$99,000 Bitcoin, U.S.'s Mortgages, and Bilt's Lastest Offering!

Ninety-Nine Thousand United States Dollars for One Orange Coin. The promised land is in touching distance.

This Week in Crypto

Another day, another yard… A special thank you to all the funds buying my bags at $99k.

We wrote last week about the uptick in ETH ETF flows and suggested that was more likely attributed to a CME basis trade rather than structural flows from allocators. Given this week it’s reverted back to a week of outflows (yes an entirely red week) - I’d say we were right.

• ETHBTC made new yearly lows (I literally just copy and paste that every week)

• Meanwhile SOLUSD and SOLETH made new ATHs. Our start-of-year prediction had SOLETH (then 0.03) trading at 0.1, this week it hit 0.08… so we are getting there.

  • Solana is undoubtedly one of the great crypto comeback stories. You could have scooped it for just $8 in Jan ‘23.

• Speaking of Solana, Bitwise, Vaneck and 21Shares filed for ETFs

• And Speaking of ETFs, Gary Gensler announced his departure

  • Without googling it, I’m going to take a wild stab in the dark and say that the filings went in about 5 minutes after his departure was announced…

  • Paul Atkins (former commissioner), Brian Brooks (Robinhood CLO), and Teresa Goody Guillén (Prominent Crypto Lawyer) are the respective three front-runners for the position right now.

• If you’re the C-suite of any of the companies that were under fire or drowning in Well’s notices, you should be pretty happy this week. But none, I imagine, we be as happy (or as bald) as Brian Armstrong who was rumored to have a 1 on 1 meet with the President-Elect.

  • Following this, rumors spread the Trump camp is debating crafting a specific Whitehouse crypto role.

  • Reuters also reported a slew of C-suites are fighting for seats on an advisory board who’s purview will also include the mythical Strategic Bitcoin Reserve.

• Alright, I was saving this one until the end, but Big Mike just keeps bidding. This week he bought, if you’ll excuse my French, a shitload more Bitcoin.

  • I genuinely don’t know how much he bought this week, but it’s at least 50,000 BTC. He is issuing convertible notes faster than I can scroll Twitter.

  • He will remain on the bid through the end of the year as he implements his 21/21 plan (covered in previous weeks).

  • Microstrategy was the most traded stock this week, surpassing Nvidia and Tesla, it also hit a $100B market cap and new ATHs of over $500.

  • I’ve promised a more in-depth breakdown of their strategy and why the NAV premium is so high, but in all honesty, I still haven’t quite gotten my head around it (it is slowly starting to make sense in my tiny pea brain though). While my cogs are turning, just watch him explain it himself:

And in between smashing the buy button he just sits on twitter posting stuff like this:

… what a life ey?

This Week in TradFi

The latest U.S. economic data seems to be holding steady.

• Weekly jobless claims rose less than expected last week, reaching a 7-month low. This has been steadily decreasing over the past few weeks. This dataset helps give a good real-time pulse into the labor market, which seems to be holding steady.

• October was the strongest month for existing home sales since mid-2021. This is likely a result of the recent rate cuts, which started in September.

• However, mortgage rates have been increasing over the past few weeks, which will result in a decrease in existing home sales if it continues.

The UK is in for a bumpy road ahead as the economy contracted in September alongside Q3 growth coming in lower than expected. At the same time, inflation increased to 2.3% in October, suggesting a pause on further rate cuts. Europe is in a far worse state across the board and may be in for a disaster if Trump’s proposed 10% tariffs take place on Europe’s biggest exports - cars and chemicals, which make up almost 2% of Europe’s GDP.

The big news out of Asia this week was not good for one of India’s wealthiest families, with Adani’s Groups founder, Gautam Adani, and several others being indicted with bribery charges.

• The Adani group had a meteoric ascent in India and has an expansive empire, ranging from ports to mining to airports and more.

• However, they’ve had a rocky past few months, first with Hidenberg’s negative research report and now with the bribery charges.

This being said, there’s a long list of well-known companies that have recently settled bribery charges in the U.S. such as Oracle, 3M, SAP, Walmart, and more. This too will likely blow over and not have much of an impact on the Adani group, but we will be tracking it closely given the impact of the Adani Group in India.

This Week in Tech

The big news this week was primarily fintech. Robinhood made a splash this week by announcing it’s $300M acquisition of TradePMR, demonstrating Robinhood’s ambitions in the RIA space.

• This seems to be a very strategy move for Robinhood as it now looks to compete more head on with the likes of Charles Schwab and Fidelity.

• What started as a company that primarily served retail traders is slowly evolving into more of a banking and wealth management company - with a high yield account, credit card, trading account, IRA, and soon access to advisors.

• The scale at which Robinhood has been able to launch and execute on new products is impressive.

Bilt launched a new offering that will enable users to earn points on home purchases. This is an incredible product and Bilt continues to try to help users unlock value on their largest expenses (rent) or purchases (homes). Unlike the rental payment rewards, the economic model of this latest offering is very clear — think of it as a kick-back on the fee that a buyer typically pays an agent. This is an incredible partnership for Bilt that will likely get material uptick immediately given the economic incentives here.

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

• Zepto, a quick-commerce company India’s hottest tech start, raised $350M from leading Indian family offices at a $5B valuation.

• DCG is launching a decentralized AI subsidiary, Yuma, led by Barry Silbert himself.

• Wordware, a startup making it easier to build AI-agents, raised a $30M seed round led by Spark Capital.
  

Arch is building 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. We also offer access to bank-grade custody, trading and staking services, powered by BitGo.

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