Another Red Week for Crypto as Odds for a December Rate cut Drop to 30 Percent

This Week’s Top Stories

“U.S. Government reopening could spark a wave of spot ETF approvals over coming weeks and months.” – This week 

• The Bitwise Solana spot ETF has been live for a couple of weeks now and yesterday Bitwise’s XRP spot ETF went live in the United States with the ticker XRP. Other traditional finance players have launched their Solana spot ETFs over the past weeks as well. With the U.S. government open again and related legislation advancing, we could be in for a series of new altcoin spot ETF approvals, many of which have been waiting for their final decision since October.
• This week BlackRock announced that it is planning to file for a Staked Ethereum ETF and Grayscale’s XRP and Dogecoin spot ETFs are expected to go live next week. There is a lot happening beneath the surface in the ETF world, all while the Bitcoin spot ETFs recorded their second largest outflow day yesterday with over $900 million leaving the products.

“FOMC Minutes revealed a split over a December rate cut and odds for a 25 bps cut fall to 30 percent on Polymarket.” – Wednesday, 19 November 2025 

• At the end of October, odds for a 25 bps rate cut in December were at 90 percent on Polymarket but have steadily dropped since then. The FOMC meeting minutes this week accelerated this downward trend as market participants seem to have lost their hopes for a rate cut, with the odds for a 25 bps cut now sitting at only 30 percent.
• The FOMC minutes revealed that many officials said during the meeting that a cut would not be appropriate, while several members think a cut is needed. The market realized that “many” is greater than “several,” which is why a pause is now more likely for most investors.
• Reasons for this uncertainty are still rooted in the long government shutdown and much of the economic data from October being delayed or even cancelled, leaving the Fed in a blind flight and forcing them to be careful, as Powell has mentioned various times.

A Quick Crypto Overview: Another Red Week for Crypto

The selling continues and more market participants are wondering whether this relentless sell pressure is stemming from casualties of the 10 October crash. There seems to be a seller or a series of sellers who have been selling during U.S. hours for a couple of weeks straight, and it remains to be seen whether news surrounding this will surface at some point in the future. 

While the crypto market has been selling for weeks straight, the U.S. stock market rolled over during Thursday’s trading session, with the S&P 500 losing more than 2 percent in a single day. 

Gold is also trading lower this week after putting in a high last week just below $4’250, which now looks like a lower high below the October all-time high. The U.S. Dollar Index on the other hand continues to trade higher, sitting just below the 100 mark. 

Bitcoin dominance is sitting at 59 percent, down more than 4 percent from the early November highs, while Ethereum dominance continues to follow its downward trend from the end of August, currently at 11.5 percent. 

Looking back at the crypto market, it is interesting to note that the total market capitalization excluding Bitcoin and Ethereum is down less than the total market capitalization as a whole, which means that smaller altcoins seem to be holding a little better than Bitcoin and Ethereum themselves. 

Chart of the Week: Year-to-Date Price Performance

When looking at the year-to-date performance for Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana and XRP we observe that currently all four crypto assets are in the red since the beginning of the year. Historic price action shows that since 2013, Bitcoin has only experienced three years of negative price performance, in 2014, 2018 and 2022, all of them bear market years. Now 2025 is shaping up to be another year with negative price performance, breaking a decade old dynamic, since Bitcoin historically printed three years with positive price performance after each year with a negative year to date performance. 

While the year is not over yet and Bitcoin still has a chance of closing the year in the green, this is certainly something to keep an eye on. It is also no secret that the market structure of Bitcoin and other crypto assets has changed over the past two years with the launch of the spot ETFs in the United States and digital asset treasuries and traditional finance players entering the space. 

On the bright side, after a year with negative year to date performance for BTC, a strong year has historically followed. As mentioned repeatedly, the outlook for 2026 holds some promising factors for positive price action and Bitcoin is one of the most responsive risk sensors in the market and historically bottoms out earlier than other assets.

What’s Happening Onchain? Onchain Degens are Taking a Break, Monad Sale Ongoing & Aztec Launched Ignition Chain 

The onchain trenches are quiet these days as market participants are feeling the overall downward pressure and memecoins have died down alongside the broader market fear. Solana’s active addresses have fallen to a little over 3 million, putting in a new twelve-month low. The chart of daily active addresses has traded downward steadily all year long after its peak in January amid the Trump and Melania launches. Daily launchpad volume on Solana has also decreased steadily over the past six months, as the chart below shows, with PumpFun continuing to account for the bulk of the market share.

In other news, Aztec launched the Ignition Chain this week, an important milestone on its path to bring decentralized privacy to Ethereum. Aztec aims to provide Ethereum with features that accelerate real world adoption and is built to be neutral and verifiable at the protocol level, while allowing its users to enjoy privacy at the application level. What stands out in this week’s launch is that Aztec is decentralized from day one, since it launches with decentralized block production without a centralized sequencer that would otherwise have full control over the network. You can learn more about Aztec here. 

In the world of token sales, Monad continues to make waves as its public sale on Coinbase is ongoing this week. As mentioned last week, Monad aims to raise $187.5 million at a fully diluted valuation of $2.5 billion, allowing investors to buy MON tokens at a price of $0.025 per token. The sale will be open until tomorrow, Saturday, 22 November, and is progressing slowly as many market participants have raised concerns about the sale at such a high fully diluted valuation. You can track the progress here.  

Digital Asset Fund Flows: $2 billion Outflows Last Week and Interesting 13F Filings 

Last week, digital asset investment products saw net outflows of $2 billion , largely led by Bitcoin with almost $1.4 billion in outflows. The selling continues this week with a new second highest net outflow day in the history of the Bitcoin spot ETFs yesterday, with more than $900 million leaving the products in a single day. We will continue to monitor the spot ETF flows closely, as a slowdown in outflows could give us a good indication of a bottom formation. 

The 13F filings from the third quarter have been rolling in over the past few weeks and we want to highlight two filings this week. Harvard University increased its IBIT position in the third quarter by more than 250 percent and now holds more than 6.8 million shares of IBIT worth $440 million at the end of September, making it their largest single holding. Eric Balchunas said that it is extremely rare for top endowments like Harvard or Yale to buy ETFs, calling this one of the strongest validations an ETF can get. 

Another big name, Al Warda Investments, an investment vehicle overseen by the Abu Dhabi Investment Council, more than tripled its IBIT holdings in Q3 this year to almost 8 million shares worth more than $500 million on September 30, 2025. We want to highlight this comment from an ADIC spokesperson: “We see Bitcoin playing an increasingly important role alongside gold. Both assets contribute to diversifying our portfolio and we expect to hold them as part of our near- and long-term strategy.” 

Market Sentiment: Market Participants Continue to be Extremely Fearful 

The crypto fear and greed index continues to stay in extremely fearful territory at 14 for the second week straight but seems to be putting in a bottom as the index continues to stay above the 10 level. Although, following this morning’s price action, it is likely that we will drop lower into the single digit levels today. The CNN fear and greed index is already back in single digit extreme fear territory at 8, trading at similar levels as in April 2025. 

While this extreme fear is something that accompanies bottoms most of the time, the market can stay in fearful levels for quite some time, as the last few weeks have shown. In May 2021 and 2022 the market stayed in extreme fear for almost two months, which helps put this into perspective. Historically, a couple of months after extremely fearful readings in the sentiment indices, prices have more often than not traded at higher levels.

Other Relevant News

• Kraken secured a $200 million strategic investment from Citadel Securities at a $20 billion valuation. – Link 
• Coinbase adds ETH-backed loans via Morpho, letting users borrow up to $1 million. – Link
• El Salvador discloses largest single-day BTC purchase of $100 million as bitcoin dips lower. – Link
• Michael Saylor's Strategy buys another 8’178 Bitcoin for $836 million. – Link
• Nvidia reported fiscal Q3 2026 revenue of $57.01 billion, beating expectations and rising 62 percent year over year and 22 percent quarter over quarter. – Link
• Aave Labs to launch high-yield savings app with 'insurance-backed protection' for deposits up to $1 million. – Link
• New Hampshire’s Business Finance Authority (BFA) has approved a $100 million Bitcoin-backed municipal conduit bond. – Link

Looking Ahead: Holding Tight and Waiting for a Bottom

Markets are looking negative right now and participants who are sitting in positions have no other choice than to look for levels to bid for a potential bottom formation. Prices do not move in straight lines, and the market has been going down for a while, so the risk reward ratio is currently skewing toward buying rather than selling from an objective perspective. Historically, dollar cost averaging into Bitcoin after a 30 percent correction has more often than not proven to be a decent strategy. Looking back at the past two years, Bitcoin corrected 34 percent in spring 2024 and 33 percent in early 2025. Currently, Bitcoin is down 35 percent from its all-time high. For comparison, in April and May 2021 Bitcoin corrected more than 55 percent before the summer and then put in another all-time high in November 2021, after which it corrected another 50 percent before increasing by 46 percent ahead of the infamous 2022 bear market. 

Keeping an eye on the spot ETF flows is certainly helpful, since a slowdown in outflows might indicate a potential temporary bottom formation. The U.S. stock market is also something to monitor, especially since yesterday’s trading session brought some blood to Wall Street as well. The FOMC meeting is a little less than three weeks away and it will be interesting to see how the expectations for the rate cut decision evolve until then, as increasing chances for a rate cut would likely bring back some positive momentum to risk assets. 

Below, you can find some of the key data releases and events to watch out for next week. 

Tuesday, 25 November 2025 

USA – Core PPI, PPI (September) 

USA – Retail Sales (September) 

Wednesday, 26 November 2025 

USA – GDP (Q3) 

USA – New Home Sales (September) 

Friday, 28 November 2025 

USA – Thanksgiving Day (Early Close) 

Switzerland – Retail Sales 

Switzerland – GDP