Bitcoin sell-off and institutional pressure

Spot bitcoin ETFs posted $1.28 billion in outflows last week, while CryptoQuant said aggregate demand fell to a one-month low. Against a backdrop of macroeconomic uncertainty, fears of a Federal Reserve rate increase and bitcoin’s underperformance versus equities, Wintermute analysts warned that the cryptocurrency could fall to $68,000.

Bitcoin dropped below that level on Nov. 13, setting off $1.64 billion in liquidations. CryptoQuant analysts began assessing possible market-bottom zones, while forecasts ranged from expectations of a rebound to Peter Schiff’s bearish scenario of a decline below $16,500.

The next day, bitcoin fell to levels last seen in July. Market sentiment reached “extreme” fear and liquidations approached $2 billion. Bitcoin was trading at $65,546 at the time of writing, according to TradingView.

Adam Back said the main wave of professional investment in bitcoin was still to come and bet that the asset would reach $1 million by 2028. Michael Saylor, meanwhile, discussed the historical development of digital credit and bitcoin’s role in the creation of Strategy’s STRC preferred shares. MSCI decided to remove Strategy from its indexes, a move that could lead to outflows from the company’s stock.

Bitcoin Core developers also disclosed three previously patched vulnerabilities affecting mining nodes, block processing and the privacy of Tor users. The most serious could disrupt the creation of valid block templates after a blockchain reorganization. The vulnerabilities were fixed in Bitcoin Core versions 30.0 and 29.2, released in October 2025.

Ethereum investment and technology

Grayscale identified five measures on which Ethereum outpaces other blockchains, including stablecoin and tokenized-asset volumes and the numbers of applications and developers. Vitalik Buterin and Joseph Lubin backed positioning ether as a store of value, citing decentralization, security, programmability and censorship resistance. Lubin said Ethereum could offer an alternative to gold and bitcoin during periods of inflation and economic instability.

Spot Ethereum ETFs recorded $365.28 million in weekly outflows. Ether fell below $1,900 on Nov. 13 and was trading at $1,830 at the time of writing, according to TradingView.

Santiment and CryptoQuant reported increased staking among large holders, with locked coins reaching 36.32% of total supply. BitMine ended the year with a $6.31 billion loss, largely because of a revaluation of its reserves.

The Ethereum Foundation and other ecosystem participants are considering a faster transition to post-quantum security. Ethlabs proposed the pqai27 initiative to address potential threats from quantum computers and artificial intelligence as early as 2027. Developers proposed changing priorities for the planned Hegotá hard fork and delaying fast slots.

NVIDIA investigation and China scrutiny

NVIDIA’s board opened an independent investigation after reports of possible ties between Huang and Alice Huang, whom U.S. authorities suspect of cooperating with Chinese intelligence. Huang stepped down as CEO, although some employees called for his return.

U.S. lawmakers also increased scrutiny of NVIDIA’s China strategy. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Jim Banks called for tighter restrictions on exports of advanced NVIDIA chips to China after a Reuters investigation identified $3.2 billion in Chinese AI projects using U.S.-made H100, H200 and H800 accelerators. NVIDIA said there was no evidence that corporate secrets had leaked or that U.S. national security was threatened.

Crypto crime and cybersecurity

North Korea-linked hackers created memecoins and liquidity pools on the TRON, NEAR and Solana networks to launder funds after the Binance hack. Elliptic said the attackers moved about $430,000 through six tokens on NEAR.

The U.S. Department of Justice dismantled infrastructure used in the FaceStealer campaign, which stole more than $400 million over 18 months. U.S. authorities also secured freezes covering more than $2.7 billion in assets stolen from Binance; a court allowed more than $1.2 billion to be confiscated or blocked.

TRON, Tether and Chainalysis formed the Digital Crime Task Force to identify suspicious USDT transactions and freeze funds quickly. TRM Labs launched Beacon Concierge to help law-enforcement agencies trace and seize crypto assets. U.S. and international authorities also conducted the largest operation in JCODE’s history against darknet drug trafficking, arresting 354 suspects and seizing more than $234 million in cash and digital assets.

TSMC confirmed that some employees’ personal information had leaked after a hacker offered a database containing 46,000 records for 3 BTC. Indian exchange Unocoin reported unauthorized server access and temporarily restricted logins. Binance denied reports of a breach affecting 335.9 million customers, saying it found no indication that its systems had been compromised.

Trezor confirmed three cases in which malicious hardware implants were installed in Safe 5 devices bought through reseller CryptoBilis. It issued a firmware update to block the implants. Ledger CEO Pascal Gauthier said crypto-industry hacks were inevitable and warned that advances in artificial intelligence and quantum computing would increase cyber risks.

Artificial intelligence investment and infrastructure

Anthropic introduced the Claude Fable 5.2 and Mythos 5.2 models for complex technical work and began preparing for an initial public offering that could raise as much as $64.4 billion at a valuation of up to $1.4 trillion. Venture-capital firm a16z described an emerging AI-agent economy requiring companies to adapt to a business-to-agent model, while the MegaETH Foundation allocated $30 million for AI-based products.

SpaceX plans to invest $24 billion in a roughly 748-megawatt gas-fired power plant in Texas to support an AI supercomputer. Republican Senator Josh Hawley proposed a nationwide moratorium on new U.S. data centers until safeguards are adopted to protect consumers from possible electricity-rate increases.

Ukraine

A French court sentenced a Ukrainian citizen to five years in prison and imposed a €600,000 fine over the illegal issuance of 1 billion Holograph tokens, valued at $14 million. Trustee Plus wallet users raised more than 1.2 million hryvnias to buy 350 tactical first-aid kits for the “Liut” assault brigade.

G7 ambassadors also responded to comments by the National Bank of Ukraine on draft law No. 10225-d, which would regulate the virtual-asset market. They stressed the importance of financial stability, transparency and the central bank’s independence.

Source: Incrypted