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This Week's Top Stories

“Bitcoin surpassed silver in market capitalization” – Wednesday, 13 November

• As the bitcoin price started trading to the upside over the weekend, crossing $80’000 for the first time in history on Saturday, 9 November, its market capitalization began increasing by a large margin. With the recent push above $85’000 per bitcoin, its market capitalization passed silver, taking the seventh spot among all assets, including public companies.
• Bitcoin’s market capitalization is sitting at $1.74 trillion today, just shy of Saudi Aramco’s $1.8 trillion, which it briefly surpassed this week when bitcoin was trading above $90’000. Gold remains in the number one spot with $17.2 trillion, roughly ten times higher than bitcoin at the time of writing.

“Trump announced that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will lead a new Department of Government Efficiency (D.O.G.E.)” – Tuesday, 12 November

• This week Donald Trump officially announced that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will lead the new Department of Government Efficiency (D.O.G.E.) during his second administration. Trump’s vision for the department is to dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure federal agencies.
• It is not yet clear how exactly the D.O.G.E. will operate or whether Congress would have the appetite for such a massive restructuring of the government, including spending.
• Crypto market participants naturally received the news very positively, especially regarding Dogecoin, which has increased by more than 100 percent since Trump’s victory in this year’s U.S. election.

“18 U.S. states filed a lawsuit against the U.S. SEC and its commissioners” – Thursday, 14 November

• Eleanor Terret, a reporter from Fox Business, posted on X that 18 U.S. states have filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and its commissioners, accusing them of unconstitutional overreach and unfair persecution of the crypto industry under the leadership of Gary Gensler.
• SEC Chairman Gary Gensler stated in a speech on Thursday that he was proud to serve as SEC chair and defended his stance on crypto regulation. The crypto community interpreted his closing words as a hint toward a potential resignation, but mainstream media has not picked up on this, and it remains to be seen whether he will resign or whether Trump will fire him in January.

“Powell erodes hopes for December cut” – Thursday, 14 November

• Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell stated on Thursday evening that there is no need to rush any further interest rate cuts as the economy is still growing, the job market remains solid, and inflation remains above their 2 percent target. Probabilities for a 25-bps rate cut at the December meeting dropped to 62 percent after his speech, down from 82.5 percent on Wednesday.
• The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq closed Thursday in negative territory, both down roughly 0.75 percent on the day.

A Quick Crypto Overview: What A Week!

Bitcoin closed last Friday at $76’000, and everyone was happy and celebrating. Little did we know what a wild ride we were in for! Even though we mentioned in last week’s Wrap that “Bitcoin seems to be on track to finally leave the trading range of the last few months behind and explore new heights, as it is currently trading above the previous all-time high from March 2024.”

Bitcoin increased by more than 20 percent from last Friday’s close, reaching a new all-time high above $93’000 on Wednesday – just 7 percent shy of the magic $100’000 mark. But it wasn’t only Bitcoin that had a good week; the total market capitalization crossed $3 trillion again on Wednesday and is currently sitting at $2.86 trillion, up almost 13 percent since last Friday.

Ethereum took a beating against Bitcoin, as many other altcoins did as well, reaching a new multi-year low today, trading at 0.03455 – its lowest level since early 2021.

Memecoins stole the show again this week, with PNUT up 1’500 percent, PEPE up 90 percent, and DOGE up 87 percent. We have already discussed a possible reason for Doge’s pump and will elaborate on the stories behind PNUT and PEPE in today’s On-Chain chapter.

Chart of the Week: Bitcoin 2024 vs Gold 2023

This week’s selection for the chart of the week is difficult, as many cryptocurrencies are showing immense price increases, but we want to highlight the Bitcoin chart in comparison to Gold last year, as we have highlighted the resemblance here already in previous editions of the Weekly Wrap.

Bitcoin has indeed followed Gold’s path and has broken out of the multi-month range this week, while Gold has traded to the upside for almost twelve months after breaking out of the range in October 2023, it remains to be seen how Bitcoin will behave over the coming weeks and it will be interesting to observe, whether the resemblance of the two charts will continue to uphold or change over the course of the next weeks and months.

What’s Happening On-Chain? Memecoin Listing-Pumps

As mentioned above, certain memecoins stole the show in terms of percentage increases over the past few days. Binance announced on Monday that they would list Peanut the Squirrel (PNUT) for spot trading on Monday, 11 November. While PNUT was already trading at roughly $100 million in market cap, news of the Binance listing catapulted its market cap to almost $2.5 billion in just two days—an increase of more than 1’800 percent.

Binance has listed 15 Memecoin this year, 60 percent of which are deployed on Solana and 26.7 percent on Ethereum. Of these, 73 percent were launched between August and November, and 80 percent of the projects achieved significant growth in market value after being listed on Binance.

The memecoin frenzy continued as Robinhood announced the listing of PEPE on Wednesday. PEPE surged almost 100 percent in a matter of hours, as Coinbase also added PEPE to its coin listing roadmap. The largest Korean exchange, Upbit, joined the two exchanges and announced that PEPE would open for trading on Thursday, 14 November.

Meanwhile, the crypto wallet Phantom warned iOS users that its recent update caused some users' apps to reset, resulting in a loss of access to wallets for those who did not back up their recovery phrases. Multiple stories circulated on X, where users claimed to have lost access to their wallets, with some losing significant sums of money. As we all know, Phantom cannot help recovering funds for users who did not back up their recovery phrases.

Digital Asset Fund Flows: BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF Overtook BlackRock’s Gold Trust

Last week, BlackRock's iShares Spot Bitcoin ETF (IBIT) reached $34.3 billion in assets, surpassing the $33 billion of the iShares Gold Trust (IAU) on record demand. Since its launch in January, IBIT has seen total inflows of more than $27 billion, making it the fourth-largest fund in the world in 2024. However, IBIT still has a long way to go to catch up with the world's largest gold ETF, SPDR Gold Shares (GLD), which currently has over $76 billion in assets.

It wasn’t just BlackRock’s IBIT that had a positive few days following Donald Trump’s election last week. Digital asset investment products saw a total of $1.98 billion in net inflows during the week. While regional inflows were primarily concentrated in the U.S., Switzerland also recorded net inflows of $23 million.

Bitcoin accounted for the majority of last week’s inflows, but Ethereum began to wake up, registering $157 million in net inflows during the week of Trump’s victory.

This week started in a similar fashion: Bitcoin spot ETFs recorded over $1.1 billion in net inflows on Monday alone, followed by $817 million on Tuesday and $510 million on Wednesday. Ethereum continued its turnaround with nearly $300 million in net inflows on Monday, followed by two days with over $100 million each. These three days marked Ethereum’s highest net inflows since inception.

Thursday, however, saw a reversal, with $400 million flowing out of Bitcoin products in the U.S., while Ethereum experienced modest net outflows of $3 million. Let’s see if the spot ETFs manage to recover in today’s trading session.

Market Sentiment: Crypto Market in Extreme Greed

As the prices for cryptocurrencies have increased significantly, the market sentiment has risen from Greed (70) last week into Extreme Greed (88) yesterday to a level of 80 today, according to the Crypto Fear & Greed Index. When looking back at the beginning of the year, the index reached a level of 80 or more for the first time at the end of February, coinciding with the market ripping to the upside, before then reaching a temporary multi-month high in mid-March. Let’s keep a close eye on this over the coming weeks.

During the year end rally of 2020, the index stayed in Extreme Greed levels from the beginning of November 2020 well into January 2021, before crashing down to 40 at the end of January 2021.

Other Relevant News

• According to Bloomberg, FTX has filed a lawsuit against Binance and its former CEO Zhao Changpeng, seeking to recover approximately $1.8 billion in funds. – Link
• MicroStrategy announced that it had acquired 27’200 BTC for approximately $2.03 billion, with an average purchase price of $74,463.  – Link
• Justin Drake proposed a new consensus layer upgrade proposal "Beam Chain" at the Devcon conference, which is called "Ethereum 3.0" by the community. – Link
• The annual rate of the U.S. core CPI in October was 3.3 percent, which came in line with expectations. – Link
• FBI agents raided the Manhattan apartment of Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan early Wednesday morning and demanded he turn over his phone and other electronic devices. – Link

Looking Ahead: Short Term vs. Long Term

When viewing the current situation from a short-term perspective, it is difficult to determine whether Bitcoin and the crypto market will continue to trade to the upside or if a correction and re-testing of lower levels will be needed in the near future. While Bitcoin is trading at all-time highs, many of its peers remain well below their respective all-time highs, and metrics such as TOTAL2 and TOTAL3 market capitalization are only just starting to break out to the upside.

In the short term, most market participants are exercising caution; however, the bigger picture suggests a different outlook. Bitcoin recently broke out of a multi-month sideways period, and historically, such sideways action does not resolve in a matter of days but rather over weeks or months.

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

Tuesday, 19 November

• Eurozone – CPI, Core CPI

Thursday, 21 November

• U.S. – Initial Jobless Claims
• Japan – CPI, Core CPI

Friday, 22 November

• Switzerland – SNB Vice Chairman Schlegel Speaks