Crypto veteran Arthur Hayes has issued a warning over Monad, saying the recently launched layer-1 blockchain could plunge as much as 99% and end up as another failed experiment driven by venture capital hype rather than real adoption.
Speaking on Altcoin Daily, the former BitMEX chief described the project as “another high FDV, low-float VC coin,” arguing that its token structure alone puts retail traders at risk. FDV stands for Fully Diluted Value, which is the market value of a crypto project if all its tokens were already in circulation.
According to Hayes, projects with a large gap between FDV and circulating supply often experience early price spikes, followed by deep selloffs once insider tokens unlock. “It’s going to be another bear chain,” Hayes said, adding that while every new coin gets an initial pump, that does not mean it will develop a lasting use case.
Hayes said most new layer-1 networks ultimately fail, with only a handful likely to retain long-term relevance. He named Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Solana (SOL) and Zcash (ZEC) as the small group of protocols he expects to survive the next cycle.
Hayes also laid out a bullish outlook for crypto as a whole, driven almost entirely by renewed monetary expansion. He argued that governments, particularly the United States, are preparing for another wave of liquidity injections ahead of political campaigns and slowing growth.
“I think that we are at the end of the beginning of this cycle and the massive amounts of crazy bull market money printing is ahead of us,” he said.
He also dismissed the widely cited four-year Bitcoin cycle, saying past market booms were fueled not by halvings but by global credit expansion led by the US and China. When liquidity dries up, Bitcoin reacts first, he said, calling it the “last free-market smoke alarm” for the global financial system.
Looking ahead, Hayes predicted privacy technologies will dominate the next crypto narrative, with zero-knowledge systems and privacy coins seeing renewed interest. He added that institutional adoption is likely to settle on Ethereum, especially through stablecoins and tokenized finance.
Earlier this month, he revealed that Zcash has become the second-largest holding in his family office Maelstrom, trailing only Bitcoin.
The team behind the Hyperliquid decentralized exchange (DEX) disclosed a 1.75 million HYPE token unlock for its developers and core contributors on Saturday, valued at over $60.4 million at the time of this writing.
Saturday’s token unlock was previously announced and is part of HYPE’s vesting schedule, according to pseudonymous Hyperliquid developer iliensinc, who celebrated the first anniversary of Hyperliquid’s historic airdrop and token generation event. He said:
“For perspective, about 270 million tokens were fully unlocked on Nov 29, 2024, in the largest airdrop in history, measured in today’s market value at about $9.5 billion. There are no investor unlocks, as Hyperliquid never raised any external capital.”
The unlock sparked fear about potential selling pressure that could impact HYPE’s market price, which declined by about 4.6% at the time of this writing.
Hyperliquid’s airdrop and token generation event was considered a landmark debut in the crypto industry that changed product launches, by touting a community-focused model, rewarding early adopters, developers, and users, as opposed to venture capitalists.
“Even if the team pinky swears to not sell, there is nothing holding them to that,” founder of the BitMEX crypto exchange and market analyst Arthur Hayes said.
HYPE token holders must expect a non-zero chance of daily selling pressure, which has already been priced in by the market, reflected in HYPE’s decline since September, Hayes added.
The price of HYPE has declined by about 42% from its all-time high of about $59.40, reached in September, and is trading well below its 200-day moving average, a critical support level.
HYPE’s price action shows a steady uptrend, culminating in an all-time high in September, followed by a decline. Source: TradingView
HYPE started falling on September 19, before the historic market crash in October that wiped away up to 95% in value from certain altcoins.
The token fell by about 54% in a single day during the October 10 market crash but rebounded to the $40 level within two days of the crash.
Analysts and crypto industry executives have praised Hyperliquid for its revenue generation and the platform’s ability to handle $330 billion in monthly trading volume with a small development team.
Hester Peirce, a commissioner of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and head of the SEC’s Crypto Task Force, reaffirmed the right to crypto self-custody and privacy in financial transactions.
“I’m a freedom maximalist,” Peirce told The Rollup podcast on Friday, while saying that self-custody of assets is a fundamental human right. She added:
“Why should I have to be forced to go through someone else to hold my assets? It baffles me that in this country, which is so premised on freedom, that would even be an issue — of course, people can hold their own assets.”
SEC commissioner Hester Peirce discusses the right to self-custody and financial privacy. Source: The Rollup
Peirce added that online financial privacy should be the standard. “It has become the presumption that if you want to keep your transactions private, you’re doing something wrong, but it should be exactly the opposite presumption,” she said.
Many large Bitcoin (BTC) whales and long-term holders are pivoting from self-custody to ETFs to reap the tax benefits and hassle-free management of owning crypto in an investment vehicle.
“We are witnessing the first decline in self-custodied Bitcoin in 15 years,” Dr. Martin Hiesboeck, the head of research at crypto exchange Uphold, said.
Hiesboeck attributed the shift to the SEC approving in-kind creations and redemptions for crypto ETFs in July, which allowed authorized holders to exchange crypto for ETF shares and vice versa without triggering a taxable event, unlike cash-settled ETFs.
“A move away from the self-custody mantra of ‘not your keys, not your coins’ is another nail in the coffin of the original crypto spirit,” Hiesboeck added.
On Nov. 26, Nasdaq’s International Securities Exchange quietly triggered one of the most important developments in Bitcoin’s financial integration.
The trading platform asked the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to raise the position limit on BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) options from 250,000 contracts to one million.
On the surface, the proposal looks procedural. In reality, it marks the moment Bitcoin exposure becomes large and liquid enough to operate under the same risk framework that Wall Street applies to Apple, NVIDIA, the S&P 500 (SPY), and the Nasdaq-100 (QQQ).
The filing argues that the existing limit is “restrictive and hampers legitimate trading and hedging strategies,” noting that IBIT’s market capitalization and average volume now put it among the largest products listed on US exchanges.
Once placed in the mega-cap tier, IBIT, the largest Bitcoin ETF, would join a small category of assets for which market makers can run derivatives hedges at full scale.
BlackRock’s IBIT Flows (Source: SoSo Value)
That shift does not simply deepen liquidity as it fundamentally changes the plumbing of how Bitcoin moves through institutional portfolios.
Bitcoin enters Wall Street’s risk machinery
A one-million-contract ceiling is not about speculative excess; it is about operational feasibility.
Market makers responsible for maintaining orderly markets must continuously hedge their exposures. With only 250,000 contracts available, desks cannot size trades to align with the massive flows from pensions or macro hedge funds.
When limits expand, dealers gain the freedom to hedge delta, gamma, and vega on positions that would otherwise be impossible to manage.
The filing provides a quantitative rationale: even a fully exercised one-million-contract position represents about 7.5% of IBIT’s float, and only 0.284% of all bitcoin in existence.
While these numbers suggest minimal systemic risk, the shift is not without operational challenges. Moving to this tier tests the resilience of clearinghouses, which must now underwrite Bitcoin’s notorious weekend gap risks without the buffer of lower caps.
It signals maturity, but it also demands that the US settlement infrastructure absorb shocks previously contained offshore.
Unlocking Bitcoin as collateral
The most consequential impact of higher position limits is the unlocking of Bitcoin as raw material for financial engineering.
Banks and structured-product desks cannot run notes, capital-protected baskets, or relative-volatility trades without the ability to hedge exposures at size.
This is the “missing link” for private wealth divisions, effectively allowing them to package Bitcoin volatility into yield-bearing products for clients who never intend to own the coin itself.
With a one-million-contract limit, constraints recede. Dealers can treat IBIT options with the same infrastructure that supports equity-linked notes and buffered ETFs.
However, a crucial friction remains: while the market structure is ready, bank balance sheet mechanics are not. Regulatory hurdles like SAB 121 still complicate how regulated entities custodian the underlying asset.
Until those accounting rules harmonize with these new trading limits, Bitcoin will function as a trading vehicle for banks, but not yet as seamless, capital-efficient collateral.
The double-edged sword
This change arrives in a year when IBIT overtook Deribit as the largest venue for Bitcoin options open interest.
That implies a structural shift where price discovery is drifting toward regulated US venues, but the market is becoming bifurcated.
While “clean” institutional flow settles in New York, high-leverage, 24/7 speculative flow is likely to remain offshore, creating a dual-track market.
Furthermore, the transition to a derivatives-driven phase is not purely stabilizing.
While wider limits generally tighten spreads, they also introduce the risk of “Gamma Whales.” If dealers are caught short gamma during a parabolic move, the higher position limits allow for massive forced hedging that can accelerate, rather than dampen, volatility.
So, the market would shift from a market driven by spot accumulation to one driven by the convexity of option Greeks, where leverage can act as both a stabilizer and an accelerant.
Bitcoin’s integration into the global macro grid
The proposal to raise IBIT’s options limits is an inflection point.
Bitcoin is being wired into the systems that price, hedge, and collateralize global financial risk. For the first time, Bitcoin exposure can be hedged, sized, and structured in the same ways as blue-chip equities.
The filing’s request to eliminate limits on customized, physically delivered FLEX options further accelerates this, allowing block trades to migrate from opaque swaps to exchange-listed structures.
This does not change Bitcoin’s inherent volatility, nor does it guarantee institutional flows. However, it changes the architecture around the asset.
Before 2021, China controlled a large share of global Bitcoin (BTC) mining. Data from the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index shows that Chinese miners produced about 65% of the world’s Bitcoin computing power in 2020.
In 2021, the Chinese government moved to stop mining activity. Authorities cited concerns about financial risks, capital outflows and the high electricity use required for mining. In September 2021, the People’s Bank of China declared all cryptocurrency transactions illegal and confirmed the nationwide ban on mining.
The immediate result was a sharp drop in global hashrate as many Chinese mining facilities closed or moved their equipment to countries such as the US, Kazakhstan and Russia.
Even though China banned crypto mining, global electricity use by BTC miners kept rising. The decline in the nation was offset by rapid growth in other countries. Yearly electricity use for Bitcoin mining increased from 89 terawatt-hours (TWh) in 2021 to about 121.13 TWh in 2023.
Total Bitcoin electricity consumption
The 2024-2025 recovery of mining operations
Mining operations have resumed in various parts of China, though they are smaller and less visible than the large farms that operated in the past.
According to Hashrate Index data reported in October 2025, China now accounts for about 14% of global Bitcoin mining, making it the third-largest mining country after the US and Kazakhstan. Analysts at the onchain research firm CryptoQuant go further, estimating that the real share of Bitcoin mining in China is between 15% and 20%.
Fast-rebounding sales of rig maker Canaan, one of the largest manufacturers of Bitcoin mining machines, also point to a resurgence in Bitcoin mining in China. China accounted for only 2.8% of Canaan’s revenue in 2022. By 2023, the figure had risen to 30%, and industry sources say it exceeded 50% in the second quarter of 2025.
Did you know? Bitcoin’s network is secured by miners competing to solve cryptographic puzzles, yet no single entity has ever controlled it long-term. Geographic shifts from China to the US to Central Asia show its resilience against political and economic disruptions.
Reasons behind the resurgence of mining operations in China
According to a Reuters report, mining operations have restarted in Xinjiang and Sichuan over the past two years or so. Xinjiang is an energy-abundant province that has supported mining activity. Since much of its surplus energy cannot be transmitted out of the region, it is often used for crypto mining.
Many inland regions of China produce more electricity than they can efficiently transmit to coastal cities. In provinces such as Xinjiang and Sichuan, surplus power drawn mainly from coal would otherwise go unused. Using this low-cost or stranded electricity to run mining machines has become a profitable option.
Local governments have also built large data centers in recent years. When regular demand for these facilities is lower than expected, owners can rent space and power to Bitcoin miners. Rising Bitcoin prices since 2024 have further boosted the profits of these miners.
Excessive data center capacity combined with rising Bitcoin prices may have created an optimal environment for the resurgence of cryptocurrency mining.
The underlying factors behind the increase in Bitcoin mining activity include the following:
Availability of inexpensive or underutilized power: When provinces such as Xinjiang and Sichuan have more than enough power, the surplus can be used for mining.
Surplus computing infrastructure: Overdeveloped data center facilities are actively seeking clients to make use of their capacity.
Elevated Bitcoin price environment: A high Bitcoin price, supported in part by favorable cryptocurrency policy changes in the US, improves mining profitability.
The resurgent mining activity is concentrated in power-abundant regions:
Xinjiang with plentiful coal and wind power, along with established industrial facilities.
Sichuan, known for low-cost hydropower during the rainy season.
Other western provinces with surplus energy and favorable local conditions.
Did you know? Every four years, Bitcoin undergoes a halving that cuts miner rewards by 50%. This built-in scarcity mechanism mimics gold extraction and often triggers major market cycles while shaping long-term supply dynamics.
Changing attitude of China toward digital assets
China’s policy toward digital assets is moving away from outright rejection and shifting toward selective, strategic acceptance. Beijing is showing greater openness to carefully regulated digital asset infrastructure.
Hong Kong’s stablecoin licensing framework, which took effect in August 2025, reflects this broader approach. Hong Kong is part of China, though designated as a Special Administrative Region.
On the mainland, authorities are exploring yuan-backed stablecoins as a way to increase the international use of the renminbi, China’s currency. China is also rapidly advancing its central bank digital currency, the e-CNY, and integrating it into public services, cross-border pilot programs and everyday retail payments.
These developments show that China’s approach is shifting from comprehensive bans to controlled experimentation. Digital assets that support financial stability and advance national economic goals may be allowed to operate.
The rules include licensing, AML checks, cold storage, and strict state authority over token issuances.
Crypto assets are classified as backed or unbacked and are not legal tender in Turkmenistan.
The move follows a Nov. 21 government meeting focused on digital asset policy.
Turkmenistan has taken a major step towards formalising its digital asset sector, joining a wave of countries introducing detailed crypto regulations as global frameworks evolve.
The move was confirmed in a Nov. 28 report by Business Turkmenistan, which said President Serdar Berdimuhamedov had approved a new law that will come into effect in 2026.
The legislation introduces a tightly controlled structure for digital assets in a country long known for strict information policies and limited access to outside technologies.
It places crypto exchanges, custodial services, and mining under clear state-defined rules, positioning Turkmenistan within a growing international effort to manage crypto adoption more systematically.
Sweeping rules
The new law establishes licensing procedures for exchanges and custodial platforms.
It sets know your client and Anti Money Laundering checks as standard requirements, along with mandatory cold storage obligations for service providers.
The framework also prevents credit institutions from offering crypto services. The state can stop, void, or enforce the refund of token issuances, placing digital asset activity squarely under government authority.
Mining is a central focus of the legislation. Individuals and organisations must register mining and mining pool operations. Covert mining activity is banned.
The central bank is also given the power to authorise distributed ledgers or operate its own, opening the door to permissioned systems that could direct transactions and digital asset activity through state-managed infrastructure.
Strict classifications
Turkmenistan’s law also defines the legal status of crypto assets. Digital currencies are not considered legal tender, currency, or securities within the country. Instead, the law divides them into two categories: backed and unbacked.
Regulators will later set rules for the liquidity of the backing, settlement requirements, and emergency redemption arrangements for assets in the backed category.
This structure hints at a system in which any asset with underlying backing will face closer supervision, while unbacked assets remain strictly delineated in legal terms.
The legislation was introduced following a Nov. 21 government meeting.
Deputy Chairman of the Cabinet of Ministers Hojamyrat Geldimyradov presented a report outlining the legal, technological, and organisational basis for the introduction of digital assets.
The report was accompanied by a proposal to establish a special State Commission that will oversee the sector and coordinate regulatory decisions as the framework is implemented.
Global context
Turkmenistan’s shift mirrors a wider push among governments to tighten their regulatory approaches to crypto and stablecoins.
Earlier this week, the United Kingdom’s tax authority outlined a new plan that allows decentralised finance users to defer capital gains taxes on crypto lending and liquidity pool activity until they sell the underlying token.
The move reduces the administrative burden on users and brings policy closer in line with how traditional assets are taxed.
In another development, Bank of England Deputy Governor Sarah Breeden said she expects the UK to move in parallel with the United States on stablecoin policies.
This suggests that major economies may establish similar frameworks as stablecoins become more integrated into payment and settlement systems.
International bodies are also reassessing earlier positions.
Erik Thedéen, governor of Sweden’s central bank and chair of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, recently indicated that the group may need a different approach to its current risk weighting for crypto exposures after some countries resisted adopting the 1,250% standard.
This reflects rising pressure for coordinated regulatory models as digital asset markets expand.
Political backdrop
The regulatory shift comes against the backdrop of Turkmenistan’s tightly controlled political landscape.
The former Soviet republic, home to around 6.5 to 7 million people, relies heavily on natural gas exports and maintains one of the world’s most centralised presidential systems.
It appears in lists of countries where X and Telegram are banned.
The country is also known for distinctive landmarks, including a permanently burning natural gas crater known as the door to hell, the white marble architecture of its capital, Ashgabat, and a national holiday dedicated to melons.
These features sit alongside heavy state oversight, making the introduction of a structured crypto law a notable change in approach.
For two centuries, factories chased cheap hands and dense ports. Today, miners roll into windy plateaus and hydro spillways, asking a simpler question: where are the cheapest wasted watts?
When computing can move to energy rather than energy to people, the map tilts.
Heavy industry has always chased cheap energy, but it still needed bodies and ships. The novelty with Bitcoin (BTC) is how completely labor, logistics, and physical product have dropped out of the siting equation.
A mining plant can be one warehouse, a dozen staff, a stack of ASICs, and a fiber line. Its output is pure block rewards, not a bulky commodity that must be shipped. That lets miners plug into genuinely stranded or curtailed energy that no conventional factory would bother to reach, and to rush when policy or prices change.
Bitcoin isn’t the first energy-seeking industry, but it is the first large industry whose primary location bid is “give me your cheapest wasted megawatt, and I’ll show up,” with labor nearly irrelevant.
Curtailment creates a new subsidy
CAISO curtailed about 3.4 TWh of utility-scale solar and wind in 2023, up roughly 30% from 2022, and saw more than 2.4 TWh curtailed in just the first half of 2024 as mid-day generation routinely overshot demand and transmission limits.
Nodal prices often go negative: generators pay the grid to take their electricity because shutting down is costly, and they still want renewable tax credits.
Miners show up as a strange new bidder. Soluna builds modular data centers at wind and solar projects that soak up power the grid cannot absorb. In Texas, Riot earned about $71 million in power credits in 2023 by curtailing during peak demand, often more than offsetting the BTC they would have mined.
In 2024, the Bitcoin mining firm turned curtailment into tens of millions of dollars of credits, and in 2025, it is on track to beat that, with more than $46 million of credits booked in the first three quarters alone.
A 2023 paper in Resource and Energy Economics models Bitcoin demand in ERCOT and finds that miners can increase renewable capacity but also emissions, with much of the downside mitigated if miners operate as demand-response resources.
Curtailment and negative pricing are a de facto subsidy for anyone who can show up exactly where and when power is cheapest, and mining is architected to do that.
Hash rate moves faster than factories
Miners used to seasonally migrate within China seasonally, chasing cheap wet-season hydropower in Sichuan and then shifting to coal regions like Xinjiang when the rains ended.
When Beijing cracked down in 2021, that mobility went global: US hash-rate share jumped from single digits to roughly 38% by early 2022, while Kazakhstan’s share spiked to around 18% as miners lifted whole farms and re-planted them in coal-heavy grids.
For the past year, US-based mining pools have mined over 41% of Bitcoin blocks.
Reuters recently reported that China’s share has quietly rebounded to around 14%, concentrated in provinces with surplus power.
ASICs are container-sized, depreciate in two to three years, and produce the same virtual asset regardless of where they sit. That lets hashrate slosh across borders in a way steel mills or AI campuses can’t.
Bitcoin miners have concentrated in Texas, the Southeast, and Mountain West, regions where renewable energy curtailment creates surplus power at low prices.
A programmable knob and wasted-watts frontier
ERCOT treats specific large loads as “controllable load resources” that can be curtailed within seconds to stabilize frequency.
Lancium and other mining facilities brand themselves as CLRs, promising to ramp down almost instantly when prices spike or reserves thin. Riot’s July and August 2023 reports read like grid-services earnings releases, with millions in power and demand-response credits booked alongside far fewer self-mined coins during heat waves.
The OECD and national regulators now discuss Bitcoin as a flexible load that can either deepen renewable penetration or crowd out other uses.
Miners bid on interruptible power at rock-bottom rates, grid operators gain a buffer they can call on during tight supply, and the grid absorbs more renewable capacity without overbuilding transmission.
Bhutan’s sovereign wealth fund and Bitdeer are building at least 100 MW of mining powered by hydropower as part of a $500 million green-crypto initiative, monetizing surplus hydro and exporting “clean” coins. Officials reportedly used crypto profits to pay government salaries.
In West Texas, wind and solar fleets run into transmission bottlenecks, producing curtailment and negative prices.
That is where many US miners have situated, signing PPAs with renewable plants to take capacity that the grid cannot always absorb. Crusoe Energy brings modular generators and ASICs to remote oil wells, using associated gas that would otherwise be flared.
Miners cluster where three conditions overlap: energy is cheap or stranded, transmission is constrained, and local policy welcomes or ignores them. Bitcoin mines can reach sites that a workforce-intensive industry never could.
AI adopts the playbook, with limits
The US Department of Energy’s Secretary’s Energy Advisory Board warned in 2024 that AI-driven data center demand could add tens of gigawatts of new load. It stressed the need for flexible demand and new siting models.
Companies like Soluna now pitch themselves as “modular green compute,” toggling between digital assets and other cloud workloads to monetize curtailed wind and solar.
China’s new underwater data center off Shanghai runs roughly 24 MW, almost entirely on offshore wind, with seawater cooling.
The friction comes from latency and uptime SLAs. A Bitcoin miner can tolerate hours of downtime and seconds of network lag.
An AI inference endpoint serving real-time queries cannot. That will keep tier-one AI workloads near fiber hubs and major metros, but training runs and batch inference are already candidates for remote, energy-rich sites.
El Salvador’s proposed Bitcoin City would be a tax-haven city at the base of a volcano, where geothermal power would feed Bitcoin mining, with Bitcoin-backed bonds funding both the town and miners.
Whether or not it gets built, it shows a government pitching “energy plus machines” rather than labor as the anchor. Data-center booms in the Upper Midwest and Great Lakes draw hyperscalers with cheap power and water despite limited local labor.
Bhutan’s hydropower-backed mining campuses sit far from major cities.
The civic fabric is thin. A few hundred high-skill workers service racks and substations. Tax revenue flows, but job creation per megawatt is minimal. Local opposition centers on noise and heat, not labor competition.
By 2035, clusters where power plants, substations, fiber, and a few hundred workers define the “city” become plausible, machine-first zones where human settlement is incidental.
Heat reuse adds revenue
MintGreen in British Columbia pipes immersion-cooled mining heat into a municipal district-heating network, claiming it can displace natural gas boilers. Norway’s Kryptovault redirects mining heat to dry logs and seaweed.
MARA ran a pilot in Finland where a 2 MW mining installation inside a heating plant provides a high-temperature source that would otherwise require biomass or gas.
A miner paying rock-bottom power rates can also sell waste heat, running two revenue streams from the same energy input. That makes cold-climate sites with district-heating demand newly attractive. Kentucky’s HB 230 exempts electricity used in commercial crypto-mining from state sales and use tax.
Supporters concede that the industry creates few jobs relative to the size of the power subsidy. Bhutan’s partnership with Bitdeer bundles sovereign hydropower, regulatory support, and a $500 million fund.
El Salvador wrapped its geothermal plan and Bitcoin City in legal tender status, tax breaks, and preferential access to geothermal energy from volcanoes.
The policy toolkit includes: tax exemptions on electricity and hardware, fast-track interconnection, long-term PPAs for curtailed power, and, in some cases, sovereign balance sheets or legal-tender experiments.
Jurisdictions compete to deliver the cheapest, most reliable stream of electrons with the fewest permitting hurdles.
What’s at stake
For two centuries, industrial geography optimized for moving raw materials and finished goods through ports and railheads, with cheap labor and market access as co-drivers.
The Bitcoin mining boom is the first time we’ve had a global, capital-intensive industry whose product is natively digital and whose primary constraint is energy price.
That has revealed where the world’s “wasted watts” live and how much governments are willing to pay, in tax breaks, interconnection priority, and political capital, to turn those watts into hash.
If AI and generic compute adopt the same mobility, the map of future data centers will be drawn less by where cheap hands live and more by where stranded electrons, cool water, and quiet permitting coexist. Transmission buildouts could erase the curtailment edge.
Policy reversals could strand billions in capex. AI’s latency requirements may limit the amount of workload that can be migrated. And commodity cycles could collapse hashrate economics entirely.
But the directionality is visible. Bhutan monetizes hydro through hash. Texas pays miners to shut off during heat waves.
Kentucky exempts mining electricity from tax. China’s miners quietly reboot in provinces with surplus power. These are jurisdictions rewriting the bidding rules for compute-intensive industry.
If the industrial age organized around hands by the harbor, the compute age may organize around watts at the edge. Bitcoin is just the first mover exposing where the map already wants to tear.
Balancer will return $8M to affected liquidity providers after the V2 exploit.
Whitehat and internal teams recovered part of the stolen $28M.
Reimbursements will be distributed pro rata in the same tokens via a 180-day claim.
Decentralised finance protocol Balancer has unveiled a plan to reimburse liquidity providers (LPs) following the massive exploit that drained over $128 million from its V2 pools.
The reimbursement plan comes after an extensive recovery effort led by whitehat hackers and internal teams, aiming to restore funds and rebuild trust within the platform’s user community.
The plan has been submitted to the Balancer DAO for community feedback and will require approval through a formal voting process before distribution begins.
The Balancer exploit
The Balancer exploit, which occurred in early November, targeted a rounding function flaw in Balancer’s Composable Stable Pools (CSPv5).
Attackers combined this vulnerability with batched swaps, allowing them to manipulate token price calculations and drain multiple pools across Ethereum, Polygon, Base, and Arbitrum.
Despite 11 previous security audits conducted by four different blockchain security firms, the vulnerability went unnoticed.
The breach sent shockwaves through the DeFi sector, causing Balancer’s total value locked to fall from $775 million to $258 million, while its native BAL token lost roughly 30% of its value.
Portions of the protocol were paused immediately after the attack to prevent further losses, while whitehat and internal recovery operations began working to salvage funds.
Here’s everything you need to know about the Balancer Hack:
1. The attack targeted Balancer’s V2 vaults and liquidity pools, exploiting a vulnerability in smart contract interactions. Preliminary analysis from on-chain investigators points to a maliciously deployed contract that… pic.twitter.com/udAM4hB0OD
Overall, approximately $28 million of the stolen funds was recovered.
Whitehat hackers played a significant role, reclaiming around $3.9 million, while internal Balancer teams, including coordination with security firm Certora, retrieved another $4.1 million from vulnerable metastable pools that had not yet been exploited.
Among the whitehat contributors, an anonymous actor dubbed “Anon #1” recovered $2.68 million on Polygon, including various tokens such as WPOL, MaticX, TruMATIC, and stMatic, as detailed in the unveiled reimbursement proposal.
Some rescuers on Arbitrum declined to identify themselves and waived their bounty claims, highlighting the voluntary and community-driven nature of these recovery efforts.
The remaining $19.7 million in osETH and osGNO tokens was recovered through StakeWise, an Ethereum liquid staking protocol, and will be returned to users via StakeWise’s own governance mechanisms.
The $8M reimbursement plan
Balancer’s reimbursement plan focuses on the $8 million recovered directly by whitehats and internal teams.
The framework adopts a non-socialised approach, meaning funds are returned only to liquidity providers in the specific pools affected.
Reimbursements will be distributed on a pro-rata basis according to each user’s Balancer Pool Token holdings at a snapshot block taken before the exploit.
Payments will be made in-kind, allowing users to receive the exact tokens that were stolen, avoiding any mismatches or unintended losses due to price fluctuations.
Whitehat contributors are entitled to a 10% bounty of the recovered funds, capped at $1 million per operation.
To receive their reward, Whitehat participants must complete identity verification, KYC, and sanctions screening under Balancer’s SEAL Safe Harbour Agreement.
Notably, internal recovery operations, including Certora’s involvement, are excluded from these bounties due to pre-existing service agreements.
If the distribution plan is approved, affected liquidity providers will have a 180-day window to claim their funds, during which they must digitally accept Balancer’s updated terms of use.
These terms require users to release Balancer Labs, the DAO, the Foundation, and affiliated parties from legal liabilities related to the exploit.
Unclaimed funds after 180 days will be considered dormant and may only be reallocated through a governance vote.
TRON price hovers above $0.28, largely unchanged in the past week.
Despite the consolidation, TRX looks poised to go higher.
Recent network developments, including stablecoin growth and partnerships, buoy bulls.
TRON (TRX) has shown limited upward momentum in recent sessions but continues to hold near the key $0.28 level, even as volatility across the crypto market keeps investors cautious.
TRX is trading around $0.28 after a modest 0.4% dip over the past 24 hours, reflecting broader market weakness and a lack of clear direction.
Sentiment remains fragile following Bitcoin’s slide to $80,000 last week before rebounding toward $92,000, a move that has kept traders on edge.
Still, TRON has managed a mild recovery from recent lows near $0.27, offering a tentative sign of strength despite the uncertain backdrop.
What could aid the TRX price?
The question of whether Tron could ignite a parabolic rally arises from TRON DAO’s growth and expansion across the market.
For instance, TRON has dominated the stablecoin market in terms of total transfers year-to-date. USDT supply on TRON surpassed $80 billion in July.
Leo Chan, a small business owner in Asia, recently highlighted why TRON is seeing huge adoption in stablecoins.
“When I need to make payments at traditional banks, I need to do some paperwork,” Leo said. “I may face delays and lose business. With TRON, recipients can instantly get the payment.”
While it sits above peers in global USDT activity, 2025 also boosts many other notable feats, including daily active users and integrations.
Platforms such as Chainlink and MetaMask have helped elevate TRON’s reach, expanding access beyond stablecoin transfers into decentralized finance, tokenized assets and retail payments.
In terms of adoption, the latest data shows TRON’s total accounts have surpassed 346 million.
This ecosystem growth speaks to rapid growth amid an explosion in decentralized finance.
🎉 TRON’s total accounts have now surpassed 346 million!
TRON ecosystem continues its rapid growth as we push forward on our mission to decentralize the future. pic.twitter.com/J5v0OFTasP
Bitcoin may be carving out a short-term bottom after weeks of heavy selling, with one market analyst arguing that conditions are in place for a relief rally toward the $100,000–$110,000 range.
In a recent video, trader Mister Crypto said Bitcoin (BTC)’s short-term structure shows signs of stabilization following what he described as “capitulation” across the market. He claimed that indicators tied to trader behavior suggest that large players have begun opening new long positions despite the sentiment plunging into extreme fear territory, a mix that has historically preceded bounces during downturns.
One of the main technical signals cited is the Bitcoin Relative Strength Index (RSI) on the weekly chart, which is approaching the 30 level. “We have bottomed out for Bitcoin right here. We have been reaching the 30 level. Boom,” he said.
The analyst noted that, in past cycles, this zone has coincided closely with market bottoms. While he cautioned that this does not guarantee the start of a new bull run, he said the current setup often signals at least a temporary reversal.
Bitcoin price performance after Thanksgiving. Source: Mister Crypto
Another factor adding weight to the rebound scenario is Bitcoin’s distance from the 50-week moving average, currently near $102,000. According to the analysis, Bitcoin has repeatedly retraced toward this level after dipping below it in previous market cycles. The expectation now is a bounce that could lift prices back into six figures before any deeper trend emerges.
Macro conditions are also feeding optimism in the near term. The analyst pointed to expectations that quantitative tightening could soon end, combined with speculation around another interest rate cut at an upcoming policy meeting. Both developments tend to favor risk assets such as Bitcoin by easing financial conditions.
However, the longer-term outlook remains cautious. The analyst claimed that the broader market is in bear territory. He warned that any bounce could be followed by renewed weakness later on, as broader conditions have yet to show a decisive shift back into sustained growth.
Meanwhile, Bitwise Europe research head André Dragosch has said that Bitcoin could have major upside ahead, as its current price doesn’t reflect improving macro expectations. He said Bitcoin now offers an “asymmetric” risk-reward similar to the COVID crash of March 2020, when prices plunged before rebounding strongly, arguing the market is already pricing in an extremely bleak global outlook.
