分类： Bitcoin

If you’ve ever bought a token only to find out its grand use case was “having a token,” congrats, you played the game just right. Wolf of All Streets’ Scott Melker sums it up best. After years wandering crypto’s high-stakes tables, he’s upgraded his stance from “99.9% of crypto is a casino” to “99.999999%. As for the rest of the industry? Well, it’s doubling down on his assessment, one Twitter thread at a time.​

Crypto is a casino with bull cycles and bear-ly believable drama

The general mood in crypto circles is that this has been the worst bull cycle ever. This market is about as cheerful as a rain-soaked slot machine. Retail? Gone. OGs? Ejecting coins like a busted pinball.

Just look at the Trump coin saga, where retail bagholders bought into the hype before newly minted “patriots” were left clutching tokens at a 90% discount. Or the “Banana Cat” memecoin, which mooned for two days before dumping so hard holders were left with whiplash.

And it’s not just retail; insiders can get burned too, like Justin Sun’s spectacular miss with World Liberty Financial freezing 595 million coins. Even well-connected whales can end up face down at the blackjack table. Of course retail is leaving in droves.

For those traders left still glued to their screens waiting for the next “God candle,” Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas wants you to know it’s “actually a real mental health problem.” Sure, crypto is a casino, but Bitcoiners have seen their portfolios swing 300% in the last two years, and they still feel robbed anyway.

Broken promises, pump and dumps, and the Bitcoin endgame

So where do these winding market roads lead? After sifting through the promises and the latest “faster, cheaper, better” blockchain flavor, the exhausted crowd eventually stumbles back to Bitcoin. It’s the one digital roulette wheel that still spins when everything else goes bust. As ex Blockstream VP Fernando Nikolić cheekily observes:

“Bitcoin Twitter is 50,000 people talking to each other while thinking they’re talking to the world.”

Meanwhile, normies treat Bitcoin like a stock, maxis bicker over covenants, traders pray for candles, and the neighbor is pretty sure it trades on Saturdays.​

Adoption? Not nearly as straightforward as anyone hoped. But Nikolić nails one universal truth. NGU (Number go Up) is the only thing everyone understands. Price speaks to billions; tech and philosophy… dozens and hundreds, at best.

The Scott Bessent effect: Bitcoin goes mainstream

And just when you think the game is over, along comes Scott Bessent. The U.S. Treasury Secretary publicly embraces Bitcoin for its 100% uptime (unlike the U.S. government), propelling Washington’s mood from combative to admiration.

All roads may be paved with lost retail coins and meme casualties, but they still end at Bitcoin’s door, complete with regulatory love and institutional buy-in.​

So while 99.999999% of crypto is a casino in a flashing Vegas pit, Bitcoin is leaving the nonsense behind to crash the Washington ball. The real jackpot? When you finally realize the only token you needed was sitting under your nose the whole time, humming away block by block, at a dinner party where Scott Melker quietly mutters: “Told you so.”

• Local banks will offer custody, transfers, and crypto-to-fiat exchange services.
• The bolivar’s sharp depreciation has driven a surge in stablecoin adoption.
• Conexus currently processes nearly 40% of Venezuela’s electronic payments.

Venezuela is preparing to merge its struggling traditional banking system with digital currencies as payment giant Conexus plans to integrate Bitcoin and stablecoins into the national banking infrastructure.

The move, expected to launch in December 2025, marks a significant step in the country’s financial transformation, offering Venezuelans a regulated channel for cryptocurrency use.

With the bolivar’s persistent depreciation and rising adoption of stablecoins, this development could make Venezuela one of the first nations to formally blend fiat and crypto operations under a unified system.

The integration also reflects Venezuela’s long-standing struggle with international sanctions that have limited access to global banking.

By adopting blockchain-based systems, Conexus aims to provide citizens with a more resilient alternative that can facilitate remittances, domestic transfers, and business payments without heavy dependence on foreign intermediaries and unstable local exchange rates.

The initiative also seeks to improve financial inclusion nationwide, making digital transactions more accessible to individuals and businesses across the country.

Conexus aims to bridge banks and blockchain

Conexus, which currently processes nearly 40% of Venezuela’s electronic transactions, is leading this shift by allowing local banks to offer direct crypto services such as custody, transfers, and fiat conversion for Bitcoin and stablecoins.

The integration seeks to make digital currency access seamless for customers within their regular bank accounts, eliminating the need for external wallets or apps.

The new infrastructure will be built on blockchain technology to enhance transparency and transaction security.

According to the company, the system will enable both individuals and businesses to move between digital and traditional currencies safely, reducing reliance on unregulated exchanges.

Growing reliance on stablecoins amid inflation

Years of hyperinflation have eroded confidence in the bolivar, pushing Venezuelans to rely heavily on stablecoins like Tether (USDT) as a store of value and medium of exchange.

From small retailers to freelancers, many now prefer stablecoins to protect earnings from volatility.

Conexus President Rodolfo Gasparri has highlighted that this surge in stablecoin transactions demonstrates a clear public demand for better integration between crypto and banking systems.

The company’s upcoming model aims to formalise this reality by providing regulated access to crypto within Venezuela’s financial framework, allowing citizens to transact and save using digital assets with greater confidence.

Potential blueprint for emerging economies

The Conexus initiative could reshape not only Venezuela’s financial sector but also set an example for other economies facing currency crises.

By offering a direct bridge between fiat and digital assets, the model could help millions gain access to stable, low-cost, and transparent financial services.

Venezuela’s attempt to merge traditional finance with blockchain technology aligns with global trends toward digitalisation of money, particularly in regions where economic instability drives innovation.

If implemented successfully, this system could serve as a prototype for countries in Latin America and beyond, where inflation and limited banking access continue to affect economic stability.

Mastercard may soon make a significant investment to fully enter the crypto space.

According to Reuters, the company is in advanced talks to acquire Zero Hash for roughly $1.5 to $2 billion, a move that, if completed, would fold a regulated crypto-settlement network into one of the world’s largest payment processors.

On the surface, it looks like another corporate experiment with digital assets. Underneath, it’s something bigger: an attempt to rebuild the plumbing of money itself around stablecoins, not banks.

Zero Hash isn’t a consumer-facing brand but the quiet infrastructure behind several tokenization efforts.

Founded in 2017, it’s regulated as a money transmitter across the US, holds a New York BitLicense, and operates under equivalent virtual-asset frameworks in Europe, Canada, and Australia.

The firm already processes flows for issuers such as BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, and Republic, enabling their tokenized funds to move value across twenty-two chains and seven major stablecoins.

Earlier this year, it raised $104 million at a $1 billion valuation, led by Interactive Brokers, with backing from Morgan Stanley, Apollo, and SoFi. This demonstrates that traditional finance is treating on-chain settlement less like a curiosity and more like a utility.

From pilots to platform

For Mastercard, the attraction is obvious. Its network moves trillions each year but remains tethered to the old calendar of money: weekday clearing, T+1 or T+2 settlement, closed on weekends. Zero Hash runs twenty-four hours a day.

Owning it would enable Mastercard to settle card and account-to-account payments in regulated stablecoins, compressing those delays to T+0 while keeping everything within its compliance perimeter.

The company has hinted at this direction before, with its “wallets-to-checkouts” stablecoin pilot launched in April 2025, but that was still a sandbox. A purchase would turn it into infrastructure.

The timing couldn’t be better. Stablecoins now total more than $300 billion in circulation, with monthly on-chain settlements of around $1.25 trillion, according to a16z’s State of Crypto 2025 report.

Most of that volume still flows between exchanges and DeFi protocols; however, a rising share comes from cross-border payouts and fintech wallets, the very niches where card networks have struggled to maintain high margins.

Visa has already partnered with Allium to publish stablecoin analytics, Stripe quietly re-enabled USDC settlements, and PayPal is running its own token. Mastercard risks disintermediation unless it controls a comparable rail of its own.

Zero Hash also sits at the intersection of two fast-growing markets: stablecoins and tokenized treasuries. Much of the $35 billion now locked in on-chain real-world-asset products, mainly short-term T-bills backing stablecoins, moves through entities like it.

That gives Mastercard an entry point not only into consumer payments but also into institutional treasury flows, a part of the market where instant, programmable settlement could replace the slower web of correspondent banks and clearinghouses.

The overlap of these two systems, consumer payouts and institutional liquidity, may explain why Mastercard is willing to pay roughly twice Zero Hash’s last valuation.

The rails war goes on-chain

If the deal closes, it would mark the first time a tier-one card network owns a fully regulated stablecoin processor outright. The broader context is a quiet arms race. Visa, Stripe, and even Coinbase are investing in fiat-to-stablecoin bridges to capture future settlement fees.

Each knows that whoever runs the compliant, always-on layer between bank accounts and blockchains will effectively own the next generation of payments. Mastercard’s move reframes that race: rather than experiment on the side, it is pulling the rails in-house.

There are hurdles. Zero Hash’s licenses will require change-of-control approvals from state regulators, the NYDFS, and European authorities under MiCA. Those sign-offs could take months. And while the US Senate’s stablecoin bill passed earlier this year, it still awaits full enactment.

Yet the direction of policy is clear. Both the US and EU frameworks now treat fiat-backed stablecoins as legitimate financial instruments, establishing reserve and disclosure standards that institutional users can accept. That clarity lowers the reputational risk for Mastercard to integrate them directly.

The economics are enticing. Even a sliver of global stablecoin flow could generate material revenue if monetized like a network. A 0.75% share of the $12 trillion annualized stablecoin volume would give Mastercard roughly $90 billion of addressable settlement activity.

At a blended take-rate of 12-20 basis points, that’s $100 to $180 million in potential yearly revenue, small next to its $25 billion top line but growing far faster than card transactions. And unlike interchange, those fees accrue around data, compliance, and liquidity, not consumer spending.

The bigger prize is strategic. As more money lives on-chain, card networks must decide whether to compete with or become the settlement layer. Mastercard appears to have made its choice.

Zero Hash offers not just APIs and licenses but a template for how traditional payment giants might survive the shift: by absorbing the crypto infrastructure before it absorbs them.

Solana spent years building a staking culture in which over two-thirds of the circulating supply is delegated to validators, earning roughly 6% annually from inflation and fees. Non-staking Solana ETFs might just change this dynamic.

Now that reflexive on-chain participation faces a new competitor: exchange-traded funds that either cannot or will not stake.

Hong Kong’s ChinaAMC Solana ETF began trading on October 27 with an explicit mandate not to stake any of its SOL holdings, while the US already runs three stake-enabled products: the REX-Osprey’s SSK, the Bitwise BSOL, and the Grayscale GSOL.

These funds direct their custodian to delegate and distribute rewards net of fees. The split creates a natural experiment: will large pools of non-staking ETF capital drain Solana’s validator economy, or will the yield feedback loop pull liquidity back on-chain?

The answer depends on which model scales. Non-staking ETFs impose a pure fee drag; for example, ChinaAMC’s ongoing charges amount to 1.99% in year one, effectively turning what would be a 6% staking yield into a negative 2% tracking difference versus the spot rate.

Stake-enabled funds, such as SSK, can deliver a positive carry, passing through roughly 4.8% to 5.1% after accounting for the fund’s 0.75% expense ratio and custodian-validator infrastructure fees.

But that convenience comes with a risk of centralization. SSK’s prospectus allows the custodian to choose validators, and the fund also holds stakes in non-US ETPs that themselves delegate large blocks of SOL.

If a few custodians direct billions of dollars in delegations, Solana’s consensus power and MEV routing concentrate in the hands of institutional gatekeepers rather than in community choice.

Non-staking Solana ETFs mechanics: fewer stakers, higher APY

Solana’s staking reward model is self-correcting by design. Inflation distributes SOL to all stakers proportionally, so when the staked ratio falls, the same reward pool is split among fewer participants, lifting the per-staker APY.

This creates an incentive for capital to flow back on-chain until a new equilibrium is established.

The math is straightforward: if circulating supply sits around 592.5 million SOL and the baseline staked ratio is 67%, then $1.5 billion in non-staking ETF AUM (roughly 7.5 million SOL at $200 per token) would shift the staked ratio to about 65.7%.

APY scales inversely, rising from 6.06% to roughly 6.18%, a 12-basis-point bump. Push AUM to $5 billion, and the lift reaches 41 basis points, while $10 billion nudges it 88 basis points higher.

The implication is that non-staking ETFs don’t gut on-chain yields; they gently raise them. The larger the unstaked pool, the more attractive native staking becomes for anyone who can hold SOL directly and delegate to a validator.

That’s a very different dynamic from “ETFs drain staking,” the initial fear when spot products were first proposed.

Instead, non-staking funds act as a subsidy to on-chain participants, concentrating rewards among those who continue to stake while institutional capital sits inert in brokerage accounts.

Stake-enabled ETFs change the calculus. If funds like SSK delegate their holdings, the staked ratio barely changes, so APYs remain near the baseline.

But the validator set receiving those delegations is determined by custodian relationships and fund sponsor policy rather than community signaling or performance metrics.

SSK’s design allows it to hold other staked ETPs alongside directly delegated SOL, creating a layered structure where multiple intermediaries, such as fund sponsors, custodians, and ETP issuers, each take a fee slice and decide where stake flows.

That’s operationally similar to how Lido concentrates Ethereum staking through a curated set of node operators, but without on-chain governance or the composability of a liquid staking token.

stETH lessons, but not a replay

Ethereum’s stETH precedent is instructive but inexact. Lido grew Ethereum’s staking participation from low single digits to over 30% of supply by offering liquidity and yield in a single wrapper.

At its peak, Lido controlled roughly 32% of staked ETH, raising concerns about centralization that prompted governance efforts to cap and diversify the number of node operators.

The share has drifted down to the mid-20s as competitors like Rocket Pool and EigenLayer have offered alternative staking paths.

Still, the core lesson holds: liquid, yield-bearing wrappers amplify participation and centralize power unless actively managed to distribute power.

Solana’s ETF landscape doesn’t mirror that trajectory. Many products, especially in Asia, are explicitly non-staking, meaning they can’t concentrate validator power even as AUM scales.

Those that do stake, like SSK or European products from CoinShares and 21Shares, yield less than native liquid staking tokens.

CoinShares’ Physical Staked Solana ETP charges no management fees and delivers a net yield of approximately 3% after deducting validator commissions. At the same time, 21Shares’ ASOL reinvests rewards but charges a 2.5% annual fee, compressing the pass-through.

Native LSTs like JitoSOL or Marinade typically deliver 5 to 6% with minimal fee drag and full on-chain composability.

The yield gap means staked ETFs appeal primarily to accounts that cannot custody crypto directly, such as retirement plans, registered investment advisors, and regulated institutions, not to users who can stake natively and capture the full reward stream.

The real risk is delegation concentration within the subset of funds that stake. If a handful of custodians receive the bulk of institutional delegations, Solana’s validator set tends to skew toward entities with robust compliance infrastructure and US legal footprints.

That’s a different security profile than a widely distributed validator set chosen by individual stakers based on performance, decentralization ethos, or MEV-sharing policies.

It’s not inherently worse, but it shifts control of block production and transaction ordering, and it makes validator economics more dependent on custodian relationships than on community endorsement.

Regulatory glidepath and AUM paths

The SEC’s September adoption of generic listing standards lowered the bar for exchanges to list spot crypto ETFs beyond Bitcoin and Ethereum.

That regulatory shift opens the door for mainstream issuers, such as BlackRock, Fidelity, and VanEck, to file Solana products if they see demand.

JPMorgan’s base case projects $1.5 billion in first-year US inflows for SOL ETFs, a fraction of the $20 billion-plus that flowed into spot Bitcoin ETFs in 2024, but still meaningful at roughly 1.3% of Solana’s circulating supply.

If most of that capital lands in non-staking funds, native APY ticks up modestly. If stake-enabled products dominate, validator concentration accelerates.

Scale beyond the base case becomes interesting. A $5 billion AUM scenario, plausible if Solana’s price rallies and multiple low-fee US issuers join the market, would represent over 4% of supply.

If held unstaked, that lifts on-chain APY by 41 basis points, making native staking more attractive and likely pulling some liquidity back on-chain.

If staked via ETFs, the validator set receiving those delegations becomes a structural feature of Solana’s consensus, with custodians directing billions in stake based on operational rather than economic signals.

Either path redistributes staking income more than it drains total staked SOL, but the composition of who stakes and who earns matters for both security and decentralization.

Europe offers a preview. CoinShares and 21Shares have operated large staked Solana ETPs for over a year, demonstrating that institutional staking pass-through is operationally feasible at scale.

Those products haven’t led to a collapse in Solana’s staking participation; they’ve simply added a new class of institutional holders who capture yield through regulated wrappers.

The US market will likely follow a similar pattern, with the added wrinkle that American custody and compliance requirements may funnel delegations to a narrower set of validators than Europe’s more fragmented ETP landscape.

What to watch: delegation, policy, and the yield equilibrium

The next phase hinges on three variables.

First, which validators receive ETF delegations?

SSK’s prospectus allows custodian-directed delegation, and if a few large validators, those with deep compliance infrastructure and US legal presence, capture the bulk of institutional stake.

Solana’s validator economics then tilt toward entities that can service ETF custody, rather than those that prioritize maximizing decentralization or community engagement.

Tracking public disclosures and on-chain delegation data will reveal whether ETF flows diversify or concentrate.

Second, actual AUM run-rate versus the $1.5 billion base case. If Solana’s price rallies or if US retail and institutional demand surprises, the scale question shifts from “does this matter” to “how fast does this reshape the validator set.”

Monitoring fund creation data, CME Solana futures open interest for basis trades, and AP hedging flows will provide early signals of ETF traction.

Third, governance. Solana’s 2025 SIMD-228 proposal aimed to make inflation dynamic with respect to the staking rate, thereby dampening the APY feedback loop that currently rewards on-chain stakers when ETFs hold SOL that is unstaked.

The proposal didn’t pass, but the debate shows the community is actively considering policy that could mute the “fewer stakers, higher APY” mechanic.

If a successor lands, the economics of ETF versus native staking change, potentially tilting the equilibrium toward more unstaked holdings if policy smooths out the yield advantage.

The broader narrative is less about stETH than about custody and defaults. Liquid staking tokens on Ethereum succeeded because they preserved composability and liquidity while delivering yield.

Solana’s ETFs split the atom: non-staking funds offer liquidity without yield, and stake-enabled funds offer yield without composability.

The winner depends on who the marginal buyer is. Retirement accounts that can’t custody crypto will take the ETF route, while on-chain users will continue to stake natively to capture full rewards and maintain control over delegation.

The question isn’t whether ETFs drain staking, but whether the institutional capital they unlock stays passive or begins steering Solana’s validator economy from the inside.

Every few months, headlines warn of a looming multi-billion-dollar options expiry poised to shake Bitcoin price.

This quarter’s figure, roughly $13 billion in notional contracts, sounds dramatic, yet it’s part of a well-worn pattern on Deribit, the exchange that clears nearly 90% of Bitcoin’s options open interest.

The real story isn’t the size of the expiry, but the rhythm of how volatility is priced, hedged, and recycled through the platform that now anchors the crypto derivatives market.

A mechanical heartbeat

Deribit’s quarterly and month-end expiries follow a simple cadence: the last Friday of each period, all short-dated contracts settle simultaneously.

Traders start rolling positions days in advance, shifting exposure from expiring maturities into new ones. This means the $13 billion figure represents gross notional; most of it has already been neutralized long before the clock runs out.

In 2025 alone, the market has already seen expiries of similar scale: roughly $11.7 billion in May, $15 billion in June, and $14-15 billion in August, none of which derailed spot prices. The steady pattern shows that size alone doesn’t move Bitcoin; positioning does.

Why prices pin

Leading into expiry, a dynamic called gamma pinning keeps Bitcoin unusually stable. Dealers who are long gamma, essentially long volatility through options they’ve sold, hedge by buying into dips and selling into rallies. These offsetting flows suppress realized volatility, often holding BTC near the strike levels with the most open interest. That “max pain” zone is where the majority of option buyers experience a loss in value.

The moment contracts settle, this artificial calm disappears: the “gamma reset” removes hedging pressure, allowing spot to move more freely. As Glassnode has shown in past cycles, open interest quickly rebuilds while implied volatility (IV) eases.

Reading volatility through DVOL

The pulse of the options market is captured in Deribit’s DVOL, a 30-day implied-volatility index derived from the options smile. DVOL spiked above 70% in late October, reflecting traders’ demand for protection amid macro uncertainty.

However, as expiry approaches, DVOL typically drifts lower unless an outside catalyst intervenes, such as economic data, ETF flows, or a liquidity shock. The metric even has its own futures now, letting traders bet directly on volatility itself.

For newcomers, think of DVOL as a measure of expected turbulence: when it’s high, the market anticipates significant moves; when it’s low, options traders see calm seas ahead. Comparing DVOL with realized volatility shows whether option sellers are demanding a premium or pricing complacency. A DVOL that remains rich relative to realized levels suggests that sellers are earning carry, while compression warns that volatility could re-ignite.

Context beyond crypto

Unlike earlier cycles, today’s volatility isn’t isolated inside crypto venues. Spot Bitcoin ETFs have become primary parallel channels for Bitcoin. In early October, global crypto ETF inflows reached nearly $6 billion in a single week, providing steady demand that helps cushion spot prices.

This linkage means that derivatives now sit alongside institutional investment vehicles, rather than opposing them, as volatility spikes are as likely to be dampened by ETF flows as they are to be triggered by them.

At the same time, CME options activity has expanded, providing U.S. desks with a regulated venue for hedging, while offshore traders remain concentrated on Deribit. The result is a split ecosystem: Deribit defines near-term crypto-native volatility, CME reflects TradFi participation. Their interplay helps explain why even record expiries now pass with minimal dislocation.

What to watch post-expiry

Once the $13 billion clears, three variables shape the next leg:

• Open-interest rebuild: New maturities show where traders expect movement. A shift toward upside calls signals renewed optimism; heavy put interest hints caution.
• DVOL term structure: A front-month premium fading after expiry points to normalization; a sustained elevation implies lingering uncertainty.
• ETF and macro overlays: Strong inflows or soft economic data can override any technical expiry effects, redirecting flows faster than option books can adjust

The bigger picture

Kaiko’s research frames these expiries as volatility-management events, not market shocks. Each one clears the board, resets positioning, and lays the foundation for the next volatility cycle.

Deribit’s dominance ensures that Bitcoin’s implied volatility structure (the balance between fear and greed) remains anchored to how traders hedge on that single platform.

For seasoned desks, expiry Friday is just accounting; for observers chasing the next “big move,” it’s a reminder that the loudest numbers often hide the quiet mechanics that make modern crypto markets run.

The next major Ethereum upgrade, called Fusaka, a hybrid of “Fulu” (consensus) and “Osaka” (execution), will modify how the network handles data and fees without altering the primary user experience.

Beneath the surface, it’s a statement of direction: Ethereum’s main chain is staying the final settlement and data-availability hub, while everyday activity continues to flow outward onto cheaper, faster rollups.

The open question, which is whether Fusaka will bring users back to Layer 1, already has its answer. It won’t. It will make Layer 2 even harder to leave.

Inside Fusaka: scaling the plumbing, smoothing the ride

The technical backbone of Fusaka centers on data availability, sampling, and blob management, which is Ethereum’s approach to making Layer 2 posting cheaper and more efficient. The headline proposal, EIP-7594 (PeerDAS), lets nodes sample only fragments of rollup data, called “blobs”, instead of downloading everything.

That unlocks higher blob capacity and drastically lowers bandwidth costs for validators, a prerequisite for scaling L2 throughput.

Then comes EIP-7892, introducing “Blob Parameter-Only” forks, or BPOs, a mechanism to gradually increase the number of blobs per block (for instance, from 10 to 14, or 15 to 21) without rewriting the protocol.

This effectively lets developers tune Ethereum’s data capacity without waiting for complete upgrades. EIP-7918 sets a base-fee floor for blobs, ensuring the auction price for data space doesn’t collapse to near zero during low demand.

The rest of the bundle focuses on user experience and safety. EIP-7951 adds support for secp256r1, the cryptographic curve used in WebAuthn, making passkey logins possible across Ethereum wallets. EIP-7917 introduces deterministic proposer look-ahead, a small but significant change that helps pre-confirmation systems predict who will produce the next block, enabling faster transaction assurance.

Meanwhile, EIP-7825 caps transaction gas to prevent denial-of-service risks, and EIP-7935 adjusts default block gas targets to maintain validator stability.

These upgrades are already live on testnets like Holesky and Sepolia, with a mainnet activation expected in early December.

Why Fusaka matters for fees and the rollup economy

For users, Fusaka doesn’t promise cheaper Layer 1 gas. It’s built to lower Layer 2 fees. By allowing rollups to post more data at lower cost, the upgrade improves the economics for networks like Arbitrum, Optimism, Base, and zkSync.

Internal modeling suggests that rollup fees could fall between 15% and 40% under typical conditions, possibly even up to 60% if blob supply outpaces demand for an extended period. On the Ethereum mainnet, gas prices may remain roughly flat, although future adjustments to block gas targets could reduce them by another 10-20%.

The passkey and proposer updates, however, could make a difference in how Ethereum feels to use. With WebAuthn support, wallets can integrate biometric or device-based logins, removing the friction of seed phrases and passwords. With pre-confirmations enabled by predictable proposer schedules, users can expect near-instant confirmations for routine transactions, especially on rollups.

The net result is that Ethereum becomes smoother to use without pulling anyone back to L1. The rails get faster, but they’re still pointed toward the rollup lane.
L1 as settlement, L2 as experience

Ethereum’s architecture is no longer a debate between monolithic and modular design: it’s modular by choice. Layer 1’s purpose is to serve as the high-security settlement and data availability base, while actual user activity is moved to Layer 2.

Fusaka reinforces this split. When blob capacity increases, L2s can handle higher throughput for games, social apps, and micro-transactions that would be uneconomical on mainnet. The improvements to login and confirmation workflows make these L2 environments feel native and instantaneous, erasing much of the UX gap that once favored L1.

Where might users still choose Layer 1? In narrow cases, it involves high-value settlements, institution-scale transfers, or situations where block-ordering precision is crucial, such as miner extractable value (MEV) management or DeFi clearing. But those scenarios represent a small fraction of total on-chain activity. For the rest, L2 remains the natural home.

The bigger narrative: Ethereum as a layered internet

Viewed from above, Fusaka is less about gas optimization and more about maturity. It gives Ethereum a scalable framework for adjusting data capacity (BPOs) without disruptive forks, and a UX layer that makes Web3 feel more like Web2.

Yet its philosophy is clear: the network isn’t trying to centralize traffic on mainnet. It’s building an expressway system where rollups handle local traffic, and L1 serves as the courthouse where everything eventually gets notarized.

There’s also a monetary layer to the story. Cheaper data posting could drive a wave of new low-value applications, like social, payments, and gaming, back into rollups. Each of these still consumes ETH through blob fees, and with EIP-7918’s fee floor, those fees contribute to ETH burn. Ethereum’s burn rate could even tick higher if activity expands faster than fees decline, despite cheaper user costs.

On the validator side, PeerDAS lightens the load on bandwidth but may create a new reliance on “supernodes” that store full blob data. That’s a decentralization trade-off the community will continue to debate: how to scale data availability without narrowing participation.

The balance Ethereum is striking here, between throughput, usability, and trust, mirrors the broader direction of crypto infrastructure. L1s are hardening into secure bases, while L2s absorb experimentation and scale.
The takeaway

Fusaka isn’t a bid to reclaim the spotlight for the Ethereum mainnet. It’s the opposite: a deliberate move to strengthen the foundations for a rollup-centric future.

The upgrade expands data capacity, stabilizes fees, and modernizes wallet experience, but it does so in service of the layers above. Ethereum’s L1 becomes safer and smarter, while users continue to live on L2s that now run cheaper and faster than before.

By the time BPO1 and BPO2 roll out early next year, the real signals to watch will be blob utilization versus capacity, L2 fee compression, and wallet adoption of passkeys. The outcome will define how frictionless Ethereum feels in 2026, not by pulling people back to the main chain, but by making the off-ramps almost invisible.

Solana exhibits an on-chain pattern that appears bearish at first glance but becomes constructive when considered alongside capital flows into regulated investment products.

Over the past month, early Solana holders, investors who accumulated during quieter market phases, have begun moving older coins back into circulation.

For context, Arkham Intelligence analyst Emmett Gallic reported on Oct. 30 that a long-dormant Solana address had recently transferred 200,000 SOL, worth roughly $40 million, to Coinbase Prime. Usually, such transactions often spark concern that a major holder is preparing to sell.

In fact, CryptoQuant data reinforced that perception, showing that large wallets have recently dominated average spot trade sizes on major exchanges. This indicates that older, better-capitalized investors were distributing their holdings into stronger positions.

That behavior isn’t inherently bearish. Across Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana, veteran investors tend to sell when liquidity improves, rather than when markets are illiquid.

However, what sets the current cycle apart is the new class of buyers absorbing that supply.

ETF flows absorb supply

CoinShares’ weekly digital asset fund report indicates that Solana-focused products have garnered approximately $381 million in inflows for the month, bringing their year-to-date flows to roughly $2.8 billion.

That placed Solana behind only Bitcoin and Ethereum as one of the top-performing crypto assets among institutional products, despite the significant market pullback that wiped more than $20 billion from investors’ earlier in the month.

Moreover, this shift has coincided with the debut of several new US-listed Solana investment vehicles.

Indeed, Grayscale’s Solana Trust (ticker: GSOL), which converted into an exchange-traded format on Oct. 29, recorded a modest $1.4 million in first-day net inflows, according to SoSoValue data.

A day earlier, Bitwise’s Solana Staking ETF (BSOL) saw a far stronger debut with $69.5 million in inflows, followed by another $46.5 million on Oct. 29. In fact, trading activity has mirrored that enthusiasm, with BSOL recording $57.9 million in day-one volume and over $72 million the following day.

Considering this, Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas described the performance as “a strong sign of institutional demand” for Solana-linked products.

How does this impact SOL?

The changing ownership dynamics are strengthening Solana’s market structure rather than weakening it.

While old wallets have been distributing coins, those sales are being absorbed by regulated ETFs and institutional buyers with longer investment horizons. That reduces short-term speculative churn and anchors more stable, programmatic demand.

Price-wise, that handoff helps explain why SOL has held within a $180–$200 range even as broader crypto volatility has risen.

Instead of sharp selloffs, the token has shown controlled consolidation, suggesting that newly created ETF shares are being absorbed faster than they reenter the exchanges. Inflows from Bitwise’s BSOL and Grayscale’s GSOL act as a continuous liquidity sink, effectively tightening the available float in spot markets.

At the same time, the increase in open interest, up from under $8 billion to around $10 billion, has deepened Solana’s derivatives market.

That additional liquidity provides large holders with room to de-risk their positions without triggering outsized price reactions. Together, the two trends create a cushion against volatility: liquidity is broadening even as ownership concentrates among long-term vehicles.

If sustained, this pattern supports a more mature phase of price discovery.

SOL may continue trading sideways in the near term, but with less downside pressure and a more supportive base for future rallies.

However, the key risk is that the ETF inflows will fade below roughly $100 million weekly, while long-term holders continue to distribute. That imbalance could flip the equation, pushing SOL back toward exchange supply and weakening price stability.

China has again made its position on stablecoins unmistakably clear.

At a recent financial policy forum, Pan Gongsheng, governor of the People’s Bank of China (PBoC), described stablecoins as a “new source of vulnerabilities” within the global financial system. He warned that they could undermine smaller economies’ monetary sovereignty and enable illicit financial flows.

According to him, these assets “amplify loopholes in global financial regulation, such as money laundering, illegal cross-border fund transfers, and terrorist financing.” He also stressed that most stablecoin projects fail to meet basic compliance standards such as customer identification and anti-money-laundering checks.

His remarks reaffirm China’s decade-long stance: private digital currencies and stablecoins remain off-limits, even as Beijing continues to advance its digital yuan (e-CNY) as a state-controlled alternative.

Yet as the rest of the world accelerates toward tokenized finance, China’s absence raises the pressing question of whether stablecoins can truly thrive without the world’s largest fintech economy.

A global market moving without Beijing

For now, the answer appears to be yes.

While China doubles down on restrictions, global stablecoin adoption has surged. According to DeFiLlama data, the sector’s total capitalization recently crossed $308 billion, expanding by nearly $100 billion since January.

At the same time, a report from A16z shows that the sector’s transaction volumes surpassed $46 trillion over the past year, rivaling established payment giants such as Visa when adjusted for legitimate activity.

Chris Dixon, a partner at venture capital firm A16z, said:

“Stablecoins have gone mainstream. [They] have found product-market fit, rivaling the world’s largest payment networks in transaction volume.”

This milestone is unsurprising considering that governments across Asia, which once echoed Beijing’s caution, are moving in the opposite direction.

Japan has legalized fiat-backed stablecoins this year, with fintech firm JPYC Inc. launching the first fully compliant yen-denominated token on Ethereum, Avalanche, and Polygon.

Moreover, other leading jurisdictions, including South Korea, Hong Kong, and Singapore, are preparing similar frameworks to license issuers and protect consumers.

In the West, the United States is pushing toward formal oversight through legislation such as the GENIUS Act, while major institutions, from PayPal to Western Union, are rolling out their own tokenized settlement assets.

These moves are transforming stablecoins from speculative tools into regulated infrastructure for payments, remittances, and on-chain treasury management.

That momentum suggests the market can function and flourish without China’s participation because the technology has matured beyond its early crypto-native roots.

Essentially, stablecoins now act as the core liquidity layer of decentralized finance and the backbone of on-chain commerce, enabling instant settlement across thousands of platforms.

Thriving without China: But not entirely free from it

Yet even as the industry expands, China’s influence lingers.

The Asian country’s market size, cross-border trade capacity, and digital-payment infrastructure remain unmatched. Platforms such as Alipay and WeChat Pay process more transactions annually than many entire regions combined. Excluding that ecosystem limits stablecoins’ reach and potential scale.

In practice, the ban has not erased stablecoin activity in China. Instead, it has merely pushed it underground.

Chinese investors and businesses still use dollar-pegged tokens like USDT through offshore exchanges and private OTC desks to move funds internationally or hedge against yuan volatility.

Despite official restrictions, stablecoins remain a quiet instrument of capital mobility within Chinese networks.

This underground usage illustrates how the thriving sector could benefit from China’s eventual inclusion in the technology.

A fully integrated Chinese presence, whether through regulated participation or interoperability between the e-CNY and compliant stablecoins, would link the world’s largest trade economy to blockchain-based payments. This would undoubtedly complete the network effect that stablecoins currently lack.

For now, however, two parallel systems are emerging: an open, market-driven ecosystem led by dollar-backed tokens, and a closed, sovereign digital-currency model built around the e-CNY.

A necessary absence?

China’s decision to stand apart may, paradoxically, strengthen the case for decentralized finance and stablecoins.

By refusing to integrate, Beijing is forcing the rest of the world to build independently. As a result, this process has already created a more diversified, regulation-aware, and institutionally supported market.

Stablecoins have become indispensable to global liquidity, powering decentralized exchanges, tokenized bond markets, and US Treasury instruments. Their growth has continued despite regulatory uncertainty, cyberattacks, and central-bank skepticism.

So, each expansion reinforces their staying power and proves that the concept of a borderless digital dollar can survive without China’s approval.

Still, the long-term picture remains nuanced.

Without China, stablecoins lose access to one of the largest pools of fintech innovation and global trade settlement. With it, they could achieve true interoperability between Western and Eastern payment systems.

For now, the market is proving that thriving without China is possible.

However, thriving globally may be much more difficult because the absence of the world’s most significant digital economy limits scale.

Yet the quiet participation of Chinese investors shows that even a strict policy can’t suppress the appeal of programmable money.

The Federal Reserve just cut the policy rate by 25 basis points, moving the target range to 3.75% to 4.00%. However, futures markets have now removed the prospect of a further cut in December.

Before yesterday’s FOMC meeting, many traders expected a third rate cut because inflation had gradually eased, the labor market showed signs of softening, and the Fed had already begun easing.

While the Fed did cut this time, Powell emphasized that another cut in December is “not a foregone conclusion, far from it.”

Powell said.

“There were strongly different views today. And the takeaway from that is that we haven’t made a decision about December, and we’re going to be looking at the data that we have and how that affects the outlook and the balance of risks.”

According to CME FedWatch, probabilities shifted after the press conference from a near lock on an additional cut to a hold as the base case with a live hike tail, and rate path distributions across 2026 moved up and flattened.

The adjustment leaves crypto facing a stickier liquidity backdrop, tighter sensitivity to incoming macro data, and wider dispersion across tokens.

December 10, 2025 FOMC, pre vs. post press conference (CME FedWatch snapshots)

Scenario	Pre-presser	Post-presser
Cut	≈ 96%	0%
Non-cut (hold or hike)	≈ 4%	≈ 100%*

December 10, 2025 FOMC, post-presser breakdown (CME FedWatch snapshot)

Scenario	Probability
Hold	≈ 70%
Hike	≈ 20%–30%

According to FedWatch, January 2026 retains a hike tail near 18.5 percent, which reflects persistent concern that sticky inflation could pull the Committee toward a reversal if data do not cool.

January 2026 FOMC, hike tail (CME FedWatch snapshot)

25 bps hike	Probability
Tail	≈ 18.5%

The longer-run path repriced higher. FedWatch distributions through 2026 collectively shifted roughly 25 basis points upward and flattened, with modal outcomes clustering around 3.00% to 3.25% through mid- and late 2026 and persisting into 2027.

Prior snapshots showed a tilt toward 2.75% to 3.00% late in 2026. The profile implies fewer and later cuts, and a market view that the neutral real interest rate sits above earlier estimates.

Modal policy rate ranges by horizon (CME FedWatch snapshots)

Horizon	Modal target range	Comment
Mid-2026 (Jun, Jul, Sep)	3.00%–3.25%	Mode shifted up, flatter distribution
Late-2026 (Oct, Dec)	3.00%–3.25%	Earlier flirtation with 2.75%–3.00% has faded
2027	3.00%–3.25%	No swift glide to pre-2024 “neutral”

The immediate market read-through for crypto ties back to liquidity and rates.

A higher-for-longer stance supports the dollar and keeps real yields firm, which has often weighed on high-beta risk and long-duration narratives tied to far-dated cash flows.

Bitcoin has tended to absorb that impulse with less drawdown than smaller capitalization tokens and alt-L1s. However, broad crypto liquidity, including stablecoin float and perp leverage, still reflects the same macro setting.

With balance sheet runoff ongoing and the policy rate elevated, the cost of capital within crypto ecosystems remains constrained, and treasury-bill alternatives pull some marginal demand away from basis and carry structures.

Flows become more data-dependent. Spot ETF and fund allocations are sensitive to swings in hike tails around major prints.

Upside inflation or hot labor data tends to lift near-term hike probabilities and pressure risk, while clear disinflation can reopen demand for duration and growth proxies.

That environment favors faster rotations between BTC and alts as probabilities move, with allocators leaning into higher-quality balance sheets and liquid pairs when uncertainty rises.

Policy uncertainty also reshapes the volatility regime.

A fatter hike tail widens the distribution of outcomes for crypto returns, and correlations to real yields and the dollar index often rise into key macro releases.

That pattern can increase dispersion within crypto, with projects anchored by more precise cash flow or fee capture holding up better than tokens with far-dated tokenomics and heavy emissions.

Funding markets may cheapen as the risk-free anchor rises, and miners face higher discount rates for capex and future cash flows, which places attention on power costs, leverage, and treasury mix.

Scenario mapping over the next one to three months centers on three paths.

The base case is a December hold near 70 percent odds on the latest snapshot, with growth cooling and inflation not yet soft enough to invite another quick cut. Under that setup, real yields stay firm, equities and crypto trade choppy ranges, and BTC performance skews toward resilience versus high-beta alt exposure.

A hawkish surprise, defined as a 25 basis point hike in December or January from the aggregated 20 to 30 percent tail, would amplify risk-off pressure, lift the dollar, and compress valuations across long-duration crypto, raising drawdown risk for leverage-intensive segments while pushing flows toward cash-flowing infrastructure and quality L2s.

A dovish surprise, where core measures ebb convincingly, would allow cuts to creep back into mid-2026 pricing. The liquidity impulse would first lift BTC as the cleanest macro proxy and then broaden if the soft-landing narrative strengthens.

Portfolio construction in this tape often prioritizes liquidity management, basis calibration, and convexity.

Given its depth and cleaner macro beta, BTC remains the most direct instrument for tactically expressing shifts in policy odds around CPI, PCE, and labor reports. Within alts, dispersion screening around the runway, emissions, and fee capture matter more when the risk-free anchor is higher.

For miners, sensitivity to power pricing and balance sheet leverage becomes a larger driver of equity-linked tokens and revenue sharing, and forward hedging costs need to be weighed against spot upside optionality.

“The cut landed, but the pivot did not, and traders now lean higher for longer through 2026.”

According to CME FedWatch, the repricing is visible across the entire curve of meeting outcomes, with the December 10 meeting now presenting a hold as the base case and a non-trivial hike tail.

Per the Federal Reserve, the benchmark move delivered the cut, while communication kept the easing path slow and conditional. The December meeting now enters focus with a hold as the central probability and a live hike tail.

FedWatch probabilities are implied from futures and update intraday. Snapshots here reflect the attached tables at the time of capture.

MetaMask spent years as the default gateway to Ethereum, the browser extension that turned “connect wallet” into muscle memory for millions of users.

Now Consensys is betting that same reflex can work across blockchains. In late May, MetaMask flipped the switch on native Solana support, letting its 30 million monthly active users manage SOL and SPL tokens without installing Phantom or any other Solana-first wallet.

Bitcoin support sits somewhere on the 2025 roadmap, initially slated for the third quarter but not yet shipped.

If it lands, MetaMask will become the first primary wallet to support Ethereum, Solana, and Bitcoin natively. Those are the three ecosystems that have historically required separate apps, separate seed phrases, and individual mental models.

The timing isn’t subtle. Artemis data from June showed that Solana’s monthly active addresses matched those of every other layer-1 and layer-2 network combined.

Solana stopped being the “Ethereum alternative” and started looking like the place where actual users were showing up.

For MetaMask, that created an uncomfortable dynamic: the wallet with the largest distribution was missing the chain with the most activity.

Phantom, the Solana-native incumbent with 15 million monthly active users (MAUs) and $25 billion in user assets, had already made the opposite move, adding support for Ethereum and Bitcoin throughout 2024.

The multichain wallet wasn’t a future concept; it was already here, and MetaMask was late.

The UX thesis: one account, three rails

What MetaMask is proposing goes beyond feature parity. The product now offers a unified portfolio view across Ethereum and Solana, with swaps and bridges built directly into the interface.

Users can import existing Solana wallets using the same Secret Recovery Phrase that governs their Ethereum keys, collapsing what used to be a multi-app juggling act into a single session.

When Bitcoin support arrives, the loop closes: one recovery phrase, one interface, three entirely different consensus mechanisms and cryptographic schemes.

The convenience is obvious. The risk is less discussed but harder to ignore. A single seed phrase now controls secp256k1 keys for EVM chains and ed25519 keys for Solana, with Bitcoin’s key derivation next in line.

One compromised backup exposes every chain simultaneously. Consensys has published security guidance around the multichain model, but the trade-off remains: blast radius versus ease of use.

An extension bug earlier this year that caused MetaMask to write excessive data to SSDs on some Chromium setups didn’t help the reliability narrative.

Consensys shipped a fix, but the episode underscored how extension-level failures can erode trust faster than feature announcements build it.

This is where account abstraction comes into play. Consensys pairs the multichain rollout with its Delegation Toolkit and the upcoming EIP-7702 standard in Ethereum’s Pectra upgrade.

These tools enable gas sponsorship, transaction batching, and session-style permissions, which compose the software layer that lets wallets hide seed phrases entirely and execute multi-step flows without repeated approvals.

The result is what the industry calls “invisible wallets,” where users interact with apps without ever thinking about keys, gas, or chain IDs.

It’s a compelling vision, but EIP-7702 also opens new avenues for phishing. Malicious dapps can request broad permissions that let them act on behalf of users, and distinguishing legitimate requests from scams becomes the wallet’s job.

MetaMask’s security alerts and how aggressively it surfaces warnings around delegate permissions will matter as much as the UX improvements themselves.

Shelf space as distribution

Wallet interfaces have become the new homepage.

If MetaMask surfaces Solana dApps, stablecoin bridges, and memecoin swaps in the default view, millions of EVM-native users will sample Solana not because they researched the ecosystem but because the path of least friction pointed them there.

The same logic applies to Bitcoin. Daily active addresses on Bitcoin routinely range from 700,000 to 1 million, and ordinals plus inscriptions have turned BTC into something more than a savings asset.

A native Bitcoin tab inside MetaMask would let Ethereum and Solana users experiment with Bitcoin-based collectibles or Lightning payments without switching contexts, and it would give Bitcoin-first users a reason to try stablecoin swaps or DeFi protocols on faster chains.

The strategic question is whether distribution alone can shift ecosystem gravity. MetaMask’s 30 million MAUs dwarf Phantom’s 15 million, but Phantom owns mindshare among Solana users and has spent years building tooling around NFTs, token launches, and social discovery.

If MetaMask converts even 10% to 18% of its user base into active cross-chain participants within the first few weeks, that could mean several million people suddenly browsing Solana dapps from an Ethereum wallet.

It’s not a winner-take-all outcome, but it does reframe the competitive landscape. Phantom will likely double down on power features and community-driven discovery, leaning into what made it the default for Solana natives in the first place.

MetaMask is betting that “good enough” cross-chain UX plus account abstraction rails will be more valuable than specialized depth.

The regulatory shadow and the super-app endgame

The SEC sued Consensys in June 2024, alleging that MetaMask Swaps and staking features generated more than $250 million in fees without proper broker registration.

Consensys is contesting jurisdiction, and the case hasn’t killed momentum, but it adds a layer of uncertainty to every product expansion.

Each new chain, each new swap route, each new revenue stream invites fresh scrutiny.

Meanwhile, OKX Wallet operates as a full-fledged super-app, supporting 100+ chains and smart account features, demonstrating what’s possible when regulatory constraints are lighter.

Coinbase Smart Wallet took a different path entirely, using passwordless flows and embedded wallets to push past 1 million accounts created over the summer, all on Base, all EVM, no Solana or Bitcoin in sight.

Coinbase is targeting users who don’t know they’re using a wallet, which is arguably the real endgame for mainstream adoption.

MetaMask sits in the middle: too visible to avoid regulation, too decentralized to pivot into a fully custodial model, and too large to ignore the chains where users are actually spending time.

The multichain push is as much about survival as it is about ambition. If wallet market share becomes a proxy for ecosystem influence, then the wallet that spans the most chains with the least friction controls where the next cohort of users lands.

Phantom got there first on Solana and Bitcoin. MetaMask is trying to get there first with “everything at once.”

The wallet wars have shifted from key management to defaults. Whoever owns the first tap, consisting of the initial connection, the first swap, and the chain that loads when a new user opens the app, will steer where millions of people think crypto happens.

If MetaMask’s Bitcoin integration ships before year-end, 2026 opens with a single interface that treats Ethereum, Solana, and Bitcoin as tabs in the same browser rather than separate universes. At that point, the question isn’t which chain wins. It’s which wallet decides.