Be quick, but don't hurry! (weekly crypto updates)

What happened in crypto in the past week? Bitcoin is calming down. Ripple is making moves. Solana is in a good place. What else? Read below:

• Bitcoin: Some people think that Bitcoin's four year cycle is not dead yet, but this means that BTC will hit $1M per coin in the next decade. Could this be true? The consensus about BTC is mixed, balancing whale accumulation against technical resistance and retail fear. We look at $115K-$118K as support zone for a bounce, but ETFs are at 21- Extreme Fear. We did had one slip bellow $100K, with $1.3B in leveraged positions being wiped instantly. We can see situations like Sequans Communication selling 970 BTC to pay down debt, and while they cut their debt in half, their BTC stack went down from 3234 BTC to 2264 BTC. Galaxy calmed down and it is seeing Bitcoin as $120K at the end of the year, as opposed to the previous $185K mentioned before. I may try my hand with a prediction too: at the end of the year Bitcoin will be either over $200K, or under $200K. Am I right? JPMorgan is more optimistic, seeing $170K instead. Some are dreaming while being awake, saying the the Bitcoin bull hasn't even started. Just a fun statistics, public companies now hold nearly 1M BTC, and 90% of this sits in the US.

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• Ethereum: Fusaka upgrade excitement builds with the December 3rd launch, promising 10X data capacity boost for Layer 2 networks through PeerDAS technology.

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• Altcoins and stablecoins: Altcoin weakness intensifies as Bitcoin dominance climbs to 59.5%. Did you claim your Monad airdrop? It goes live on November 24. Privacy coins flipped the script, surging 80%. Zcash announced the Q4 roadman as prices surged. Seems that institutional capital targets established altcoins like XRP and ADA over new tokens. Arthur Hayes made Zcash his second biggest bet. Solana ETFs recorded its fourth straight day of inflows, pulling in $44M, while BTC and ETH ETFs are losing money. Western Union gives Solana a vote of confidence with the planned stablecoin launch. Fidelity fast-tracks SOL ETF filing. Ripple stablecoin, RLUSD, crossed $1B market cap with 1278% year-to-date growth, and it is now the 10th largest USD-pegged stablecoin globally. They have also raised $500M at a $40B valuation, with Citadel Securities and Fortress Investment Group leading the round. Despide going 14.2% down, BNB is still +66% year-2-tear right now. Linea announced their Linea burn mechanism, burning Linea and ETH with every transaction on its Layer 2. Someone bet $140M against BTC and XRP using 20X leverage on Hyperliquid. Donald, is that you? Memecoins volume is down 32%. Google added real-time odds from prediction markets Polymarket and Kalshi to Search and Google Finance.

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• NFTs and blockchain games: I have enjoyed playing Golem Overlord lately on Hive, and it is quite enjoyable, I would say, with some significant updates lately. On Splinterlands, we have had the Land NFT new update and improved tokenomics, and the new rewards cards from the Conclave collection are up and running. Bored Apes creators launched a social hub for its metaverse. Mythical Games partnered with Sam Altman-backed world. Gala sunsets 3 Telegram games.

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• Good news: UK has lifted its ban on crypto exchange-traded notes, allowing retail investors to gain exposure to BTC and ETH in pensions and ISAs. BlackRock launches its iShares Bitcoin ETP on the London Stock Exchange. Citigroup is preparing to launch a crypto custody service in 2026. Even Nigel Farage called on the UK to introduce crypto regulations urgently as we fall behind as a financial center. Malaysia announced a three-year roadmap to test real-world asset tokenization across its financial sector. Traditional banks seems to go all-in on blockchain, and Standard Chartered told HK Fintech that phisical money is finished. Iggy Azalea wants to fix celebrity coins, as she launched a platform called Trust on Solana, and wants every celebrity signing up to sign actual legal contracts defining their obligations to token holders. Good for you! And something is cooking, as Solana, Fireblocks, Monad and Polygon formed an allaince called the Blockchain Payments Consortium. Why? We will find out soon enough. Coinbase wants to buy BVNK, a London-based startup that helps bussinesses to accept payments in stablecoins and other digital assets, while in Ireland they got a $24.6M fine for failing to proper monitor billions in crypto transactions for signs of financial crime. Ripio exchange launched aN Argentine Peso-backed stablecoin called wARS. Gemini is preparing to launch a prediction market platform. Ledger considers a New York IPO or private raise.

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• Bad news: Ripple bought Hidden Road for $1.25B, launching a US prime brokerage platform that lets institutions trade XRP, and other dozens of crypto over-the-counter. Check Ripple Prime, still something looks dodgy to me. We will see what future brings! Stream Finance suspended all withdrawals after an external fund manager somehow lost $83M in user assets. Their xUSD stablecoin crashed 77%. We witnessed a DEFI contagion, with Elixir, Euler, Silo Finance and a few others going down in value too. In other strange turn of events, Forward Industries approved a $1B share repurchase, while holding 6.8M Solana tokens, and instead of going up, its shares dropped 20% right away. Bad week for Balancer and Balancer forks, as it was exploited for $120M, with the forks losing part of their TVL too. Pakistan suddenly wants its own stablecoin, after years pent pushing back against crypto. It seems that over 100M out of the 240M population is unbanked in Pakistan.

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• Joke of the week: Jerome Powel crushed the crypto market with one comment about the December rate, and $360M fled crypto investment products last week. Right now US funds alone lost $435M and BlackRock IBIT seen $403M out in a single week. The result: $1.2B got liquidated in one day, BTC fell 4%, ETH 7% and other altcoins lost around 9%. Yet stock indices such as NASDAQ and S&P500 remained positive. Overall big wallets buy while small holders flee. Crypto hit a liquidity wall, with no fresh money actually entering in the space. The US Treasury even sanctioned eight North Korean individuals and two banks accused of laundering millions in crypto tied to cyberattacks. And right now crypto seems to raise after Donald proposed a $2000 tarriff dividend for most Americans.

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All the best, George

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Why not...

...have fun and win rewards on my favourite blockchain games (Splinterlands- a Hearthstone-like card game) (Golem Overlord - a Play2Earn game on Hive) (Upland - a real-life virtual land) (Holozing - a Pokemon-like game)and ( Chain of Legends - with a hint of Heroes of Might and Magic).

...get crypto while writing on the Publish0x blog, using the Presearch search engine to maximise your income with PRE tokens. Use Torum instead of Twitter. I am also writing for crypto on Hive.

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