(43/52) Weekly Market Insight | November Week 1 | Alternative Guidances

Headline News: Alternative Guidances

• Bitcoin price slid 3.5% last week as Fed Chair Powell highlighted there were “strongly differing views about how to proceed in December.” The hawkish pivot was immediately reflected in the rate-cut probability in December from 91% to 69%, indicating a higher level of uncertainty in the future rate path with the absence of major economic data. This gives greater weight to the nuances in upcoming speeches by Fed officials and private-sector economic data such as ADP employment change.

Macro-Outlook: A Shaken Rate Path

• The US and China reached a 1-year trade deal to delay the planned export restrictions on rare-earth minerals, resume US soybeans purchases, cutting fentanyl tariffs in half and more.
• The Federal Reserve cut interest rates by 25bps and announced a stop to quantitative tightening on December 1 in last week’s FOMC meeting. The participants’ views on economic activities remained unchanged. However, Chair Powell indicated the reduction in the policy rate at the December meeting is not a foregone conclusion, “far from it.”

Upcoming Economic Calendar including,

• Monday, November 3, 11:00pm: US ISM Manufacturing PMI in October
• Wednesday, November 5, 9:15pm: US ADP Employment Change in October
• Wednesday, November 5, 10:00pm: Supreme Court Oral Argument on President Trump’s Tariffs Authority
• Wednesday, November 5, 11:00pm: US ISM Services PMI in October
• Friday, November 7, 11:00pm: Michigan Consumer Preliminary Sentiment in November

Weekly-Cryptos-Overview: Privacy and ZK Resurgence

• Trump Media & Technology Group announced partnering with Crypto.com to launch a new prediction market, Truth Predict, on Truth Social platform.
• Latin American crypto exchange Ripio launched wARS, an Argentine peso-stablecoin, on Ethereum, Base and World Chain.
• Mastercard is reportedly in late-stage discussions to acquire Zerohash, a crypto infrastructure firm backed by Morgan Stanley and Interactive Brokers, for a price range between $1.5 billion and $2 billion.
• Revolut announced free on/off-ramp services from USD to USDC and USDT on a 1:1 basis.
• MetaMask launched its MetaMask Reward campaign, rewarding users with over $30 million worth of LINEA, discounted fees and more. Its parent company Consensys reportedly selected JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs as lead underwriters for its upcoming IPO. SharpLink also announced deploying up to $200 million worth of ETH on Linea network to capture yield from staking, EigenCloud and other ecosystem incentives.

Layer 1 and Layer 2s

• Ethereum launched an Institutions site for builders from institutions to have clearer pathways for resources, including dedicated resources for privacy integrations using ZK, TEE, FHE and more.
• Base Chain increased its throughput from 75 to 100 Mgas/s. Base USDC is now supported for depositing on Kalshi.
• Flutterwave, the leading payment service provider in Africa, selected Polygon as its default blockchain to launch cross-border stablecoin payment services.
• Starknet partnered with Hyperlane, launching direct Solana bridge on StarkGate.
• Western Union announced the launching of its USDPT stablecoin and a Digital Asset Network that provides on/off-ramp services on Solana.
• Circle’s Layer-1 Arc launched its public testnet with a huge number of institutional participants including BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, HSBC and more.
• Stacks launched Dual Staking, enabling sBTC stakers to earn up to 0.8% APY and more if stacked together with STX.
• Japan’s payment leader TIS launched Multi-Token Platform on AvaCloud to efficiently enable the issuance, management and distribution of digital assets.
• Unichain added support for more Layer-1 coins such as ZEC, DOGE and XRP by adopting the Universal bridge standard.

Dapps

• Pump.fun announced Spotlight, a new program that aims to advance Internet Capital Markets by helping utility token projects to gain market visibility, liquidity and more support.
• Animoca Brands announced an undisclosed position of AERO and 4-years-locked for veAERO.
• INFINIT announced integrating Virtuals’ ACP to enable agents access to INFINIT’s automated execution layer and will soon be x402 compatible as well.
• Ondo Finance expanded its Global Markets to BNB Chain, enabling direct trading of tokenised stocks on DEX such as PancakeSwap.
• Myriad prediction market is now live on BNB Chain. The third blockchain integration after Abstract and Linea.
• Frax Finance launched FraxNet, a GENIUS standard account which users can on/off ramp with frxUSD across 20+ chains.
• Fluidkey launched its mobile applications on both iOS and Android, introducing privacy transfers, access to Morpho yield vaults, bank transfers and more.
• Frax partnered with IQ to launch KRWQ, a Korean-won stablecoin, on Base and uses LayerZero for cross-chain transfer. Stablecoin legislation in Korea has not been finalised yet.
• Trump’s official memecoin team reportedly plans to acquire a pre-IPO equity tokenisation platform Republic.
• SSV introduced Anchor, a Rust-based client, as the second client after Go-SSV in its multi-client DVT strategy.
• F(x) Protocol introduced fxMINT, enabling users to mint fxUSD with WBTC and ETH with zero interest rate, only a one-time opening and closing fee.
• Lombard Finance acquired the BTC.b brand from Ava Labs to expand its Bitcoin Capital Market strategy.
• Some Ether.fi cards were reportedly compromised in upstream or downstream partners, resulting in unauthorised transactions charged on users’ cards. The team promised to compensate affected users. Ether.fi also launched on/off-ramp services on its platform.

Governance and Upcoming Alpha

• Ripple is holding Ripple Swell conference from November 4 to 5 in New York. Meanwhile, Chainlink is also holding its SmartCon conference during the same period in New York.
• Aerodrome is expected to launch Slipstream v2 and Autopilot this week, introducing automated concentrated liquidity strategy to the protocol.
• Jupiter announced launching Decentralised Token Formation (DTF) in November, a new token launchpad that potentially allows JUP stakers early access to the sales. Jupiter is also voting to burn the 130 million JUP (about 4% of circulating supply) in the “Litterbox”.
• Telegram founder Pavel Durov introduced Coccon, a confidential compute network for AI that is built on TON Network and planned to launch in November 2025.
• Ether.fi proposed a dynamic buyback of up to $50 million worth of ETHFI when ETHFI price is below $3 (ETHFI price is currently trading below $1).
• Rabby wallet announced integrating Aave into its wallet soon.
• GMX approved purchasing $110,000 worth of GT tokens from GMX Solana each month for 12 months to support the GMX Solana operational expansion. GT tokens are the reward tokens on GMX Solana that can be redeemed for USDC from GMX Solana treasury.
• ZCash released its Q4 roadmap, which includes temporary addresses for NEAR Intents swap and Zashi wallet users, aiming to reduce the reuse of addresses and increase overall anonymity set.
• DYDX plans to reenter the US market with trading fees slashed by 50% by the end of 2025.

Token Unlock

• AVNT token unlocks on November 9, amount representing 4.64% of the token supply.
• LINEA token unlocks on November 10, amount representing 6.59% of the token supply.
• HOME token unlocks on November 10, amount representing 4.06% of the token supply.
• LAYER token unlocks on November 11, amount representing 12.00% of the token supply.
• BB token unlocks on November 14, amount representing 10.9% of the token supply.
• ZKC token unlocks on November 16, amount representing 7.46% of the token supply.
• STBL token unlocks on November 17, amount representing 46.2% of the token supply.
• ZRO token unlocks on November 21, amount representing 10.3% of the token supply.
• KAITO token unlocks on November 21, amount representing 6.91% of the token supply.