TLDR CRYPTO 2025-11-20

INSTITUTIONS TRIM BTC WHILE SOLANA ETFS KEEP ABSORBING FLOWS

BlackRock's IBIT posted a record $523 million single-day outflow and has now seen $1.43 billion pulled over five days and $2.19 billion over four weeks, as institutions rebalance risk since bitcoin's slide from a $126,080 ATH and ongoing Fed rate and liquidity uncertainty. The selling drove a $372.7 million net outflow across all spot BTC ETFs and similar redemptions from ETH products. Spot Solana ETFs have quietly racked up 16 straight days of inflows totaling $420.4 million, signaling allocators rotating toward higher-yielding altcoin exposure rather than exiting crypto entirely.

KRAKEN CONFIDENTIALLY FILES FOR IPO

Kraken confidentially filed for a US IPO following an $800 million raise at $20 billion valuation, including $200 million from Citadel Securities, with proceeds earmarked for international expansion and payment services buildout. The 2011-founded exchange joins a wave of crypto companies tapping public markets under the Trump administration after Circle's $1 billion June IPO and Bullish and Gemini's listings in August and September. Kraken declined to comment on IPO timing.

HYPERLIQUID UNVEILS HIP-3 GROWTH MODE

Hyperliquid launched HIP-3 growth mode, allowing permissionless market deployment with taker fees slashed over 90% from 0.045% to 0.0045%-0.009%, potentially reaching 0.00144% for top-tier traders at maximum staking and volume tiers. Deployers must set fee scales between 0-1 and avoid overlap with existing validator-operated perpetuals to prevent parasitic volume, with growth mode locking for 30 days once activated to ensure market stability. The upgrade aims to deepen liquidity and broaden asset offerings by lowering barriers to entry for exotic markets, including real-world yields, commodities, and tokenized treasuries, though HYPE token fell 6% below $40.

COINBASE APP CODE APPEARS TO INCLUDE PREDICTION MARKETS AND STOCKS

Coinbase's mobile app code contains interfaces for prediction markets and tokenized stock trading discovered through reverse-engineering by researcher Jane Manchun Wong, with fine print indicating "Prediction markets are offered by Coinbase Financial Markets through KalshiEX LLC" pointing to a Kalshi integration. The features align with Coinbase's July "everything exchange" strategy announcement and the company's December 17 "System Update" event promising new product launches.

HOW SLASH WENT FROM $2M TO $150M ARR IN 24 MONTHS

YIELD-BEARING STABLECOIN LANDSCAPE

The GENIUS Act bifurcates stablecoins into non-yielding Payment Stablecoins and Yield-Bearing Stablecoins (YBS). The YBS label masks fundamentally different risk profiles across three categories: RWA-backed assets like Ondo importing T-bill yields with counterparty risk, onchain native protocols like Ethena's sUSDe generating delta-neutral returns with smart contract and funding rate risk, and actively managed strategies like Maple Finance introducing human underwriting risk. Hyperliquid's USDH exemplifies innovative value capture by keeping the stablecoin non-yielding while directing 95-100% of RWA reserve yields back to the protocol ecosystem, circumventing regulatory restrictions. Current market analysis relying on TVL and APY comparisons fails to capture these disparate qualitative risk vectors.

STABLES ARE NOT STABLE

Stream Finance's collapse in November exposed recursive lending fraud where $1.9 million USDC collateral backed $14.5 million xUSD through systematic fractional reserve expansion, triggering $93 million direct losses and $285 million cross-protocol contagion. The circular dependency with Elixir's deUSD amplified the cascade, with Stream holding 90% of deUSD supply while Elixir concentrated 65% of reserves in loans to Stream via private Morpho vaults, causing deUSD to collapse 98%. Contagion spread to TelosC with $123.64 million exposure, MEV Capital with $25.42 million, and Euler with $137 million bad debt, while yield-bearing stablecoins lost 40-50% TVL industry-wide despite maintaining pegs as users fled indiscriminately. DeFi's fundamental pattern of unsustainable yields, circular dependencies, and oracle failures remains structurally unchanged across five years of documented failures.

SOLANA ETF RACE HEATS UP

21Shares launched its Solana ETF with ticker TSOL on CBOE.

SENATE TARGETS EARLY 2026 VOTE ON CRYPTO MARKET STRUCTURE BILL

Senate Banking Chair Tim Scott says he plans committee markups of a crypto market structure bill next month.

ETH IS ETHEREUM'S TREASURY EXPORT

Just as the US “exports” Treasuries as a global store of value and source of dollar liquidity, Ethereum “exports” ETH as the asset backing its digital rule of law, property rights, and programmable financial system.

BLOCK-ACCESS-LISTS COULD SUPERCHARGE ETHEREUM SCALING

EIP-7928's Block-Access-Lists remove a key verifier bottleneck so blocks can be checked faster and more predictably.