institutional adoption. The news out of Hong Kong was particularly significant.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
This was the HKD pair. Right tell us about that
it is.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
Well, which is a fully licensed exchange in Hong Kong,
integrated XRP for its institutional clients. But the key detail
is that they added an XRPHKD trading pair, so you.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
Can trade directly from Hong Kong dollars into XRP exactly.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
It means professional investors there don't have to rely on
a foreign stable coin like UST anymore. They can get
direct Fiat exposure, which is a huge deal for compliance
and operational ease.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
And this came right as Singapore gave Ripple a big
regulatory thumbs up as well.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
Ripple's subsidiary in Singapore got an expanded Payments license from
the Monetary Authority of Singapore, the MAS. This basically solidifies
their APAC headquarters in one of the toughest financial jurisdictions
in the world.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
So what does that expanded license let them do? How
does it help their main product, on demand liquidity.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
It's the green light to scale up. ODL uses XRP
as a bridge for cross border payments. With the full
MAS blessing, regional banks can now plug into that system
with confidence. They can, for example, convert Singapore dollars to
Philippine pace in seconds completely bypassing the old slow swift system.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
So while Asia is seeing these big operational wins. Back
in the US, the store was all about the success
of the spot xrpetfs.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
It really was. The spot xrpetfs, which only launched in
mid November, have already crossed one billion dollars in assets
under management.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
In under four weeks. That's incredibly fast.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
It's the fastest a cryptospot ETF has hit that milestone
since Ethereums. It shows there was huge pent up institutional
demand with big names like Grayscale, Bitwise and Franklin Templeton
all launching products and pulling in assets.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
And this demand has technical analysts talking about a massive
potential price move. What's this legendary breakout thesis all about.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
It's all about chart patterns and history. The analysts are
pointing out that XRP has been consolidating in a tight
range for three hundred and seventy one days, and they're
drawing a parallel to the four hundred and fifty day
accumulation phase that happened right before the massive twenty seventeen
bowl run.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
So they see this long on quiet period as a
spring coiling up exactly.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
The tightening price and declining volume look like a classic
compression pattern. The argument is that if this institutional demand
keeps up, the energy being stored in this pattern could
be released in a really explosive way.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
Okay, so that's xrp's big week. Now let's talk about Solana,
which was holding its ground technically and then its social
media team decided to get weird, very weird.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
But first, the price sol has been very strong, bouncing
perfectly off the seventy five percent FIBONACI level, which is
a key support area analysts. Now watching one hundred and
forty dollars is the next big test.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
But the real story was the viral moment when Solana's
official x account just posted a number, the number five
eighty nine.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
Yeah, and for anyone not deep in crypto twitter, lord,
that number means absolutely nothing.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
But for the XRP community, it means everything.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
Right, It's a core piece of their cultural identity. It
comes from this old, totally fake meme of a Simpsons
episode that predicted XRP would hit five hundred and eighty
nine dollars. It's become this in side joke, this shorthand
for extreme bollishness in the XRP army.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
So for Solona to just tweet that number out of nowhere.
It's a direct troll.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
It's either a troll or a very strange teaser for
some kind of collaboration. And they didn't stop there, they
doubled down what they do next. They posted this illustration
of a castle with sol at the very top and
bitcoin an XRP on these lower, smaller towers, and then
they explicitly tagged David Schwartz Ripples CTO. It was a
masterclass in social media engagement and it got them their
(22:30):
highest interaction numbers of the entire.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
Year, which just shows how much tribalism and identity still
drive this space.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
Okay, moving from memes back to technology, the XRP ledger
itself has a pretty critical upgrade coming up.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
It does on December eighteenth, an amendment called fixed directory
limit is set to activate. It's already passed the eighty
five percent consensus threshold it needs from validators.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
Fixed directory limit, what does that actually do so?
Speaker 2 (22:53):
Historically, the ledger had a limit on how many objects
like offers or trust lines could be in a single
director page. It was a way to prevent spam and
stop the ledger from getting too bloated. This amendment removes
that limit.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
But if you remove the limit, what stops people from
spamming the network?
Speaker 2 (23:10):
Now that's where the existing economics of the ledger come in.
To create any object on the XRPL, you have to
lock up a small amount of XRP as a reserve.
That financial cost is a much better and more flexible
deterrent against spam than some arbitrary hard limit. So this
is just an optimization to allow for better scaling.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
And there's a critical warning for anyone running a node
on the network.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
Yes, a mandatory one. If you are running an older
version of the rippled software, you have to upgrade immediately.
If you don't, your node will become amendment blocked on December.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
Eighteenth, meaning it gets kicked off the network.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
It gets kicked off the network, it won't be able
to process transactions or participate in consensus. So it's a
crucial update for all node operators.
Speaker 1 (23:50):
All right, let's shift to global infrastructure, because there was
massive news out of Hong Kong with the IPO of
a licensed crypto exchange, hash key.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
This is a landmark moment for reg related crypto in Asia.
Hashke going public in Hong Kong, aiming to raise about
two hundred and fifteen million US dollars. It just validates
Hong Kong's entire strategy of creating a clear, welcoming regulatory framework.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
And it sets them up in the start contrast to
the more restrictive environment we.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
See in the US exactly, and the money they're raising
is going right back into building out that regulated ecosystem,
product innovation, infrastructure, market expansion across Asia and.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
Hashki had already hit a major milestone for one of
the hottest narratives in crypto, RWA tokenization.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
This is the proof point right here. They partnered with
GF Securities to launch Hong Kong's first fully on chain
tokenized security. This is it. This is taking a traditional
financial product and putting it on a blockchain under the
supervision of a regulator. The promise of our WA is
starting to become a reality.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
Now, let's talk about the stable coin world. We saw
a huge partnership between bybit and Circle, a.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
Very strategic move. Bibit is the world's second largest exchange
by volume. They're partnering with Circle, the issuer of USDC,
to make USDC the primary stable coin on their platform,
especially for their massive derivatives market and.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
This integration goes pretty deep, right. It's not just about
trading pairs.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
It's pervasive. They're weaving USDC into all their consumer products
bybit earned for savings, the bibitcard for spending, bit pay
for transactions, and they're building out new fiat on ramps
to make it super easy to move between your local
currency and USDC.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
And Circle is also innovating on the core technology with
the ARC network and this new USDCX.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
They're looking ahead. Bibit joined the test net for Circle's
ARC network, which is a new blockchain built from the
ground up just for stable coin finance. And they also
partnered with a layo on USDCX. What's CXFO privacy. It's
a privacy focused version of USDC that uses zero knowledge
proofs to shield user data like your transaction history, while
(25:56):
still being able to meet regulatory requirements. Like kysc is
trying to find that sweet spot between privacy and compliance.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
And we also saw big regulatory wins for Tether and
finance in the Middle East.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
Yeah, in the Abudabi Global Markets or eighty GM. Tether's
USDT got full regulatory approval as a FIAT reference token there,
and Binance got a comprehensive license to run its exchange
clearing and brokerage businesses. The Middle East is aggressively positioning
itself as a top tier, predictable place to do crypto business.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
And that global expansion theme continues with Robinhood making a
big play in Southeast Asia.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
A huge play. They're moving into Indonesia, a market with
seventeen million crypto investors. They did it by acquiring two
licensed local firms, a brokerage and a crypto asset trader.
The plan is to have a localized app for stocks
and crypto ready to go by early twenty twenty seven.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
But this global expansion also highlights a huge global problem
tax compliance.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
Yes, and Canada's situation is the perfect case study. The
Canadian Revenue Agency, the CIA, put out report saying that
forty percent of crypto users in the country are either
evading taxes or are at high risk of non compliance.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
Forty percent. That's a staggering number.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
It is, and while their crypto audit program has clawed
back about one hundred million dollars in taxes, they admit
the real problem is that their laws haven't kept up
with the technology.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
They can't reliably track who owns what as it moves
between exchanges and self custody wallllets exactly.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
They said they have these crucial legal gaps that limit
their ability to identify taxpayers and that's what's driving this
big push for new legislation to combat financial crime, which
they hope to have by twenty twenty six. It's the
same metal every country is fighting.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
Okay, let's shift into our old coin lightning round. We've
got a lot of ground to cover here. It started
with Cardono, which saw a huge whale move some Ada.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
Yeah, a massive transfer fifty million EIGHTYA worth over twenty
one million dollars move to finance. And normally, when you
see a move that big to an exchange, you assume
it's getting ready to be.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
Sold, and the price usually dumps in anticipation. But that's
not what happened, not at all.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
The price just stayed flat around forty two cents. It
suggests the market is really uncertain. No one knows if
this is a prelude to a sale, or just an
internal wallet shuffle, or maybe an institution repositioning for staking.
The market is just waiting for a real catalyst.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
But on the ecosystem front, Cardano's founder Charles Hoskinson was
celebrating a new token launch.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
He was the taken is called Midnight or Night ht.
It's the native token for a new privacy focused chain
in the Cardano ecosystem, and it's being featured on the
Binance Alpha prelisting platform, which is a big vote of confidence.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
And it's launching on a bunch of exchanges at once.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
Yes by bit okx, htxgate dot io, a coordinated launch
to ensure deep liquidity right from day one, right.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
Next up B and B and z Cash. B and
B has been remarkably stable.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
The stability in BnB is really tied to that regulatory
win for Binance and Abudhabi. It just reinforces the idea
that Binance is a secure, well regulated player, which helps
its native token. Rice has been holding a nice uptrend
near nine hundred ten dollars.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
But the real comeback story here is z cash.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
I mean, what a reversal z cash. Zec hit a
low of just sixteen dollars in July of twenty twenty four.
People had completely written it off and then what happened
And then in a forty day window starting in late September,
it went from fifty five dollars to seven hundred and
twenty three dollars.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
That is a thirteen x move in less than two months.
What on Earth caused that?
Speaker 2 (29:25):
It was a perfect storm of a renewed narrative around
privacy coins combined with a lot of whale accumulation. The
market suddenly remembered that z cash is a leader in
zero knowledge tech, and with regulators cracking down, the theory
is that privacy will become essential even for institutions. It's
pulled back since, but it's holding strong support above four
hundred and ten dollars.
Speaker 1 (29:44):
Okay, quickly, hyper Liquid's hype token. They just launched as
a public company and they're already.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
Doing a buyback, Yeah, a thirty million dollar share repurchase program.
It's a very strong signal from management that they believe
their stock is undervalued. The native hype asset trading around
twenty nine dollars, way below its peak of nearly sixty,
so they see this as a chance to buy their
own equity on the cheap.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
All right, Finally, let's step into the deep end of speculation,
the hunt for the one hundred x coin with this
deep snitch AI presale.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
This is where we have to put up the biggest
warning signs. You see projects like this deep Snitch ai
getting hyped in pre sale articles with claims of one
hundred x potential, comparing it to buying Solana in twenty.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
Eighteen, which is the classic marketing line.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
It's the classic fomo trigger. The project is about some
AI agents for crypto intelligence, and the presale has raised
over seven hundred thousand dollars, but analysts universally warned that
one hundred x is just marketing. The vast majority of
these presale tokens have no real utility and they crash
as soon as they hit in exchange.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
So how does a listener even begin to evaluate something
like this?
Speaker 2 (30:47):
You have to look for things that are often missing,
a public, proven team, a real growing user base, and
tokenomics that aren't designed to let insiders dump on you.
Most new projects today launch with these massive, fully deluded
valuations that make a true one hundred x return mathematically
almost impossible. Chasing these is the highest risk game in crypto.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
A healthy dose of skepticism is required, a massive dose. Okay,
we have covered a colossal amount of ground, from P
and C bank getting to spot bitcoin to Hong Kong's
new regulatory framework to the wild price action in ethan
z cash.
Speaker 2 (31:24):
It really feels like the whole week boiled down to
two massive colliding forces.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
On one side, you have this undeniable acceleration of institutional acceptance,
the sec approvals, the bank adoption, the CFTC pilots, the
global licenses. It's all happening, and it's happening fast.
Speaker 2 (31:38):
And on the other side you have the raw underlying
volatility and fragility that still defines this market for the
average person.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
And that collision is really where the most interesting questions are.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
It is and if you connect it all back to
the biggest buyers of the week strategy with its billion
dollar bitcoin purchase bitmin, with its half a billion in ethereum,
a really provocative thought emerges for you, the listener, to
chew on and what's that These huge corporate purchases are
often funded by selling stock to the public. So while
(32:07):
the retail investor looks at a price dip and sees
fear like those seven million btc underwater or the outflows
from the ETFs, these corporate treasuries see the exact same
moment as a strategic buying opportunity. They are using traditional
finance tools to systematically move vast quantities of these decentralized
assets into highly centralized corporate balance sheets.
Speaker 1 (32:27):
So the question isn't just about the price anymore.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
The question is what is the long term consequence of
this rapid centralized corporate accumulation on the whole decentralized ethos
of crypto is the very nature of who buys and
why they buy changing right before our eyes.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
A profound question to end on as the regulated walls
come down. That is it for this week's Crypto News rundown.
Until next time, stay safe, stay skeptical, and keep learning.
Welcome to the Crypto News rundown. We are diving into
a week that I think really changed the game for
how traditional finance looks at digital assets.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Oh absolutely.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
If you thought we were just kind of coasting in
a quiet period, last seven days just completely blew that
idea up. Institutions are clearly on a very different schedule.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
It was a watershed week. There's really no other way
to put it. We saw regulated pathways just open up
across the board, from products on the NYSE, to major
US banks getting into spot trading, and even a huge
shift in how derivatives markets are thinking about digital collateral.
All of this happening while the market itself is just
whipping around Bitcoin back over ninety four thousand dollars, some
(00:42):
serious moves in the alt coins.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
It's a massive amount to cover. We've got the SEC's
latest ETT approval, that huge bitcoin surge which we need.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
To unpack, and the corporate buying behind it exactly.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Then there's the Ethereum treasury market and this almost geopolitical
drama playing out between Solana and XRP. Our job, as
always is to connect the dots for you from all
the sources.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
But first, and this is more important than any price
chart or prediction. We absolutely have to start with the
investment disclaimer.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Yes, absolutely, So let's be crystal clear. Everything we discuss
here today, the news are analysis, the commentary we're pulling
from experts. It is all strictly for informational and educational
purposes only.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
We are not licensed financial advisors. This is not in
any way, shape or form investment advice.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
And you have to understand the crypto market is and
will continue to be extremely volatile. It carries a huge
amount of.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Risk, and just because you see big institutional names entering
the space, that does not mean the risk has disappeared overnight.
If anything, it can sometimes add new layers of complexity.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
I mean, we've seen market leaders, the biggest assets suffer
drawdowns of eighty percent or more. It's not a question
of if that kind of volatility comes back, it's just.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
When your capital is at risk. So please do your
own deep, comprehensive research and more in certainly talk to
a licensed independent financial advisor before you make any decisions.
Our goal is to give you the analysis, but the
decisions are and must be entirely your own.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
Okay, With that critical warning front and center, Let's get
into what you called the institutional tsunami, because it really
feels like traditional finance isn't just testing the waters anymore,
not at all.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
They're building bridges, huge regulated, multi lane bridges. And it
starts with the SEC and a new ETP.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
Right, the Bitwise ten crypto index fund bitw It got
SEC approval to trade as an exchange traded product on
nyse ARCA.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
And that's the key. This isn't just another fund. It's
the second US listed multi asset crypto index ETP. Grayscale
got one back in July. So this shows it wasn't
a fluke, it's a pattern.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
Okay, So let's unpack that. The CEO of Bitwise, Hunter Horseley,
called it a water shed moment. Why is moving from say,
an over the counter product to a fully regulated nyse
ARCA listing. Why is that such a game changer.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
It's all about who can buy it and how they
account for it. When bitw lands on the nyse ARCA,
it suddenly looks and feels exactly like some of the
most established financial instruments in the.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
World, like a gold etf for an oil fund exactly.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
It uses the identical regulatory structure for a big institutional allocator,
that familiarity is everything. It removes the scariness, the operational headache.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
So you're talking about pension funds and Dowmans, big family offices.
They might have rules that stop them from holding, you know,
a token directly on a hardware.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
Wallet, right the legal and compliance departments would never sign
off on.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
That, but they can absolutely buy a NYSE listed ETP.
It just slots right into their existing custody and reporting systems.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
It strips away the two biggest hurdles custody risk and
regulatory ambiguity and bitw itself. It's a one point twenty
five billion dollar fund that gives you diversified exposure to
the top ten crypto's, BTC, eth, sol, XRP, all the
big ones. It's rebalanced monthly, so.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
Let's them bet on the growth of the entire asset class,
not just try to pick the one winner.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
That's what Matt Hugan, the CIO at bitwise, emphasized, it's
a structural shift, and it's a gateway for potentially billions
of dollars of capital that has been sitting on.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
The sidelines and building on that. We saw a major
US bank just decide to skip the ETPs altogether and
go straight to offering spot bitcoin.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
This one, to me was maybe the most shocking development
of the week. PNC Bank the first major US bank
to offer direct spot bitcoin trading to its private bank
clients right inside its own digital platforms.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
So we're talking buy hold, cell all integrated. That is
a huge leap from just offering custody.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
A massive leap. But they're being smart about it. They're
not trying to build all the complicated crypto plumbing from scratch.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
They're using a partner for that. Right now.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
They are the actual trading, the custody, the settlement, all
of that is handled by coinbases crypto as the service infrastructure.
But and this is the crucial part, PNC keeps the
direct client relationship, They keep the regulatory oversight. The buck
stops with them.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
Okay, but does using coinbase for the back end create
a new kind of risk, a third party risk? I'm
sure regulators are looking at that very closely.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
Oh, they're hyper focused on it. But the structure is
designed for that. PNC layers its own bank rade risk
management framework on top of what coinbase provides. It lets
them get to market fast while still owning the client trust,
which in private banking is everything.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
And this is aimed at their top tier clients.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
Exactly, high net worth individuals, family offices. This move comes
right after Bank of America started telling its advisors to
think about a one to four percent allocation to digital assets.
The client demand is clearly there, and PNC is the
first to really meet it head on with an integrated solution.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
So let's connect this institutional push to the derivatives market.
Because the CFTC, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, just made
a really big move on token is collateral.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
This is where it gets really interesting. Down in the
plumbing of the financial system. The CFTC launched a pilot program.
It allows what are called Futures Commission Merchants or fcms, the.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Guys who process all the futures.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
Trades exactly, It lets them accept tokenized digital assets as
margin collateral. This is a massive step. It's integrating crypto
directly into the backbone of regulated trading.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
So you could use bitcoin or ethereum to back a
traditional futures position.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
Bitcoin ethereum and for the first three months USDC and yes,
that's exactly what it means what was holding them back
was this old memo from twenty twenty, an advisory that
basically put up a bunch of roadblocks for fcms because
of worries about volatility and custody.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
And to launch this pilot, they had to get rid
of that memo.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
They formally withdrew it, and they said the reason they
could was because of not just better technology, but a
change in federal law, the Genius Act.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
The Genius Act, what did that do?
Speaker 2 (06:53):
It basically created a legal framework that clarified how to
classify and regulate non security digital assets. It gave the
CFTC the legal confidence they needed to say, Okay, we
understand the standing of these assets. Now we can build
a supervised framework around them.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
So it's about bringing all this activity that's happening offshore
back into regulated US markets.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
That's the goal. Make it safer, make it more transparent.
And this brings up the next big question everyone is
asking about.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
Real world assets RWAs.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Yes, tokenized treasuries. For example, the CFTC put out brand
new guidance on this. They clarified how things like tokenized
t bills can be used under the existing rules.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
And what are the key requirements.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
It's all about segregation, custody, and valuation. The tokenized asset
has to be held in a way that the FCM
can liquidate it instantly. If there's a margin call and
the underlying asset has to meet super strict quality standards,
it shows the regulator is focused on the risk of
the asset, not the digital wrapper it comes in. That's
a fundamental mindset shift.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
Okay, so that's the infrastructure being built now for the
market reaction saw a really decisive move in bitcoin, a
huge surge back over ninety four thousand dollars.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
Yeah, it swored back over ninety four k and US
morning trading that was a more than four percent gain
in twenty four hours, and it was on heavy volume
forty six billion dollars.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
And what was so significant about this move was the
pattern it broke.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
It completely reversed the trend for weeks, every time the
US markets opened, Bitcoin would sell off. It's adjusted there
was this big wall of institutional selling pressure. This rally
felt different. It felt like maybe those sellers were finally exhausted.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
So what was driving it? Was this just a bunch
of leverage bets or were people actually buying coins.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
The data really points to spot demand. Analysts looked at
the price gain versus the growth and open interest on derivatives,
and the price moved way faster. That's a classic sign
of spot buying. Actual coin accumulation fueling the rally.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
And this wasn't happening in a vacuum. The macro timing
was pretty much perfect right.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
It couldn't have been better. This rally happened one day
before the Federal Reserve was expected to announce a twenty
five basis point.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
Rate cut, right looser financial conditions, which is generally good
for risk assets exactly.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
Even if the cut was priced in, it just reinforces
that narrative shift away from rate hike fear and towards
a more accommodative policy. That's the kind of environment where
an asset like bitcoin can really run.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
And as the market was running, we saw the biggest
bull of them all, Michael Sailor's company Strategy, make another
absolutely massive purchase.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
They are just relentlessly accumulating. They bought another ten thoy
six hundred and twenty four bitcoin for about nine hundred
and sixty two million dollars. The average price was ninety
six hundred and fifteen dollars.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
Almost a billion dollars. And the wild part is how
they paid for it. It wasn't just cash on hand, No.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
They funded most of it by selling nine hundred and
twenty eight million dollars of their own common and preferred stock.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
That's that's just an incredible level of conviction to dilute
your own shareholders to buy more bitcoin.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
It shows they're not just a software company with some
bitcoin anymore. They have completely re engineered their corporate tree treasury.
Their total stash is now six hundred and sixty six
hundred and twenty four btc.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
But isn't that a huge risk. Yeah, they've essentially become
a leveraged bitcreen ETF. What happens to their stock if
bitcoin crashes back to fifty thousand?
Speaker 2 (10:13):
That is the multi billion dollar question, and it's the
central debate around the company. Critics say they've abandoned their
core business. But Sailor's argument, which he was actually pitching
to sovereign wealth funds in Abu Dhabi this week, is
that he's just acquiring digital capital.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
He calls it digital gold right, and.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
His pitch is that twenty twenty five is the year
that idea was validated because now you have big banks
willing to hold it and lend against it. For him,
the risk is an owning bitcoin, the risk is owning
fiat currency that's being devalued.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
So you have these huge corporate buyers on one hand,
but on the other analysts at Biffinex put out a
pretty serious warning about structural softness in the market.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Yeah, that Biffine's report was a really important reality check.
They pointed out this big divergence, Y S and P
five hundred is hitting record highs, but Bitcoin was until
this latest pop, just stuck in a range.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
That relative weakness points to a problem.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
It points to what they called a fragile setup. The
underlying spot demand just isn't that strong.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
So what specific signals did they point to? What's the
evidence for this fragility?
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Three main things. First, persistent outflows from the US spot
bitcoin ETFs. This means the people using these new easy
access products are actually selling into strength, They're not accumulating.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
On the balance, That seems counterintuitive. If the institutions are
building bridges, why are the flows going out.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
It could mean that the early money in those ETFs
was more tactical, you know, hedge funds taking short term
profits rather than long term strategic money from pensions.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
Okay, what was the second signal.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
A sharply negative cumulative volume delta or CVD.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
Right, break that down for us. What is cumula volume
delta and why is a negative number a bad sign?
Speaker 2 (11:58):
So? CVD basically tracks what the aggressive buyers or aggressive
sellers are in control. A positive number means buyers are
hitting the asked price to get in. A negative number
means sellers are hitting the bid price to get out.
Even during this price bounce, the CVD stayed negative, which
means that underneath the surface, sellers were still more aggressive.
They were draining liquidity from the order books.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
And the third signal sounds like it's about investor psychology.
It is.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
They noted that over seven million bitcoin are currently sitting
at an unrealized.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
Loss, meaning a huge number of coins where bought at
price is higher than where.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
We are now exactly, and that creates a kind of
psychological resistance. Every time the price goes up, there's a
whole group of people who are just desperate to sell
and get back to even It creates a heavy ceiling
on any rally. You put all three of those things
together and you get that fragile setup.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
This all leads directly to that big portfolio debate. Is
Bitcoin still digital gold or is it just a very,
very risky tech stoc.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
The data since twenty eighteen is really challenging that whole
digital gold story. Financial advisors are getting much more skeptical
about its role as a portfolio hedge.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
And the two big problems are volatility and correlation exactly.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
First volatility, people compare it to a high beta tech
stock like Nvidia or Tesla, but it's not even in
the same league. Why not, because while those stocks can
swing wildly, Bitcoin has had multiple drawdowns of over eighty
percent from its hies. That kind of risk can completely
wreck a traditional portfolio. It's just a different beast entirely.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
And then there's correlation. As a hedge, it's supposed to
zig when the stock market SAgs.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
And it just doesn't. In fact, it does the opposite.
The data shows its correlation to the S and P
five hundred actually increases during times of market stress.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
So right when you need the diversification to work, it
breaks down.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
It breaks down and often makes the losses worse. It
acts more like a risk accelerant than a shock absorber.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
So given that reality, what's the practical advice? How should
someone even think about allocating to it?
Speaker 2 (13:57):
The consensus advice now is that sizing matters more than prediction.
Treat it as an asymmetric risk asset. The potential upside
is obviously huge, but the chance of losing everything is
also very real.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
So the old advice holds true. Only invest what you
are fully prepared.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
To lose one hundred percent. The institutional infrastructure might create
a high long term floor, but the journey there is
going to be incredibly violent.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
All right, Let's move from Bitcoin to the second largest asset, ethereum,
which had a really impressive week of its own, both
technically and in terms of corporate buying.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
Ethereum showed some incredible strength. It jumped eight percent in
twenty four hours back above thirty three fifty, and this
came right after a pretty brutal twenty one percent drop
in November.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
And the speed of that move basically triggered a classic
short squeeze.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
Oh it vaporized the shorts. The move started right as
the New York session opened, and the liquidation data from
coin glass showed two hundred and sixty million dollars in
short positions were liquidated in just four hours.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
So the bears were just completely cut off guard.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
They were betting on more weakness and they were forced
to buy back Eth to cover their positions, which just
threw gasoline on the fire and pushed the price up
even faster.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
And technically this move was really significant. It broke through
a couple of key resistance levels, a.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Very clean breakout, It pushed out of its descending price channel,
and more importantly, it reclaimed the two hundred day exponential
moving average the EMA and.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
Getting back above the two hundred day is a big
deal for technical traders right.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
It's a huge signal. It suggests the long term trend
might be flipping from bearish back to bullish. The next
major level everyone is watching now is thirty five hundred dollars.
If it can hold above that, it would really confirm
a full trend reversal.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
And just like we saw with strategy and Bitcoin, there's
a corporate giant on the ethereum side that's just as.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
Convicted Bitmine Immersion Technologies or BM and R. They're the
largest ETH treasury firm and they just went on a
buying speed. They picked up another one hundred and thirty
eight thousand eth last.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
Week, wow, which is that in dollar terms.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
About four hundred and thirty five million dollars one of
their biggest weekly buys.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
Ever, that's a staggering amount of capital. What's their total
holding now?
Speaker 2 (16:08):
It's at three point eighty six million eth To give
you some context, that is over three point two percent
of the entire circulating supply of ethereum held by one company.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
Incredible and their chairman, Thomas Lee, what's his reasoning for
such aggressive buying right now?
Speaker 2 (16:22):
He pointed to two things. First, on chain fundamentals, specifically
the recent Fusaka upgrade that improves scalability, and second, the
same macro factors we talked about with bitcoin, the expected
FED rate cut and the end of quantitative tightening.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
So he's calling this the cryptos supercycle is intact, and
he sees this going strong into twenty twenty six.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
That's his view. He's incredibly bullish on tokenization and adoption.
But and this is a really important but the source
material also points out a harsh reality, which is, despite
all this buying, bitmin is sitting on nearly three billion
dollars an unrealized loss on its ETH stash at current
prices three billion.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
What does that kind of paper loss due to a
publicly traded company's balance sheet.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
It's a huge risk. It doesn't affect their day to
day cash, but it hammers the perceived value of the
company and can make it really hard to raise more capital.
It makes their stock incredibly volatile. It just shows that
this high conviction strategy is also a high wire act.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
And beyond the corporate buyers, we also saw black Rock
and Robinhood making moves that really cement Ethereum's case in
the institutional world.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
Yeah, Blackrock is really expanding its offerings. They already filed
for a standard non staked spot ETH ETF. Now they
filed an S one for a second product, the I
shares stake Ethereum Trust.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
Okay, so what's the difference between a STEAK and a
non state BTF and why would they offer both.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
A non staked ETF just holds the eth its value
tracks the price. A stake DTF, on the other hand,
takes the ETH it holds and actively participates in securing
the network through staking. In return, it earns a yield
paid in more ETH.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
So it's a way to get total return price appreciation plus.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
Yield exactly, and Blackrock is offering both because different institutions
have different rules. Some can't take on the extra smart
contract risk that comes with staking, so they'll want the
plain vanilla version. Others will want that extra yield. It's
about giving institutions maximum choice.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
And Robinhood is bringing that same choice steaking to the
retail market in the US.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
Correct, They just launched Ethereum and Solana staking for US customers,
starting with users in New York, which is a big
deal because of the state's tough bit license rules. It's
a major step in making crypto yield accessible to everyone
through a platform they already know and trust.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
All Right, let's pivot now to two ecosystems that were
all over the news this week, XRP and Solana. And
XRP had an absolutely fantastic week, especially in Asia.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
Yeah, Asia is really becoming the key jurisdiction for xrp's
institutional adoption. The news out of Hong Kong was particularly significant.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
This was the HKD pair. Right tell us about that
it is.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
Well, which is a fully licensed exchange in Hong Kong,
integrated XRP for its institutional clients. But the key detail
is that they added an XRPHKD trading pair, so you.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
Can trade directly from Hong Kong dollars into XRP exactly.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
It means professional investors there don't have to rely on
a foreign stable coin like UST anymore. They can get
direct Fiat exposure, which is a huge deal for compliance
and operational ease.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
And this came right as Singapore gave Ripple a big
regulatory thumbs up as well.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
Ripple's subsidiary in Singapore got an expanded Payments license from
the Monetary Authority of Singapore, the MAS. This basically solidifies
their APAC headquarters in one of the toughest financial jurisdictions
in the world.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
So what does that expanded license let them do? How
does it help their main product, on demand liquidity.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
It's the green light to scale up. ODL uses XRP
as a bridge for cross border payments. With the full
MAS blessing, regional banks can now plug into that system
with confidence. They can, for example, convert Singapore dollars to
Philippine pace in seconds completely bypassing the old slow swift system.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
So while Asia is seeing these big operational wins. Back
in the US, the store was all about the success
of the spot xrpetfs.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
It really was. The spot xrpetfs, which only launched in
mid November, have already crossed one billion dollars in assets
under management.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
In under four weeks. That's incredibly fast.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
It's the fastest a cryptospot ETF has hit that milestone
since Ethereums. It shows there was huge pent up institutional
demand with big names like Grayscale, Bitwise and Franklin Templeton
all launching products and pulling in assets.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
And this demand has technical analysts talking about a massive
potential price move. What's this legendary breakout thesis all about.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
It's all about chart patterns and history. The analysts are
pointing out that XRP has been consolidating in a tight
range for three hundred and seventy one days, and they're
drawing a parallel to the four hundred and fifty day
accumulation phase that happened right before the massive twenty seventeen
bowl run.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
So they see this long on quiet period as a
spring coiling up exactly.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
The tightening price and declining volume look like a classic
compression pattern. The argument is that if this institutional demand
keeps up, the energy being stored in this pattern could
be released in a really explosive way.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
Okay, so that's xrp's big week. Now let's talk about Solana,
which was holding its ground technically and then its social
media team decided to get weird, very weird.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
But first, the price sol has been very strong, bouncing
perfectly off the seventy five percent FIBONACI level, which is
a key support area analysts. Now watching one hundred and
forty dollars is the next big test.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
But the real story was the viral moment when Solana's
official x account just posted a number, the number five
eighty nine.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
Yeah, and for anyone not deep in crypto twitter, lord,
that number means absolutely nothing.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
But for the XRP community, it means everything.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
Right, It's a core piece of their cultural identity. It
comes from this old, totally fake meme of a Simpsons
episode that predicted XRP would hit five hundred and eighty
nine dollars. It's become this in side joke, this shorthand
for extreme bollishness in the XRP army.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
So for Solona to just tweet that number out of nowhere.
It's a direct troll.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
It's either a troll or a very strange teaser for
some kind of collaboration. And they didn't stop there, they
doubled down what they do next. They posted this illustration
of a castle with sol at the very top and
bitcoin an XRP on these lower, smaller towers, and then
they explicitly tagged David Schwartz Ripples CTO. It was a
masterclass in social media engagement and it got them their
(22:30):
highest interaction numbers of the entire.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
Year, which just shows how much tribalism and identity still
drive this space.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
Okay, moving from memes back to technology, the XRP ledger
itself has a pretty critical upgrade coming up.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
It does on December eighteenth, an amendment called fixed directory
limit is set to activate. It's already passed the eighty
five percent consensus threshold it needs from validators.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
Fixed directory limit, what does that actually do so?
Speaker 2 (22:53):
Historically, the ledger had a limit on how many objects
like offers or trust lines could be in a single
director page. It was a way to prevent spam and
stop the ledger from getting too bloated. This amendment removes
that limit.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
But if you remove the limit, what stops people from
spamming the network?
Speaker 2 (23:10):
Now that's where the existing economics of the ledger come in.
To create any object on the XRPL, you have to
lock up a small amount of XRP as a reserve.
That financial cost is a much better and more flexible
deterrent against spam than some arbitrary hard limit. So this
is just an optimization to allow for better scaling.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
And there's a critical warning for anyone running a node
on the network.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
Yes, a mandatory one. If you are running an older
version of the rippled software, you have to upgrade immediately.
If you don't, your node will become amendment blocked on December.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
Eighteenth, meaning it gets kicked off the network.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
It gets kicked off the network, it won't be able
to process transactions or participate in consensus. So it's a
crucial update for all node operators.
Speaker 1 (23:50):
All right, let's shift to global infrastructure, because there was
massive news out of Hong Kong with the IPO of
a licensed crypto exchange, hash key.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
This is a landmark moment for reg related crypto in Asia.
Hashke going public in Hong Kong, aiming to raise about
two hundred and fifteen million US dollars. It just validates
Hong Kong's entire strategy of creating a clear, welcoming regulatory framework.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
And it sets them up in the start contrast to
the more restrictive environment we.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
See in the US exactly, and the money they're raising
is going right back into building out that regulated ecosystem,
product innovation, infrastructure, market expansion across Asia and.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
Hashki had already hit a major milestone for one of
the hottest narratives in crypto, RWA tokenization.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
This is the proof point right here. They partnered with
GF Securities to launch Hong Kong's first fully on chain
tokenized security. This is it. This is taking a traditional
financial product and putting it on a blockchain under the
supervision of a regulator. The promise of our WA is
starting to become a reality.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
Now, let's talk about the stable coin world. We saw
a huge partnership between bybit and Circle, a.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
Very strategic move. Bibit is the world's second largest exchange
by volume. They're partnering with Circle, the issuer of USDC,
to make USDC the primary stable coin on their platform,
especially for their massive derivatives market and.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
This integration goes pretty deep, right. It's not just about
trading pairs.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
It's pervasive. They're weaving USDC into all their consumer products
bybit earned for savings, the bibitcard for spending, bit pay
for transactions, and they're building out new fiat on ramps
to make it super easy to move between your local
currency and USDC.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
And Circle is also innovating on the core technology with
the ARC network and this new USDCX.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
They're looking ahead. Bibit joined the test net for Circle's
ARC network, which is a new blockchain built from the
ground up just for stable coin finance. And they also
partnered with a layo on USDCX. What's CXFO privacy. It's
a privacy focused version of USDC that uses zero knowledge
proofs to shield user data like your transaction history, while
(25:56):
still being able to meet regulatory requirements. Like kysc is
trying to find that sweet spot between privacy and compliance.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
And we also saw big regulatory wins for Tether and
finance in the Middle East.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
Yeah, in the Abudabi Global Markets or eighty GM. Tether's
USDT got full regulatory approval as a FIAT reference token there,
and Binance got a comprehensive license to run its exchange
clearing and brokerage businesses. The Middle East is aggressively positioning
itself as a top tier, predictable place to do crypto business.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
And that global expansion theme continues with Robinhood making a
big play in Southeast Asia.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
A huge play. They're moving into Indonesia, a market with
seventeen million crypto investors. They did it by acquiring two
licensed local firms, a brokerage and a crypto asset trader.
The plan is to have a localized app for stocks
and crypto ready to go by early twenty twenty seven.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
But this global expansion also highlights a huge global problem
tax compliance.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
Yes, and Canada's situation is the perfect case study. The
Canadian Revenue Agency, the CIA, put out report saying that
forty percent of crypto users in the country are either
evading taxes or are at high risk of non compliance.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
Forty percent. That's a staggering number.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
It is, and while their crypto audit program has clawed
back about one hundred million dollars in taxes, they admit
the real problem is that their laws haven't kept up
with the technology.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
They can't reliably track who owns what as it moves
between exchanges and self custody wallllets exactly.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
They said they have these crucial legal gaps that limit
their ability to identify taxpayers and that's what's driving this
big push for new legislation to combat financial crime, which
they hope to have by twenty twenty six. It's the
same metal every country is fighting.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
Okay, let's shift into our old coin lightning round. We've
got a lot of ground to cover here. It started
with Cardono, which saw a huge whale move some Ada.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
Yeah, a massive transfer fifty million EIGHTYA worth over twenty
one million dollars move to finance. And normally, when you
see a move that big to an exchange, you assume
it's getting ready to be.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
Sold, and the price usually dumps in anticipation. But that's
not what happened, not at all.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
The price just stayed flat around forty two cents. It
suggests the market is really uncertain. No one knows if
this is a prelude to a sale, or just an
internal wallet shuffle, or maybe an institution repositioning for staking.
The market is just waiting for a real catalyst.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
But on the ecosystem front, Cardano's founder Charles Hoskinson was
celebrating a new token launch.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
He was the taken is called Midnight or Night ht.
It's the native token for a new privacy focused chain
in the Cardano ecosystem, and it's being featured on the
Binance Alpha prelisting platform, which is a big vote of confidence.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
And it's launching on a bunch of exchanges at once.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
Yes by bit okx, htxgate dot io, a coordinated launch
to ensure deep liquidity right from day one, right.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
Next up B and B and z Cash. B and
B has been remarkably stable.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
The stability in BnB is really tied to that regulatory
win for Binance and Abudhabi. It just reinforces the idea
that Binance is a secure, well regulated player, which helps
its native token. Rice has been holding a nice uptrend
near nine hundred ten dollars.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
But the real comeback story here is z cash.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
I mean, what a reversal z cash. Zec hit a
low of just sixteen dollars in July of twenty twenty four.
People had completely written it off and then what happened
And then in a forty day window starting in late September,
it went from fifty five dollars to seven hundred and
twenty three dollars.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
That is a thirteen x move in less than two months.
What on Earth caused that?
Speaker 2 (29:25):
It was a perfect storm of a renewed narrative around
privacy coins combined with a lot of whale accumulation. The
market suddenly remembered that z cash is a leader in
zero knowledge tech, and with regulators cracking down, the theory
is that privacy will become essential even for institutions. It's
pulled back since, but it's holding strong support above four
hundred and ten dollars.
Speaker 1 (29:44):
Okay, quickly, hyper Liquid's hype token. They just launched as
a public company and they're already.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
Doing a buyback, Yeah, a thirty million dollar share repurchase program.
It's a very strong signal from management that they believe
their stock is undervalued. The native hype asset trading around
twenty nine dollars, way below its peak of nearly sixty,
so they see this as a chance to buy their
own equity on the cheap.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
All right, Finally, let's step into the deep end of speculation,
the hunt for the one hundred x coin with this
deep snitch AI presale.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
This is where we have to put up the biggest
warning signs. You see projects like this deep Snitch ai
getting hyped in pre sale articles with claims of one
hundred x potential, comparing it to buying Solana in twenty.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
Eighteen, which is the classic marketing line.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
It's the classic fomo trigger. The project is about some
AI agents for crypto intelligence, and the presale has raised
over seven hundred thousand dollars, but analysts universally warned that
one hundred x is just marketing. The vast majority of
these presale tokens have no real utility and they crash
as soon as they hit in exchange.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
So how does a listener even begin to evaluate something
like this?
Speaker 2 (30:47):
You have to look for things that are often missing,
a public, proven team, a real growing user base, and
tokenomics that aren't designed to let insiders dump on you.
Most new projects today launch with these massive, fully deluded
valuations that make a true one hundred x return mathematically
almost impossible. Chasing these is the highest risk game in crypto.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
A healthy dose of skepticism is required, a massive dose. Okay,
we have covered a colossal amount of ground, from P
and C bank getting to spot bitcoin to Hong Kong's
new regulatory framework to the wild price action in ethan
z cash.
Speaker 2 (31:24):
It really feels like the whole week boiled down to
two massive colliding forces.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
On one side, you have this undeniable acceleration of institutional acceptance,
the sec approvals, the bank adoption, the CFTC pilots, the
global licenses. It's all happening, and it's happening fast.
Speaker 2 (31:38):
And on the other side you have the raw underlying
volatility and fragility that still defines this market for the
average person.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
And that collision is really where the most interesting questions are.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
It is and if you connect it all back to
the biggest buyers of the week strategy with its billion
dollar bitcoin purchase bitmin, with its half a billion in ethereum,
a really provocative thought emerges for you, the listener, to
chew on and what's that These huge corporate purchases are
often funded by selling stock to the public. So while
(32:07):
the retail investor looks at a price dip and sees
fear like those seven million btc underwater or the outflows
from the ETFs, these corporate treasuries see the exact same
moment as a strategic buying opportunity. They are using traditional
finance tools to systematically move vast quantities of these decentralized
assets into highly centralized corporate balance sheets.
Speaker 1 (32:27):
So the question isn't just about the price anymore.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
The question is what is the long term consequence of
this rapid centralized corporate accumulation on the whole decentralized ethos
of crypto is the very nature of who buys and
why they buy changing right before our eyes.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
A profound question to end on as the regulated walls
come down. That is it for this week's Crypto News rundown.
Until next time, stay safe, stay skeptical, and keep learning.
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