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AVALANCHE ETF RACE HEATS UP

Bitwise updated its Avalanche ETF filing to include staking.

BIG BTC HOLDERS ARE SELLING INTO THE DIP

Over 9,000 BTC flowed into exchanges on November 21. 45% came from large 100+ BTC deposits, pushing the average deposit size to 1.23 BTC, the highest in a year. Big holders appear to be reducing exposure and adding sell pressure. ETH and altcoins are also seeing elevated exchange deposits. Spot data shows sellers have dominated since early October, with only the last couple of days looking more balanced between buyers and sellers.

WORLD LIBERTY-LINKED DAT ALT5 SIGMA IS IMPLODING

ALT5 Sigma, a Nasdaq-listed firm that pivoted into a “digital asset treasury” to accumulate World Liberty Financial (WLFI) tokens, has seen its stock crash ~80% since August and is now experiencing internal issues. The company warned staff it expects litigation and possible regulatory probes, suspended its CEO, and was found guilty of money laundering in Rwanda. Shareholders say they feel “betrayed” as the broader DAT boom starts to look like an off-ramp for big token holders.

SUPERVAULTS V2: POWERING THE NEOBANK

Superform will launch SuperVaults v2 on December 3 with SuperWBTC, SuperWETH, and SuperUSDC on Ethereum, introducing validator-secured ERC-7540 vaults with double-Merkle hook allowlisting, 7-day timelocks, and validator-signed price-per-share backed by economic slashing to replace centralized "vaults" operating offchain without verifiability. The infrastructure splits roles across Managers under timelock who can only execute pre-approved hooks, Validators attesting PPS with bonded accountability, and Guardians with veto and pause authority, while the SuperBundler enables single-signature cross-chain deposits across 8+ networks. The flagship strategies combine variable-rate lending on Morpho, Euler, and Aave with fixed-rate Pendle Principal Token exposure dynamically allocated based on redemption activity and term-market dislocations.

WHAT IS ETH ACTUALLY WORTH?

ethval is a public dashboard that tries to estimate ETH's intrinsic value instead of just looking at price. It combines 8 different valuation models to give a more fundamentals-driven view of Ethereum.

NARRATIVE > REVENUE

Despite profitable companies like Pumpfun reaching $100 million revenue in six months and Hyperliquid generating $875 million with 11 employees, revenue shows weak correlation with token prices. Hyperliquid's $3 million daily buybacks correlate 0.7 with HYPE price, but PUMP's $460 million projected annual buybacks correlate only 0.38 with price at a 3.7x revenue multiple, while Uniswap's fees show -0.14 correlation with UNI despite the fee switch proposal spiking price 43% to $10 before settling at a 35x revenue multiple. The revenue meta disconnect mirrors traditional markets where TSLA trades at 260x P/E and PLTR at 350x P/E as the average S&P 500 P/E ratio doubled from 13 in 2011 to 30 today, with revenue mattering less in bubbles and more in bear markets as 2025 marks crypto's first year with multiple projects delivering hundreds of millions to token holders.

CRYPTO IS PRICED FOR NETWORK EFFECTS IT DOESN'T HAVE

Crypto is valued at $2,500-$23,000 per user versus Meta's $400-$500 per user, despite lacking comparable retention, monetization, or network effects, with most crypto "network effects" being negative congestion effects where more users increase fees and slow transactions. L1s capture 90% of total market cap but only 12% of fees, down from 60%, while DeFi generates 73% of fees but represents under 10% of valuation, contradicting the fat protocol thesis as value migrates to app and user aggregation layers. Metcalfe's Law analysis reveals crypto's k coefficient is 10-1,000x higher than Facebook's, meaning each user is priced vastly more valuable despite lower stickiness as liquidity remains mercenary, developers churn through forkable codebases, and retention fails to compound across cycles. Crypto might grow into powerful network effects if it becomes an internet settlement fabric, but it is currently far overvalued.

WHY CAPITAL IS LEAVING BITCOIN

Bitcoin functioned as a regulatory battering ram that survived where E-gold failed by removing centralized attack vectors, but its three trillion dollar valuation collapses now that tokenized US stocks, gold, and stablecoins are legal with several hundred billion in market cap. The monopoly dissolved as stablecoins migrated from Bitcoin to Ethereum to Tron treating blockchains as disposable plumbing, while Nasdaq outperformed Bitcoin over four-year cycles as risk premium vanished and developer commits plunged to 2017 levels. People prefer Tether's ability to freeze stolen funds and recover misplaced tokens over Bitcoin's permanent irreversibility, revealing the market wants powerful rails with error correction rather than pure code-is-law decentralization.

MAPPING THE FIRST WAVE OF AGENT PAYMENTS

x402 payment infrastructure analysis shows USDC accounts for 99% of volume, with Base handling 89% of transactions, while agent-like wallets generate 90% of transaction count. Coinbase leads facilitator transaction volume, but Questflow routes to the widest recipient set, positioning itself as the long-tail marketplace aggregator versus vertical SaaS-style competitors. USDC's ERC-3009/transferWithAuthorization standard enables the authorization-then-settle flow optimized for Coinbase and Base infrastructure, though this concentration creates platform risk as agents dominate micro-payment volumes while humans execute fewer, larger-ticket transactions.

CELO #1 L2 FOR DAILY ACTIVE USERS

Celo, an L2 focusing on payments in emerging markets, now has the most daily active users of any L2.

STABLECOINS ARE NOW MAJOR GOLD BUYERS

Tether alone has bought ~26 tons of gold this year, more than any individual country.

ZISKVM CROWNED TOP ZKVM AT ETHPROOF

ZiskVM has been ranked as the #1 zkVM, ahead of zkSync's Airbender implementations.

ROBINHOOD VERTICALLY INTEGRATES PREDICTION MARKETS

Robinhood is expanding its prediction markets via a joint venture with Susquehanna and the acquisition of MIAXdx.

BITCOIN REBOUNDS ABOVE $88K

Bitcoin recovered to $87,600, up 2.5% from its $85,550 weekend low. There was a shift from aggressive selling to orderly derisking with stabilizing open interest and muted spot activity despite persistent ETF outflows. Options sentiment turned cautiously optimistic as the 25-delta skew rebounded from -10.96 to -4.58 while Long Call Condor block trades across $100,000-$118,000 strikes indicate demand for upside exposure into late 2025. Analysts believe Bitcoin must reclaim the $87,000-$88,000 range for sustained gains. Institutions are patiently bullish and building conviction ahead of December's Federal Reserve interest rate decision, which may be the next major catalyst.

CHINA RETURNS AS BITCOIN MINING HUB WITH 14% MARKET SHARE

China reclaimed the third-largest Bitcoin mining position with approximately 14% of global hashrate by October despite the 2021 ban, driven by cheap electricity and excess data center capacity in Xinjiang and Sichuan provinces. 15-20% of global mining capacity now operates underground in China, which has softer policy signals, including Hong Kong's stablecoin legislation and yuan-backed stablecoin discussions indicating a more flexible stance. Bitcoin hashprice hit an all-time low of $34.2 per petahash per second on Friday, driven by Bitcoin's 30%+ decline from October peaks, subdued transaction fees, and network hashrate above one zettahash (10% below recent highs). The next difficulty adjustment is expected on Wednesday.

FULL SEND: FASTEST PATH FOR TRANSACTION INCLUSION

CROSS RIVER LAUNCHES STABLECOIN PAYMENTS

Cross River Bank launched a stablecoin payments infrastructure, unifying fiat and stablecoin flows in a single interoperable system that eliminates pre-funding requirements and ledger rebuilding for network settlement, merchant payouts, and treasury management. The platform targets $20 trillion in annual stablecoin volumes by providing bank-grade compliance and programmability for fintechs, enterprises, and crypto-native companies without operational sprawl across fragmented rails. The infrastructure is available today for approved partners, with broader availability planned.

UNDERSTANDING SIMD-0411

Solana's SIMD-0411 proposal doubles the disinflation rate from -15% to -30% annually, accelerating terminal inflation arrival from 6.2 years to 3.1 years while reducing emissions by 22.3 million SOL over six years, worth $2.9 billion at current prices. The single-parameter change delivers similar emissions reduction as the failed SIMD-0228 without introducing dynamic, stake-responsive formulas that raised implementation complexity and governance friction. Nominal staking yields decline from the current 4.18% to 5.04% in year one, 3.48% in year two, and 2.42% in year three, pushing approximately 10 validators into unprofitability initially while strengthening long-term SOL value through reduced dilution. The deterministic, easily modeled approach contrasts with SIMD-0228's exponential function, tying inflation to staking participation percentages, offering validators and institutions predictable outcomes without changing the 1.5% terminal rate the ecosystem already aligns around.

COINBASE VENTURES: WHAT THEY WANT TO FUND IN 2026

TOKENIZATION ONLY MATTERS IF MONEY MOVES

Tokenizing an asset is just the starting point, as without either long-term lock-in or frequent real usage, you've just created “dead money” that sits onchain and earns nothing. There are only two long-lasting ways for a tokenized asset to generate fees: it must attract committed, parked capital by paying yield and rewarding conviction, or be used constantly so velocity plus fees make it valuable.

STABLECOIN ISSUANCE IS GETTING COMMODITIZED

Stablecoin issuance is shifting from a bespoke, high-margin business to a cheap, white-label commodity offered by platforms like Circle, Brale, M0, Bridge, Paxos, and Agora. As costs fall and issuers share more of the T-bill yield with partners, launching your own branded stablecoin becomes easy and primarily about owning the customer relationship, payment rail, and interest income. Commoditization of issuance pushes competition up the stack as products will increasingly differentiate on UX, distribution, regulation, and niche use cases.

BERACHAIN GRANTED REFUND RIGHT TO VC

Berachain granted Brevan Howard's Nova Digital fund a post-TGE refund right on its $25 million Series B investment, exercisable until February 6, 2026.

ETHEREUM BLOBS ARE MAXING OUT; FUSAKA STARTS THE NEXT SCALING PHASE

Ethereum's data-availability “blob” capacity (target 6 blobs per block) is basically full, showing strong L2 demand.

KLARNA LAUNCHES ITS OWN STABLECOIN

Klarna has launched KlarnaUSD, its first stablecoin, and is becoming the first bank to build on Tempo.

AAVE HAS REAL REVENUE, MINIMAL INCENTIVES

Aave is pulling in roughly $131M in annualized protocol revenue on ~$52B TVL while paying out very little in token incentives today.

BITCOIN BOUNCE, STILL FRAGILE

Bitcoin has rebounded to around $87.5K after dipping near $81K, with analysts calling it a “post-flush bounce” rather than a full recovery. Market structure is fragile. BTC is expected to chop in a tight $85K–$90K range while long-term holders quietly accumulate.

BITCOIN LOGS LONGEST LOSING STREAK SINCE 2024

Bitcoin tracked its fourth consecutive weekly loss, marking the longest downtrend since June 2024. Q4 2025 looked like its worst quarterly performance since 2018 at -24% despite bouncing 6% from the November 21 low of $82,100 to $87,400. The aggregate spot bid-ask delta at 10% depth spiked to 2025's second-highest level, indicating dip-buying activity, while Federal Reserve rate cut odds surged from 40% to 70% last week. There is a potential bull trap with options traders loading puts in the $80,000-$85,000 range, meaning Bitcoin could briefly slip to mid-to-high $70,000s before recovering to $90,000 by year-end if the Fed avoids hawkish tone. Recovery to $100,000 is expected by Q1 2026.

REAL-TIME BLOCK PROVING USING AIRBENDER

zkSync's Airbender prover achieved real-time Ethereum L1 block proof generation using just two consumer-grade RTX 5090 GPUs, prompting Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake to suggest the breakthrough could enable "gigagas L1" with significantly higher gas limits pushing L2 fees toward zero. Vitalik Buterin praised the "huge milestone" but cautioned about worst-case performance gaps where proving times can differ by 60x between average and worst-case blocks, recommending repricing gas for expensive operations like RSA verification rather than hardware arms races. The achievement was showcased at Ethproofs Day in Buenos Aires and marks a shift in Ethereum's scaling trajectory as consumer-grade proving becomes feasible compared to historical data center resource requirements.

LEVERAGE ON PREDICTION MARKETS IS POSSIBLE

Leverage in prediction markets faces fundamental challenges because instant price jumps to zero eliminate liquidation windows, requiring financiers to price expected losses upfront, but naive probability-based fees merely create accounting tricks where levered ROI equals unleveraged positions. The solution splits price movements into "creep" (continuous drift allowing liquidation) versus "jumps" (instant gaps with no reaction time) and prices risk over short epochs with rolling per-epoch fees similar to perps funding rather than pricing entire position lifespans. This epoch-based approach treats drift, volatility, and jump rates as frozen constants within small time windows, computing liquidation probabilities and average losses separately for creep versus jumps, while limiting misspecification risk that could wildly over- or underestimate fees as market conditions shift near resolution dates. The architecture includes block-level auction designs capturing news-driven arbitrage to rebate market makers and financiers, further reducing effective jump losses and fees charged to traders.

HOW TO PROFIT ON CORRELATED POLYMARKET BETS

You can often get better risk/reward on Polymarket by trading relationships between markets instead of single yes/no outcomes. Three ways to do this include time spreads on the same event, “either-extreme-wins” baskets, and logical/arbitrage-style bets across correlated AI markets.

$12B IN DEFI LIQUIDITY SITS IDLE

83-95% of liquidity in major DeFi pools, including Uniswap and Curve, sits idle, with only 0.5% of Uniswap v2's liquidity falling within active trading ranges, leaving nearly $1.8 billion ineffective. Retail liquidity providers bear the brunt as 50% lose money from impermanent loss with net deficits exceeding $60 million, including one Uniswap v3 pool losing over $30 million to Just-in-Time manipulation. 1inch's Aqua protocol could be a solution as it allows DeFi applications to share a common capital base across strategies while users keep assets in wallets and create "virtual trading positions," with any existing DEX implementable under 10 lines of code. The liquidity crisis stems from over 7 million fragmented pools across the ecosystem diluting capital and reducing routing efficiency for trades.

PREDICTION MARKET FEE WARS BEGIN

Big brokerages in the US are starting to treat prediction markets as commoditized backends. Kalshi is already rebating up to half its fees to Webull for order flow, while Robinhood is signaling it will route prediction orders across multiple venues and eventually squeeze fees or build its own markets.

OFFCHAIN LABS CHALLENGES VITALIK'S RISC-V PROPOSAL

Offchain Labs challenged Vitalik Buterin's proposal to transition Ethereum's execution layer to RISC-V, arguing WebAssembly offers superior long-term advantages by distinguishing between "delivery ISA" for uploading contracts versus "proving ISA" for ZK virtual machines. Arbitrum already proves WASM-based Stylus smart contracts by compiling WASM to RISC-V first, and enshrining RISC-V on L1 could lock Ethereum into proving technology just as better alternatives emerge. WASM's structured design, efficient execution on common hardware without emulation, validation capabilities preventing vulnerabilities, and mature tooling ecosystem position it as an "Internet Protocol for smart contracts" as ZK proving costs have plummeted to $0.025 per block.

EIGENDA'S “LITTLE GREEN SLICE”

Ethereum's data chart shows L1 blobs still dominate rollup data (≈67%), with EigenDA already at ~19% and Celestia the rest.

BITCOIN VOLATILITY VS. ETHEREUM SETTLEMENT

Crypto feels like it's hanging by a thread as BTC has dropped from ~126K to ~85K in weeks, wiping out around $1T in market cap.

GIP-143: GNOSISDAO FIRES KARPATKEY TREASURY MANAGER

GnosisDAO has voted overwhelmingly to end Karpatkey's mandate to manage its ~$300M non-GNO treasury.

JPMORGAN SHUTS STRIKE CEO'S ACCOUNTS

Strike CEO Jack Mallers says JPMorgan Chase abruptly closed his personal bank accounts.

MONAD TOKEN SALE ENDS OVERSUBSCRIBED ON COINBASE

Monad's MON public sale on Coinbase, initially feared to be a flop after an early slowdown, closed at roughly $216 million raised in USDC, about 115% of its $187 million target as a last-minute wave of commitments came in. The oversubscribed sale, which offered 7.5% of MON's 100 billion supply, doubles as the first major stress test of Coinbase's new token sale platform. It signals strong retail interest in Monad's high-performance EVM-compatible L1 despite cooler conditions than MegaETH's blockbuster raise.

DNS ATTACK KNOCKS AERODROME AND VELODROME FRONT-ENDS OFFLINE

Base's Aerodrome and Optimism's Velodrome suffered a DNS hijack that redirected users from their primary domains to scam front-ends, forcing both DEXs to push traders toward decentralized mirror links while they work on a fix and emphasize that core smart contracts remain unaffected. The incident, similar to a 2023 domain compromise, demonstrates how centralized DNS remains a key security weak point even for leading DeFi protocols and comes just months before the projects merge into a unified Aero platform.

FANATICS ENTERS PREDICTION MARKETS

Fanatics announced a prediction markets platform launching within weeks through a Crypto.com partnership, with CEO Michael Rubin revealing the news on CNBC but declining to share product details or operational scope. The sports merchandiser holds licenses in 23 US states while acknowledging strong demand in the remaining 27, where regulatory hurdles may limit access. It remains unclear whether the platform will use crypto rails or focus on sports, given Fanatics' deep betting and merchandise roots.

GRAYSCALE XRP AND DOGECOIN ETFS TO DEBUT NOVEMBER 24

Grayscale's XRP and Dogecoin ETFs received SEC approval to begin trading on November 24 on the NYSE. Bloomberg analyst Eric Balchunas projects $11 million day-one DOGE volume and that Chainlink ETF approval will come in the following week. The launches follow Canary Capital's record-setting XRP ETF debut, with $59 million first-day volume and $250 million AUM as November's highest-volume 2025 ETF launch. REX Shares and Osprey Funds already launched a DOGE ETF in September using the 1940 Investment Company Act.

ETHER.FI CASH EMERGES AS LEADING CRYPTO NEOBANK

Ether.fi Cash has become the breakout winner in crypto neobanking by collapsing wallets, yield, and card spending into a single non-custodial Visa product that lets users borrow against staked and restaked assets, earn 5–10%+ DeFi yield, and get 3% cashback while never fully exiting crypto. Backed by Ether.fi's ~$7–11.5 billion restaking ecosystem, Cash has processed over $114 million in spend, paid nearly $5 million in rewards, and reached ~5,500 daily active cards. Metrics like $66,000 annualized spend per active user suggest a strong product–market fit. A “Triple Dip” rewards program that ties together vault deposits, card spend, and bank on-ramps acts as a reflexive growth engine, positioning Ether.fi Cash as the leading non-custodial alternative to fintech-style crypto cards and a blueprint for on-chain neobanking.

STATE OF CRYPTO

Crypto shows strong fundamental signals, including Stripe's Tempo SWIFT/ACH disruption ambitions, Citadel's $200 million Kraken investment, and $35 billion total RWA value, yet "fun crypto" has become compressed as average participants struggle to profit while research analysis fails to translate into trading returns. Public token sales at $1-2.5 billion valuations like Monad and MegaETH don't replicate early-stage venture exposure, creating a disconnect where only majors are recommendable despite DePIN revenues growing 400% year-over-year and monthly application revenue hitting $400 million. Upcoming research priorities include DePIN tokenomics reconciling strong sector growth with poor token performance, DeAI agent infrastructure and agentic payments via x402, Tempo's explicit positioning as a SWIFT alternative rather than a PayPal competitor, and internet capital markets exploring whether launchpad design or founder quality matters more after Believe's struggles versus MetaDAO's success.

BLOB FEES, L2S, AND WHY BLOBS ARE JUST GETTING STARTED

If all Ethereum blobs were sold at the average per-byte rate paid by perp appchain Lighter over the past three days, L1 blob revenue would be about 5x higher (~$52 million per year), highlighting early but growing, relatively price-insensitive demand for data availability. Lighter currently pays 6x more per blob than Base (13x more per byte once normalized for fullness) while spending a smaller share of its L2 revenue on blobs thanks to highly optimized Data availability (DA) and zk state diffs, suggesting that efficient, high-margin L2s could drive blob fees up and force less efficient rollups toward higher costs or alternative DA, with blob revenue becoming “icing on the cake” for ETH.

BITCOIN DOESN'T HOLD CRYPTO HOSTAGE

Ethereum is technically and economically independent of Bitcoin and would continue running its stablecoin rails, DeFi ecosystem, and ETH burn even if Bitcoin vanished. Quantum-computing risks currently spooking Bitcoin are largely Bitcoin-specific, since Ethereum has long hidden public keys behind addresses and plans to adopt quantum-safe signatures. This suggests that in a true Bitcoin failure scenario, ETH would likely inherit Bitcoin's monetary premium as the default money of the internet rather than see “internet money” die altogether.

IRS GREENLIGHTS ETH STAKING FOR ETFS AHEAD OF FUSAKA

New IRS/Treasury “safe harbor” guidance lets crypto ETPs stake ETH without punitive tax treatment, turning ETH ETFs from passive price trackers into yield-bearing products.

ETHEREUM WORLDVIEW: FROM SOV TO DECENTRALIZED AI

TRAVEL-RULE-COMPLIANT STABLECOINS COULD UNLOCK TRADFI BLITZ

Any stablecoin-enabled company not preparing for Travel Rule compliance is already behind.

SAMOURAI WALLET CO-FOUNDER SENTENCED TO 4 YEARS IN PRISON

Bill Hill, the co-founder of Bitcoin mixer Samourai Wallet, was sentenced to 4 years in prison and three years of supervised release.

BANKS' CRYPTO RULES MUST BE REWORKED

Basel Committee chair Erik Thedéen acknowledged crypto capital rules need reworking after the US and UK refused to implement the 2021 framework requiring banks to hold large capital reserves against crypto losses, with Fed Vice-Chair Michelle Bowman calling the rules "not very realistic." The original framework focused on volatile assets like Bitcoin but failed to account for stablecoins' rapid growth and lower risk profiles. The Bank of England declined to implement the rules in their current form as the committee faces pressure to quickly reassess whether stablecoins warrant the same capital treatment as traditional cryptocurrencies ahead of the framework's planned January implementation.