BTC $91K, Rate Cut Hopes, & Opus 4.5

Hope you all had a restful Thanksgiving week! We are incredibly thankful for each one of you.

This Week in Crypto

After last week’s bloodbath, Bitcoin managed to come back from $82K lows to hover around $91K by week’s end, up roughly 5% for the week.

• The recovery came after December Fed rate cut odds increased, following PPI data coming in (read more in our TradFi section!).

• BTC is now trading above $90K, though still down 28% from October’s high.

Meanwhile, XRP is absolutely crushing:

• XRP ETFs have accumulated $644M in just 8 trading days since mid-November, while Bitcoin ETFs have lost $3.5B and Ethereum ETFs lost $1.5B in the same period. 

An Ethereum whale has woken up after 9 years:

• An Ethereum whale who accumulated ETH back in 2016 at $203/coin decided to start selling this week.

• The whale transferred 1300 ETH ($3.94M) to Wintermute, locking in a whopping 1,391% return after nine years. 

• Since November 17, this wallet has dumped 6,000 ETH worth $18.16M.

This morning a massive $15.4B options expiry closed out - one of the largest monthly derivatives event of the year.

• Bitcoin led with $13.4B in contracts expiring, while Ethereum followed with $1.7B. 

• With trading volumes down 30% in the 24 hours before expiry and thin liquidity, market makers had less ammunition to push prices.

This Week in TradFi

A pretty good week domestically to close out Thanksgiving!

• This week brought the long-delayed September Producer Price Index (PPI) report, which was held up due to the government shutdown.

  • The data showed wholesale inflation rose 0.3% MoM in September, matching expectations, driven primarily by energy costs that increased 3.5% and food prices that rose 1.1%. 

  • YoY, the PPI increased 2.7%. 

  • Though the report was backward-looking data from pre-shutdown September, it still managed to move markets because it reinforced the narrative that inflation isn’t totally dead yet. 

• Stocks rallied a bit this week, with the S&P 500 up 1.6% on Monday, 0.9% on Tuesday, and 0.7% on Wednesday. 

  • The Nasdaq is also up, though still down 2-3% for November, with gains fueled by Alphabet. 

• Multiple Fed officials came out in support of a December rate cut, reversing sentiment from just last week.

  • San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly and New York Fed President John Williams both made statements in favor of a rate cut next month, which would be the third consecutive 25bps cut in 2025. 

On the international front:

• Europe had a pretty quiet week with the U.S. Thanksgiving holidays limiting activity.

  • The STOXX 600 edged up just 0.12% on Thursday, though it saw more momentum earlier in the week.

• Tech stocks in Asia led gains for three consecutive days through Tuesday, with TSMC driving the rally and MSCI All Country World Index increasing 0.1%. 

• Gold continued its upward momentum, trading around $4,150/oz - typically thriving during periods of lower interest rates. 

This Week in Tech

On Monday, Anthropic announced Opus 4.5, the latest version of its flagship model.

• The new version of Opus has state-of-the-art performance on a range of benchmarks, including coding, tool use, and general problem solving. 

• Notably, Opus 4.5 is the first model to score over 80% on SWE-Bench verified, a well-known coding benchmark. 

• Along with Opus 4.5, Anthropic will also make its Claude for Chrome and Claude for Excel products more broadly available. 

OpenAI and Perplexity both announced AI shopping features this week, which integrate into their existing chatbots to help users research potential purchases. 

• The tools are … basically identical? 

• AI-assisted online shopping seems to be the next big thing in AI, with lots of AI shopping startups popping up, but OpenAI and Perplexity launching their own shopping features may put these startups at risk.

As usual, below are some fundraising announcements, M&A, and tech personnel changes that caught our eye:

• AI-powered furniture shopping platform Onton has raised $7.5M, led by Footwork. 

• Google is teaming up with Accel to invest up to $2M in startups through Accel’s Atoms program, with the 2026 cohort focusing on Indian founders. 

• AI testing startup Momentic has raised a $15M Series A, led by Standard Capital.

• Revolut has raised new funding in a share sale that values the company at $75B. 

Arch is building a next-gen wealth management platform for individuals holding Alternative Assets. Our flagship product is the crypto-backed loan, which allows you to securely and affordably borrow against your crypto.

Disclaimer: None of the above is financial advice, seriously.