分类： Bitcoin

Ripple Labs closed a $500 million strategic funding round in 2025 at a $40 billion valuation, led by Fortress Investment Group and Citadel Securities with participation from Brevan Howard, Marshall Wace, Pantera Capital, and Galaxy Digital.

This came on top of a $1 billion tender offer earlier in the year at the same valuation, providing early shareholders liquidity without the scrutiny of public markets.

The investor roster reads like a who’s-who of institutional capital deployment. These aren’t crypto venture funds making speculative bets on protocols, but rather multi-strategy firms and market makers managing hundreds of billions of dollars in traditional assets.

Their participation signals that something has shifted in how seriously the financial system views Ripple’s position.

At the same time, Ripple has been building aggressively. It acquired prime broker Hidden Road for approximately $1.25 billion, treasury platform GTreasury for roughly $1 billion, and stablecoin infrastructure firm Rail for $200 million.

It launched and scaled RLUSD, a fully reserved dollar stablecoin with a supply exceeding $1 billion, used for payments and as collateral.

It applied for a US national bank charter and a Federal Reserve master account to hold stablecoin reserves directly at the Fed.

And it formally closed its existential SEC battle with a $125 million penalty and an injunction limited to institutional XRP sales, preserving the crucial ruling that exchange-traded XRP is not itself a security.

This is now one of the most valuable private crypto companies on the planet, backed by top-tier traditional finance, and building a regulated dollar and infrastructure stack. The obvious question: does “bigger Ripple” automatically mean better outcomes for XRP?

The answer is more complicated than the headlines suggest.

Equity is not tokens

The first clarifying point matters more than any other: Fortress, Citadel Securities, and the rest did not buy XRP. They bought Ripple equity.

Equity holders have a claim on Ripple’s businesses, including stablecoin revenue, custody fees, prime brokerage operations, software licenses, payment processing, and any financial upside Ripple can derive from its XRP holdings.

XRP holders do not get a claim on Ripple’s profits, don’t receive dividends, and don’t participate in the company’s governance.

The tokens exist on a separate economic plane from the corporate structure.

The $40 billion valuation is a testament to traditional finance, which asserts that Ripple’s corporate stack is valuable in a world where the GENIUS Act provides regulatory clarity for stablecoins and banks can custody digital assets.

It is not a statement that XRP is worth more per coin tomorrow or that the token’s utility just expanded mechanically.

That distinction should anchor any expectations of what this funding round actually means for XRP holders. A bigger balance sheet for Ripple does not automatically translate to higher token prices or expanded use cases. It creates optionality, not inevitability.

The conditional upside case

There are plausible channels through which a larger, better-capitalized Ripple could enhance XRP’s real-world utility, but each depends on execution choices the company has yet to make.

First, Ripple now has serious firepower to deepen financial rails where XRP could be integrated. More capital for liquidity programs, better integration of XRP into payment corridors, interoperability between RLUSD and XRP for multi-currency settlements, using its prime broker and custody stack to make XRP easier for institutions to hold and fund.

The bull case rests on the capital plus regulatory credibility translating into more institutional adoption of XRP as a liquidity asset in cross-border flows.

Second, the SEC cloud has lifted. The company cleared its existential regulatory overhang with a manageable settlement that preserves the key precedent that exchange-traded XRP is not a security.

That removes a barrier for US institutions that could not previously touch XRP due to its unregistered security risk. A de-risked issuer backed by marquee investors makes it easier for risk committees to at least consider XRP exposure alongside Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Third, owning Hidden Road and similar infrastructure assets gives Ripple direct influence over a piece of the institutional trading stack.

If Ripple chooses to route some of that flow through XRP for foreign exchange, collateral management, or liquidity provision, its infrastructure footprint could translate into non-trivial, utility-driven demand rather than purely speculative positioning.

All of that describes possibility, not mechanism. The funding round creates pathways Ripple can choose to pursue. It doesn’t mandate any specific outcome for XRP.

The strategic dilution risk

The more uncomfortable and most honest angle is that Ripple’s new strategy can also dilute XRP’s centrality to the business model.

Most of what investors are paying $40 billion for is Ripple’s position in stablecoins and regulated infrastructure, not XRP maximalism.

RLUSD is explicitly a dollar token, not a bridge asset. Its growth, backed by Treasury bills and bank-style oversight, integrated into Hidden Road, GTreasury, and Rail, represents a direct bet that institutions want on-chain dollars with yield and regulatory compliance.

That is a fundamentally different product from XRP’s original “bridge asset between fiat corridors” narrative.

The GENIUS Act framework and pursuit of a bank charter push Ripple to behave like a cautious, supervised financial institution.

In that world, RLUSD and custody fees are clean, regulator-approved revenue lines.

Promoting heavy XRP speculation or relying on continuous XRP sales becomes less attractive from both a political and a prudential supervision standpoint.

The more Ripple can generate revenue from stablecoin yield spread, payment processing, brokerage commissions, and software licensing, the less it needs XRP as a core revenue engine.

That’s good for Ripple’s long-term solvency and regulatory standing. It weakens the simplistic “XRP moons because Ripple succeeds” thesis.

There’s also the reality of supply overhang. Ripple still controls a massive XRP stash in escrow. A stronger balance sheet means less immediate pressure to sell into the market for operating capital, which is mildly supportive of price.

However, those holdings remain part of what equity investors value when they price the company at $40 billion.

The market knows those coins exist. The funding round doesn’t make them disappear or commit them to any specific use case.

The tension worth exploring is this: Ripple is evolving into a diversified, stablecoin-and-infrastructure firm whose success only partially overlaps with XRP’s original role.

The token was designed as a bridge asset to address liquidity issues in cross-border payments. The company is now building a comprehensive financial infrastructure that generates predictable fees from dollars, custody, and prime services. Those businesses don’t require XRP to work.

What the $40 billion actually signals

The honest assessment requires separating what the funding round proves from what it implies.

It proves that some of the sharpest allocators in traditional finance believe in Ripple’s stablecoin, custody, and prime brokerage strategy in a post-GENIUS regulatory environment.

It confirms Ripple has institutional credibility and can access massive pools of capital without going public. It validates that the company weathered its regulatory battle and emerged with valuable businesses and regulatory clarity.

It does not prove that those businesses will drive XRP adoption. It does not guarantee Ripple will prioritize XRP integration over alternative revenue streams.

It does not eliminate the structural tension between what equity investors value, which is predictable, regulated financial services, and what token holders want, which is expanded utility and demand for XRP itself.

Whether “bigger Ripple” matters for XRP depends entirely on the choices the company makes with this capital and credibility.

Will Ripple use its $500 million and institutional backing to drive real transactional demand for XRP beyond speculative trading? Will it integrate XRP into its growing institutional stack in ways that stablecoins or plain dollars cannot match?

Or will RLUSD and dollar rails fully cannibalize XRP’s bridge-asset narrative, leaving the token as a legacy holding that pays for new initiatives but doesn’t participate in their upside?

Currently, the funding round primarily indicates that investors are enthusiastic about Ripple’s transition to a regulated dollar and its infrastructure. For XRP holders, that represents opportunity, not promise.

The company has more resources to build rails where XRP could matter, with more resources to build around it.

The $40 billion valuation is real. Whether it translates to XRP utility depends on the execution decisions that have yet to be made.

“OG Bitcoin whales are dumping,” is the overarching narrative surrounding the latest Bitcoin selloff. Yet, amid nonstop chatter that Bitcoin’s earliest supporters are behind its latest price slide, on-chain analyst Willy Woo points to “nuance” in the metrics. On-chain moves don’t tell the full story; the old-guard may not be caving in just yet.

Are OG Bitcoin whales cashing out? The narrative

Charles Edwards of Capriole Investments published a chart painting 2025 as a “very colorful” year for whale activity, with a string of $100 million and $500 million Bitcoin spends traced from addresses untouched for more than seven years. He concluded:

“OG Bitcoin whales are dumping.”

Over 1 million BTC have moved since June, dramatically outpacing prior cycles and handing analysts the simple conclusion that whales are cashing out. Alex Krüger highlighted how this pattern marks a break from previous market cycles. Whale selling has been steady for nearly 12 months, contributing to Bitcoin’s underperformance against other risk assets.​ He stated:

“Chart shows OG Bitcoin whales have been dumping non-stop since November 2024.”

Horizon’s Joe Consorti chimed in, posting:

“OG bitcoin whales are dumping and sentiment is horrible.”

He noted how much the market has changed as Bitcoin’s early advocates are giving way to TradFi giants like JPMorgan, and “99.5% of funds in the spot bitcoin ETFs haven’t sold in this 20% drawdown”

ETF investors: The “boomers” who didn’t flinch

And while insiders appear to be fleeing like rats from a sinking ship, senior ETF analyst at Bloomberg, Eric Balchunas, points out that the “boomer” Bitcoin ETF buyers are holding strong. Bitcoin ETFs have seen less than $1 billion in outflows, even as spot Bitcoin fell 20%. He questioned:

“So who’s been selling? To quote that horror movie, “ma’am, the call is coming from inside the house”

The ‘nuance’ beneath OG Bitcoin whales’ moves

Yet amid the supposed avalanche of OG selling, Willy Woo, widely respected for on-chain analytics, cautions against reading every movement of ancient coins as dumping. His analysis points out three key things often misinterpreted as sales but which may have nothing to do with price-driven liquidation:

• Address Upgrades: Many OG holders are moving coins from legacy addresses to Taproot addresses, seeking quantum security (not liquidating for cash).​
• Custody Rotations: Coins may be shifted to institutional custody (e.g., with Sygnum Bank) for better protection against physical theft and wrench attacks, or posted as collateral to borrow against, with no sale required.​
• Treasury Participation: Some “OG” coins are being moved into equity wrappers or treasury companies, allowing holders to leverage, borrow, or optimize their holdings without triggering a taxable sale.​

Woo points out that on-chain data only shows coins “moving,” not the real-world intent behind the transaction. So while headline charts point to OG Bitcoin whales “dumping,” the resilience of price under this massive movement highlights market absorption and deeper reasons than just whales cashing out.​

Data from Capriole, Bloomberg, and top traders all confirm heavy OG activity, but ETF outflows remain minimal, and the price, while pressured, absorbed more than 1 million BTC in sales with far less carnage than past cycles. Not all ancient coin movement is dumping, so pay attention to on-chain nuance rather than the rumors. What you see may not be what you get.

Seven of the top ten miners by hashrate report AI or high-performance computing initiatives already generating revenue, with the other three planning to follow suit.

The shift pairs miners’ energized land and interconnections with contracted revenue from GPU customers, creating a second line of business that competes with running ASICs at full power.

AI partnerships redefine mining economics and investor focus

TeraWulf set the reference point after signing two 10-year hosting agreements with Fluidstack, totaling approximately 200 MW at Lake Mariner.

According to Barron’s, Google is backing a portion of Fluidstack’s lease obligations, up to approximately $ 1.8 billion, and has received warrants that could equate to roughly 8 percent of TeraWulf. The disclosed deal math implies roughly $1.85 million per MW per year of headline revenue over the term, which many miners now use as a benchmark when courting AI tenants.

Core Scientific expanded a 12-year relationship with CoreWeave for about 70 MW of additional HPC capacity, with operations targeted for the second half of 2025. Bitdeer continues to operate a commercial AI cloud based on NVIDIA DGX systems, while Iris Energy reports an AI cloud business running on H100 and H200 GPUs.

Others are building the real estate for the next wave. CleanSpark said on October 29 it secured 271 acres and about 285 MW of long-term power in Texas for what it calls a next-generation AI and HPC campus. Marathon agreed in August to acquire 64 percent of Exaion, an EDF subsidiary, to expand its global AI and HPC capabilities, with an option to increase its stake to 75 percent by 2027.

Riot has been assessing the conversion of approximately 600 MW at Corsicana for AI or HPC and has paused part of its mining expansion, resulting in a reduction of year-end 2025 hashrate guidance from 46.7 EH/s to 38.4 EH/s. Bitfarms has hired consultants to conduct a feasibility study and has been marketing its sites to AI clients.

Cipher Mining is reported to have a multi-year Fluidstack arrangement with a Google-linked lease commitment, although not all terms are disclosed in a single primary filing. Abu Dhabi’s Phoenix Group has signaled plans to scale data-center capacity beyond 1 GW, with an AI focus, and is exploring a U.S. listing to fund the expansion.

The economic case rests on power and predictability.

Using today’s network context of about 1.08 to 1.10 ZH/s and 144 blocks per day with fees that have ranged from roughly 0.3 to 2.0 BTC per block, one MW of modern ASICs at about 17 J/TH translates to about 0.059 EH/s of hashrate.

That share of the network earns roughly $ 1.0 to $ 1.6 million per MW per year in gross mining revenue before power and opex, at a bitcoin price of nearly $104,000, according to CoinWarz data for price and hashrate. The midpoint of that range, around 1.2 to 1.3 million dollars, trails the 1.85 million dollars per MW per year implied by TeraWulf’s AI contracts.

Power price, capital expenditure (capex), and utilization determine margins in either model. Still, the contracted nature of AI hosting has become a key feature for equity investors seeking steadier cash flows rather than pure exposure to risk and fees.

Macro demand for data-center power provides the backdrop. McKinsey charts show U.S. data-center electricity consumption could reach about 606 TWh by 2030 as AI workloads scale. ERCOT projects record peak demand over the next five years, with data centers a primary factor, as analyses indicate approximately 35 GW of peak data-center load by 2035.

Utilities are adjusting, with American Electric Power increasing its five-year capital plan to $ 72 billion as it works through a pipeline of customer-backed contracts and more than 190 GW of load requests in development, according to Reuters. Those numbers align with miners’ pitch that their grid ties, substations, and land banks are now scarce inputs for AI campuses, not just for exahash.

This realignment changes what matters inside the mining league table.

A miner that directs new megawatts toward AI may record lower headline hashrate growth than a pure-play operation. Yet, its enterprise value can improve through contracted revenue, power optionality, and longer-dated agreements.

Core Scientific’s additions with CoreWeave put a 12-year stamp on the model. CleanSpark’s 285 MW plan and Marathon’s Exaion purchase push miners toward owning and operating mixed-use campuses where GPUs, miners, and sometimes standard colocation can share infrastructure. Riot’s public evaluation of 600 MW at Corsicana demonstrates how quickly the mix can change when a site already has transformers, switchgear, water rights, and fiber infrastructure in place.

There are constraints. ERCOT interconnection timelines, gas turbine availability for new peakers, and transformer lead times all dictate how quickly high-density halls can be energized. GPU supply remains a swing factor as Blackwell and successor parts ramp and as hyperscalers allocate inventory to internal builds.

On the crypto side, any shift in fee regimes that materially lifts fees per block can close some of the per-MW revenue gap between mining and AI hosting. A move of about 0.5 BTC per block in sustained average fees is worth roughly $ 0.2 to $ 0.3 million per MW per year in miner gross revenue at current price levels, based on the simple share-of-network math above.

Investors are watching the composition of revenue, rather than just the exahash.

Contracted AI megawatts and dollars per MW per year are becoming the new disclosures to track. The $1.5 to $2.0 million per MW per year range is emerging as a practical benchmark for high-density hosting in the U.S., with TeraWulf’s disclosed figure serving as a current reference.

Utility capex plans and interconnection queue updates are now as relevant to miner outlooks as ASIC delivery schedules. As U.S. spot power tightens, miners with already energized land, permitted pads, and spare substations can monetize that optionality faster than greenfield entrants.

The international angle adds heft. Marathon’s move with Exaion ties a U.S. miner to an EDF affiliate inside the French power system, aligning GPU hosting with state-adjacent energy assets.

Phoenix Group’s plan to scale in the Gulf, while weighing a U.S. listing, puts sovereign power economics into the mix for AI infrastructure.

Those structures could pull more miners into joint ventures where utilities or energy investors anchor long-term contracts in return for capacity rights, priority interconnects, or equity stakes.

For crypto fundamentals, the pivot could slow the rate at which network hashrate expands through 2026 if material portions of new power are routed to GPUs instead of ASICs. The network will still add hash as new sites come online and as older fleets refresh, yet the slope can flatten relative to the last surge.

That would not stop capital from entering mining, as high bitcoin prices and fee spikes can still improve returns; however, it makes the hashrate leaderboard a weaker proxy for equity value than it was in prior cycles.

Below is a concise snapshot of where the largest listed miners stand today. Status reflects whether AI/HPC is already generating revenue or is still in the planning or evaluation phases, based on company disclosures and mainstream reporting.

Bitcoin Miner	Hashrate (EH/s)	% of Global Network	AI/HPC Involvement	Status
Marathon Digital Holdings	57.4	5.3%	Acquiring 64% of EDF’s Exaion to expand AI/HPC infrastructure	Revenue
CleanSpark	50.0	4.6%	Building 285 MW AI/HPC data-centre campus in Texas (contracts under development)	Revenue
Iris Energy (IREN)	45.4	4.2%	Operating renewable-powered GPU AI cloud clusters with H100/H200 systems	Revenue
Riot Platforms	36.5	3.4%	Evaluating AI/HPC repurpose of 600 MW Corsicana facility (paused mining expansion)	Planning
Bitdeer Technologies	35.0	3.2%	Running commercial AI cloud service using NVIDIA DGX H100/H200 GPUs	Revenue
Cipher Mining	23.6	2.2%	Reported multi-year AI data-centre leases (AWS & Fluidstack, ~$8.5 B total)	Revenue
Core Scientific	19.1	1.8%	Hosting AI/ML workloads for CoreWeave under 12-year contract (~70 MW)	Revenue
Bitfarms	19.5	1.8%	Conducting HPC/AI conversion feasibility with Appleby Strategy Group	Planning
TeraWulf	12.8	1.2%	Signed 10-year AI hosting contracts (> 200 MW, Google-backed Fluidstack)	Revenue
Phoenix Group*	15.0 *	1.9% *	Expanding toward 1 GW hybrid data-centre capacity for AI/HPC by 2027 (planned)	Planning

What to watch now is simple and measurable. Track contracted AI megawatts and dollars per MW per year in new filings, utility capex trajectories, and ERCOT load revisions, and thirty-day averages for bitcoin fees relative to the subsidy using sources like CoinWarz.

Those data points will tell you how much mining power shifts to GPUs, how quickly campuses energize, and how the per-MW revenue gap evolves. The largest miners are already executing on that playbook.

In August 2025, Ripple Labs formally closed its years-long battle with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

The company paid a $125 million civil penalty, accepted an injunction on certain institutional XRP sales, and walked away with something more valuable than victory: clarity.

Judge Analisa Torres had already ruled in July 2023 that XRP itself wasn’t inherently a security and that programmatic sales on exchanges didn’t trigger Howey test requirements.

Direct institutional sales totaling about $728 million did violate securities law, but the core business survived intact.

The existential threat evaporated, and the stain of “unregistered security in secondary markets” lifted.

Industry watchers expected the obvious next move: an initial public offering to capitalize on vindication, access deeper pools of capital, and cement Ripple’s status as a legitimate financial infrastructure company.

Instead, Ripple did something else.

It raised half a billion dollars at a $40 billion valuation from Fortress Investment Group and Citadel Securities, executed a $1 billion tender offer at the same price to provide early investor liquidity, acquired a prime broker for $1.25 billion, launched a stablecoin, and applied for a US national bank charter.

The firm did everything except go public.

That choice deserves scrutiny not because it suggests weakness, since the company’s moves demonstrate the opposite, but because it reveals how crypto’s most sophisticated operators read the actual state of US public markets.

Ripple’s hesitation is less about what it can’t do and more about what it has learned watching others try.

Capital without the theater

The traditional case for an IPO rests on two pillars: access to capital and liquidity for stakeholders, and Ripple solved both without filing an S-1.

The 2025 capital raise attracted investors such as Fortress, Citadel Securities, Brevan Howard, Marshall Wace, Pantera Capital, and Galaxy Digital. This is the kind of investor roster that typically signals institutional legitimacy.

These aren’t crypto-native venture funds taking flyers on protocols, but multi-strategy macro shops and market makers deploying significant capital at a $40 billion valuation.

The tender offer provided exit liquidity for early employees and investors without the roadshow circus or quarterly earnings calls.

New strategic backers secured positions, while Ripple preserved tight control over its XRP treasury and RLUSD stablecoin economics.

Additionally, the company effectively recreated most benefits of a public listing while remaining in a private disclosure regime that doesn’t require explaining every strategic decision to retail shareholders and activist investors.

When a private round led by Citadel Securities functions as a de facto institutional seal of approval, the signaling value of a Wall Street listing loses some of its historical premium.

In other words, Ripple doesn’t need the Nasdaq to prove it’s real, it already proved that by attracting capital from firms that trade hundreds of billions in traditional securities daily.

The XRP machine under glass

Going public would force uncomfortable transparency around questions that equity analysts ask reflexively, but token projects prefer to keep blurry.

How much of Ripple’s revenue and cash flow depends on selling XRP over time? How should investors value a company controlling a large escrowed stash of a volatile token that it partially influences through its own product decisions and announcements? How durable is growth in RLUSD, payment processing, custody services, and prime brokerage compared to XRP mark-to-market effects?

These aren’t hypothetical concerns. A 2024 Forbes analysis characterized Ripple as a “crypto zombie” with modest fee income relative to enormous token holdings.

The company has since moved aggressively to fix that characterization through the $1.25 billion Hidden Road acquisition, the $200 million purchase of stablecoin infrastructure firm Rail, and the buildout of RLUSD, which processes about $95 billion in payments.

But an IPO would freeze that evolution into SEC filings, inviting constant comparison between operating business fundamentals and token treasury fluctuations.

Ripple also carries a permanent federal injunction tied to institutional XRP sales and a fresh $125 million violation on its books. That history is absolutely IPO-manageable, as plenty of companies list with regulatory settlements behind them, but it’s not clean.

It means extra risk-factor disclosures, extra analyst questions, and a real-time reminder that US securities law has already embedded itself in the company’s past behavior.

A firm that spent years arguing XRP isn’t a security understandably has limited enthusiasm for immediately becoming a registered securities issuer, whose every XRP movement would be judged by the same rulebook.

Crypto’s public market scar tissue

Ripple’s caution makes more sense in the context of how US public markets have treated crypto companies that did take the leap.

Coinbase is the cautionary tale. It executed a textbook direct listing in April 2021, complete with blue-chip advisors and full regulatory disclosure.

Within two years, the SEC sued Coinbase anyway, alleging it operated an unregistered exchange and broker-dealer.

The lesson absorbed across the industry: going public is not a regulatory safe harbor. It can paint a bigger target on your back by centralizing liability and creating a highly visible enforcement trophy.

Circle attempted a SPAC merger in 2021, but it was killed when regulatory tone and market conditions soured. The company finally completed a successful IPO in 2025.

Gemini followed a similar path, listing after regulatory frameworks solidified. Crypto firms that list cleanly are those whose economics resemble those of traditional, boring, fee-and-yield fintechs.

Companies that resemble regulated money transmitters or custody providers can fit into existing analyst models and compliance frameworks.

Ripple doesn’t fit those boxes. It’s simultaneously a token issuer with XRP, a would-be bank with a charter application pending, a stablecoin operator with RLUSD, a capital markets infrastructure owner with Hidden Road, and a firm with a documented enforcement history.

Cramming that hybrid structure into one public ticker invites every regulatory constituency to fight over how the company should be policed, priced, and potentially broken apart.

Maintaining privacy while pursuing a national bank charter and establishing structured relationships with multiple regulators enables Ripple to select its referees.

The bank charter route subjects the firm to prudential supervision, but treats RLUSD reserves parked at the Federal Reserve as banking activity, rather than securities issuance.

That’s a fundamentally different regulatory posture than trying to explain XRP custody and RLUSD mechanics in a Form 10-K while defending against potential securities litigation.

What hesitation reveals

Ripple’s “no rush” posture toward public markets is a signal worth decoding.

If a legally vindicated, strategically positioned, $40 billion-valued company backed by Citadel Securities, Fortress, and Brevan Howard still prefers tender offers, private rounds, and a bank charter application over a public listing, it’s not because the balance sheet is weak or the business model is broken.

Although much has changed during President Donald Trump’s administration, the US public market regime still treats crypto-native structures as problems to be contained rather than forms to be accommodated.

Despite years of maturation, institutional adoption, and regulatory battles fought to conclusion, the infrastructure for reasonably pricing and governing hybrid token-plus-operating-business companies remains underdeveloped.

Crypto firms have discovered they can now access deep institutional capital, regulatory legitimacy, and stakeholder liquidity through private placements, stablecoin frameworks like the GENIUS Act, and banking charters without surrendering narrative control or expanding their litigation surface area through public filings.

That’s not a temporary arbitrage. It’s a structural judgment about where the path of least resistance actually runs.

For Ripple specifically, staying private preserves maximum flexibility over XRP treasury management and RLUSD strategy while the company rebuilds itself as a full-stack financial infrastructure provider.

Listing now would lock that evolving story into quarterly earnings theater, which has historically not been kind to this industry.

Better to prove the model works, deepen regulatory relationships through the bank charter process, and wait until public markets can actually price what Ripple is becoming rather than what it used to be.

The company beat the SEC in court, but it’s choosing not to test whether Wall Street is ready to understand what comes next.

Russian entrepreneur Roman Novak, a convicted crypto fraudster, and his wife Anna were abducted and found murdered in the United Arab Emirates, after a plot linked to ransom demands and digital assets went awry.​

Roman Novak was well known across St. Petersburg for defrauding investors out of millions from his various crypto ventures. After being sentenced to a six-year prison sentence for large-scale fraud in 2020, Novak relocated to Dubai, creating the Fintopio crypto app and allegedly raising hundreds of millions from new investors.

In early October, Novak and his wife set out for what appeared to be a promising investor meeting near Hatta, close to the UAE-Oman border. Instead, they switched vehicles, leaving their driver behind, and disappeared without a trace.​

Roman Novak: International kidnapping and murder

As days passed with no contact, Novak’s relatives sounded the alarm. Russian and UAE authorities launched an investigation, suspecting the couple had been lured to a rented villa under false pretenses, abruptly turning a business meeting into a kidnapping for ransom.

The kidnappers hoped to force Novak to hand over access to substantial crypto funds, reportedly held in wallets and accounts linked to his app and prior fraud schemes. When they failed to secure the money, the tragic outcome followed: both Roman and Anna were killed. According to sources cited by Russian media, their bodies were dismembered and left in containers near a Hatta shopping center.​

Aftermath and ongoing investigation

With news breaking in Russian and international outlets, details have emerged of arrests spanning both the UAE and Russia. Seven suspects, several from St. Petersburg and one from Kazakhstan, have been detained, facing charges ranging from murder to financial crimes as intermediaries in illegal money movements. Anna’s father and stepmother had traveled to Dubai after the couple’s disappearance to be with the couple’s underage children, who were left orphaned by this brutal act.​

Crypto’s dark underside

The murder of Roman Novak and his wife is a stark reminder of the dangers lurking beneath the surface of the crypto world, and the alarming rise of wrench attacks. As security expert Jameson Lopp previously told CryptoSlate, flaunting your personal wealth on platforms like Instagram while holding crypto is one of the most dangerous things you can do.

Digital wealth creates new targets and new vulnerabilities, where criminal intent collides with decentralized finance. For law enforcement and crypto investors alike, the murder highlights the need for vigilance and strong safeguards in all dealings involving digital assets, especially as crypto continues its global spread.​

In the wake of Novak’s murder, both Russian and international authorities are stepping up efforts to police cross-border crime linked to blockchain investment scams and ransom-driven violence, as the search for accountability continues.

Zcash (ZEC) trades at $676.64 as of press time, marking its highest valuation since January 2018. The privacy-focused cryptocurrency posted a 26% gain in the past 24 hours and a 1,486% surge over the past three months.

The token now ranks as the 18th-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, at $11.2 billion, positioning it near Hyperliquid and above established networks, including Sui, Avalanche, and Litecoin.

Since Oct. 1, Zcash jumped from $74.30 to an intraday high of $750 on Nov. 7, representing a more than 10-fold price increase.

Jake Kennis, analyst at Nansen, explained the movement in a note:

“There is certainly speculation beyond the technology at this point, having increased by over 1,486% in just the last 3 months. The funding rate is extremely negative, and there have been many liquidations for those short recently.”

Privacy infrastructure meets market timing

According to Kennis, Zcash’s eight-year high is attributed to multiple converging factors. Privacy has transitioned from a feature to a perceived necessity in cryptocurrency markets, driving renewed ideological demand for private, self-sovereign transactions.

This manifests in the steady expansion of Zcash’s shielded pool, which enables fully encrypted transactions using zero-knowledge cryptography.

The technical architecture supporting this privacy layer has matured substantially. Zcash’s zero-knowledge proof system, the Zashi wallet that enables shielded transfers, and recent Solana integration have collectively improved usability and accessibility for users who previously found privacy coins difficult to adopt.

Zcash’s tokenomics mirror Bitcoin’s scarcity model while adding cryptographic privacy. The network operates on a fixed 21 million supply cap, utilizes proof-of-work consensus, and is facing an upcoming halving that will reduce new token issuance.

Combined with zk-SNARK-enabled privacy, these characteristics position Zcash as what Kennis describes as an “encrypted Bitcoin.”

Capital flows and attention return

The price surge has attracted renewed attention from crypto industry figures, including Arthur Hayes and Barry Silbert.

After years of underperformance relative to the broader cryptocurrency market, ZEC’s resurgence has drawn fresh capital flows from investors reassessing privacy-focused assets.

Derivatives markets reflect extreme positioning around the move. The negative funding rate Kennis cites indicates a crowded short position that faced liquidation pressure as prices climbed, potentially accelerating the upward momentum through forced buying.

The timing of Zcash’s breakout coincides with broader market discussions around transaction privacy and regulatory scrutiny of blockchain surveillance.

As governments and private entities expand blockchain analytics capabilities, demand for privacy-preserving transaction methods has grown among users seeking financial confidentiality.

Additionally, the Zashi wallet launch addressed a longstanding friction point in Zcash adoption. Previous wallet implementations made shielded transactions complex for average users, limiting the privacy features to technically sophisticated participants.

Zashi simplifies the process, potentially expanding the user base willing to conduct shielded transactions.

Solana integration extends Zcash’s reach into a high-throughput ecosystem with substantial liquidity and an active developer community.

This cross-chain functionality enables Zcash to leverage Solana’s user base while preserving its core privacy features through bridging mechanisms.

The shielded pool expansion Kennis references represents actual usage of Zcash’s privacy features rather than purely speculative trading.

When users move ZEC into the shielded pool, they opt into encrypted transactions where amounts and addresses remain hidden. Growth in this metric suggests organic demand for the privacy functionality itself.

The combination of ideological positioning around privacy, technical infrastructure improvements, Bitcoin-like supply dynamics, and attention from industry figures created conditions for the three-month rally that pushed ZEC past its multi-year resistance levels.

Samourai Wallet cofounder Keonne Rodriguez received the maximum sentence this week of five years in prison for writing code. As a developer sits in a jail cell for building privacy tools, many in the Bitcoin community, including Max Keiser, are pushing for a full pardon.

Crypto crackdown: Beyond campaign promises

Donald Trump vowed during his campaign to put an end to the crackdown on crypto. To a certain extent, he’s been true to his word. Since he’s been in office, he’s pardoned Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht, Binance’s founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, and issued a flurry of executive orders, such as the debanking order to put an official end to Operation Choke Point 2.0.

But the arrest and conviction of Samourai Wallet developers shows the continued clash between privacy, code, and the law, even with the White House’s pro-crypto pivot. And the contrast is harsh, as one Bitcoiner pointed out.

While banking giant JPMorgan paid $290 million to settle something as heinous as sex trafficking allegations in 2023, without a single top executive being jailed, the coder behind a Bitcoin privacy tool is convicted to serve five years’ hard time. As Bitcoin-centric tools developer Foundation, commented:

“The current administration often speaks in support of Bitcoin, yet the Justice Department continues to pursue policies that may predate this administration – targeting privacy technologies and open-source developers… Open-source developers deserve protection, not persecution.”

What is Samourai Wallet?

Samourai Wallet is a privacy-first Bitcoin wallet, co-founded by Keonne Rodriguez and William Lonergan Hill. It lets users mask their transaction histories and identities by using mixing features like Whirlpool and Ricochet.

The Department of Justice alleged that Samourai processed more than $2 billion in transactions and laundered over $100 million in criminal proceeds, including funds linked to hacking, fraud, drug trafficking, and murder-for-hire.

The core charges? Conspiracy to commit money laundering and operating an unlicensed money transmitting business, with prosecutors arguing that the creators marketed their software to people seeking to hide illicit funds. The devs pleaded guilty, and Rodriguez was given the maximum sentence of five years and ordered to pay a $250,000 fine. Hill will be sentenced later this month.

Ross Ulbricht, CZ, and a wave of pardons

The story doesn’t end with Samourai. The ghosts of cypherpunk past loom large: Ross Ulbricht, the founder of Silk Road, received a full pardon from President Trump this year, walking free after a decade behind bars for operating the infamous dark web marketplace.

Meanwhile, Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, Binance’s founder, also saw the inside of a cell, but was pardoned after serving time on federal money laundering charges this autumn. It was another instance where Trump’s political calculus overlapped with crypto’s biggest personalities.​

But while crypto devs get handed hefty sentences, financial titans like JPMorgan keep writing settlement checks and moving on unscathed.

Max Keiser and a growing chorus of Bitcoiners are urging Trump to issue a blanket pardon for the Samourai Wallet developers, framing the case as a battle for open-source financial privacy against creeping surveillance. They argue that prosecuting coders for privacy tools criminalizes not just software, but the very idea of financial autonomy.​

Why this case matters for crypto

Samourai Wallet’s prosecution marks a chilling milestone in the war on privacy-first financial tools, as​ Wall Street banks continue to avoid direct accountability for criminal allegations, settling massive cases without jail time.​

The push for a Samourai pardon is the tip of a growing movement: stand up for privacy, code, and the principles of financial freedom, or risk watching them put behind bars.​

This is the new crypto election cycle, where the lines between code and crime, settlement and sentence, are more blurred than ever, and the fight for justice is the industry’s loudest call yet.​

When Elon Musk crosses the trillion-dollar threshold, it will mark more than personal success. It will signal a new phase in economic history, where individual influence rivals that of entire states.

As a Bitcoiner, I see Satoshi Nakamoto’s vision of decentralized wealth and democratized finance as a blueprint for diffusing power, a way to make value less dependent on singular actors.

Yet as capital, AI, and policy orbit Musk’s expanding empire, his rise exposes how far we’ve strayed from that ethos.

The very idea of “value” may be consolidating again, this time not in governments or banks, but in individuals who wield technology as a form of leverage.

Some would say Bitcoin embodies the purest form of private property: unconfiscable, borderless, self-sovereign.

From that angle, Satoshi might not have viewed a trillionaire as a failure of decentralization but as its logical, perhaps unintended, consequence.

Elon’s elaborate payday

As of today, Tesla shareholders have approved a compensation package that could potentially increase Elon Musk’s net worth to $1 trillion if the plan’s milestones are met.

More than 75 percent of votes at Tesla’s Nov. 6 annual meeting backed a multiyear, option-heavy plan that pays out only if Tesla clears operational and valuation hurdles, including a market capitalization of nearly $8.5 trillion and the deployment of large-scale autonomy and humanoid robotics.

The math embedded in Tesla’s plan sets up an unusual comparison: a single individual’s equity exposure can plausibly overtake the market cap of the top four altcoins combined.

How to reach the finish line: wealth, power, and policy

If all of Musk’s tranches vest and are exercised, his effective ownership could move into the mid-20s percent, subject to dilution and financing.

At $8.5 trillion, a 27 percent stake would be approximately $2.295 trillion from Tesla alone. SpaceX is valued at nearly $350 billion in private markets as of mid-2025, with published bull cases reaching the trillions by 2030 in defense and broadband.

xAI funding chatter has circulated in a $75 to $200 billion range. Layered together, the convexity of the option grant ties personal wealth to a small set of binary outcomes, above all, robotaxis and humanoid robots.

Those are policy-gated as much as they are technical. In California, Tesla holds a DMV permit for testing with a safety driver, not the driverless testing and deployment permits that unlock commercial-scale operations. Separate CPUC approvals govern the phases of ride service, according to state records and Reuters coverage.

NHTSA’s scrutiny of Full Self Driving features remains a headline risk, as seen in prior probes covered by Ars Technica.

The trillion-dollar crypto challenge in perspective

Currently, Elon Musk’s net worth exceeds that of any single altcoin network. Only Bitcoin has a higher market cap at over $2 trillion, and I’m bullish enough on BTC to believe it will continue to outperform the portfolio of any private individual.

The next highest, Ethereum, has a market cap that has fluctuated in a $390 to $600 billion range in recent months, currently sitting at around $400 billion, which is around $100 billion below Musk’s wealth.

So let’s do some basic forward modeling.

Under a conservative scenario where autonomy is delayed and Optimus remains niche, Tesla reaches a valuation of $3 trillion by 2035, yielding approximately $750 billion for Musk’s 25 percent stake in Tesla, with SpaceX at $500 billion and xAI at $50 to $100 billion.

That produces approximately $1.3 to $1.35 trillion in gross assets, and after accounting for exercise costs, taxes, and loans, net worth hovers just below, but may not surpass, the $1 trillion mark.

By comparison, if Ethereum were valued at $5,000 with 125 million coins, the market cap would be approximately $625 billion.

In a base case, Tesla reaches $5 trillion, Optimus works first in factories, and energy scales, putting Musk’s Tesla stake at around $1.25 to $1.45 trillion, with SpaceX at $1 trillion and xAI at $200 billion.

That configuration makes a trillion-dollar net worth a base outcome, while Ethereum, even at nearly $10,000 and with 120 to 125 million coins, places ETH’s value around $1.2 to $1.25 trillion.

In a bull case, Tesla reaches a market capitalization of $8.5 trillion, robotaxis are widely adopted, humanoids are shipped at scale, SpaceX advances toward a market capitalization of $2.5 trillion, and xAI surpasses $500 billion. Musk’s wealth becomes multi-trillion.

The comparison is not hero versus protocol; it is equity optionality versus network adoption.

Scenario (2030–2035)	Tesla Market Cap	Implied Musk Tesla Stake	SpaceX / xAI	Gross Assets	Plausible Net Worth	ETH Supply	ETH Price	ETH Market Cap	Key Assumptions
Conservative	$3T	~$750B	$500B / $50–100B	~$1.3–1.35T	Sub-$1T–$1.1T	~125M	$5k	~$625B	Robotaxi limited geography, Optimus niche, ETF demand steady
Base	$5T	~$1.25–$1.45T	$1T / $200B	~$2.45–$2.65T	>$1T	120–125M	$10k	~$1.2–$1.25T	Partial autonomy monetization, Optimus in factories, ETF penetration
Bull	$8.5T	~$2.1–$2.5T	$2.5T / $0.5T+	$5T+	Multi-trillion	~120M	$20k	~$2.4T	Broad robotaxis, humanoid scale, crypto supercycle

So, for Ethereum to surpass Musk within the next decade and reach a $1 trillion valuation first, ETH would need to break above $10,000, assuming Tesla’s market cap remains below $3 trillion.

Billionaire influence and the politics of wealth

However, I believe that the social framing around these numbers also matters.

Research published through Cambridge University Press shows that admiration for the mega-rich, and related meritocracy or system-justifying beliefs, reduces support for redistribution and progressive taxation, including among lower-income groups.

Long-term research in political science suggests that policy outcomes are more responsive to the preferences of affluent individuals than to those of average citizens, indicating that extreme concentration can lead to enduring political influence.

In parallel, studies in economics have found that exposure to wealthier peers lowers life satisfaction and increases conspicuous consumption and borrowing, with significant effects at the lower end of the distribution, as documented in the Quarterly Journal of Economics and related work.

Polling by the Harris Poll in 2024 shows majorities say billionaires do not do enough for society, and UK polling points to broad concern about the political reach of the very rich.

These are not abstract vibes around celebrity. They are channels through which billionaire glamor and media narratives feed back into budgets, ballots, and debt.

Context on scale helps locate the ethics.

Forbes counted 3,028 billionaires in 2025, a record high, out of a world population of roughly 8.23 billion, which means about one in 2.7 million people.

No trillionaire currently exists. UBS estimates global household wealth at $450 trillion. One trillion dollars is about 0.22 percent of that total. The median adult wealth globally is in the low thousands of dollars, and more than 80 percent of adults have less than $100,000, according to Reuters’ summary of UBS data.

A one trillion-dollar personal fortune would equal the entire net worth of approximately 100 to 130 million median adults. The base rate for anyone moving from millionaire to billionaire is vanishingly low. Treating a trillion as an aspirational target for the public is numerically incoherent.

Policy choices are the swing factor around the tail. Status quo rules let top-end fortunes compound, and given the documented tilt in policy responsiveness, affordability issues tend to lag behind.

A targeted 2 percent annual tax on billionaire wealth, as modeled by Zucman and cited by Oxfam and reported by The Washington Post, would raise approximately $250 billion per year, which could fund public goods or cost-of-living relief while modestly trimming the tail.

A cultural shift away from grand man narratives and toward systemic accounts of progress raises support for progressive taxation in experimental settings, creating a softer check on the spillovers of billionaire worship.

Policy and public perception shape the trillion-dollar race

None of these measures changes Tesla’s valuation math or crypto demand curves on their own. They adjust the environment in which extreme fortunes sit.

There is also a governance angle within Tesla. Shareholders, not just the board, priced the option convexity and approved it, which answers one critique while raising another.

If state permits and safety agencies effectively gate the autonomy cash flows that underpin the plan, then public oversight now sits upstream of private wealth options worth trillions.

According to Reuters and California DMV records, Tesla still requires driverless testing and deployment approvals for the robotaxi scale in key markets, and NHTSA reviews remain active. The calendar for those decisions, not press events, will determine whether the package converts.

We do not need to cheer or boo Musk to see the comparison cleanly.

A monetary network’s path to one or two trillion relies on adoption, throughput, and flows. In contrast, a founder’s path to one or more trillion relies on a narrow set of technical and regulatory unlocks.

One can admire execution or engineering without celebrating a culture of billionaire worship that blunts support for redistribution and amplifies the sway of elites over policy. The math is plain, the worship is optional.

Ultimately, whether the first to reach $1 trillion is a man or a network, the more important question is what kind of system we want to empower: one built on individual ambition or collective adoption?

The Artificial Superintelligence Alliance, once hailed as crypto’s flagship AI collaboration, is now unraveling under the weight of internal conflict and competing interests.

Formed to unify Fetch.ai, SingularityNET, and Ocean Protocol into a shared ecosystem, the alliance promised to accelerate decentralized AI development through token and governance alignment.

But what began as a vision of synergy has devolved into public disputes over control, transparency, and token management.

Those tensions have now spilled into the courtroom, with Fetch leading a class action that could test not only the alliance’s future but also the very notion of DAO autonomy.

Why is Fetch taking legal action against Ocean Protocol?

Fetch and three token holders have filed a class action in the Southern District of New York alleging Ocean Protocol and its founders misled the community about the autonomy of OceanDAO.

The complaint, “Fetch Compute, Inc., et al. v. Bruce Pon, et al., case no. 1:25-cv-9210,” was filed Nov. 4, 2025, and names Ocean Protocol Foundation Ltd., Ocean Expeditions Ltd., OceanDAO, and Ocean co-founders Bruce Pon, Trent McConaghy, and Christina Pon as defendants.

Plaintiffs claim that Ocean misrepresented that hundreds of millions of OCEAN “community” tokens would be reserved for DAO rewards, but instead converted and sold those tokens after joining the Artificial Superintelligence Alliance, thereby depressing the value of FET and undermining the DAO’s stated governance model.

According to the complaint, the alleged scheme centered on the status of approximately 700 million OCEAN community tokens.

Plaintiffs claim that those tokens were initially pledged for autonomous, rules-based distribution to contributors via smart contracts as Ocean transitioned to a DAO model, but were subsequently reclassified in practice and removed from community control.

The filing argues that Ocean transferred the OceanDAO assets to a Cayman Islands entity, Ocean Expeditions, in late June, converted OCEAN to FET beginning in early July, liquidated a large portion of the resulting FET on centralized venues, and withdrew from the ASI Alliance in October.

K&L Gates partner Ed Dartley, counsel to Fetch.ai and the plaintiff class, said in a statement shared with CryptoSlate that

“Ocean misled the token community and its merger partners… to believe that 600 million Ocean tokens were reserved for community rewards.”

He added that the defendants “reaped millions of dollars that should have gone to the community.”

Ocean Protocol Foundation is contesting the claims. In a statement to CryptoSlate, Preston Byrne, Managing Partner of Byrne & Storm, who represents Ocean Protocol Foundation, said:

“This is a very strange lawsuit that seems designed for consumption on social media rather than destined for success in a courtroom. OPF will be responding to this lawsuit vigorously in due course.”

In a statement shared with CryptoSlate, Dr. Ben Goertzel, CEO of SingularityNET and co-founder of the ASI Alliance, said:

“While I have been very unpleasantly surprised by some of the recent actions of Ocean Protocol in the context of their departure from the ASI Alliance, I would rather leave the legal side in the hands of the lawyers.

I would just like to reiterate that while Ocean has chosen to go their own way, the Alliance continues to move forward powerfully toward decentralized AGI and superintelligence, with new advances every day.”

Plaintiffs detail a timeline that tracks the ASI token merger and Ocean’s eventual departure.

According to the filing, plaintiffs assert claims of fraud, civil conspiracy, violations of New York General Business Law, breach of contract, breach of the implied covenant, and promissory estoppel, and they seek class certification, damages, and equitable relief, including rescission and disgorgement.

The complaint frames the case around whether a purportedly decentralized DAO was, in fact, controlled by a small group that could move community assets without the approval of token holders, and whether Ocean’s public materials, blog posts, and “vision” documents created a binding covenant regarding how community tokens would be used.

They allege that Ocean joined the alliance on the basis that community tokens would remain restricted for rewards, whereas the FET and AGIX communities voted to proceed.

Afterward, the complaint states that Ocean created Ocean Expeditions on June 27, 2025, transferred OceanDAO assets to that entity, began converting OCEAN to FET around July 1, 2025, and later exited the ASI Alliance on October 8–9, 2025.

The filing quantifies the flows as more than 661 million OCEAN converted into approximately 286.46 million FET, followed by sales of roughly 263 million FET into the market, equivalent to more than 10 percent of the circulating supply at the time, resulting in price pressure on FET during and after Ocean’s withdrawal.

For readers tracking the on-chain and structural mechanics, the complaint claims Ocean had previously revoked contract control and described OceanDAO as “fully decentralized and autonomous,” with community tokens to be disbursed by smart contract to participants in data farming and other incentive programs.

Plaintiffs argue that these commitments were central to merger-vote approvals and to token holders’ decisions to hold, convert, or acquire tokens during the ASI transition, and that any undisclosed change in control of the community token wallets would be material to market behavior and governance expectations.

The filing also asserts market structure impacts. Plaintiffs allege that converting and then selling community tokens created a persistent overhang, weakening confidence in DAO governance and impairing the alliance’s ability to attract contributors and sustain incentives.

The complaint cites price levels around the exit window and ties the drawdown to Ocean’s actions and announcements, while noting the scale of the tokens at issue in relation to the float.

The theory of harm combines direct token price effects with a loss of the incentive pool that the community expected to fund data and model contributions over time.

For an at-a-glance view of the dispute as pleaded:

Event	Detail	Date / Amount
Case filing	SDNY class action, case no. 1:25-cv-9210	Nov. 4, 2025
Community token pool	Designated OCEAN community tokens	≈700,000,000 OCEAN
Entity change	Ocean Expeditions formed, OceanDAO assets moved	June 27–30, 2025
Conversions	OCEAN converted to FET	661,218,319 OCEAN → 286,456,967.46 FET
Alleged sales	FET sold into market	≈263,000,000 FET
Alliance exit	Ocean leaves ASI Alliance	Oct. 8–9, 2025

The case lands in a period of mounting regulatory and civil scrutiny for token projects that describe themselves as decentralized while maintaining foundation-controlled multisig structures. U.S. agencies and courts have treated DAOs as unincorporated associations when human controllers are identifiable.

Recent matters have focused on who can authorize treasury moves, how proposals are approved, and whether token holder votes are binding in practice. The SDNY forum adds discovery and motion practice that can probe the gap between technical decentralization claims and operational control, especially where a large “community” allocation is alleged to have been spent, converted, or redirected.

Key next steps to watch are an appearance by defense counsel, any motion to dismiss challenging the contract and consumer protection claims, and requests for preliminary relief tied to control of token holdings referenced in the filing.

Plaintiffs also plead for equitable remedies that could affect custodied balances or on-chain addresses if granted. Any parallel governance changes, signer disclosures, escrow arrangements, or return mechanisms announced by the parties would reshape the live controversy even as the litigation proceeds.

Ocean’s response will determine whether this dispute proceeds directly to motions practice or toward a negotiated framework for handling the tokens at issue.

Plaintiffs have framed the case around DAO accountability and the reliance of token holders on the DAO. The defense has framed it as a social media narrative.

The complaint now presents that conflict before a federal judge in New York.

US-traded spot Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded funds’ (ETFs) flows turned net positive after nearly a week of redemptions.

According to Farside Investors’ data, US spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded $240 million in net inflows on Nov. 6, following six consecutive sessions that drained more than $660 million from the products.

BlackRock’s IBIT led with $112.4 million, followed by Fidelity’s FBTC at $61.6 million and Ark 21Shares’ ARKB at $60.4 million.

The movement means that the largest marginal buyers in the Bitcoin market just stopped selling and started buying again.

Although one green day doesn’t erase a week of red, in a market where liquidity determines price action more than sentiment, the reversal matters because ETF flows are no longer just demand signals. The funds have become a liquidity infrastructure.

Since launch, US spot ETFs have accumulated over $60.5 billion in net inflows and control roughly $135 billion in assets under management. That represents approximately 6.7% of all Bitcoin in existence, held in products that cater to regulated-access demand.

When those products flip from net redemptions to net creations, they don’t just change the headline, but rather the mechanical pressure on order books.

The arithmetic of absorption

Following the halving, miners issue approximately 450 BTC daily. At current prices of nearly $102,555.06, that translates to over $46 million in new supply entering the market every day.

A single $240 million inflow day absorbs more than five days of global issuance through US ETFs alone. This isn’t metaphorical buying pressure, but a programmatic demand executing through authorized participants who must purchase BTC to create new shares.

When ETF flows turn negative, the process reverses. Authorized participants redeem shares and sell Bitcoin back into the market or into their internal inventories, creating constant and predictable sell pressure at the margin.

When flows flip positive, those same participants buy in size to meet demand for creation.

Because ETFs now control a mid-single-digit percentage of total supply and serve as the primary vehicle for institutional allocation, their net flow has become the cleanest measure of large, trackable marginal liquidity in Bitcoin.

The market structure has changed. Liquidity for BTC no longer primarily resides on Binance’s spot and perpetual futures markets, but also lives in what IBIT, FBTC, and their peers are doing with daily creations and redemptions.

Two conditions, one met

Recent analysis from Glassnode identified two requirements for Bitcoin bulls to regain structural control: consistent positive ETF flows and a reclaim of roughly $112,500, the short-term holder cost basis, as support.

The Nov. 6 inflow satisfies the first condition in miniature. It demonstrates that real TradFi demand still exists at current prices, willing to buy the dip via ETFs rather than abandon the product after a $1.9 billion outflow stretch.

One print doesn’t rewrite the structure. Over the past week, ETFs have remained net negative.

However, the moment those daily bars flip from red to green and stay there, the market turns off a major systematic seller and turns back on a buyer capable of outbidding both new issuance and a portion of long-term holder distribution.

That’s when the “ETF flows plus $112,500 reclaim” combination becomes a credible setup rather than wishful thinking.

Four channels to tighter markets

The liquidity impact operates through multiple channels simultaneously.

First, positive ETF flows pull coins from liquid spot venues into ETF custody, where they remain relatively stable, thereby immediately reducing the tradable float. A thinner spot float combined with steady or rising demand creates more sensitive order books.

Once buyers lean in, transactions occur more quickly and with less volume.

Second, when US ETFs enter net-buy mode, authorized participants sweep liquidity across major exchanges to fulfill creation orders. That tightens spreads at the top of the book, but drains resting asks.

In a market already dealing with lower post-halving issuance and heavy HODL concentrations, ETF bid returns are the kind of structural flow that can fuel an upside break, rather than every rally being absorbed by sellers.

Third, the $135 billion ETF complex adds “paper” liquidity in the form of deep, regulated trading in ETF shares themselves. This makes it easier for pension funds, registered investment advisor platforms, and corporations to allocate or rebalance without affecting spot markets.

When those players turn net buyers, Bitcoin’s effective demand base broadens, and volatility from purely crypto-native leverage gets better absorbed by diversified flow.

Fourth, there’s signal value. After a week where outflows tracked broader risk-off positioning and long-term holders quietly distributed into weakness, a decisive inflow day from the most significant brand-name funds represents an important shift in sentiment.

The inflows indicate that large allocators remain comfortable adding Bitcoin exposure via ETFs at near six-figure prices, which supports the thesis that sub-$100,000 wicks are being treated as opportunities rather than regime breaks.

Snapping a six-day, $660 million outflow streak with $240 million of fresh creations doesn’t end Bitcoin’s correction or guarantee the next leg up. But it does something more important for market structure: it removes mechanical sell pressure from the single largest category of marginal buyers.

For now, the pressure flipped. Whether it stays flipped determines whether Bitcoin’s liquidity environment supports consolidation or another test of support.