👋 Happy Thanksgiving.
This is The Chain, where we talk about how bad Bitcoin is doing (but also how good it’s doing in another sense. More on that below).
Here are this week’s highlights:
🟠 Bitcoin Looks… Better?
🥲 Polymarket’s US Debut
🐕 Dogecoin & XRP Look Gray(scale)
It’s a short edition today so you can get back to the turkey. Let’s get started.
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🟠 Don’t Call it a BTC Comeback
Bitcoin is mounting a minor comeback, approaching $90K (at time of writing). About 8% of the total supply of Bitcoin changed hands within the past week alone, according to analysts.
According to on-chain analytics platform CryptoQuant, Bitcoin’s Sharpe ratio (which assesses risk-reward) is looking good. As an asset, BTC hasn’t looked better from a risk-reward standpoint since 2023. Hard to believe, we know, but that’s what the numbers say.
From CryptoQuant contributor MorenoDV: “This does not guarantee a bottom, but it does indicate that the quality of future returns is starting to improve, provided the market stabilizes and volatility begins to normalize.”
Chart: CryptoQuant
It might not mean the bottom is in, but it’s certainly not bad news. The Bitcoin Heater is up, too; click below to see more on how that indicator hasn’t looked this way since 2022.
🥲 Polymarket Is Growing Up
Crypto-based prediction market app Polymarket has been approved to operate a US trading platform! And all the gamblers said “YES!”
As Twitter user O Rei said, Polymarket has made several high-level predictions correctly, including:
Trump’s presidential win (weeks before polls)
Correct electoral votes
Senate results
The reason, according to O Rei (and us), is that people’s opinions are so much closer to reality when they’re putting money on the line than when there aren’t any stakes.
Polymarket hasn’t been without issues, however; just today, the Polymarket team posted a tweet with a slur in it about accounts “LARPing as egirls.” The tweet has since been removed.
Controversies aside, if Polymarket’s web traffic is up 80% from August and it hasn’t even been available for Americans to use yet…
What happens now? Does Polymarket flip Coinbase? 👀
🐕 Dogecoin & XRP Join the ETF Club
In case you were wondering where all the altcoin ETF hype went, don’t worry. Even if there isn’t much hype, the train is still moving forward. Grayscale’s own Dogecoin and XRP ETFs just officially got approved, and they’ll launch for trading next Monday.
Next up for Grayscale? A Chainlink ETF. Gotta get those boomers their LINK!
We get that these announcements aren’t as exciting as they used to be. But just take a second and think back… would you have believed it if someone told you in 2013 that there would be legit ETFs traded on Wall Street for Dogecoin and XRP?
We would have LOST it. I mean, we didn’t even know what they were at that point.
Regardless of how cool the news is, all the XRP ETFs haven’t helped the cryptocurrency’s price: Ripple is down 18% on the month, according to Cointelegraph.
🍟 Extra Crispy Crypto Links
An OG crypto whale who called the October crash has apparently bet $44.5M on Ethereum.
Pump.fun’s co-founder Sapijiju is rejecting “claims that the project cashed out more than $436 million in stablecoins.” He says the token movements were just treasury management.
People are worried about crypto “debanking” again after JP Morgan closed the bank accounts of Jack Mallers, CEO of Strike (a Bitcoin payments company)... with no explanation.
After IPOing in September, BNPL giant Klarna is apparently launching its own stablecoin for global transactions. It’ll be called “KlarnaUSD.”
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🎤 Let us know what you thought
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⏳ Wrapping Up
Another week, another list of positive crypto news from the institutional side and negative crypto news from the market side. At this point, we’re used to it.
We’ll keep our eyes out for a real Bitcoin comeback. Don’t worry, we’ll let you know as soon as we see orange coin go up.
Same time next week? Sounds good.
Until then,
- The Chain Team