gm 21/10

Summary
gm, BlackRock launched its first Bitcoin ETP on the London Stock Exchange, marking continued expansion of regulated crypto investment vehicles for UK retail investors. Japan's Financial Services Agency is contemplating reforms that would allow banks to acquire and hold digital assets including Bitcoin, potentially opening cryptocurrency to traditional financial institutions in a major shift from previous restrictions. Meanwhile, VanEck filed for the first Lido staked ETH ETF with the SEC, highlighting growing institutional interest in Ethereum's staking ecosystem. The market showed signs of recovery with Bitcoin bouncing back above $111,000 after reaching lows of $103,500 last week, though a $513 million outflow from crypto investment products ended a previous two-week inflow streak, signaling continued market caution amid broader macroeconomic concerns.

News Headlines
🔄 Ethereum Surges 68.5% in Q3 as Capital Shifts from Bitcoin

• Ethereum closed Q3 2025 at $4,215, reflecting a remarkable 68.5% quarterly gain as investors shifted focus from Bitcoin to altcoins, DeFi, and tokenized assets.
• The crypto market added over $500 billion in value, marking its second consecutive quarter of growth without Bitcoin leading the charge, with ETF demand and interest in tokenized real-world assets contributing to ETH's rise.

💰 Michael Saylor Claims Strategy Can Deploy $100M in Bitcoin Within an Hour

• Strategy Executive Chairman Michael Saylor stated his firm can purchase $100 million worth of Bitcoin within an hour of raising capital, operating "a thousand times faster" than technology or real estate investments.
• As the largest corporate holder of Bitcoin with 640,250 tokens, Strategy can reportedly manage up to $1 billion in capital raising in a single day, allowing for rapid deployment into Bitcoin despite market skepticism.

⚠️ Amazon AWS Outage Disrupts Major Crypto Platforms

• An Amazon Web Services (AWS) data center outage affected major platforms including Coinbase and Robinhood, highlighting the vulnerabilities of centralized infrastructure in crypto services.
• Users encountered difficulties logging in, executing trades, and withdrawing funds, reigniting discussions about the need for more resilient decentralized alternatives to prevent such disruptions.

💸 Ripple-Backed Firm Plans SPAC to Build $1B Public XRP Treasury

• Evernorth Holdings is merging with Armada Acquisition Corp II to raise over $1 billion, creating the largest public XRP treasury with support from Ripple, Kraken, and SBI.
• Unlike passive ETFs, Evernorth plans to actively engage in lending, liquidity provision, and DeFi strategies to generate yield from XRP, with the deal expected to close in Q1 2026.

🧠 Grok and DeepSeek Outperform ChatGPT and Gemini in Crypto Trading Competition

• Grok 4 achieved a remarkable 500% gain on its first day of trading by converting short positions into leveraged long investments, while DeepSeek generated a profit of $3,650, making them the top performers.
• In contrast, OpenAI's ChatGPT 5 and Google's Gemini 2.5 Pro reported significant unrealized losses of approximately $2,800 and $3,270 respectively, highlighting different AI strategies in market timing.

Market Metrics

Fundraising & VC
1. Turtle (Strategic, $5.5M) - Liquidity distribution protocol
2. Open Campus (Strategic, $5M) - On-chain OS for education
3. Avici (Public Token Sale, $3.5M) - Self-custody crypto credit and payment platform

Regulatory
🏛️ NY Democrats Propose Tax on Proof-of-Work Mining

• New York lawmakers have introduced a bill targeting proof-of-work crypto miners with tiered excise taxes ranging from 2-5 cents per kilowatt-hour based on electricity consumption.
• The collected taxes would support Energy Affordability Programs for low-income households, with exemptions for operations using renewable energy or functioning off-grid.

🌐 Senate Democrats to Meet Crypto CEOs on Market Structure Bill

• Key crypto executives from Coinbase, Chainlink, and Uniswap are meeting with US Senate Democrats to revive discussions on stalled market structure legislation.
• The meeting aims to resolve contentious issues and re-establish communication lines amid waning momentum for passing comprehensive crypto regulations in 2025.

💸 Coinbase Urges Treasury to Modernize AML Rules for Crypto

• Coinbase has criticized outdated U.S. anti-money laundering laws, urging the Treasury to integrate AI and zero-knowledge proofs to better combat financial crime in crypto.
• The exchange called for regulatory safe harbors allowing responsible AI deployment and recognition of decentralized identities as valid compliance tools.

🌎 Bolivia's New President Backs Blockchain Against Corruption

• Bolivian President-elect Rodrigo Paz plans to utilize blockchain technology to combat government corruption, starting with public procurement processes.
• His platform includes allowing citizens to declare crypto assets as part of a new foreign-exchange stabilization fund to help address dollar shortages in the economy.

🏧 Wise Recruiting for Digital Asset Lead to Explore Stablecoins

• Money transfer company Wise is hiring a digital-asset product lead focused on stablecoins, signaling a potential expansion into cryptocurrency as global regulations evolve.
• The position will investigate digital asset storage within Wise accounts, targeting the growing stablecoin market that enables faster and cheaper cross-border payments.

Technical Analysis
Bitcoin - Bitcoin is within an approximate horizontal trend channel in the short term, which indicates further development in the same direction. The currency is between support at points 107600 and resistance at points 109600. A definitive break through of one of these levels predicts the new direction. Negative volume balance weakens the currency in the short term. The short term momentum of the currency is strongly negative, with RSI below 30. This indicates increasing pessimism among investors and further decline for Bitcoin. However, particularly in big stocks, low RSI may be a sign that the stock is oversold and that there is a chance for a reaction upwards. The currency is overall assessed as technically neutral for the short term.

Ethereum - Ethereum shows weak development in a falling trend channel in the short term. Falling trends indicate that the currency experiences negative development and falling buy interest among investors. The currency has broken down through support at points 3970. This predicts a further decline. Negative volume balance indicates that volume is high on days with falling prices and low on days with rising prices, which weakens the currency. The short term momentum of the currency is strongly negative, with RSI below 30. This indicates increasing pessimism among investors and further decline for Ethereum. However, particularly in big stocks, low RSI may be a sign that the stock is oversold and that there is a chance for a reaction upwards. The currency is overall assessed as technically negative for the short term.