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As the latest US government shutdown ends and markets refocus on macro plumbing, Raoul Pal has sketched out a strikingly liquidity-heavy roadmap on X – one that, in his framework, has direct implications for crypto. “So now the US Gov has reopened, what’s next?” Pal asks. He immediately points to the Treasury General Account (TGA): “Expect a few days for TGA spending to begin to significantly add to liquidity and should persist for several months.Obviously, QT ends in Dec and the balance sheet will crawl higher. We should see the dollar begin to weaken again.” Mechanically, TGA drawdowns push cash back into bank reserves and money markets, reversing the reserve drain that built up while the government was partially shut. At the same time, the Federal Reserve has already confirmed that quantitative tightening (QT) will end on December 1, 2025, shifting from active balance-sheet reduction to full reinvestment of maturing Treasuries and a more “maintenance” stance. When Will Crypto Prices Rise Again? Pal’s point is that both channels tilt the system toward more dollars sloshing through funding markets, a backdrop he has long argued is constructive for risk assets, including crypto. The near-term risk, in his view, is a classic year-end funding squeeze. “The next key step is to avoid a Year End funding squeeze. Expect several ‘temporary’ measures to add liquidity. Term Funding and SRF operations are most likely.” Related Reading: SEC Chair Sets Out Plans For Crypto Taxonomy To Define Digital Asset Classification Here he is referring to term repo or funding facilities and the Standing Repo Facility (SRF), which the Fed can scale up to backstop banks’ access to cash if overnight rates spike. That reading aligns with recent Fed communication that elevated SRF usage and tighter money-market conditions were central reasons for ending QT early. Pal then escalates from tactical tools to structural regulation: “That will eventually morph into the desperately needed changes to the SLR to allow banks to absorb more issuance and re-lever their balance sheets. This is a big liquidity bazooka. Expect in Q1. SLR should lower rates as banks buy more bonds.” The Supplementary Leverage Ratio (SLR) caps large banks’ overall balance-sheet size, regardless of asset risk. Loosening it for Treasuries and reserves has been debated for years as a way to let dealers warehouse more government debt without breaching constraints. If regulators move in that direction, it would, as Pal notes, free capacity for banks to buy more bonds and could exert downward pressure on yields—again easing financial conditions. Related Reading: The 2025 Year-End Crypto Outlook: The Catalysts That Will Decide Everything For crypto, that matters indirectly: Pal’s core macro thesis is that improving liquidity and lower real yields are the primary tailwinds for digital assets. Regulation is explicitly on his radar too: “Also expect CLARITY Act for crypto to begin to get finalized.” The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act of 2025 (“CLARITY Act”) has already passed the US House and is now before the Senate. It would define digital asset categories and divide oversight between the CFTC and SEC, replacing much of the current “regulation by enforcement” model. Pal’s remark signals his expectation that the shutdown’s end clears the way for renewed legislative momentum – a key piece of the institutional puzzle for non-bitcoin crypto. He closes by broadening the lens to global and fiscal policy: “There will also be stimulus payments and the Big Beautiful Bill fiscal goosing. China will continue balance sheet expansion. Europe will add fiscal stimulus or extra spending. The debts must be rolled and the Gov wants to super heat the economy into the Mid-Terms. This is the Liquidity Flood…. the spice must flow.” Taken together, Pal is describing a synchronised regime: post-shutdown TGA spending, the end of QT, potential SLR relief, progressing US crypto legislation, and ongoing fiscal and monetary support in China and Europe. For crypto investors who share his liquidity-centric lens, the message is not subtle: the macro “spice,” in his view, is about to flow again. At press time, the total crypto market cap dropped to $3.24 trillion. Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com

A widely followed macro roadmap circulating on X early Friday, November 7, sets an explicit sequence of policy and market triggers that could define crypto’s trajectory into December—and frame positioning into 2026. The thread, posted by macro analyst Alex Krüger is unambiguous about the immediate constraint: “cautious stance until [the government shutdown is] resolved.” It is equally explicit about the upside if Washington finds a path forward, calling the shutdown’s resolution “bullish” for risk assets and saying for bitcoin to “Expect BTC +5% or more within 48 hours of deal.” The near-term hinge, in other words, is binary. A shutdown that lingers keeps risk pared back; a deal, by contrast, opens the door to what the thread characterizes as a quick relief move. The author’s base case on timing—“estimated to be resolved sometime between the end of next week and Thanksgiving”—extends that window into the back half of November. That framing matters for crypto because the same roadmap argues the December calendar is stacked with policy and flow headwinds that could complicate any rally that begins late this month. Crypto Outlook For Year-End Of 2025 At the center of December sits the Federal Open Market Committee. The thread presently tags the December 10 FOMC outcome “hawkish,” explaining that “most Fed officials favor a pause as of now, which is not priced in at the moment,” while also acknowledging that “officials may change their stance on rates as economic data comes in and the month progresses.” The nuance is important: the policy signal, as currently envisioned, is tighter than markets are discounting, yet the sign itself could be revised as data crystallizes—if it arrives at all. Related Reading: Caution In The Crypto Market: Expert Warns Of Bearish Phase Unfolding This November That caveat leads into a second unusual feature of this year-end: a potential data vacuum due to the ongoing US government shutdown. “Omitted all upcoming economic data releases from the list due to uncertainty on release dates,” the thread notes, citing the shutdown’s impact on statistical agencies. It adds, “Will likely see no official economic data in November, and data resuming in December, with payrolls (jobs) on Dec//5 (a crucial data point for the FOMC decision).” An extended blackout followed by a compressed burst of releases would increase event risk around any single print, especially nonfarm payrolls, and could amplify volatility across risk assets, crypto included. A separate political appointment may intersect with the December meeting as well. The roadmap flags the “New Fed Chair nomination,” “estimated to be announced before the next FOMC, to influence the FOMC decision (it could also be soon after); bullish to very bullish.” Even if the timing slips to just after the meeting, the signaling effect around leadership and policy reaction functions would, in this framework, skew supportive for risk. Tax-based flows complicate that picture for crypto assets specifically. The thread characterizes “Tax loss selling (crypto only)” as “bearish; all December, mainly last two weeks,” reasoning that crypto’s relative underperformance versus equities this year leaves room for harvesting that is “of particular importance given relative stocks-crypto performance.” Seasonal pressure late in the month would be consistent with prior years in which crypto saw localized December-to-January pivots as selling abated and re-risking emerged with the calendar reset. Related Reading: the shutdown’s resolution “bullish” for risk assets Another macro wildcard sits outside monetary policy. The author highlights the “Supreme Court’s decision on Tariffs: most likely sometime in December, otherwise January, timing fluid,” and frames market odds as pointing to a ruling “against Trump, which would be extremely bullish IMO, although some argue such a ruling would be bearish.” The point is less about a one-way trade and more about the breadth of plausible paths: depending on the ruling and how forward-looking positioning is into the event, crypto could either extend a policy-led risk-on move or face a whipsaw if the outcome collides with consensus. Beyond 2025’s final weeks, the roadmap sketches a decidedly constructive macro backdrop next year, at least at the start. “2026: very bullish first half of the year, driven by accommodative fiscal and monetary policies.” For crypto, that forward anchor matters because it underwrites the notion that any December drawdowns from tax effects or a hawkish-leaning FOMC could be transient if the policy impulse turns easier into 2026. Tactically, the thread even proposes a short-term trade expression around the shutdown endgame: “For BTC, I think you can probably sell a spike into the shutdown resolution around $108k-$109k (~20 DMA) then enjoy a king’s holiday and come back in by year end.” At press time, the total crypto market stood at $3.36 trillion. Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com

The question dominating crypto desks this week is whether the cycle is intact, and when the bull run will return. Two widely followed macro commentators sketched the same causal chain from public-sector cash management to crypto asset beta, arguing that the current drawdown is a liquidity story first and a sentiment story second—and that its reversal hinges on the mechanics of the US Treasury General Account (TGA), Federal Reserve balance-sheet policy, and the timing of Washington’s reopening. Crypto Market Awaits US Government Shutdown Resolution Macro analyst @plur_daddy on X summarizes the current state bluntly: “We are seeing the contraction in liquidity flowing through into risk markets. Naturally it first showed up in BTC and market internals within equities, and now is finally hitting the broader indices.” He describes a textbook quality rotation underway—speculative thematics “such as quantum, nuclear, drones, and alt energy have been getting destroyed,” while flows consolidate into the megacap cohort and earnings-backed momentum, notably the AI capex complex. The underlying plumbing, in his reading, is starved of bank reserves as cash piles into the TGA and quantitative tightening (QT) continues to shrink the Fed’s balance sheet. “Monetary liquidity is drawing down as the TGA has become overfilled beyond the Treasury Dept’s $850bn cap, due to mechanical factors around higher issuance, timing of specific payments, and the government shutdown. There is a broader lack of bank reserves which continues to fall below the key $3trn threshold.” His conclusion is conditional but clear: these stresses “will precipitate actions to calm market plumbing but it will take time.” Related Reading: Caution In The Crypto Market: Expert Warns Of Bearish Phase Unfolding This November On the dollar and cross-asset risk, he points to a crucial level: “The DXY has been rallying and is now approaching a key level at 101, which would be a logical point for it to top. I continue to believe the Trump administration wants a lower dollar.” The path to a crypto bottom, in his cadence, is explicitly tied to policy milestones: “The government reopening provides a clear catalyst to mark the bottom in liquidity conditions. Then, we get QT unwinding Dec 1 and then potentially more Fed actions (such as hints on bills repurchases) on Dec 10. The fiscal deficit will expand significantly starting Jan 1 as the OBBBA will fully kick in.” He characterizes Bitcoin’s behavior as resilient—“BTC has held in well despite tremendous OG selling, the aftermath of 10/10, and the factors above”—and describes his own playbook accordingly: “I currently have a sizable cash position and plan to aggressively add equities (especially the memory trade) and BTC once the government reopening looks imminent.” Hours later he added, “Bought some BTC. Seeing progress being made towards government reopening and signs that liquidity headwinds have peaked. Risk/reward here is strong with sentiment bombed out.” When The Liquidity Returns Raoul Pal, whose framework centers almost entirely on the global liquidity cycle, pushes the same thesis to its logical macro conclusion. “If global liquidity is the single most dominant macro factor then we MUST focus on that,” he writes, before distilling the next year of market structure into a single constraint: “REMEMBER — THE ONLY GAME IN TOWN IS ROLLING $10TRN IN DEBT. EVERYTHING ELSE IS A SIDESHOW. THIS IS THE GAME OF THE NEXT 12 MONTHS.” In Pal’s telling, the shutdown’s effect is immediate and mechanical—“the gov shutdown has forced a sharp tightening of liquidity as the TGA builds up with no where to spend it. This is not offset by the ability to drain the Reverse Repo (it is drained). And QT drains it further”—and crypto, as the highest-beta liquidity asset, takes the brunt. The pivot, he argues, is likewise mechanical once fiscal operations restart: “As soon as the gov shutdown ends, the Treasury begins spending $250bn to $350bn in a couple of months. QT ends and the balance sheet technically expands. The Dollar will likely begin to weaken again as liquidity begins to flow.” Related Reading: Crypto Isn’t Topping Yet: Arthur Hayes Says Stealth QE Is Near He layers on prospective policy and regulatory catalysts—“SLR changes free up more of the banks balance sheets allowing for credit expansion. The CLARITY Act will get passed, giving the crypto regs so desperately needed for large scale adoption by banks, asset managers and businesses overall. The Big Beautiful Bill then kicks in to goose the economy into the midterms”—and frames the global backdrop as additive, with China’s balance-sheet expansion and Japan’s policy mix supporting a broader risk rally. His tactical advice is to accept bull-market volatility without over-reacting: “Always remember the Dont Fuck This Up rules… and wait out the volatility. Drawdowns like this are common place in bull markets and their job is to test your faith. BTFD if you can.” The punchline comes down to a single indicator within his dashboard: “td:dr — When this number goes up, all numbers go up.” The through-line across both perspectives is the primacy of dollar liquidity—specifically, the interaction of Treasury cash balances, Fed asset purchases or run-off, and the available stock of bank reserves after the Reverse Repo Program has largely normalized. When the TGA rises without offset, it functions as a suction pump on aggregate reserves; when it falls as the Treasury spends, reserves rebuild, the marginal cost of leverage eases, and high-beta assets—crypto first—tend to outperform. Where does that leave the timing question implied by every red candle on crypto Twitter? Neither source offers a date, but both tether the next leg higher to the same sequence: a resolution in Washington that flips the TGA from hoarding to spending, visible easing in reserve scarcity as QT pauses or is unwound, a swerve lower in the dollar from resistance, and renewed fiscal impulse that re-steepens the growth impulse into 2026. At press time, the total crypto market cap stood at $3.38 trillion. Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com

Arthur Hayes argues that the next leg of the crypto cycle will be driven not by a headline pivot to quantitative easing, but by a “stealth” version executed through the Federal Reserve’s Standing Repo Facility (SRF). In a new essay titled “Hallelujah” published on November 4, 2025, the former BitMEX CEO lays out a balance-sheet-driven case that persistent US fiscal deficits, hedge-fund demand for Treasuries financed via repo, and the Fed’s need to cap funding stress will translate into incremental dollar liquidity that ultimately “pumps the price of Bitcoin and other cryptos.” As he frames the core mechanism: “Government issued debt grows the money supply.” Hayes’ logic chain begins with an observation on political incentives and the arithmetic of public finance. Governments can fund spending with “savings or debt,” and in his view elected officials “will always favor borrowing from the future to get re-elected in the present.” For the United States, he contends that the trajectory is already set: “Here are the estimates from the TBTF banksters, and a few US government agencies. As you can see, the estimates are for ~$2 trillion deficits funded by ~$2 trillion of borrowing.” In his model, once one accepts that “Yearly Federal Deficit = Yearly Treasury Debt Issuance Amount,” the next critical question is who actually buys that debt, and on what financing. Fed’s Stealth QE Will “Pump Crypto” He dismisses foreign central banks as dependable marginal buyers after the US sanctioned and immobilized Russian reserves in 2022. “If Pax Americana is willing to steal Russia’s money… then no foreign owner of treasuries is ever safe,” he writes, concluding reserve managers “would rather buy gold than treasuries.” He likewise downplays the capacity of the US household sector given that “the 2024 personal savings rate was 4.6%” while “the US federal deficit was 6% of GDP,” and he argues the largest US money-center banks have increased their Treasury holdings by only “~$300 billion” in fiscal 2025 against issuance of “$1,992 billion,” making them meaningful but not decisive. Related Reading: Caution In The Crypto Market: Expert Warns Of Bearish Phase Unfolding This November Instead, Hayes positions relative-value hedge funds—particularly those booking positions via Cayman vehicles—as the marginal, price-setting bid for US duration. Citing a recent Federal Reserve study, he quotes: “Cayman Islands hedge funds purchased, on net, $1.2 trillion of Treasury securities… [between] January 2022 and December 2024… [and] absorbed 37% of net issuance of notes and bonds.” The trade architecture is straightforward: “Buy a cash treasury debt security vs. sell the corresponding treasury futures contract,” then lever the tiny basis through repo funding. Because the edge is “measured in basis points,” the trade only works if leverage is cheap and predictable every day. That funnel leads directly to the SRF. Hayes lays out the Fed’s short-rate corridor—“Upper and Lower Fed Funds; currently these equal 4.00% and 3.75% respectively”—and the policy plumbing that keeps market rates inside it: the Reverse Repo Facility (RRP) at the lower bound for money-market funds (MMFs) and banks, interest on reserve balances (IORB) for banks in the middle, and the SRF at the upper bound as the emergency spigot. Lower Fed Funds = RRP < IORB < SRF = Upper Fed Funds,” he summarizes, adding that the target, SOFR, normally oscillates inside the band. Stress occurs “when SOFR trades above the Upper Fed Funds,” which he calls “a problem” because “the filthy fiat financial system shuts down” once participants can’t roll overnight leverage at a stable rate. In his telling, the cash supply that cushions SOFR is structurally thinner than it was when the Fed began quantitative tightening in early 2022. MMFs, he says, have drained the RRP to zero because “the T-bill rate is so attractive,” making them less available as repo cash providers. That leaves banks, who will supply liquidity so long as they have ample reserves, but “banks lost trillions in reserves since the Fed began QT.” Set against that diminished supply of cash is relentless demand for repo financing from RV funds, whose “marginal” Treasury purchases must be levered. If SOFR threatens to pierce the ceiling and repo becomes unreliable, the Fed’s SRF must backstop the system to prevent a funding accident. “Because a similar situation occurred in 2019, the Fed created the SRF,” Hayes writes. “The Fed can supply an infinite amount of cash using its printing press at SRF as long as one provides an acceptable form of collateral.” His conclusion is blunt: “If the SRF balances are above zero, then we know the Fed is cashing the checks of the politicians using printed money.” Hayes labels this dynamic “Stealth QE.” He argues the optics of outright balance-sheet expansion via asset purchases are now politically toxic—“QE is a dirty word… QE = money printing = inflation”—so the central bank will prefer to meet marginal dollar demand via SRF lending rather than by visibly creating excess reserves. What This Means For The Crypto Market The result is functionally similar from a liquidity standpoint, in his view: repo credit distributed by the Fed against Treasuries still increases spendable dollars in the system to finance government borrowing. “This will buy some time, but eventually the exponential expansion of treasury debt issuance will force the repeated use of the SRF,” he writes. “Stealth QE will begin shortly. I don’t know when it will begin. But… the SRF balance must grow as the lender of last resort. As SRF balances grow, the amount of fiat dollars in the world expands as well. This phenomenon will reignite the Bitcoin bull market.” He also sketches a near-term tactical backdrop that helps explain recent market tone across crypto. While auctions are pulling cash into the Treasury General Account, he notes, fiscal spending has been temporarily impeded by the government shutdown, producing a net drain in private-sector liquidity. Related Reading: Crypto Bull Case Vs. Bear Case: These Forces Divide The Market “The Treasury General Account is above the $850 billion target by ~$150bn,” he writes, arguing that this “extra liquidity won’t get released into the markets until the government reopens,” contributing to “current softness in the crypto markets.” In other words, the same fiscal engine that ultimately forces the Fed’s hand via the SRF can, in the very short run, sap liquidity when issuance front-runs outlays. Hayes’ rhetoric remains intentionally sharp. He describes Treasuries as “dog shit” at prevailing real yields, calls the buy-side “debt shit eaters,” and opens with a hymn to Bitcoin’s monetary properties—“Praise be to Lord Satoshi that time and compounding interest exist regardless of who you are.” The provocation serves the point: if the marginal financing of US deficits increasingly relies on opaque backstops rather than transparent reserve creation, then crypto’s native, non-sovereign liquidity cycles will key off the same hidden plumbing. He distills the investment upshot in a single sentence: “Treasury Debt Amount Issued = Increase in Supply of Dollars.” The essay is not a calendar call. Hayes refuses to timestamp the inflection—“I don’t know when it will begin”—and he warns that “between now and when stealth QE begins, one has to husband capital. Expect a choppy market,” especially with shutdown dynamics distorting flows. But he is unequivocal on direction once SRF usage becomes persistent: “Stealth QE will begin shortly… [and] will reignite the Bitcoin bull market.” For crypto investors conditioned to watch CPI prints and FOMC dots, the message is to track money-market microstructure instead. In Hayes’ framework, when SRF balances stop being a rounding error and start trending, that is the tell that dollar liquidity has quietly flipped—and that crypto isn’t topping yet. At press time, the total crypto market cap was at $3.41 trillion. Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com

On November 2, 2025, crypto analyst Ignas | DeFi distilled crypto’s current standoff into a clean ledger of pros and cons. The Bearish Case For Crypto The first bear pillar is the “AI bubble” overhang. Late-October headlines crystallized the debate as Nvidia briefly breached a $5 trillion market value, a milestone that sharpened concern that equity valuations tied to AI infrastructure spending may be running ahead of realized returns. Point two—“bullish news fail to pump”—was on display as “Uptober” ended with a whimper for the crypto market. Despite intermittent policy tailwinds and strong ETF inflows mid-month, both Bitcoin and Ethereum faded into month-end, and US spot ETF flows turned sharply negative over the final three trading days of October, a pattern consistent with risk aversion after the Oct. 10–11 shock. Related Reading: Is Crypto ‘Boring’ Now? Bitwise CEO Says The Market Is Changing That shock, the “10/10 crash,” is the third bear lever. The two-day downdraft followed a sudden tariff escalation threat from the White House and produced one of the largest one-day liquidations in crypto history, spurring a rush for downside hedges and leaving the market probing for “dead entities” and hidden impairments. Cycle timing is Ignas’ fourth bear note. The fourth Bitcoin halving occurred on April 20, 2024 (block 840,000). Prior cycles do not map one-for-one, but the post-halving window is a pattern which gets a lot of attention at the moment. If the “cycle is not dead,” a Bitcoin top may already be in or is looming by the end of the year. “Old OG wallets selling” is the fifth bear claimant—and, for once, the chain tells a clear story. Since mid-October, long-term holders have materially increased net distribution, with Glassnode and other trackers flagging outflows on the order of tens of thousands of BTC, alongside headline-grabbing awakenings of Satoshi-era wallets. This does not prove panic, but it does inject supply at a delicate moment. Negative ETF flows round out the bear list. Farside’s fund-by-fund ledger shows pronounced outflows on October 29–31 across several US spot Bitcoin ETFs, with total daily net redemptions exceeding $470 million on October 29 and $488 million on October 30, before another hit on October 31 (191 million). While October closed with a inflow total of 3.424 billion, the message: the “fast money” cohort that chased the summer breakout was, at least temporarily, in retreat. Buffett’s caution is the macro bear exclamation point. Berkshire Hathaway’s third-quarter print revealed a record $381.7 billion cash pile and a twelfth straight quarter as a net seller of equities—a posture that telegraphs wariness about broad risk assets and liquidity conditions even as operating earnings rise. For crypto, this is not a direct flow, but it is a bellwether for global risk appetite. The Bull Case For Crypto The bull case, however, is not hand-waving. Start with “liquidity easing & interest cuts.” The ECB has already delivered substantial easing this year and paused; the Bank of England has begun cutting; and in the US, the Federal Reserve is also expected to close out the year with two more cuts while ending quantitative tightening. Related Reading: Powell, The FOMC, And Crypto: The Message Everyone Missed Ignas also says “no clear euphoria,” and—empirically—he’s right. The Crypto Fear & Greed Index spent the past week toggling between “Fear” and low “Neutral,” printing in the mid-30s to low-40s as of November 3. That’s a long way from the 80s–90s “extreme greed” that often sets up blow-off tops, and it supports the idea that positioning is not yet dangerously crowded. Institutional adoption remains the quiet compounding force in the bull ledger. With $30.2 billion year-to-date inflows, spot Bitcoin ETFs are fueling most of the market strength. On policy, the US did more than chatter in 2025: the Senate passed, and President Trump signed, a bipartisan stablecoin law in July. A broader market-structure bill remains in play, but even the stablecoin win is non-trivial for on-chain liquidity and payments rails. Seasonality also favors patience. Since 2013, Q4 has been Bitcoin’s strongest quarter on average, with multiple cycles posting outsized November–December runs. Then there’s the stablecoin plumbing. Despite October’s chaos, aggregate stablecoin float sits around $307–308 billion and notched fresh all-time highs in mid-October—a sign that dry powder inside crypto’s own rails remains abundant and ready to mobilize if confidence stabilizes. As of today, DefiLlama pegs the total at roughly $307.6 billion. Finally, the US–China trade war has seen extremely positive progress. “This is the BIGGEST de-escalation yet. Under the new US-China trade deal, President Trump made a HUGE agreement with China: China will suspend ALL retaliatory tariffs announced since March 4th. And, China will suspend or remove ALL retaliatory non-tariff countermeasures taken since March 4th. This is not getting nearly enough attention,” The Kobeissi Letter wrote via X on Sunday. At press time, the total crypto market cap stood at $3.56 trillion. Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com

In a post on X on October 29, Quinn Thompson, CIO of Lekker Capital, argued that Jerome Powell’s post-FOMC messaging was less about macro uncertainty and more about pressure tactics aimed at the political apparatus — with direct consequences for crypto liquidity. Powell’s FOMC Comments Decoded Thompson wrote: “Powell appeared to be playing political games / posturing / CYA around the December verbiage, possibly to communicate to the admin to get the government reopened. It almost felt like a threat that if no data (due to continued government shutdown), then there won’t be a December cut and the market was briefly thrown off by that uncertainty.” He called out how abnormal it was to hear Powell comment this directly on market expectations: “The immediate reaction made sense given it is quite abnormal to hear Powell comment on market pricing so specifically as he always refrains from doing so and makes a point to say he will not comment on market pricing.” That is the core of Thompson’s read. Powell just broke his own habit. Powell tends to reject any framing that implies the Fed is validating market forward pricing. This time, after the Federal Reserve cut its policy rate by 25 basis points to a target range of 3.75%–4.00%, Powell said explicitly that “a further reduction in the policy rate at the December meeting is not a foregone conclusion — far from it.” He underlined that there are “strongly different views” inside the Committee about the speed and depth of further easing. Markets immediately repriced. Treasury yields moved higher and the probability of a December cut fell sharply from near certainty to something closer to a coin flip, and risk assets reacted accordingly. That includes crypto: bitcoin and large-cap crypto assets initially traded lower alongside equities as the market read the comment as a hawkish surprise rather than as positioning. Related Reading: China Intensifies Crypto Crackdown With Latest Warning Against Stablecoins Thompson’s view is that this was not about signaling a hawkish turn. It was about signaling conditionality. He frames Powell’s remarks as a message to the White House and Congress: reopen the government, restore economic data flow, and the Fed has cover to cut again in December; keep the shutdown in place and deny the Fed official data, and Powell can say, on record, that he cannot justify further accommodation. Powell himself emphasized that the central bank has been operating “in the absence of key government data” because the shutdown that began on October 1 has blocked normal labor, inflation, and activity reporting. Thompson characterizes that stance as an implicit warning shot. In his words, “What you infer from that is up to you, but additionally I believe the market may have been surprised by what I believe to be an incorrect Fed reaction function to the government shutdown. There is no scenario in which the economy is stronger because of the shutdown and if they are highlighting continued downside labor market risks, there isn’t a great case to be made to veer from their September dot plot path.” For crypto, the subtext is important: Thompson is saying Powell’s comments were not a signal to tighten financial conditions into year-end. They were leverage in a political negotiation, not a policy ceiling on liquidity. That point is operational, not rhetorical. Thompson is saying the Fed’s stated logic does not actually line up with what the Fed itself claims to be worried about. Powell’s justification for the October 29 cut leaned heavily on labor market softening and downside employment risk. The official FOMC statement pointed to a “shift in the balance of risks” toward weaker employment, noted that job gains have slowed, and acknowledged that unemployment has edged higher. Powell also said inflation is still above target but no longer accelerating the way it was earlier in the year, which is why some members favored faster easing. That mix — weakening labor, cooling inflation, policy cuts — has historically been constructive for crypto because it points to easier dollar liquidity and a lower cost of capital without outright crisis. On the balance sheet, Thompson highlights something that is already documented in Fed and press statements but has not yet fully repriced across risk: “Just a week or two ago the market was not expecting QT to end this soon and today Powell went so far as to discuss the next step in this process being a return to balance sheet growth. These developments are definitively liquidity positive, even though the MBS reinvestment and future purchases will be all or predominantly bills.” What This Means For Crypto In plain terms, the Fed didn’t just cut rates by 25 bps. It also said it will stop quantitative tightening on December 1. That means the Fed will no longer allow its Treasury and mortgage holdings to roll off passively. Instead, it will reinvest maturing Treasuries back into Treasuries and redirect principal paydowns from its mortgage-backed securities portfolio into Treasury bills. Related Reading: Max Bid Crypto Now: Market Maker Wintermute Turns Fully Bullish For crypto, this is the line that matters. When the Fed stops shrinking its balance sheet and starts recycling back into bills, it’s effectively injecting incremental dollar liquidity into the system, even if it refuses to call it QE. That liquidity has historically leaked into the parts of the market most sensitive to excess cash and duration scarcity — tech, high beta credit, and crypto. Thompson is basically saying that under the surface of Powell’s cautious language, the Fed just signaled the start of the next crypto liquidity regime. This is a critical liquidity inflection that is easy to miss if the only headline you absorb is “December cut not guaranteed.” Ending QT this early was not a consensus two weeks ago. This is also why Thompson rejects the idea that Powell’s tone was structurally bearish for risk. He writes, “All in all I think the December cut is still quite likely.” He then lays out the macro sequence he expects to see once the shutdown ends: “Ultimately I think they will reopen the government in the next few weeks so there will be data and it is likely to show inflation falling for the next few months and labor market continue its weakening path, and Trump is making deals that likely bring tariffs down which also earns him brownie points with the FOMC.” The message for crypto investors is that once data resumes, it will justify continued easing, not block it. The last part of Thompson’s post moves from mechanics to governance. He points directly at Powell’s expiring authority. “Powell’s term as Chair ends in 6 months and his successor will be known even sooner, creating a shadow Fed chair situation. It remains clear to everyone and the market that the new chair will be friendly towards and help effectuate the admin’s agenda. Given all of the above, it is difficult for me to paint a risk asset bear case based upon liquidity dynamics as all signs point to continued massaging to support markets.” That is the crypto punchline. Thompson is arguing that the institutional bias of the Fed, going into the succession window, is toward maintaining and managing liquidity conditions so markets do not crack. If that bias holds, it is inherently crypto-bullish, because it implies a policy floor under dollar liquidity at the exact moment the Fed is already preparing to halt balance sheet runoff and re-expand via bills. At press time, the total crypto market cap stood at $3.73 trillion. Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com

Wintermute, one of crypto’s largest market makers, struck an overtly risk-on tone in a Monday market update on X, arguing that a dovish macro turn and thawing US–China tensions have reset positioning and liquidity into a friendlier Q4 regime. In a post dated October 28, the firm wrote that “risk appetite is returning as softer CPI data and improving Trump-Xi relations lifted markets, with yields easing and volatility declining,” adding that “Bitcoin reclaimed $115k on ETF inflows and short squeezes, while DeFi and AI sectors led the recovery.” Wintermute’s Bullish Crypto Outlook For Q4 The desk framed the impulse as both macro- and microstructure-driven. On the macro side, Wintermute pointed to “a softer US CPI print (3.0% YoY vs 3.1% expected)” and “the announcement of a Trump-Xi summit in Seoul,” which it said catalyzed “a broad rebound across assets” as the S&P 500 gained 1.9%, the VIX hovered “around 16,” and Treasury yields eased with rate-cut odds firming into this week’s Federal Reserve meeting. On the crypto side, the update said “Bitcoin performed well with a 5.3% gain, climbing above $115k… amplified by $160m in short liquidations,” while “Ethereum tracked higher toward $4,200,” and “gold unwound nearly 7% from its highs, signaling a rotation from defensive assets into risk assets.” Related Reading: China Intensifies Crypto Crackdown With Latest Warning Against Stablecoins Wintermute characterized the advance as broadening beneath the surface. “DeFi and AI names led gains on strong protocol revenue prints and improving on-chain activity,” while “Utilities and Tooling benefited from infrastructure-related rotation as new L2 deployments and restaking primitives drew liquidity.” Derivatives posture turned supportive, too: “On the perp side, funding rates turned positive again across most majors… though positioning remains far from crowded.” The firm also flagged a turn in base money for crypto beta: “Stablecoin supply is ticking higher for the first time since September, reinforcing that macro tailwinds are beginning to translate into fresh inflows. Spot demand from US spot ETFs, according to Wintermute, continues to anchor the structure even as activity cooled. “US spot BTC ETFs absorbed moderate inflows through the week even as volumes thinned, underscoring sticky structural demand.” Meanwhile, derivatives leverage “is rebuilding at a measured pace after the early-month flush,” which the firm framed as healthier—“cleaner leverage and more balanced funding.” The house view into November is unambiguously constructive and leans on seasonality and positioning. One passage distilled the stance: “While Uptober had a bit of a false start, macro tailwinds, cooling inflation, ‘stabilizing’ geopolitical tension and a dovish FED are setting the stage for a supportive rest of the year, which historically (Q4) has been the strongest for Bitcoin.” Related Reading: ‘It’s All One Trade’ — Crypto Bull Run Isn’t Done, Says Dan Morehead In its closing summary, Wintermute reiterated that “positioning is cleaner, volatility subdued, and capital rotation is gradually steering toward crypto. With liquidity conditions improving and sentiment stabilising, the setup into Q4 remains constructive, favouring further risk-on continuation.” A Decisive Week For Crypto The note drew immediate amplification from market commentators. DeFi analyst Ignas compressed the message into a trading takeaway: “Wintermute is telling you to max bid,” citing “yields… easing, volatility… down, and BTC reclaimed 115k helped by ETF inflows and short squeezes.” He highlighted Wintermute’s own line that “macro tailwinds, cooling inflation, ‘stabilizing’ geopolitical tension and a dovish FED are setting the stage for a supportive rest of the year.” Whether this marks an outright regime shift or a tactically favorable window will hinge on this week’s event risk—namely the Fed decision and any concrete outcomes from the Trump–Xi engagement. Wintermute, however, is explicit about the current state of play: markets are “rotating back into risk” with “cleaner positioning” and “calmer volatility,” Bitcoin “has reclaimed early-October losses with steady ETF inflows,” and sector leadership in DeFi and AI is consistent with an early-risk rotation. “With cleaner positioning, calmer volatility, and better macro visibility, the setup into November looks healthy for further recovery and rotation across crypto,” the firm concluded. At press time, the total crypto market cap stood at $3.78 trillion. Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com

Pantera Capital founder and CEO Dan Morehead argues the core driver of this cycle remains the same “one trade” uniting macro and crypto: fiat debasement pushing capital into scarce, higher-beta assets. In a wide-ranging conversation with Real Vision’s Raoul Pal, the pair frame the current rally—and what comes next—through the lens of policy error, structural deficits, sticky inflation, and the slow-rolling migration of institutional and sovereign portfolios into digital assets. The Debasement Trade Powers The Crypto Bull Run Morehead’s starting point is blunt: “We have full employment. Inflation is debasing our assets by 3% a year… and they’re cutting rates. Like, it’s crazy.” He calls 2020–2021 “a policy error”—“there was a time where inflation was 8%, and the Fed Funds rate was zero”—and says easing into today’s backdrop “when everything’s booming” undermines the monetary check on “record fiscal deficits.” The consequence, he argues, is that price levels across real assets look high not because they are rallying independently, but because the denominator is falling: “It’s the price of paper money that’s plummeting.” Related Reading: Is The Crypto Bull Run Over? Lekker Capital CIO Warns ‘Don’t Miss The Forest’ Pal extends the frame to a single macro factor. “We use [Global Macro Investor’s] total global liquidity index as our benchmark for debasement. The Nasdaq, since 2012, has a 97.5% correlation, and Bitcoin is about 90%.” In his words, “None of it matters. It’s all one trade.” The implication is a regime where liquidity and debasement overwhelm the usual cross-asset nuance: “It’s the greatest macro trade of all time.” That regime, in Morehead’s view, also explains why adoption keeps broadening. The pair note how the “debasement trade” has migrated from crypto-native circles into bank research. “JP Morgan’s talking about it. And I got an email from Goldman today, the debasement trade,” Morehead says. “I’ve been talking about it for 12 years.” Pal adds that even large banks “openly” talk about currency debasement now, while clients are being offered wider access to crypto exposure. The wedge, they contend, remains institutional under-allocation. “How can you have a bubble nobody owns?” Morehead asks. “The median institutional investor’s exposure to crypto and blockchain ventures is literally 0.0.” Asked where steady-state allocation could land, he points to “8 or 10” percent over time, echoing Pal’s observation that many family offices that start at 2% “end up being 20% really fast” as price action mechanically increases weightings and conviction follows. Morehead also sees policy politics and geopolitics accelerating adoption. He argues the US election reset a regulatory headwind—“we went from… aggressively negative… to being extremely positive”—unlocking public pensions and sovereign funds that “got scared away in 2022” after the FTX/Luna/Celsius cascade and high-profile enforcement cases. He goes further, sketching a sovereign “arms race” for reserve Bitcoin: US holdings via seizures, “roughly the same” in China, and GCC states “aggressively getting into the blockchain space,” with room for acquisitions “tiny compared to balance sheets.” In his phrasing, if multiple blocs each target million-coin stockpiles, supply dynamics could “squeeze up like a watermelon seed.” Why This Crypto Bull Run Extends Into 2026 If liquidity and adoption anchor the bull case, both still respect crypto’s cyclicality. Morehead has modeled four-year dynamics around halvings and says Pantera’s prior cycle targets hit with eerie precision: “We forecast… Bitcoin would hit $118,542 on August 11th, 2025. And it did… one day [early].” He also notes past peaks coincided with celebratory “events”—the 2017 CME futures listing and 2021 Coinbase direct listing—followed by ~85% drawdowns. Yet he argues “this time” may be meaningfully extended by the policy and allocation backdrop: “The regulatory changes in the US, I think just trump everything… I think the next six to 12 months are still a big rally.” Pal, while acknowledging the internet’s penchant for hanging forecasters, concurs: “I think it’s going to extend.” Related Reading: Russia’s New Crypto Framework Could Redefine Global Trade Amid Sanctions Pressure The social dimension of adoption runs through the conversation. Debasement’s distributional effects have made housing and rents the stickiest CPI components—“35% of [core CPI] is shelter,” Morehead says—pushing younger cohorts toward hard assets. Meanwhile, the “virality rate of crypto is like 95%,” he claims: “you get a smart person… to think about it for an hour, they’re all like, ‘Oh yeah, I should buy some crypto.’” Evangelists matter, too: “Michael Saylor has done a great job. He has Messianic following… Tom Lee [on ETH]… We’re gonna endeavor to do that on Solana.” Visibility through ETFs, DATs, and media segments pulls newcomers into the funnel, where small initial slices tend to scale. As Pal puts it, investors who lack exposure feel “like you’re short the upside calls.” I love it when technology, crypto, and macro come together in someone’s journey… and there’s no one better than my dear friend @dan_pantera, an OG in the space! Please enjoy pic.twitter.com/ShZAd2tB3u — Raoul Pal (@RaoulGMI) October 23, 2025 For all the optimism, the macro warning lights stay on in the background: structural US deficits “literally in the best of times,” a monetary-fiscal loop trapped between refinancing needs and price stability, and a demographic drag on productivity that leaves AI-driven gains still ahead of the curve. “Debasing your fiat currency against everybody else’s fiat currency is a race to the bottom,” Morehead cautions. In that world, gold and crypto function as life rafts: “That’s why everything’s at record prices… except for paper money.” Both men close by zooming out. The internet is “53 years old and they’re still doing cool internet companies,” Morehead says; Bitcoin turning 17 means the asset class remains a teenager. The majority of institutions “still have 0.0” exposure. If the “one trade” persists—liquidity up, fiat down, adoption rising—then the path of least resistance, in their telling, still points higher. Or as Morehead compresses the thesis into a single line: “If you hold crypto for four or five years, I think it’s like 90% that you make money… It is that simple.” At press time, the total crypto market cap stood at $3.7 trillion. Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com

Lekker Capital CIO Quinn Thompson says the market just lived through a rare “positioning rinse” that has left crypto consensus facing the wrong direction at precisely the wrong time. “There’s about 1, at most 2, times per year where I feel like I’m seeing things at 180 degree odds with the crypto twitter consensus,” Thompson wrote on October 20, pointing to prior episodes in September 2023, September 2024, and February 2025 as similar inflection points for sentiment. “I am using the below 3 tweets to summarize consensus,” he added, linking to contemporaneous bearish posts from @qwqiao, @blknoiz06, and @cburniske to frame the prevailing mood. Why The Crypto Bull Run Highly Likely Isn’t Over Thompson’s core claim is straightforward and deliberately contrarian: the October 10 open-interest flush was not a reason to turn medium-term bearish on Bitcoin and Ethereum, but a capitulation that typically precedes strong forward returns. “Current setup for BTC and ETH is rare – largest positioning rinse in history of crypto while standing on doorstep of macro goldilocks. 10/10 liquidation cleared more leverage in $ and % of OI than entire Jan–Apr ’25 period. Opportunity ahead is similar to pre-Trump victory ’24,” he said. Related Reading: Russia’s New Crypto Framework Could Redefine Global Trade Amid Sanctions Pressure The message is not a victory lap, he emphasized: “It’s silly to even have to say this but the referenced tweets are not about being wrong or right – simply references to sentiment… Sometimes it’s better to observe more, love more and say less.” The positioning argument rests on a simple historical heuristic: selling “after” a deep deleveraging event is usually a poor trade once forced sellers have been flushed. “Anyone want to run the math on what percentage of -30–40% open interest crypto liquidation events was it a good idea to get bearish AFTER it happened?” Thompson asked He made his hypothesis explicit: “Getting medium time frame bearish, e.g. 40/80/120 days forward, after a large scale liquidation event is a poor risk/reward the vast majority of the time, especially if it is of the magnitude of the 10/10 event.” Market veteran Alex Krüger and Framework Ventures co-founder Vance Spencer each replied “0%,” a succinct endorsement of that probabilistic view. Related Reading: Crypto Market Records ‘Particularly Robust’ Q3 Performance With 16% Active Trader Growth – Report Beyond positioning, Thompson ties the crypto setup to a macro backdrop he repeatedly characterizes as “goldilocks.” In late summer, he and Felix Jauvin discussed gold’s bull case on Forward Guidance; that thesis, Thompson says, crystallized when a widely circulated image showed Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and Narendra Modi clasping hands at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit. “When this picture leaked it was nail in the coffin and the most obvious buy gold signal you could get after its 4–5 month consolidation,” he wrote, arguing that Bitcoin now sits in an analogous posture after a ~10-month consolidation. “Basically getting the same thing now… Don’t miss the forest for the trees,” pointing to Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong’s policy-push post. “Heading to D.C. tomorrow, excited to roll up our sleeves with key decision makers to get market structure to @POTUS’s desk”—as part of a constructive structural backdrop for US market plumbing. If you watch @ForwardGuidance, you will recall @fejau_inc and my gold rants back in late summer. When this picture leaked it was nail in the coffin and the most obvious buy gold signal you could get after its 4-5 month consolidation. Basically getting the same thing now after a… pic.twitter.com/ry29kkKocz — Quinn Thompson (@qthomp) October 22, 2025 At press time, BTC traded at $109,101. Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com

A rare confluence of macro catalysts will put risk assets—and by extension crypto—on edge this Friday. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has confirmed it will publish the delayed September Consumer Price Index at 8:30 a.m. ET on Friday, October 24, even as most federal data remain frozen by the ongoing government shutdown. In a short notice, the agency underscored the exceptionality of the move and added that “no other releases will be rescheduled or produced until the resumption of regular government services.” Crypto Bulls On Alert The timing is unusual on two counts. First, CPI is rarely a Friday print; The Kobeissi Letter noted via X that it would be the first Friday CPI since January 2018. Second, it lands five days before the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meets on October 28–29, compressing the policy-reaction window for the only marquee data. As Adam Kobeissi framed it: “Something unusual is happening this week: On Friday, we are receiving CPI inflation data DURING the US government shutdown… Not only is it 5 days before the October 29th Fed meeting, but it is the first time CPI data will be reported on a Friday since January 2018.” Related Reading: Has The Crypto Treasury Bubble Burst? Tom Lee Thinks So Against that backdrop, crypto strategist Nik Patel captured prevailing risk-tone logic in a morning note via X: with scarce data in a “speech-heavy” week, any print that leans above survey “will be of significance.” He argued: “Would even expect a moderately above consensus inflation print to be welcomed by the markets — I would like to see inflation breakevens bottom out here and turn higher again (and make no mistake the Fed will still be cutting into this and this combination would be bullish risk). Growth, Inflation continues to be what I expect of the next 6 months but right now we’re chewing through a period of fears around both.” The Macro Backdrop To understand why this particular CPI matters for crypto assets, consider the near-term inflation trend and the state of the Fed debate. Headline CPI rose 0.4% month-over-month in August after 0.2% in July; the year-over-year rate accelerated to 2.9% from 2.7%. Core CPI held at 3.1% YoY. Back-to-back prints earlier in the summer had suggested headline inflation was stabilizing in the high-2s: June CPI ran at 2.7% year-over-year with a 0.3% monthly gain, and July matched 2.7% YoY while core posted its largest monthly increase since January. The August re-acceleration nudged debate away from a straight-line disinflation narrative and toward a more nuanced view—one sensitive to tariffs. Related Reading: Crypto Bulls Smell Blood: SOFR–RRP Spread Hints QT Pivot By October The Fed preview is therefore unusually binary—even if the meeting dates themselves are conventional. The central bank’s October 28–29 gathering is live, with rates markets leaning toward another quarter-point cut, followed by a more contested December. But the data blackout has amplified CPI’s leverage over the policy narrative, which is why a single release can swing the perceived odds of both the October move’s size and the guidance for year-end. All of this collides with crypto’s macro-beta reality. When liquidity expectations improve—via easier financial conditions and falling real yields—large-cap tokens typically outperform; when policy turns cautious, crypto’s duration-like characteristics can cut the other way. That’s why the market is latched onto the shutdown-Friday CPI quirk. The bottom line for crypto participants is straightforward. Friday’s CPI is not just “another inflation print.” It is a rare Friday release, arriving in a data drought five days before an FOMC decision, with PMIs and sentiment hitting hours later. If it cools meaningfully, easing expectations could firm into month-end. If it surprises hot and re-validates August’s firmness, markets may still attempt to spin it as growth-positive—as Nik Patel suggested—so long as the Fed signals it will keep cutting. Either way, by compressing signal and policy into a single news cycle, the shutdown has turned one morning into the fulcrum for October’s crypto narrative. At press time, the total crypto market cap stood at $3.71 trillion. Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com

An obscure spread at the heart of US money markets just flashed a bright warning, and crypto traders are pouncing on the signal. The Secured Overnight Financing Rate (SOFR) printed 4.29% on Wednesday, while the Federal Reserve’s overnight reverse-repo (ON RRP) award rate sat at 4.00%, putting the SOFR–RRP spread at 29 basis points on a non-quarter-end day — an unusually wide gap that points to tightening funding conditions in the plumbing of the financial system. On the same day, the Fed’s Standing Repo Facility (SRF) was tapped for $6.5 billion — the largest non-quarter-end draw since its creation — as general collateral repo rates jumped, another sign of reserve frictions. Why Crypto Bulls Smell Blood The move has revived talk that the Fed’s quantitative tightening (QT) campaign is running into the same reserve-scarcity constraints that forced a policy pivot in 2019. “QT could be done by this October FOMC meeting at this rate,” On the Margin podcast host Felix Jauvin wrote on X, amplifying trader Sahil Mehta’s data point: “SOFR–RRP spread at 29bps on a random Wednesday.” Head of Growth at Horizon and Theya Joe Consorti framed the market backdrop more bluntly: “Regional banks down 4.5%. Gold at $4,300/oz. SOFR/RRP spiking. Feels like a policy response is imminent.” Those remarks reflect a widening belief among macro-sensitive crypto investors that a liquidity backstop — whether an earlier-than-planned QT halt or stepped-up repo operations — could arrive as soon as the Fed’s October 28–29 meeting. Related Reading: October 10th Crypto Crash: Expert Foresees New Wave Of Lawsuits Against A parallel market message arrived from risk assets and havens. Gold ripped through $4,300 per ounce for the first time on Thursday, while US regional banks slumped anew — recording a 4.5%–7% drop in the KBW regional bank gauges amid loan-quality headlines and rising funding costs. Those moves reinforced the “tightening liquidity, rising stress” read that macro traders mapped onto the SOFR print. Commentary on X pushed the narrative further. Analyst Furkan Yildirim argued the spread is “a classic sign of funding pressure,” adding that with the reverse-repo buffer depleted and QT ongoing, “fewer and fewer excess reserves in the system” mean “real liquidity scarcity,” especially around heavy Treasury issuance and tax days. “What’s happening here is a classic sign of funding pressure, i.e., stress in the short-term money market. In other words: Banks and major financial players are struggling to find enough cheap money to refinance overnight. We last saw this in this form in 2019, shortly before the Fed was forced to pump liquidity back into the system,” Yildirim wrote via X. Another account, @The_Prophet_, tied the move to a broader decoupling between market-based rates and the Fed’s administered corridor: “SOFR spiking above the Fed Funds rate means the interbank plumbing is tightening… The Fed will call it ‘technical.’ But history will call it ‘the moment control began to slip.’” While the rhetoric is charged, the underlying constellation — SOFR above EFFR, an elevated SOFR–RRP gap, SRF usage in mid-month — is the sort of micro-divergence that often precedes policy recalibration. Related Reading: Crypto Bull Run Ahead: Powell Just Telegraphed End Of QT Policymakers themselves have been edging in that direction. After delivering a 25 bp cut on September 17 to a 4.00%–4.25% range, Fed officials have signaled openness to further easing, and market odds lean toward additional accommodation. Governor Christopher Waller on Thursday endorsed another 25 bp move at the October meeting, and Chair Jerome Powell has acknowledged tightening financial conditions and the approaching end of QT. If the Fed does halt balance-sheet runoff this month, it would mirror the 2019 experience, when repo-market stress — SOFR briefly topped 5% and EFFR breached its target — catalyzed a fast operational pivot. For crypto, the signal chain is straightforward even if the timing isn’t: persistent funding frictions beget official liquidity backstops; backstops relax financial conditions; and looser conditions have historically supported liquidity-sensitive assets. The difference — as several macro voices cautioned — is that today’s spread isn’t euphoria, it’s strain. That nuance matters. A policy response that arrives under duress can buoy “number go up,” but it also speaks to fragility in the pipes that route collateral, cash and risk. Until the SRF usage recedes, SOFR re-anchors below fed funds, and the ON RRP buffer stops scraping the floor, the plumbing is telling you what the charts can’t: liquidity is getting dear, and the clock is running toward October 28–29. At press time, the total crypto market cap stood at $3.6 trillion. Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com

Crypto analyst Kevin (Kev Capital TA) says Jerome Powell has effectively signaled the wind-down of the Federal Reserve’s quantitative tightening program—an inflection he argues has historically unlocked altcoin outperformance and could underpin the next broad crypto rally. In a video analysis posted yesterday, Kevin framed Powell’s appearance at the National Association for Business Economics forum yesterday as unusually balance-sheet centric and tantamount to advance guidance: “This man came out today and literally sat there and spoke about the balance sheet the entire time… he telegraphed… we’re probably going to end the quantitative tightening program in the coming months.” He added, “The Fed telegraphs what they’re going to do with monetary policy… they don’t want to come out in surprise rate cuts or surprise rate hikes.” Several experts like BitMEX founder Arthur Hayes and Walter Bloomberg confirmed the interpretation via X. There you have it, QT is over. Back up the fucking truck and buy everything. pic.twitter.com/kQbpBSOlOU — Arthur Hayes (@CryptoHayes) October 14, 2025 FED’S POWELL: MAY BE APPROACHING END OF BALANCE SHEET CONTRACTION ‘IN COMING MONTHS’ — *Walter Bloomberg (@DeItaone) October 14, 2025 Start Of The Crypto Bull Run Kevin’s core claim is unambiguous: durable altcoin cycles have required a neutral or expanding Fed balance sheet, and QT has marked their demise. “We know the correlation between the Fed’s balance sheet and durable altcoin outperformance is literally one-to-one… That’s it. That’s the correlation. It’s one to one. It’s 100% hit rate,” he said, pointing to a multi-year chart of “total others versus Bitcoin” that he has tracked “for years.” According to his read, every time QT has started, altcoins have entered a bear market against BTC; when the balance sheet has shifted to neutral or QE, “altcoin season is able to occur.” The timing around last week’s violent cross-market liquidation reinforced his thesis, in his view. Kevin noted that “as soon as we see a 70–80% crash on altcoins on their USD pairs and then total others versus Bitcoin taps this major support level… three days after that, Powell comes out and telegraphs… we’re going to end [QT] in the coming months.” He stopped short of alleging intent—“I don’t like to go down the rabbit hole of manipulation… it just seems a little odd”—but argued the macro liquidity pivot now appears in sight: “All we know is that the Fed did telegraph that they are going to be ending QT, and that should be happening either by the end of the year or first thing next year.” Related Reading: Most Coordinated Attack In Crypto History? What Led To $19 Billion In Losses As Bitcoin Price Crashed While his macro read is overtly constructive, Kevin emphasized he is not trading it blindly. ” In practice, he is waiting for validation across two pillars: Bitcoin’s higher-timeframe moving averages and the USDT dominance structure. On Bitcoin, he repeated a rule he has used across cycles: “Anytime Bitcoin has lost the 2-day 200 SMA and EMA, the cycle was over. Anytime Bitcoin has lost the 50-week SMA on the weekly time frame, the cycle was over.” He located the current “cycle validators” around the rising band that, on his charts, spans “$102,000 to $96,500,” with $98,000/$96,000 the approximate line in the sand. “If you break $98K, slash $96.5K on multiple weekly closes… the cycle’s probably over,” he said. The stablecoin gauge—USDT dominance—remains his market metronome. Kevin described a “classic textbook macro descending triangle” in USDT.D with a “flat bottom” near “3.9%–3.7%” and lower highs into two-week moving averages. “There’s a 70–80% chance that this descending triangle ends up breaking down and crypto goes higher,” he said, cautioning that a minority of such formations do break up. “I don’t plan on doing a thing until it does break… I ain’t going to be the guy who sat here this entire time tracking this incredible pattern… and then deviate away from it now.” What To Watch Now Beyond liquidity, Kevin addressed the perennial four-year-cycle debate head-on. By his dashboards—ROI since halving, ROI since cycle bottom—“you’re at the end of the cycle… the four-year cycle’s over.” But he argued that macro still governs whether price must top on schedule. Related Reading: Crypto Crash Triggered By Binance Margin Exploit, Uphold Research Chief Claims Running a “process of elimination,” he said the backdrop does not currently resemble 2021’s inflation shock or a clear earnings/bubble unraveling, though he acknowledged exogenous risks such as renewed US–China tariff escalation. “Unless something macro-related durably tops this market, there’s still a chance that it goes higher,” he said. “Crypto is not invulnerable to the macro… all markets are literally tied one-to-one to the macro. Period.” Technically, he remains cautious on breadth. He highlighted persistent weekly bearish divergences on Bitcoin, Total2 (large-cap ex-BTC), and Total3 (ex-BTC, ex-ETH), and the failure to secure decisive weekly closes above “120K–125K,” which, in his words, produced “two weekly reversal candles [and] a monthly reversal candle” and “lower highs in the weekly RSI.” The August-to-present message, he said, has been consistent: “Be cautious… If you’re in altcoins from way lower, take some profits… Don’t buy anything right now… wait for a resolution.” Still, the QT call is the pivot he’s watching most closely. “We are at a critical stage in the history of crypto… I want a definitive answer.” At press time, the total crypto market cap stood at $3.79 trillion. Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com

Crypto absorbed its largest liquidation shock of 2025, with the heaviest single-day wipeouts since summer 2023 for ETH and SOL and the biggest since June for BTC, triggering a sharp, sentiment-driven downdraft across majors and large-cap altcoins. In a video analysis published today, analyst CryptoInsightUK urged restraint and argued that the move looks like a leverage flush rather than a structural break, pointing to liquidity maps, momentum gauges, and market-cap composites that, in his view, still skew constructive once the dust settles. Do not rush and panic this morning,” he said at the outset. “The only rush and panic thing that you should be doing at this time is if you just want to buy spot… nothing has really changed at all.” He framed the sell-off against near-all-time-high closes last week across market-cap aggregates: Total2 (ex-BTC) “closed at about $1.66–$1.67 trillion,” Total3 (ex-BTC, ex-ETH) at “$1.13 trillion,” and total crypto market cap just shy of $4 trillion at “$3.96.” The message, he said, is to “zoom out,” assess structure, and watch for a familiar bottoming sequence that often follows abrupt long liquidations. Related Reading: Crypto Leverage Whipeout: $600M+ In BTC & ETH Longs Liquidated The analyst’s short-term roadmap hinges on a classic liquidity sweep plus momentum divergence. After a vertical wick clears resting bids and tripping stops, he looks for price to “chop,” revisit—and marginally undercut—the intraday low, while the RSI sets a higher low. “What we’re looking for structurally… is a higher low on the RSI, perfect if it’s in the oversold area… when we have a higher low on the RSI and a lower low in price action… the momentum of the selling is waning,” he said, calling this setup a reliable reversal tell “the higher the timeframe, the better.” Crypto Watch: ETH, XRP, DOGE, ADA He cited fresh examples across majors. For ETH, a drawdown from “about $4,400 down to $4,000” knifed through a “dense” cluster of below-price liquidity that had accumulated for weeks. “This is the first time we’ve seen more liquidity above us than we have below since” the prior five-wave advance, he argued, consistent with an ABC correction that may be maturing. XRP, he said, “pinpointed” its only notable pocket of sub-price liquidity, wicking to $2.66, a level he mapped against $2.8–$2.69. He now sees the “main liquidity… above us for XRP at $3.40, while allowing that a brief wick-fill toward today’s low could complete the divergence pattern he’s watching. Bitcoin’s dominance spike during the flush also fits his playbook. He described the dominance RSI as “massively overbought… probably like on the hourly as overbought as I’ve seen it,” noting that prior forays into this zone have coincided with local peaks in BTC relative strength before rotation back into large caps and selective alts. That context—together with his “zoomed-out” view—underpins his claim that “bullish sentiment gets rewarded over time,” even if the path includes unnerving resets. Dogecoin, he cautioned, can still probe the $0.19–$0.20 zone after reclaiming the $0.22 support region, but he flagged that the 4-hour RSI is as depressed as at prior cyclical lows. He disclosed a “2x” DOGE long around $0.225, acknowledging no hard stop given his conviction in the higher-timeframe trend and accepting the risk of further chop. Related Reading: The Fed Just Changed Everything For Crypto, Says Top Trader Cardano “wicked into” a mapped liquidity shelf near $0.77, with “main liquidity… up at $1.00 and $1.20” on the daily, a configuration he views as asymmetrically favorable once the market stabilizes. What To Watch Now Throughout, he emphasized that today’s damage was amplified by leverage, not fundamentals. “We’ve had a liquidity flush,” he said, referencing a social post he saw that “a billion dollars of leverage got flushed out in 30 minutes.” For him, that is “positive; we want to see this leverage reset.” He cautioned that near-term direction is hostage to US cash-market flows—“The US might wake up and… sell, or… buy the [dip]”—but insisted the larger structures are intact: “Weekly… we’re still sitting at all-time highs… Whether the top’s in or not, I don’t think so. I really, really, really, really, really don’t think so.” His near-term checklist is straightforward: let volatility run its course, look for the RSI higher-low against a marginal price lower-low, and respect predefined support/target zones. “Take your emotion away and look for structures that you know are bottoming structures,” he said. The trader psychology, in his telling, is as critical as the levels. “These things happen and it feels like a culmination of sentiment… anger, frustration, and now probably despair… If it’s too much… go for a run,” he advised, adding that “the market doesn’t care” about anyone’s mood and will “do what it’s going to do anyway.” If the “real storm” is still to come, he implies it’s the post-flush move that matters—whether a final liquidity sweep completes the divergence or a swift rotation lifts majors into the overhead liquidity he’s mapped. Either way, he argues, the decisive phase is ahead, not behind: “Let’s see how things play out… It’s not a time to panic… If you want to be buying things… when we’re oversold like this, it’s a decent time to buy,” he said. At press time, ETH traded at $4,185. Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com

The Federal Reserve’s first rate cut of 2025 has landed—25 basis points on September 17—and, in Trader Mayne’s telling, that removes the last macro “X-factor” hanging over the crypto market. In a video analysis posted the same day, the veteran price-action trader argued that with the policy move now in the rear-view mirror, crypto can “just focus on the charts,” sketching a roadmap in which Bitcoin posts one more leg higher into new all-time highs before a pullback ushers in a classic altseason blow-off. “We had FOMC today and the rates got cut finally… It’s 25 basis points,” he said. “Now the market’s going to digest it.” Where Is Bitcoin Price Going Next? The policy backdrop he’s reacting to is straightforward: the FOMC lowered the fed funds target range by a quarter point to 4.00%–4.25% on Sept. 17, with Chair Jerome Powell describing the move as a risk-management response to weakening labor dynamics and leaving the door open to additional easing this year. The decision drew an 11–1 vote, with newly appointed Governor Stephen Miran dissenting in favor of a larger, 50 bps cut—an unusually hawkish dissent in a dovish direction—while the Board’s implementation note reset key administered rates effective Sept. 18. Markets read the statement and projections as signaling scope for further cuts into year-end. Related Reading: Crucial Ten Days Ahead For Crypto: Will They Ignite Mega Altcoin Season? From here, Mayne’s framework is unapologetically technical. He characterizes Bitcoin’s most recent upswing as corrective relative to the prior impulse and expects price to “push above the mid-range” toward a range high around $120,000–$121,000, where he will watch for rejection at a higher-time-frame confluence defined by a weekly swing-failure pattern (SFP) and an H12 breaker. If momentum stalls there, he plans to short into a washout to clear out built-up leverage—“HYPE made another all-time high today. PUMP has tripled in the last two weeks… there’s some leverage in the system”—and then buy the dip for what he calls the last parabolic leg of the cycle. “Any sort of dip on BTC, I want to be looking for a long,” he said, adding that a shallow retest in the $110,000–$111,000 area or a deeper sweep of recent lows would both be acceptable springboards if the rebound is decisive. If, instead, price grinds through the $120,000 s with no signs of exhaustion, Mayne says he has “no problem” flipping to breakout longs above the all-time high once strength is confirmed intraday—an approach that mirrors his playbook from prior expansions (“Once this thing broke out aggressively… you’re looking for longs”). He emphasizes sequence over prediction: the short he’s eyeing is counter-trend—“a pullback in an uptrend”—and the prime objective remains to position for the next impulsive advance. When Will The Crypto Market Top? Timing-wise, he situates the prospective cycle top in Q4 2025 or Q1 2026, describing a pattern in which Bitcoin’s final vertical leg into the $150,000 to $180,000 region is followed by distribution while altcoins reprice higher—the archetypal altseason. “This parabolic leg I think would be the last leg of the bull run,” he said, before outlining notional alt targets consistent with a late-cycle melt-up: Ethereum $5,000–$7,000, Solana $300–$500, Dogecoin $0.50–$0.70. The mechanics, as he narrates them: a last BTC push, a corrective wash, a V-shaped reclaim of the 2024 ATH “very quickly,” then Q4 “mania” with breadth shifting to large-cap alts as Bitcoin distributes. Related Reading: December 2024 Crypto Crash Signal Returns As Altcoins Go Wild The technical scaffolding behind that view leans on concepts familiar to discretionary price-action traders. Weekly SFPs (failed breaks of prior extremes) set the trap line at range edges; H12 breakers and order blocks frame high-probability reaction zones; and fair-value gaps guide where liquidity vacuums might fill during a corrective flush. On structure, he insists the weekly trend remains up, so any short is tactical and any deeper dip must resolve in a swift V-bottom and reclaim of the former highs to keep the cyclical script intact. His invalidation is equally clear: “If we spend any significant time back below [the 2024 all-time high], it’s really bad… I’m probably going to reassess my thoughts.” Macro, in Mayne’s view, now recedes to the background. The rate cut may have helped pull forward some September strength—“you could argue… the up move we’ve seen on Bitcoin… is in anticipation of this rate cut”—but with the decision made and Powell hinting there “could be another one… there could be two,” his emphasis is squarely on execution: wait for price to trade into the $120,000s and signal weakness for the clean counter-trend short; or, absent weakness, wait for the breakout continuation and ride it. Either way, he’s explicit about the north star for the coming weeks: “Focus on Bitcoin… Any sort of dip on BTC, I want to be looking for a long… Then altseason.” At press time, BTC traded at $117,176. Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com

Crypto analyst Maartunn (@JA_Maartun) warned on September 14 that a familiar—and historically unfriendly—market pattern has reappeared: speculative leverage pouring into altcoins while Bitcoin’s derivatives positioning stays conspicuously muted. “History doesn’t repeat, but it often rhymes, and right now a major warning signal is flashing,” he said, stressing that his message is not to incite panic but to flag a shift in market climate that “any smart investor” should not ignore. At the core of Maartunn’s diagnosis is open interest, the notional value of active futures and perpetual positions across venues. “We keep throwing around this term, open interest. What is it? Well, to put it simply, it’s a way to measure the total amount of money and active bets in the market. When open interest rises, it means new money, often speculative money, is coming in,” he explained. Crypto’s ‘Musical Chairs’ Moment In his read, altcoin open interest is “through the roof,” while Bitcoin—“the anchor of the whole market”—is flat. The divergence, he argued, is precisely what preceded the late-2024 drawdown. “Altcoin speculation is heating up — the gap between BTC and Altcoin Open Interest just hit a new high,” Maartuun wrote via X. Maartunn anchored his warning in a recent analogue. “Back in December of 2024, the exact same story played out. Altcoin speculation was running wild, while Bitcoin was just stagnating. And the result? It wasn’t pretty.” The immediate aftermath, he recalled, was a sharp, broad-based markdown and then a tedious consolidation. Related Reading: Crypto Faces Liquidity Endgame—Debt And Inflation Risks Mount By 2026 “We’re talking [about] a 30% drop,” he said of Bitcoin’s move, adding that such declines “don’t happen in a vacuum.” Liquidity retreats to safety, correlations rise, and “those high-flying, speculative altcoins… get hit the hardest.” What followed was “three whole months” of rangebound “chop modus,” a period that historically bleeds momentum strategies and punishes late-cycle leverage. To illustrate how leverage-heavy phases can abruptly unravel, he leaned on a metaphor. “It’s a high-stakes game of musical chairs,” he said. As long as flows are positive, “the party’s in full swing, and everyone feels like a genius.” The structural risk emerges at the moment “the music stops”—an adverse headline, an exogenous macro shock, or simply fatigued bid depth. “Everyone makes a mad dash for a chair, for safety. But in a panic, there just aren’t enough chairs for everybody, and someone always gets left holding the bag.” In crypto’s derivatives-driven microstructure, that dash translates into forceful de-risking and liquidations that can cascade across thin order books. Related Reading: Kraken Co-CEO And Barry Silbert Warn Of Crypto Bubble; 99% Tokens Could Tank Crucially, Maartunn framed his assessment as situational risk—not a deterministic crash call. “This isn’t about predicting a crash or trying to cause a panic, not at all,” he said at the outset. The point, rather, is to recognize that the “growing split in the market” between exuberant altcoin leverage and a subdued Bitcoin base “can’t last forever.” “The level of risk in the market has clearly gone up,” he concluded. “The music is absolutely still playing, but it’s probably a good time to know where the emergency exits are.” The open question is the one he leaves viewers with: whether this is merely “the market… enjoying the music before another painful dip,” as in December 2024, or whether “this time really [is] different.” In either case, Maartunn’s thesis hinges on the same observable setup: a momentum-chasing build-up of altcoin derivatives exposure with no confirming expansion in Bitcoin’s positioning. If the past is a guide, the divergence is less a timing tool than a warning label on the current phase of the cycle—one that tends to end not when everyone expects it, but when liquidity blinks. At press time, the total crypto market cap stood $4.0 trillion. Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com

Raoul Pal’s latest “Journey Man” episode brings back Michael Howell, CEO of CrossBorder Capital, for a sweeping tour of the liquidity landscape that has propelled risk assets like crypto for nearly three years. Both agree the global liquidity cycle is “late,” still advancing but increasingly mature, with its eventual peak most likely pushed into 2026 by policy engineering, bill-heavy issuance, and rising use of private-sector conduits. The investment implication running through the conversation is unambiguous: long-duration assets—crypto and technology equities—remain the primary beneficiaries of ongoing currency debasement, yet the endgame is now visible on the horizon as a wall of debt refinancing and inflation risk approaches. How Long Will The Liquidity Cycle Push Crypto Higher? Howell’s high-level assessment is stark. “We’re late. It’s not inflecting downwards yet—we’re still in an upswing—but… the liquidity cycle is about 34 months old. That’s pretty mature.” In his framework, cycles typically run five to six years. Pal’s Everything Code—a synthesis of demographics, debt, and the policy liquidity needed to roll that debt—arrives at a similar destination, albeit with a slightly shorter cadence and a crucial timing nuance. “My view is it’s been extended,” Pal says, adding that the peak “normally would have finished sometime this end of this year, but it feels like it’s going to push out.” Howell places the likely turn “around about early 2026,” with his model’s latest estimate at March 2026, while Pal is “in the camp of Q2” 2026. The difference is tactical; the thrust is the same: the late-cycle rally can run further, but investors are now operating inside the final act. At the center of that act is what Howell calls a structural transition “from Fed QE to Treasury QE.” The US Treasury’s heavy tilt to short-dated bills over coupons lowers the average duration of paper held by the private sector. “Very crudely, we tend to think that liquidity is equal to an asset divided by its duration,” Howell explains. Reducing duration mechanically boosts system liquidity. That issuance profile also corrals volatility and creates powerful bid auras: banks gladly absorb bills to match deposit growth, and, increasingly, so do stablecoin issuers managing cash to T-bill ladders. “If any credit provider buys government debt—particularly short-dated stuff—it’s monetization,” Howell notes. The result, in Pal’s summary, is that policymakers have shifted from balance-sheet expansion to a more complex “total liquidity” regime, where banks, money funds, and even crypto-native entities become the delivery rails of debasement. Related Reading: Elliott Management Warns Of ‘Inevitable Crypto Collapse’ Linked To White House Support The debate over near-term Fed liquidity hinges on reserves and the Treasury General Account. The quarterly refunding blueprint has telegraphed a rebuild of the TGA toward the high-hundreds of billions. Howell is unconvinced it happens quickly or fully, because draining that much cash would risk a repo spread spike, something the Fed and Treasury appear determined to avoid. “Everything I hear… is they want to manage that liquidity. They don’t want to pull the rips on the markets,” he argues, adding that the Fed has effectively been targeting a minimum level of bank reserves since last summer’s stress-test changes. “The Federal Reserve controls bank reserves in aggregate completely,” Howell says. Even if the TGA edges higher, “you can find other ways of injecting liquidity… through Treasury QE or getting the banks to buy debt.” Global Liquidity Remains Strong The global overlay is every bit as important. Europe and Japan, as Howell frames it, are net-adding liquidity; China has moved decisively to ease via the PBoC’s toolkit—repos, outright OMOs, and medium-term lending—after a stop-start attempt in 2023. Chinese 10-year yields and term premia have started to firm from depressed levels, which, paradoxically for asset allocators, “can be good” if it signals escape from debt-deflation toward reflation and a commodity up-cycle. “If you get this big Chinese stimulus continuing… that should mean stronger commodity markets,” Howell argues, with Pal adding that a revived China would restore the missing engine of the global business cycle even as liquidity remains the dominant market driver. Japan is the outlier with a fascinating twist. Disaggregating term premia shows the selling is concentrated in the ultra-long end, not the belly or front of the curve. Howell’s inference is a duration rotation rather than a full-curve sovereign dump—“a switch from bonds into equities”—consistent with mild-inflation regimes that favor stocks. Why tolerate it? Howell floats two possibilities: Japan “actually want[s] some inflation,” which quietly erodes debt burdens, and, more speculatively, “the Japanese are being told to ease monetary policy by the US Treasury,” keeping the yen weak to pressure China. He is careful to caveat, but the pattern—persistent yen weakness despite strong equity inflows—fits the policy-coordination narrative that Pal has long emphasized. The U.K. and France, by contrast, look like textbook supply-shock sovereigns. Here, term premia have risen across the curve, reflecting heavy issuance, swelling welfare-state obligations, and weak growth. Howell highlights that the U.K.’s “underlying term premium [is] up over 100 basis points in the last 12 months,” a move that cannot be waved away as a single budget misstep. The policy menu is narrow: higher taxes, eventual spending restraint (likely only enforced by a crisis or an IMF-style conditionality), and, ultimately, some form of monetization—whether relabeled QE, regulatory loosening to stuff more gilts into bank balance sheets, or de-facto yield-curve management. “Let’s not say never for [monetization] because that’s almost inevitably what’s going to happen,” Howell says. Hovering over all of it is the dollar. On Howell’s preferred real trade-weighted lens, the dollar remains in a secular up-channel with a cyclical correction in train. Rest-of-world balance-of-payments data still show net inflows to the dollar system. Pal and Howell agree that the administration wants a weaker dollar cyclically to ease the refinancing of the roughly half of global debt that is dollar-denominated, even if the dollar remains “fundamentally strong” as the world’s primary collateral system. That’s the paradox Pal underscores: “A weaker dollar allows people to refinance their debts… That ends up being the debasement of currency, even though you get dollar inflows.” Related Reading: Crypto At Risk — JPMorgan Warns Fed Cut Could Spark Crash In that debasement regime, both men argue, long-duration, liquidity-sensitive assets lead. “You’ve got to start thinking about how to invest in the monetary inflation world,” Howell says. Pal is explicit about the winners: technology and, crucially, crypto. He frames both as living within “log trend channels” that extend higher as cycles are elongated by policy engineering. The 2021 crypto blow-off, in his telling, was a sunset cycle; this time, the extension lengthens the price runway. Gold also fits the mosaic, but with a twist in its driver set. Pal observes that gold has decoupled from real rates and is now “highly correlated with financial conditions,” poised to break from a wedge if the dollar weakens and rates ease. Crypto stablecoins occupy a pivotal, and underappreciated, role in the architecture. Howell calls them a “conduit” for public-sector credit creation, while warning that deposits migrating from banks to stablecoins can curb traditional credit growth. Pal widens the lens: stablecoins are effectively a “fractionalized eurodollar market down to individual level,” giving any household in any jurisdiction access to dollar liquidity and, by extension, democratizing the demand base for US bills. It is not lost on either man that Europe is scrambling for its own digital-money answer, even if politics likely forces a central-bank-led route. The risks now crowd the 2026–2027 window. The COVID-era terming-out of corporate and sovereign debt will need to be rolled in size at meaningfully higher coupons. Howell also flags a cash-flow squeeze emanating from the corporate capex boom: “US tech companies [are] currently investing, what is it, a billion dollars a day in IT and infrastructure… over a couple of years that’s going to take about a trillion dollars out of money markets.” That drains liquidity even as profits rise. His historical analogue is the late-1980s sequence—rising yields, commodities firming, a policy signal misread, then an abrupt liquidity turn that cracked equities. He is not forecasting a crash, but he is clear that “we’re nearer the end than… the beginning.” For now, neither man is bearish on the next three to six months. Pal’s Global Macro Investor financial conditions index points to an expansion, and Howell expects “pretty decent Fed liquidity” to persist as authorities avoid repo stress and lean on duration management. “Through year end… generally I think it’s okay,” Howell says. “We will get wiggles… but the trend is intact and continues for a while.” The operative phrase is his earlier one: steady as she goes—into the liquidity endgame. Crypto sits squarely in that cross-current, the prime expression of monetary inflation even as the calendar inexorably advances toward a refinancing test that will decide whether today’s engineered extension ends in a soft plateau or a sharper turn. At press time, the total crypto market cap stood at $3.95 trillion. Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com

Macro analyst Alex Krüger says the weekend’s sell-off has likely marked a tradable low for the crypto market, arguing that the move closely mirrors the 2024 “August crash” that bottomed on a Monday. “I see the current move as a smaller scale replay of last year’s August crash (which bottomed on Monday),” Krüger wrote on late-Friday in a post on X, adding that he would “be looking to add to longs on Monday, ideally before the US cash open,” if the overnight session remained panicky. He framed the decline as a classic shakeout rather than the start of a new downtrend. Krüger’s read hinges on macro first, crypto second. He notes that 2024’s August break came in a sequence—BoJ tightening, a hawkish FOMC, then weak payrolls—and he sees the present sequence as “similar.” There was no carry-trade impulse this time, he said, but markets digested a modestly hawkish Fed, mixed Big Tech earnings, a hotter-than-expected PCE inflation print, and finally a “horrid” US payrolls report—after which risk assets slid in tandem and crypto tracked equities lower. The latest PCE data, released July 31, showed headline inflation accelerating to 2.6% year over year and core PCE at 2.8%, a notch above forecasts—what Krüger summarized as “slightly hot.” Related Reading: Crypto Hacks Surge 27% In July: $142M Stolen As 2025 Trend Continues Earnings tape-bombs reinforced the risk-off mood. Microsoft and Meta beat estimates and initially rallied, while Apple’s reception was cooler and Amazon’s results were “very poorly received,” with AMZN sliding about 7–8% as investors questioned AWS’s momentum. Coinbase’s report landed at the other extreme for crypto beta: revenue missed expectations and the stock fell, a backdrop Krüger called “dreadful” for sentiment. “Even though the aforementioned concerns emboldened bears, this week’s move has been mainly a macro story, given how crypto traded mostly in line with equity indices,” he wrote. He also flagged an unusual political and geopolitical coda to this weekend’s rout. After the weak jobs report—plus an unusually stark revision by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, May and June were revised down by a combined 258,000 jobs—markets lurched, and the White House’s subsequent decision to reposition two US nuclear submarines amid heated exchanges with Moscow added to stress, he said. Kremlin officials later tried to downplay escalation risk, calling the submarine moves “routine.” Krüger called the nuclear rhetoric and presidential barbs at the Fed “noise” for markets, but said the combination likely helped flush leveraged positions into the close. On crypto-specific drivers, Krüger listed a cluster of narratives that, in his view, amplified bearish conviction without changing the macro center of gravity: disappointing Coinbase results; debate around whether MicroStrategy could curtail its at-the-market equity issuance, limiting incremental BTC buys; questions about the sustainability of “DATs” (digital-asset treasury companies) tied to ETH; and, on the other side of the ledger, the SEC’s new “Project Crypto,” a policy push to modernize securities rules and move more market infrastructure on-chain—“an extremely bullish development that should drive inflows later in the year,” as he put it. The SEC’s chair outlined “American Leadership in the Digital Finance Revolution” last week, framing tokenization and on-chain market plumbing as a regulatory priority. Related Reading: Trump-Appointed Group Calls For Easier Crypto Regulations From Federal Authorities Krüger’s base case is timing-driven: either crypto “bottomed after today’s close, given the sheer violence of that final dump, or will be bottoming together with equities on Monday.” In his plan, the trigger to add risk was early Monday—assuming the overnight remained disorderly—on the view that the analog to August 2024 would rhyme at the turn of the week. “A violent shakeout,” he wrote, not a regime change. He remains constructive into the fourth quarter, citing three pillars: a still-solid US economy, the start of Fed rate cuts, and a steadily improving regulatory climate that should broaden institutional and retail participation. Policy churn could amplify that path. Krüger pointed to Fed Governor Adriana Kugler’s resignation—effective this month—as a potentially market-relevant shift because it hands the White House an earlier-than-expected Board vacancy, and to former Fed Governor Kevin Warsh’s call for a new “Treasury–Fed accord” as a signpost for constraints on central-bank independence. On Monday he added, “This will prove to be very important later on,” citing Warsh’s argument about “limits on the Fed’s independence to help the govt with its finances.” Whether those institutional dynamics translate into earlier or deeper rate cuts remains open, but markets have already moved to price odds to 85% for a September cut following the payrolls miss. Krüger’s longer arc is unabashedly bullish but explicitly conditional on the macro. “I remain bullish on crypto into Q4,” he wrote, while warning that ETH-linked treasury plays could “lose momentum dramatically” later in the year if goods inflation re-accelerates as corporates pass tariffs through. He set a one-year Bitcoin target for mid-2026 at $200,000–$250,000—“extreme, but possible”—on the premise that a more dovish Fed in 2026 would coincide with ongoing adoption. For now, he is treating last week’s cascade as an echo of 2024’s Monday bottom. As he put it: “Now let’s see how this ages.” At press time, BTC recovered to $ Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com

In his latest market rundown, Amsterdam-based trader and educator Michaël van de Poppe warns that “retail isn’t here in the markets as of yet” and notes that the widely-followed Altcoin Season Index is still languishing around 29—well below the 50-point threshold that would signal a rotation out of Bitcoin and into the broader market. Against that still-cautious backdrop, Van de Poppe argues that the recent 38–42 percent rebound in the ETH/BTC pair is the first concrete sign of capital rotating down the risk curve, echoing on-chain data that show Ethereum clawing back ground after months of under-performance. “We’ve had a 40% return against Bitcoin in just a week,” he says, “and therefore the blue chips or the large caps are the ones to watch.” Crypto Watchlist: Top 5 Altcoins Van de Poppe’s thesis rests on a classic money-flow model: funds move from Bitcoin to Ethereum, then to large-cap altcoins, mid-caps and, finally, into the smallest caps once animal spirits truly take hold. With that framework in mind, he singles out five names that he believes sit at different rungs of the risk ladder, each with a specific macro- or sector-level tail-wind. Related Reading: Crypto Bulls Just Got Their Macro Wake-Up Call: Here’s Why The first pick, Chainlink (LINK), is Van de Poppe’s “easiest play” on institutional adoption because “we require oracles to provide data in the web-3 space to connect between web 2 and web 3.” The analyst emphasises that LINK’s bitcoin-denominated chart is “still at an all-time low,” suggesting asymmetric upside if a true altseason materialises. Next on the large-cap list is Aave (AAVE). Van de Poppe calls the decentralised lending protocol “a large cap which implies less risk,” but adds that the market is under-pricing its role in bringing bank-grade yield products on-chain. Notably, the token has attracted high-profile flows this cycle—Donald Trump–linked World Liberty Financial disclosed cumulative AAVE purchases alongside LINK and ETH earlier this year. Moving down the capitalization spectrum, the analyst turns to Wormhole (W), a cross-chain messaging and liquidity layer he describes as “being used to transfer between the chains,” with revenues that cycle back into the protocol. He flags its selection as exclusive bridge infrastructure for multiple real-world-asset initiatives in which “tokenised T-bill funds” migrate across networks. Wormhole’s fundamentals received a liquidity boost when Binance listed the W token with four trading pairs on 3 April 2024, broadening access for retail and institutional desks alike. Related Reading: Analysis: Crypto Heats Up As $35 Billion Enters Market In Under A Month For investors willing to venture further out on the risk curve, Van de Poppe highlights Peaq (PEAQ), a layer-1 focused on DePIN and the machine economy. “It’s the largest ecosystem within the machine economy and … finally waking up again,” he says, citing on-chain data that already show more than 50 companies and six-million devices active on the network. He argues that growing transaction counts and cross-industry partnerships make PEAQ “interesting for an investment thesis” at current valuations. His smallest-cap mention is Alkimi (ADS), which he dubs “an advertising project” whose revenue “has gone 4x from $1.2 million to $5 million” even as the token corrected from $0.50 to $0.10 during the recent macro-driven sell-off. Alkimi positions itself as a decentralised ad exchange designed to cut supply-chain fees and provide on-chain transparency, a use-case the company claims can slash CPMs by over 200 percent for advertisers. Van de Poppe closes with portfolio construction advice rather than price targets. “The larger the market cap, the longer it’s in business, the larger your allocation can be because the lower the risk involved. The smaller and newer the project, the smaller the allocation,” he says. At press time, the total crypto market cap stood at $3.18 trillion. Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com

An unprecedented surge in the Philadelphia Federal Reserve’s May Manufacturing Business Outlook Survey has jolted global risk markets and given crypto asset traders their clearest macro catalyst of the year. The Future New Orders diffusion index leapt by forty-plus points, a move that Julien Bittel, head of macro research at Global Macro Investor (GMI), called “literally” historic. Crypto Bulls Can Rejoice Bittel’s commentary on X framed the print with statistical precision: “Philly Fed data for May dropped yesterday – and the Future New Orders index just made history. Literally. … Expectations for new orders posted the largest monthly spike ever recorded – going all the way back to the index’s inception in May 1968. A staggering +4.3 standard deviation move. He underlined the shock with a comparison few macro watchers will forget: For perspective: that’s an even bigger move up than the downside collapse during the depths of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis (-4.1σ). Let that sink in…” Bittel then set the surge in a broader narrative that has animated his research since late last year. “Q1 growth was weak. The reason is straightforward – financial conditions tightened sharply in Q4. The dollar ripped, bond yields surged… a classic tightening phase,” he wrote. Related Reading: Analysis: Crypto Heats Up As $35 Billion Enters Market In Under A Month The proximate trigger, in his telling, was “businesses panic‑loading inventories ahead of Trump tariffs, and markets front‑running the inflation narrative.” Those dynamics, he argued, are a replay of Donald Trump’s first term: “We’ve highlighted repeatedly: this had all the hallmarks of Q4 2016 during Trump’s first term. Just like early 2017, that tightening spilled over into slower growth momentum in Q1.” Where 2017 began with doubt and ended in a synchronous global boom, Bittel believes 2025 is rhyming. “Those Q1 headwinds have flipped into Q2 tailwinds,” he insisted. “Everything flows downstream from changes in financial conditions… Purchasing managers’ expectations are shifting – and shifts in thinking eventually translate into action. Sentiment shifts first. Action follows. It always does. Bullish.” The crypto market responded muted. Bitcoin reclaimed the $104,000 level in early‑European trade, but lost it later on. Ether steadied near $2,600, and high‑beta layer‑one tokens such as Solana and Avalanche moved in tandem. Related Reading: Ethereum Gains Momentum Amid Flat Funding Rates – Is This A Healthy Uptrend? Giancarlo Cudrig, head of markets at Immutable, said the scale of the shock is less important than how under‑positioned investors are for an upside growth surprise. “An upside economic shock like this – +4.3σ on new orders – is rare. But the bigger story is market positioning. Asset prices are not prepared. The melt‑up is the asymmetric risk. Now it’s being repriced.” Independent analyst Market Heretic struck a similar note on X: “When this dropped, markets didn’t even blink. Because the shift’s already in motion. This wasn’t news, it was confirmation. That’s the real tell, when markets shrug off a four‑sigma upside shock. It means the turn is already upon us – and it’s just getting started.” For crypto investors, the implications are immediate. A softer dollar and retreating real‑yield expectations reduce the opportunity cost of holding non‑yielding assets, while the early phase of a reflationary turn historically favours high‑beta exposures. Bittel’s own playbook is unambiguous: “Sentiment shifts first. Action follows.” As long as that chain reaction continues, the crypto bulls appear to have both math and momentum on their side. At press time, the total crypto market cap stood at $3.28 trillion. Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com

Crypto markets edged lower Monday following a stark warning from Goldman Sachs, which raised its 12-month US recession probability to 35%, citing rising tariffs, weakening growth, and deteriorating sentiment. The reassessment follows the firm’s second upward revision in March to its 2025 US tariff expectations, signaling an increasingly fraught macroeconomic environment with direct implications for risk assets — including cryptocurrencies. In the note titled “US Economics Analyst: A Further Increase in Our Tariff Assumptions”, Goldman economists Alec Phillips, Tim Walker, and David Mericle outline their rationale: “We now expect the average US tariff rate to rise 15pp in 2025 […] almost the entire revision reflects a more aggressive assumption for ‘reciprocal’ tariffs.” Goldman anticipates that President Trump will announce across-the-board reciprocal tariffs averaging 15% on April 2. Adjusted for product and country exclusions, the effective rise in average tariffs is expected to be around 9 percentage points. Related Reading: Crypto Market Cap Evolution Shows Diverging Trends Among Top Digital Asset The impact on the macro outlook is stark: Goldman has downgraded its 2025 US GDP growth forecast by 0.5pp to 1.0% (Q4/Q4), lifted its year end core PCE inflation forecast to 3.5% (+0.5pp), and increased its unemployment projection to 4.5% (+0.3pp). These revisions reflect a stagnating growth environment paired with inflationary pressures — a combination that constrains monetary stimulus options. The bank attributes the rise in recession probability to three key factors: a lower growth baseline; deteriorating household and business confidence; and “statements from White House officials indicating greater willingness to tolerate near-term economic weakness.” Despite historically poor predictive power from sentiment measures, Goldman writes: “We are less dismissive of the recent decline because economic fundamentals are not as strong as in prior years. Most importantly, real income growth has already slowed sharply and we expect it to average only 1.4% this year.” Implications For Crypto While digital assets have long been viewed as uncorrelated to traditional macroeconomic variables, that narrative has evolved. Bitcoin, in particular, has become increasingly responsive to broader macro conditions — particularly liquidity, risk sentiment, and real yields. Related Reading: Meltem Demirors On Crypto Rally: ‘Are We So Back? Not So Fast’ As the yield curve inverts once again — a classic recession signal — macro analysts are warning of a unique policy dilemma. As @ecoinometrics noted on X: “The yield curve is inverting again, a traditional recession signal. But unlike past cycles, the Fed is unlikely to rush to QE due to inflation concerns. This creates a double challenge for Bitcoin: potential risk-off pressure without the stimulus relief that typically follows. Bitcoin is very much driven by macro these days. It is behaving like a high-beta play on the NASDAQ 100.” However, not everyone agrees that a recession poses a net-negative risk for crypto. In a recent interview, Robbie Mitchnick, Global Head of Digital Assets at BlackRock, offered a nuanced view of Bitcoin’s macro sensitivity: “Economic fears. I mean, I don’t know if we have a recession or not, but a recession would be a big catalyst for Bitcoin […] It’s catalyzed by more fiscal spending and debt and deficit accumulation. That happens in a recession. It’s catalyzed by lower interest rates and monetary stimulus. That tends to happen in a recession.” Mitchnick acknowledges the short-term constraints — the wealth effect, reduced disposable income, and high correlations with equities — but maintains that structurally, Bitcoin benefits from the long-term consequences of recessionary policy responses. “Bitcoin is long liquidity in the system… and to some extent over just fears of general social disorder […] that too, unfortunately, is something that can come up in a recession.” He adds that current market reactions may not reflect Bitcoin’s true positioning: “The market has almost, it seems, gotten this in some ways not particularly well calibrated… but that’s where the opportunity comes in for education in a market and an asset class that’s still very nascent.” At press time, BTC traded at $83,230. Featured image from iStock, chart from TradingView.com

German state-owned development bank Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (KfW) is gearing up to issue its first blockchain-based digital bond, marking a significant milestone in adopting crypto technology within the financial sector.  According to a recent report by Bloomberg, KfW has already successfully issued a digital bond as a central register security in compliance with the German […]

Over the past five days, Bitcoin (BTC), the leading cryptocurrency, has experienced a period of heightened volatility, triggering significant liquidations of leveraged positions as its price fluctuated wildly in hours.  After reaching an all-time high of $73,750 on Thursday, BTC experienced a sharp decline to $64,600 on Sunday. On Monday, at the start of the […]

Bitcoin last traded above $50,000 in December 2021 — more than two years ago. The crypto market looks very different this time around.