Bitcoin ETFs lost $244 million on Thursday and the ZEC fund extended a run of October outflows. Bitcoin is back near $82,000 after a $1 billion liquidation.
By Shaurya Malwa, Omkar Godbole, and Stephen AlpherEdited by Stephen AlpherMake preferred on Share this article6 hours ago· 3:20 p.m. EDTStephen AlpherShare this postTrump claims deal with Putin for diesel supplies
“I have just concluded a highly successful discussion with President Vladimir Putin, of Russia, wherein it was agreed that Russia will immediately supply over 300,000 Tons of Diesel Fuel to the American and Global Marketplace, another 500,000 Tons during the month of November, and 1,000,000 Tons immediately thereafter,” said President Trump minutes ago on Truth Social.
“Additionally, based on the condition of their Diesel Refineries, Russia will then deliver, within a short period of time, 3,000,000 Tons of Diesel Fuel,” he continued.
The post has knocked the price of heating oil (diesel) for November delivery down by 1.6% to $4.66 per gallon. That, in turn, has shaved about one basis point off the 10-year U.S. Treasury yield, now higher by 2 basis points on the day at 5.25%.
6 hours ago· 3:10 p.m. EDTStephen AlpherShare this postCrypto headed for weekly loss as Friday bounce loses steam
After rising to just shy of $87,000 on Sunday evening, bitcoin suffered mostly downward price action throughout the week.
A bit less than an hour before the close of U.S. stocks, bitcoin is trading hands at $82,450, up 1% over the past 24 hours, but down 1% from highs hit earlier on Friday.
It’s slumped nearly 3% for the week.
Ether followed a similar, but amplified pattern, rising 1.3% over the past 24 hours, but down 7% for the week.
Rising oil prices and interest rates, FUD over AI cracking hardware wallets, an actual exploit of Ledger wallets, and the one-year anniversary of last year’s 10/10 flash crash combined to pressure crypto prices throughout the past five days.
Next week brings September CPI and PPI reports that will be key data as the U.S. Federal Reserve contemplates when to hike its benchmark fed funds rate again. For now, the betting is that the central bank skips a 25 basis point hike at its October 27-28 meeting (ahead of midterms), but resumes tightening policy at its subsequent meeting in December.
9 hours ago· 12:35 p.m. EDTStephen AlpherShare this postStrategy's STRC makes new multi-month high
The high-yielding preferred stock of Michael Saylor’s Strategy, STRC just touched $99.71, its strongest level since the June panic, when it plunged from about $100 to as low as $71.25.
STRC has been supported in recent months by bitcoin’s bounce from $60,000, as well as Saylor and team’s commitment to preserve the 12% dividend, no matter what. This has included the sale of common stock MSTR$154.29· to stockpile U.S. dollars with which to pay the dividend, as well as outright repurchases of STRC.
STRC does remain below the $100 level, which is significant. Once the stock gets there, Strategy could presumably begin issuing STRC to fund additional major bitcoin purchases.
The high-yielding preferred stock of far smaller peer Stive, SATA had been above $100 for several weeks, allowing Matt Cole and team to raise capital for bitcoin purchases.
That stock is suddenly struggling, sliding all the way back to $99 this week.
10 hours ago· 12:02 p.m. EDTStephen AlpherShare this postGold standard fan Judy Shelton coming to Treasury as adviser to Bessent
Former Trump nominee to the Federal Reserve, Judy Shelton has been picked as an adviser to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
“Shelton will advise the secretary on currency policy, with a particular focus on evaluating financial conditions in China,” said Treasury.
Shelton had been nominated to the Fed during President Trump’s first term in office. She was notable for her hawkish views on inflation and support of the gold standard.
Her nomination failed to clear a Senate vote, as one thing both sides of the aisle can agree upon is easy money.
10 hours ago· 11:17 a.m. EDTKrisztian SandorShare this postAnother crypto exploit as Ledger investigates stolen wallet funds
Crypto hardware wallet maker Ledger said Friday it is investigating reports of stolen funds linked to devices sold through a reseller in Southeast Asia as a suspected $86 million heist threatens to add to the industry's mounting losses from exploits this year.
Pseudonymous blockchain investigator Specter said on X that more than $86 million in crypto may have been stolen from hundreds of wallets. There hasn’t been any independent confirmation of the amount of user assets affected.
Specter said they traced suspected theft addresses across Bitcoin, Ethereum and Tron after seeing reports from Ledger users on X and Reddit. It remains unclear whether the incidents are connected or what caused the losses.
Ledger acknowledged in the post the reports of missing funds from customers who purchased devices through CryptoBilis, a reseller in Southeast Asia, but did not confirm the reported loss amount or identify the cause.
As a precaution, the company said it asked CryptoBilis to pause all sales and shipments while its investigation continues. Ledger advised customers who purchased devices from the reseller within the past 90 days not to begin setting them up. Those who have already activated their wallets should consider moving their assets to a new Ledger device with a newly generated recovery phrase, the company said.
The potential theft may add to an already rough year for crypto security. Last month, crypto exchange Bitget suffered an exploit that resulted in over $350 million in stolen assets. Other major incidents included Liquid Network at about $320 million, Drift at $295 million and Kelp at $293 million, according to DefiLlama data.
Founded in 2014 and based in Paris, Ledger is a major maker of hardware wallets, devices that keep the private keys used to access cryptocurrency offline. The company says it has sold more than 7 million devices worldwide and its products are widely used by investors seeking to protect their crypto without relying on exchanges.
That makes any potential security issue involving its products significant for the broader crypto market. In this case, however, the investigation concerns devices sold through a third-party reseller, and there is no confirmed evidence that Ledger's own systems or wallet technology were compromised.
One possible explanation is a supply-chain attack, in which hardware wallets are tampered with before reaching customers. For example, an attacker could supply a device with a recovery phrase they already know, allowing them to access funds deposited into the wallet at a later date.
Such a scenario would differ from a breach of Ledger's own systems. However, there is no confirmation that device tampering or pre-generated recovery phrases caused the reported losses.
The incident remains under investigation, and it is unclear how many users were affected, whether the reported thefts are connected or how much cryptocurrency was lost.
Ledger said it would provide updates as the investigation progresses.
12 hours ago· 9:47 a.m. EDTStephen AlpherShare this postIt's the new Misery Index, and it just hit a record high
Created by economist Arthur Okun in the 1970s to put an easily digestible number on then-stagflationary conditions, the Misery Index was simply the sum of the inflation and unemployment rates.
As inflation began to again take root in 2022, the folks at Bespoke created the MORTGAS Index, which summed the price of a gallon of gasoline and the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate.
That bottomed during the Covid scare of 2020, with mortgage rates below 3% and gasoline falling below $2. By October 2023, it had spiked to a record.
Three years on, that record has now been broken, with the 30-year mortgage and a gallon of gasoline adding up to 11.79.
13 hours ago· 8:39 a.m. EDTStephen AlpherShare this postCanada September jobs report stuns to the downside
Canada lost 68,300 jobs in September, according to a just-released government report. That’s after losing 41,700 jobs in August and well shy of forecasts for a gain of 7,000 jobs.
The unemployment rate rose to 6.5% from 6.4%.
The loonie has quickly shed about 0.5% versus the greenback on the news.
Unlike its counterparts, the Fed and the ECB, the Bank of Canada has yet to commence a rate hike cycle this year. Its last move was a 25-basis-point rate cut to 2.25% in October 2025. It doesn’t appear as if rate hikes north of the border will start anytime soon.
14 hours ago· 7:58 a.m. EDTStephen AlpherShare this postSpaceX up 4% on plans for Starlink to become mobile carrier; Verizon, AT&T tumble
Elon Musk’s SpaceX SPCX$162.54· late yesterday announced an agreement to acquire a nationwide low-band spectrum license portfolio “that will pave the way for Starlink to become a major mobile carrier in the U.S.”
Musk shortly later on X: “This will sound super crazy, but I see a path to SpaceX being worth orders of magnitude more than the current Earth economy.”
SPCX shares are higher by 4% pre-market.
Mobile leaders Verizon (VZ), AT&T (T), and T-Mobile (TMUS) are all down more than 7%.
14 hours ago· 7:49 a.m. EDTJames Van StratenShare this postBitcoin climbs back above $83,000
Bitcoin has climbed back above $83,000, gaining more than 2% over the past 24 hours as it rebounds from Thursday’s low of around $80,000.
Gold is also moving higher, rising more than 1% over the same period to trade above $4,180 an ounce.
16 hours ago· 5:53 a.m. EDTShaurya MalwaShare this postXRP was the only crypto ETF group to take in money on Thursday
U.S. spot XRP exchange-traded funds drew about $8 million on Thursday, the only crypto ETF group with net inflows. Investors pulled money from bitcoin, ether, SOL and ZEC funds, according to SoSoValue data.
All of the XRP flows went into Franklin Templeton’s XRPZ, which added about 6 million XRP. The other four XRP funds saw no flows.
Elsewhere, investors pulled money out. Bitcoin ETFs lost about $244 million after Wednesday’s $485 million outflow, taking two-day withdrawals to roughly $729 million. Ether funds shed about $73 million and SOL funds about $3 million.
The lone U.S. spot ZEC ETF lost about $19 million, its fifth outflow in six trading days this month, with no inflows at all in October. Those withdrawals add up to about $86 million and have erased roughly a third of the net inflows the fund had gathered since launch.
The outflows came on the day $1.19 billion in leveraged crypto bets were liquidated and bitcoin fell to about $80,400. It has since rebounded to near $82,000 after President Trump said the U.S. would not strike Iran before the midterm elections.
XRP funds have now taken in about $1.81 billion since launch, ahead of the $1.59 billion that has gone into SOL ETFs.
16 hours ago· 5:23 a.m. EDTOmkar GodboleShare this postDecentralized oracle Pyth puts 100% of revenue into PYTH purchases
Decentralized oracle service Pyth is putting 100% of the money it earns from its products into buying PYTH tokens for its reserve, according to the announcement shared on X.
A standing rule now replaces monthly votes and sends all product income, plus existing non-PYTH assets, to open-market PYTH buys. The reserve already holds 41 million PYTH. Every additional token increases the network’s ability to fund itself as demand grows.
In September 2026, Pyth reached $11.5 million in annualized revenue, up 86% from the prior quarter, as large institutions pay to use its data.
Over the past quarter, more than 94% of tracked real-world-asset perpetual volume ran on Pyth data.
17 hours ago· 5:01 a.m. EDTJames Van StratenShare this postMARA Holdings moves $81 million in bitcoin as treasury shrinks amid AI pivot
MARA Holdings transferred 996 BTC, worth $81.13 million, to a Galaxy Digital address, according to Lookonchain, although a sale remains unconfirmed. The miner’s bitcoin holdings fell from 53,822 BTC in February to 35,577 BTC in August as it sold coins to reduce debt while expanding into AI infrastructure.
17 hours ago· 4:43 a.m. EDTOmkar GodboleShare this postRobinhood explores tokenized actively managed ETF with T. Rowe Price
Robinhood HOOD$109.04· is exploring a tokenized version of an actively managed ETF with T. Rowe Price, one of the largest traditional asset managers in the world.
In a post on X Thursday, Robinhood Crypto said it is working with T. Rowe Price Digital Assets to examine a Stock Token linked to an actively managed exchange-traded fund that would trade on Robinhood Chain.
The firm noted that T. Rowe Price oversees roughly $1.9 trillion in assets and said a successful launch would mark the first Stock Token of its kind. “Institutions are here, and our rails are ready,” the post added
Any collaboration remains preliminary, subject to legal due diligence, board approval, final terms, and regulatory clearances in relevant jurisdictions. T. Rowe Price has not publicly confirmed the discussions.
17 hours ago· 4:10 a.m. EDTOmkar GodboleShare this postBitcoin extends gains above $82,000
Bitcoin BTC$82,486.39 remained bid during European trading hours, tracking an uptick in Nasdaq-linked futures.
The cryptocurrency was trading near $82,500, fast approaching its May high of $82,814. That level was first breached to the upside on Nov. 21 and then vigorously defended for several days before giving way on Thursday.
The focus is now on whether bitcoin can reclaim that level. A failure to do so would strengthen the immediate bearish outlook, as technical analysts typically view a rejected retest of a former support level as a negative signal.
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