Bitcoin’s (BTC) drawdown on Monday pushed the asset into a 26.7% loss, narrowly overtaking the 26.5% slide seen in April, and marking the steepest correction of the current bull market. The move red-lined multiple market structure indicators, suggesting the current correction could be a final leverage washout phase.
Bitcoin’s 26.7% correction is now the largest of the cycle.
The Crypto Fear & Greed index shows ‘Extreme Fear’ among investors, but as a counterindicator, it could be a sign that Bitcoin is trading at a discount.
“Extreme fear” is usually followed by profitable Bitcoin price action
Bitcoin researcher Axel Adler Jr. said that the local market stress index remained elevated following the sharp sell-off on Monday, currently sitting at 67.82, above the system’s WATCH threshold of 64 but still below levels associated with critical breakdowns.
The highest tension point occurred during BTC’s collapse on Monday, when realized volatility surged to a 4.55 Z-score and aggressive selling signaled stress alerts.
Over the past 24 hours, the index has eased into the 62–68 range, though its short-term slope (+2.62) signaled renewed stress building within the market.
Bitcoin local stress index. Source: Axel Adler Jr./X
Sentiment indicators are painting a similar picture. The Crypto Fear & Greed Index fell below 10 before rebounding slightly to 15, but is still locked in Extreme Fear. Historically, dips into this zone have been far more constructive in the previous years.
Across past cycles, whenever the Crypto Fear & Greed Index has fallen to 10 or below, Bitcoin has consistently delivered strong forward returns. On average, prices increased by 10% within a week, maintained similar strength over 15–30 days, and accelerated to 23% by day 80 and 33% by six months.
Bitcoin returns post Fear & Greed Index drop below
Economist Alex Kruger noted that in all 11 capitulation events since 2018, where the index hit this extreme level, short-term weakness was common, but almost every event produced a rebound. The pattern is one of Bitcoin’s most reliable behavioral edges: when fear reaches its peak, forward returns skew heavily to the upside.
Meanwhile, Bitcoin analyst VICTOR claimed that the current drawdown is “the close your eyes and bid type of range,” historically associated with late-stage flushes rather than cycle tops.
Short-term holder capitulation deepens, but the end could be near
Fresh onchain data indicated Bitcoin was entering one of the most severe short-term capitulation phases of this cycle. STH’s profit-ratio (SOPR) has fallen back to 0.97, confirming that short-term holders are consistently selling at a loss. The ratio has now spent several weeks below 1.0, forming a clear capitulation band, a structure that has historically appeared near cyclical turning points.
Bitcoin SOPR trend. Source: CryptoQuant
Similarly, STH-MVRV has dropped far below 1.0, indicating that nearly all recent buyers are underwater. This mirrored past episodes where unrealized losses spike, panic selling accelerates, and weak hands exhaust their supply.
The transfer of 65,200 BTC to exchanges at a loss further validates that fear is active, not theoretical. While this does not guarantee an immediate reversal, the combination of a sub-1.0 SOPR, deeply negative MVRV, and loss-driven exchange inflows suggests that the correction could be entering its final stages.
This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.
Yesterday’s outage showed how dependent the modern web is on a handful of core infrastructure providers.
In fact, it’s so dependent that a single configuration error made large parts of the internet totally unreachable for several hours.
Many of us work in crypto because we understand the dangers of centralization in finance, but the events of yesterday were a clear reminder that centralization at the internet’s core is just as urgent a problem to solve.
The obvious giants like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft run enormous chunks of cloud infrastructure.
But equally critical are firms like Cloudflare, Fastly, Akamai, DigitalOcean, and CDN (servers that deliver websites faster around the world) or DNS (the “address book” of the internet) providers such as UltraDNS and Dyn.
Most people barely know their names, yet their outages can be just as crippling, as we saw yesterday.
To start with, here’s a list of companies you may never have heard of that are critical to keeping the internet running as expected.
Category
Company
What They Control
Impact If They Go Down
Core Infra (DNS/CDN/DDoS)
Cloudflare
CDN, DNS, DDoS protection, Zero Trust, Workers
Huge portions of global web traffic fail; thousands of sites become unreachable.
Core Infra (CDN)
Akamai
Enterprise CDN for banks, logins, commerce
Major enterprise services, banks, and login systems break.
Core Infra (CDN)
Fastly
CDN, edge compute
Global outage potential (as seen in 2021: Reddit, Shopify, gov.uk, NYT).
Cloud Provider
AWS
Compute, hosting, storage, APIs
SaaS apps, streaming platforms, fintech, and IoT networks fail.
Cloud Provider
Google Cloud
YouTube, Gmail, enterprise backends
Massive disruption across Google services and dependent apps.
Cloud Provider
Microsoft Azure
Enterprise & government clouds
Office365, Teams, Outlook, and Xbox Live outages.
DNS Infrastructure
Verisign
.com & .net TLDs, root DNS
Catastrophic global routing failures for large parts of the web.
DNS Providers
GoDaddy / Cloudflare / Squarespace
DNS management for millions of domains
Entire companies vanish from the internet.
Certificate Authority
Let’s Encrypt
TLS certificates for most of the web
HTTPS breaks globally; users see security errors everywhere.
Certificate Authority
DigiCert / GlobalSign
Enterprise SSL
Large corporate sites lose HTTPS trust.
Security / CDN
Imperva
DDoS, WAF, CDN
Protected sites become inaccessible or vulnerable.
Load Balancers
F5 Networks
Enterprise load balancing
Banking, hospitals, and government services can fail nationwide.
Tier-1 Backbone
Lumen (Level 3)
Global internet backbone
Routing issues cause global latency spikes and regional outages.
Tier-1 Backbone
Cogent / Zayo / Telia
Transit and peering
Regional or country-level internet disruptions.
App Distribution
Apple App Store
iOS app updates & installs
iOS app ecosystem effectively freezes.
App Distribution
Google Play Store
Android app distribution
Android apps cannot install or update globally.
Payments
Stripe
Web payments infrastructure
Thousands of apps lose the ability to accept payments.
Identity / Login
Auth0 / Okta
Authentication & SSO
Logins break for thousands of apps.
Communications
Twilio
2FA SMS, OTP, messaging
Large portion of global 2FA and OTP codes fail.
What happened yesterday
Yesterday’s culprit was Cloudflare, a company that routes almost 20% of all web traffic.
It now says the outage started with a small database configuration change that accidentally caused a bot-detection file to include duplicate items.
That file suddenly grew beyond a strict size limit. When Cloudflare’s servers tried to load it, they failed, and many websites that use Cloudflare began returning HTTP 5xx errors (error codes users see when a server breaks).
Here’s the simple chain:
Chain of events
A Small Database Tweak Sets Off a Big Chain Reaction.
The trouble began at 11:05 UTC when a permissions update made the system pull extra, duplicate information while building the file used to score bots.
That file normally includes about sixty items. The duplicates pushed it past a hard cap of 200. When machines across the network loaded the oversized file, the bot component failed to start, and the servers returned errors.
According to Cloudflare, both the current and older server paths were affected. One returned 5xx errors. The other assigned a bot score of zero, which could have falsely flagged traffic for customers who block based on bot score (Cloudflare’s bot vs. human detection).
Diagnosis was tricky because the bad file was rebuilt every five minutes from a database cluster being updated piece by piece.
If the system pulled from an updated piece, the file was bad. If not, it was good. The network would recover, then fail again, as versions switched.
According to Cloudflare, this on-off pattern initially looked like a possible DDoS, especially since a third-party status page also failed around the same time. Focus shifted once teams linked errors to the bot-detection configuration.
By 13:05 UTC, Cloudflare applied a bypass for Workers KV (login checks) and Cloudflare Access (authentication system), routing around the failing behavior to cut impact.
The main fix came when teams stopped generating and distributing new bot files, pushed a known good file, and restarted core servers.
Cloudflare says core traffic began flowing by 14:30, and all downstream services recovered by 17:06.
The failure highlights some design tradeoffs.
Cloudflare’s systems enforce strict limits to keep performance predictable. That helps avoid runaway resource use, but it also means a malformed internal file can trigger a hard stop instead of a graceful fallback.
Because bot detection sits on the main path for many services, one module’s failure cascaded into the CDN, security features, Turnstile (CAPTCHA alternative), Workers KV, Access, and dashboard logins. Cloudflare also noted extra latency as debugging tools consumed CPU while adding context to errors.
On the database side, a narrow permissions tweak had wide effects.
The change made the system “see” more tables than before. The job that builds the bot-detection file did not filter tightly enough, so it grabbed duplicate column names and expanded the file beyond the 200-item cap.
The loading error then triggered server failures and 5xx responses on affected paths.
Impact varied by product. Core CDN and security services threw server errors.
Workers KV saw elevated 5xx rates because requests to its gateway passed through the failing path. Cloudflare Access had authentication failures until the 13:05 bypass, and dashboard logins broke when Turnstile could not load.
Cloudflare Email Security temporarily lost an IP reputation source, reducing spam detection accuracy for a period, though the company said there was no critical customer impact. After the good file was restored, a backlog of login attempts briefly strained internal APIs before normalizing.
The timeline is straightforward.
The database change landed at 11:05 UTC. First customer-facing errors appeared around 11:20–11:28.
Teams opened an incident at 11:35, applied the Workers KV and Access bypass at 13:05, stopped creating and spreading new files around 14:24, pushed a known good file and saw global recovery by 14:30, and marked full restoration at 17:06.
According to Cloudflare, automated tests flagged anomalies at 11:31, and manual investigation began at 11:32, which explains the pivot from suspected attack to configuration rollback within two hours.
Time (UTC)
Status
Action or Impact
11:05
Change deployed
Database permissions update led to duplicate entries
11:20–11:28
Impact starts
HTTP 5xx surge as the bot file exceeds the 200-item limit
13:05
Mitigation
Bypass for Workers KV and Access reduces error surface
13:37–14:24
Rollback prep
Stop bad file propagation, validate known good file
14:30
Core recovery
Good file deployed, core traffic routes normally
17:06
Resolved
Downstream services fully restored
The numbers explain both cause and containment.
A five-minute rebuild cycle repeatedly reintroduced bad files as different database pieces updated.
A 200-item cap protects memory use, and a typical count near sixty left comfortable headroom, until the duplicate entries arrived.
The cap worked as designed, but the lack of a tolerant “safe load” for internal files turned a bad config into a crash instead of a soft failure with a fallback model. According to Cloudflare, that’s a key area to harden.
Cloudflare says it will harden how internal configuration is validated, add more global kill switches for feature pipelines, stop error reporting from consuming large CPU during incidents, review error handling across modules, and improve how configuration is distributed.
The company called this its worst incident since 2019 and apologized for the impact. According to Cloudflare, there was no attack; recovery came from halting the bad file, restoring a known good file, and restarting server processes.
They appeared soon after the Virtual Assets Service Providers Act of 2025 took effect.
CoinATMradar currently lists two Bitcoin ATMs in Kenya.
The Central Bank of Kenya and the Capital Markets Authority say no VASP is licensed yet.
Bitcoin ATMs have surfaced across major shopping malls in Nairobi, only days after Kenya activated its first comprehensive crypto law, creating an unexpected test for regulators who have not yet authorised any crypto provider to operate.
The machines, branded Bankless Bitcoin, appeared beside traditional bank kiosks and offered cash to crypto services to shoppers.
Their arrival coincides with the early phase of Kenya’s Virtual Assets Service Providers Act of 2025, which came into effect on 4 November and set the first formal rules for crypto businesses.
Gaps in licensing
Local outlet Capital News confirmed that multiple malls in Nairobi had new machines installed, expanding beyond earlier attempts to introduce crypto ATMs in Kenya.
In 2018, The East African reported that BitClub deployed Bitcoin ATMs in the city, although the machines never reached mainstream retail spaces and adoption remained limited.
Kenya currently has two reported Bitcoin ATMs, making the latest installations notable for their placement in high-traffic commercial environments.
Regulators signal caution
The new law assigns oversight responsibilities to two regulators. The Central Bank of Kenya will handle payment and custody functions, while the Capital Markets Authority will regulate investment and trading activity.
However, the regulations required to begin licensing crypto firms have not yet been issued.
In a joint notice released on Tuesday, the Central Bank of Kenya and the Capital Markets Authority stated that they have not licensed any VASP to operate in or from Kenya under the new Act.
They also warned that companies claiming authorisation are doing so without approval.
The National Treasury is developing the regulatory framework that will decide when licensing can begin, placing operators in a temporary environment where the law exists but permissions do not.
This creates a visible gap. Bitcoin ATMs are entering public spaces even as regulators tell the public that no provider has met the requirements laid out in the law.
The contrast places pressure on authorities to clarify enforcement and could shape how crypto firms approach compliance in the near term.
Informal use grows
The spread of Bitcoin ATMs into high end malls highlights Kenya’s evolving crypto landscape.
Capital News reported that Bitcoin usage has long been active in lower income neighbourhoods such as Kibera, where residents use BTC as a form of banking in areas with limited access to formal financial services.
People have relied on crypto to store value without extensive documentation or traditional banking infrastructure.
The shift from informal areas to upscale malls suggests that consumer interest is expanding even while regulatory conditions remain unsettled.
The coexistence of visible infrastructure and incomplete licensing rules places Kenya at an early crossroads as it moves from a largely informal crypto market to a regulated one.
The Bitcoin market is undergoing a significant transition, with traders aggressively positioning for a year-end close beneath the $90,000 threshold.
This comes as the flagship digital asset briefly slid to a seven-month low of $89,970 on Nov. 18 before recovering to $91,526 as of press time.
As a result, crypto traders’ sentiment has significantly shifted amid a convergence of structural capital flight and tightening macro conditions.
Options desk pricing Bitcoin below $90,000
The most definitive evidence of this bearish conviction comes from options flows and prediction markets.
Crypto options platform Derive.xyz told CryptoSlate that traders are now pricing a 50% probability that Bitcoin will end the year below $90,000. This is almost in congruence with crypto bettors on Polymarket who believe the top crypto has a 36% of ending the year below $80,000.
Indeed, the bearish positioning is manifesting in aggressive risk mitigation, suggesting that professional desks are now actively betting against previously held bullish consensus.
Derive.xyz noted that Bitcoin’s Implied volatility (IV), both short-term and long-term, has been rising in tandem. For context, BTC’s short-term IV has jumped substantially from 41% to 49% in 2 weeks, while long-term volatility (180-day) has moved almost in lockstep, rising from 46% to 49%.
This implies that traders do not view the current decline as a short-lived blip, but rather as the initial phase of a more prolonged and deeper structural shift in macro conditions and market sentiment.
Derive.xyz added:
“With ongoing concerns about the resilience of the US job market and the probability of a December rate cut slipping to barely above a coin-toss, there’s very little in the macro backdrop giving traders a reason to stay bullish into the close of the year.”
Further confirming this pessimism is the widening of the 30-day put skew, which measures the premium paid for downside protection (puts) relative to the premium for upside exposure (calls).
The skew has plummeted from –2.9% to a highly defensive –5.3%, signaling that traders are not just hedging, but are paying dearly to protect against a significant, sustained drop.
According to the firm, this is the hallmark of a market transitioning into a new, more fearful volatility regime, where risk aversion dominates positioning through year-end.
ETF outflows
This defensive options positioning has been directly catalyzed by the dramatic reversal of flow within the Spot Bitcoin ETF complex.
For much of 2025, these ETFs provided the essential marginal bid, acting as the primary stabilizer by consistently absorbing supply. However, that function has now ceased.
The extent of the institutional retreat is staggering, with Bitcoin ETFs recording gross outflows of nearly $3 billion this month alone ($2.5 billion net), according to SoSoValue data. Notably, this is on course to be the second-largest month for outflows since these products launched in 2024.
Bitcoin ETF Monthly Flows (Source: SoSo Value)
The largest institutional vehicle, BlackRock’s IBIT, typically the market’s strongest structural buyer, has accounted for the majority of these withdrawals.
This sustained selling removes the market’s most reliable absorption mechanism, leading to a crucial consequence where structural demand evaporates, and liquidity thins dramatically.
In this liquidity-thin environment, volatility rises, and what would typically be a shallow dip quickly deepens into a price drawdown.
Moreover, parallel actions across the ecosystem have amplified this absence of a consistent institutional buyer. Major BTC treasury companies have paused their historical accumulation patterns, and in some cases, reduced holdings.
Consequently, 40% of their 649,870 BTC treasury is now in loss, fundamentally weakening the perceived stability of the corporate treasury floor.
Strategy’s Bitcoin Holdings Percentage in Profit and Loss (Source: CryptoQuant)
Therefore, while ETF outflows alone don’t dictate price, their presence in a contracting liquidity environment magnifies every other negative signal.
Long-term holders selling
The current downturn is simultaneously being shaped by selling from an unexpected corner: Long-Term Holders (LTHs).
These holders, historically the most resilient cohort, have collectively moved or sold over 800,000 BTC in the past 30 days. While LTH capitulation typically marks late-stage drawdowns just before a bottom, the dynamic this time appears slightly different.
Ki Young Ju of CryptoQuant has suggested that this movement is less about the wholesale collapse of confidence and more about internal rotation.
According to him, the old whales are strategically offloading their generational holdings to a new, structurally sound class of institutional buyers like sovereign funds, pensions, and multi-asset managers.
He noted that these new institutions generally possess much lower churn rates and significantly longer investment horizons.
So, if true, this rotation could be seen as long-term bullish, essentially transferring supply from early adopters to stable, perpetual investors.
However, the near-term price action of these offloadings remains detrimental.
On-chain metrics highlight this acute selling pressure, with Glassnode data showing that Short-Term Holders (STHs) are realizing losses of approximately $427 million per day, a level not seen since the November 2022 capitulation.
Bitcoin Short Term Holders (Source: Glassnode)
As a result, the supply of STH BTC held at a loss has surged to levels historically consistent with market bottoms.
However, analysts at Swissblock argued that panic-driven “capitulation selling” remains absent, while adding that the current setup clearly signals an “open bottoming window.”
Considering this, this means the period of maximum uncertainty implies that while a floor may be forming, the market has yet to confirm it, and continued selling pressure could easily push the price lower before stabilization.
Macro headwinds tighten the noose.
Ultimately, the most decisive factor driving current behavior is the increasingly hostile global macro backdrop.
Bitcoin is trading less like an idiosyncratic asset and more like a high-beta expression of global risk sentiment. When global liquidity contracts, high-risk assets invariably suffer.
Expectations for a December Federal Reserve rate cut, which was a key bullish catalyst priced confidently earlier in the year, have essentially collapsed to even odds.
According to CME FedWatch data, traders now assign a 46.6% chance of a rate cut at the Dec. 10 FOMC meeting and a 53.4% probability that the Fed keeps rates unchanged.
US Interest Rate Cut Probabilities (Source: CME FedWatch)
This renewed hawkishness has translated directly into tighter liquidity, amplifying risk aversion as rising Treasury yields and fragile equity markets pressure all asset classes. Crypto is caught squarely in this undertow.
With liquidity contracting globally, traders are being forced to hedge risk aggressively into year-end rather than take speculative upside bets.
This macro pressure validates the bearish signals seen in the options market. On-chain momentum indicators place Bitcoin squarely in the Pessimism ‘Correction’ zone around 0.72.
Bitcoin Composite Index. (Source: CryptoQuant)
If this metric continues to fall, technical models point toward a critical correction target of $87,500, a key support level dating back to early 2025.
So, any price stabilization would require a strong reversal in liquidity and sentiment, allowing the market to consolidate between $90,000 and $110,000.
Solana is down by less than 1% and is currently trading below $140.
Canary Capital and Fidelity announced the launch of their spot Solana ETFs SOLC and FSOL on Tuesday.
SOL down 1% despite positive fundamentals
SOL, the native coin of the Solana blockchain, is down by less than 1% in the last 24 hours and is currently trading below $140. This bearish performance comes despite Canary Capital and Fidelity announcing the launch of their spot Solana Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs), SOLC and FSOL, on Tuesday.
The news boosted market sentiment amid growing institutional investors. However, it didn’t translate into a positive rally for SOL, as the coin continues to eye the weekly support level around $128.
Fidelity became the fourth asset manager to launch an SOL ETF and also added a staking feature to the fund. This latest development indicates growing institutional interest in Solana-based investment products, which could become a bullish outlook for SOL in the long term.
SOL could retest the $128 low as bearish momentum persists
The SOL/USD daily chart is bearish and efficient as Solana has underperformed over the past few days. SOL faced rejection at the daily level of $168.79 last week and has lost over 22% of its value since then. At press time, SOL is trading above $136 per coin after hitting the $144 level on Tuesday.
If the current support level at $128.68 continues to hold, SOL could extend the recovery toward the next major resistance and TLQ level at $160. The RSI on the daily chart currently stands at 34, indicating that the bearish trend remains strong.
However, if SOL’s daily candle closes below $128.68 over the next few hours, the coin could extend its decline toward the next daily support at $118. Currently, the trend and order flow are negative, indicating that sellers are in control.
Global megabank HSBC is doubling down on tokenization over stablecoins as global banks rush to keep pace in the stablecoin race.
HSBC Holdings will start offering tokenized deposits to its corporate clients in the US and the United Arab Emirates in the first half of 2026, according to a Bloomberg report on Tuesday.
The Tokenized Deposit Service (TDS) by HSBC enables clients to send money domestically and abroad in seconds around the clock, said Manish Kohli, HSBC’s global head of payments solutions.
“The topic of tokenization, stablecoins, digital money and digital currencies has obviously gathered so much momentum. We are making big bets in this space,” Kohli said.
Tokenized deposits versus stablecoins
Tokenized deposits are digital representations of bank deposits issued on a blockchain by regulated banks, allowing for instant 24/7 transfers and programmable payments.
Stablecoins versus tokenized deposits: Source: Fireblocks
According to Kohli, HSBC plans to expand the use cases of tokenized deposits in programmable payments and autonomous treasuries, or systems that deploy automation and AI to independently manage cash and liquidity risk.
“Nearly every large company that we have a conversation with, we are seeing a big theme around treasury transformation,” the HSBC executive said.
HSBC stablecoin launch not ruled out
The product’s expansion in the US and UAE is the latest by HSBC, following its debut of the offering in Hong Kong in May, with Ant International becoming the first client to utilize the TDS solution.
The bank has since expanded the offering in multiple markets, including Singapore, the United Kingdom and Luxembourg.
Source: Bloomberg Intelligence
HSBC’s choice to move forward with tokenized deposits comes amid major banks like JPMorgan doubling down on the technology.
While pushing tokenized deposits, HSBC does not rule out the potential issuance of a stablecoin.
“It’s something that we would continue to evaluate,” Kohli said, adding: “There are a few things that need to happen, which is the legal framework needs to be clearer.”
Ripple’s XRP traded near $2.15 after latest price declines across cryptocurrencies.
However, downward pressure remains amid a dip in supply in profit ratios.
Breakout past $2.30 could allow bulls to aim for more gains, but waning speculative appetite limits action.
XRP price trades near $2.15 and in the red over the week as circulating supply in profit plummets to 58.5%.
This is the lowest level the metric has touched since November 2024 when the Ripple token traded under $1, with blockchain analytics platform Glassnode noting a structurally fragile market.
Dips for Bitcoin, Ethereum, and the broader altcoin market align with this XRP’s performance.
XRP supply in profit falls
According to analytics and research platform Glassnode, the strong downward pressure has XRP supply in profit tanking to around 58% – the lowest since November 2024.
That’s when the Ripple token traded near $0.53.
Losses in recent weeks have seen supply in loss rise significantly, with momentum buyers dominating and likely a source of sell-off pressure.
“Today, despite trading ~4× higher ($2.15), 41.5% of supply (~26.5B XRP) sits in loss- a clear sign of a top-heavy and structurally fragile market dominated by late buyers,” Glassnode wrote on X.
According to Glassnode, XRP distribution after profit realization since late September has been “into weakness, not strength.” But have bulls weathered the storm?
The launch of the XRP spot ETF and key partnerships have buoyed sentiment despite price declines.
On XRP spot ETFs, Bloomberg’s Eric Balchunas recently noted:
Congrats to $XRPC for $58m in Day One volume, the most of any ETF launched this year (out of 900), BARELY edging out $BSOL‘s $57m. The two of them are in league of own tho as 3rd place is over $20m away. pic.twitter.com/MjsOeceeNb
Ripple (XRP) is trading around $2.15 at the time of writing on Wednesday as uncertainty across the crypto market continues.
While Bitcoin has bounced off lows of $89,500 and touched $93,000, the market is largely negative, with retail and institutional demand having faded in recent weeks.
Ripple’s token is down 1.6% in the past 24 hours as of writing.
The altcoin is also down nearly 12% in the past week, hovering largely near key support rather than at critical resistance.
This happens as risk-off sentiment cuts across the market, driven by macroeconomic jitters and panic selling.
Bitcoin ATMs were spotted across major shopping malls in Nairobi days after Kenya implemented its first comprehensive cryptocurrency law, creating an immediate stress test for regulators who claim that no crypto provider is yet authorized to operate.
Local media outlet Capital News reported that several major malls across Nairobi had new machines branded “Bankless Bitcoin” installed beside traditional banking kiosks, offering cash-to-crypto services to the locals.
This isn’t the first time Kenya has seen Bitcoin ATMs. In 2018, The East African reported that ATM provider BitClub installed Bitcoin ATMs in Nairobi, although adoption remained minimal and the devices did not reach mainstream retail spaces.
CoinATMradar data indicates that there are currently only two reported Bitcoin ATMs in Kenya.
The arrival of new Bitcoin ATMs comes just weeks after Kenya’s Virtual Assets Service Providers Act of 2025 came into effect. On Nov. 4, Kenya implemented its first formal licensing framework for wallet operators, exchanges, custodians and other crypto platforms.
Under the new law, the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) will be responsible for overseeing payment and custody functions. In contrast, the Capital Markets Authority (CMA) will regulate investment and trading activities.
A Bitcoin ATM spotted in Kenya. Source: Capital FM
The Central Bank of Kenya warns that no VASP is licensed yet
While the law is in effect, the regulations required to initiate licensing of VASPs have not yet been issued. This means that providers are currently operating without the necessary licenses.
In a joint notice issued on Tuesday, the CBK and the CMA stated that neither regulator has licensed any VASP under the new laws to operate in or from Kenya. The regulators warned that companies claiming authorization are doing so illegally.
“Currently, CBK and CMA have not licensed any VASPs under the Act to operate in or from Kenya,” the central bank said, adding that the National Treasury is already developing and will issue regulations that will determine when the licensing can start.
The situation creates a mismatch. On one hand, visible crypto infrastructure is entering mainstream retail spaces while regulators are warning the public that no operator has the proper authorization.
It raises questions about enforcement and the compliance of crypto businesses in the country.
Bitcoin goes from Kibera backstreets to upscale malls
The arrival of Bitcoin ATMs in high-end malls signals that Kenya’s informal crypto ecosystem is expanding despite operating in regulatory gray areas.
Capital News reported that while Bitcoin ATMs are only just starting to reach more upscale malls, Bitcoin usage has flourished in lower-income neighborhoods, such as Kibera, where people use BTC as a form of banking.
“In many cases, people in Kibera do not have an opportunity to secure their lives with normal savings,” AfriBit Africa co-founder Ronnie Mdawida told the local outlet.
He said that with Bitcoin, residents can hold value without documentation and banking paperwork, which he said was “financial freedom” for people living on a dollar a day.
US-traded spot Bitcoin ETFs hemorrhaged $2.57 billion in net outflows through Nov. 17, the funds’ worst monthly drawdown since their January 2024 launch.
In the same month, Bitcoin dropped 14.7% and briefly touched $89,253.78 on Nov. 17, its lowest level since April, before recovering to $93,426.16, up 1.3% in 24 hours.
The outflow wave crested on Nov. 13, when $866.7 million exited the funds in the second-worst single-day retreat on record, according to Farside Investors data. BlackRock’s IBIT bore the brunt of the following day, posting its steepest daily loss at $463.1 million.
IBIT alone accounts for nearly $1.6 billion of the month’s total redemptions.
Transmission mechanism
ETF flows translate directly into spot demand through the authorized participant creation and redemption process. When capital enters an ETF, APs must buy or source underlying Bitcoin to deliver to the fund’s custodian, generating real spot purchases.
Creation demand beyond natural sell pressure tightens the circulating supply and lifts the clearing price. The reverse holds: redemptions force funds to sell Bitcoin or unwind hedges, pressuring spot markets lower.
This mechanism operates through channels that bypass retail crypto exchanges. Retirement accounts, registered investment advisors, and wirehouse platforms funnel institutional capital that otherwise wouldn’t touch on-chain markets.
When these allocators reverse course, they remove a structural bid that had absorbed miner issuance and other cyclical supply.
Daily mining output sits around 450 BTC post-halving, and sustained net buying above that rate creates negative net new supply, a condition that typically supports price appreciation.
Additionally, timing matters. APs execute Bitcoin purchases during US market hours around share creations, while public flow data is published after the close.
Some participants hedge with CME futures before sourcing spot, fragmenting intraday price discovery between the derivatives and cash markets. Price movements can precede headline flow figures by hours.
Broader context and price dynamics
Flows don’t operate in isolation. Bitcoin can rally on outflow days if offshore leverage expands or other buyer cohorts emerge.
Conversely, inflows don’t guarantee gains if macro risk, dollar strength, or liquidations dominate.
However, over multi-week periods, persistent redemptions signal eroding durable demand and lower the price floor needed to attract sellers.
Bitcoin’s 18.6% monthly drawdown to $89,253.78 tracks the scale of ETF capital flight. The funds had functioned as a steady source of fiat-native demand, absorbing spot supply and reducing float available for sale.
November’s reversal removes that support structure precisely as miners continue producing 450 BTC daily and the market digests prior inflows that had pushed Bitcoin above $111,000 earlier in the month.
The $2.57 billion exit represents the first sustained test of whether ETF demand can stabilize during volatility or if these vehicles amplify drawdowns when allocators rotate out.
IBIT’s $1.6 billion in redemptions alone exceeds the total monthly outflows recorded in any prior period, concentrating the exodus in the largest and most liquid fund.
Although Bitcoin’s recovery above $93,000 demonstrates some buying interest at lower levels, the month’s cumulative damage reflects the withdrawal of structural demand that had underpinned the asset’s climb through 2024 and early 2025.
Coinbase plans a prediction markets platform using Kalshi’s regulated system.
Users can trade USDC or USD across sports, politics, and tech events.
Move aligns with Coinbase’s goal to become an “everything exchange.”
Coinbase is preparing to enter the rapidly growing prediction markets sector, leveraging the regulated infrastructure of Kalshi to build its own platform.
Screenshots shared by tech researcher Jane Manchun Wong suggest the cryptocurrency exchange is creating a fully branded interface that would allow users to trade event-based contracts using USDC or US dollars.
The leaked images reveal a prediction markets website under development by Coinbase, featuring its branding and a clean, user-friendly layout.
The platform is set to operate through Coinbase Financial Markets, the exchange’s derivatives arm, in partnership with Kalshi, a federally regulated prediction market approved by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).
This regulatory backing positions Coinbase to offer legally compliant event-based trading in the United States, which has become a critical consideration for exchanges seeking to expand into this sector.
According to the screenshots, users will be able to trade on events spanning economics, sports, science, politics, and technology.
The interface hints that new markets will be introduced frequently, suggesting that Coinbase aims to maintain a dynamic and engaging platform for participants.
The website also includes a FAQ section and an onboarding guide, reflecting Coinbase’s intent to make the service accessible to both experienced traders and newcomers.
Coinbase’s strategy to become an “everything exchange”
Coinbase has previously indicated its ambition to evolve into what it calls an “everything exchange.”
Adding prediction markets aligns with this goal, providing users with another avenue to engage in crypto-based financial products.
The partnership with Kalshi, announced in November, allows Coinbase to act as custodian for Kalshi’s USDC-based event contracts, further solidifying its foothold in this emerging market.
The move also reflects the broader industry trend. Other major crypto exchanges have been moving aggressively into prediction markets.
Crypto.com recently launched a platform integrated with Trump Media, while Gemini has filed with the CFTC to become a designated contract market as part of its effort to create a “super app.”
Prediction markets have witnessed explosive growth in 2024 and 2025, with platforms such as Kalshi and Polymarket reporting record volumes as users increasingly turn to event-based trading ahead of major political, economic, and cultural moments.
Expanding global ambitions
This development comes alongside Coinbase’s recent international expansion with the launch of Coinbase Business in Singapore, a platform designed for startups and small businesses.
The Singapore platform offers instant USDC payments, global transfers, and automated accounting integrations, supported by real-time SGD banking rails via Standard Chartered.
By blending fiat and crypto under clear regulatory standards, Coinbase is positioning itself as a trusted partner for businesses navigating the evolving digital payments landscape.
Taken together, these moves demonstrate Coinbase’s strategic push into both innovative trading products and international markets.
The prediction markets platform, backed by Kalshi, gives Coinbase a foothold in one of the fastest-growing segments of the crypto economy, while the Singapore expansion highlights its commitment to regulatory compliance and practical financial solutions for global users.
As prediction markets continue to attract interest, Coinbase’s entry into the sector could intensify competition and further validate event-based trading as a mainstream financial offering.
