$MSTR buys Bitcoin (again), Eurozone's Delicate Situation, and Uber's New Gig.

I asked Chat GPT to write a Thanksgiving joke for Bitcoiner’s and it came up with this:

Ethereum.

This Week in Crypto

Thankfully (no pun intended), not much really happened this week. So for both our sakes, it’s a quick column.

Nothing much to really write home about on the ETF front this week. We saw a reasonably decent-sized outflow which coincided with Bitcoin’s move down to the weekly low of $91,000 (current price = $95,600).

Every time I think about how Michael Saylor spends his time, I laugh. When he’s not buying hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Bitcoin…

He’s tweeting AI generated images of himself…

Never change Mike.

• He had some exchanges on twitter over his strategy with Jason Calcanis from the all-in-podcast. Jason was being… his usual self. I’m hopefully they let Saylor come on and play Shill Team Six.

Frankly, I’m struggling for stuff to cover this week, so i’ll leave you with a thoughtful thread and headlines:

• MARA purchases $615 million worth of bitcoin. Their total holdings to 34,794 BTC (3.3B), the most of any (public) Bitcoin mining company.

  • They’re issuing Saylor style convertibles, and their share price is definitely better for it ($26.92).

• Publicly traded Jiva Technologies adopts Bitcoin Treasury Strategy

• Rumble also announced they’re also buying up to $20M Bitcoin for their treasury; though it seems a little bit desperate given their cashflow issues and down-only share price.

• Pump.fun had a wild week. They ended up shutting down their livestream feature after various events took place. If you don’t know, you’re probably better off not knowing.

• Kalshi allegedly paid influencers to jump on competitor polymarket’s woes after FBI seized phones.

• Trump seems on the verge of picking Bessant to be his Treasury pick.

  • We covered this in previous editions, so it should be no surprise to avid readers (we know you exist)!

• FTX creditor disbursements look set for March.

This Week in TradFi

All indicators continue to paint the picture of a resilient US economy:

• Second estimates showed that the U.S. economy increased at an annualized pace of 2.8% in Q3.

• Consumer spending, which accounts for more than two-thirds of economic activity, increased 0.4% in October. We may be in for historic Black Friday consumption!

• New weekly jobless claims are at historic low levels; however, continuing applications are near all-time highs, suggesting increasing difficulty in finding employment.

• All of this being said, inflation continues to be a concern as recent data shows that the PCE Price Index (Personal Consumption Expenditures) grew at an annualized rate of 2.3% in October. This is the FED’s preferred inflation metric, so it will be interesting to see how this impacts the December FOMC meeting.

Europe continues to try to balance a fine-line with the ECB looking to keep rates static, while multiple European countries desperately need a boost in economic activity. Alongside assessing impacts of proposed U.S. tariff’s, the ECB is trying to balance aiding the deteriorating euro-zone economy while aiming to control inflation.

On the other hand, Asian markets delivered some positive news this week:

• China’s factory activity expanded slightly in November, marking the second straight month of expansion. Perhaps this is early signs of all the stimulus kick in. The Bank of China forecasts at 5% GDP growth in 2025.

• Japan’s economy seems to be on a slow moving recovery path.

• Despite early reports on weaker urban consumption, the Indian economy is still projected to grow at ~6.5% YoY, which would place it as the fastest growing major economy.

This Week in Tech

The tech markets are continuing to see a flurry of investment activity, specifically within AI. Larger companies are also poised to go IPO over the coming year, which should provide some much needed liquidity to investors across the spectrum.

One interesting news from the week was Uber’s launch of Scaled Solutions, a data-labeling service. On the surface this may seem like a completely different business for Uber to get into. However, we think it makes complete sense. If you zoom out, Uber is basically a logistic network that moves things from Point A to Point B:

• Moving people with Uber Rides

• Moving food and grocery with Uber Eats

• Moving packages with Uber Connect, and more

However, viewed differently, Uber is basically a marketplace connecting people to work opportunities. Uber helped pioneer the “gig economy”. To date, all of the gigs have been in the logistics area. However, now Uber is expanding the type of work that it’s army of global contractors can have access to - from giving rides to delivering food to labeling data.

It’ll be interesting to see the next suite of gig opportunities that Uber decides to expand into.

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

• /dev/agents, a high profile AI agent startup, raised a $56M seed round at a $500M valuation led by Index Ventures alongside Capital G.

• Roon, a video focused healthcare site aiming to replace WebMD, raised $15M led by Forerunner Ventures and FirstMark.

• Ramp, an expense management startup, is seeking a secondary transaction at an $11B valuation, a big step up from its most recent down round at ~$5.8B.

• SoftBank is planning to buy $1.5B of OpenAI stock in a secondary transaction.

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.