Crypto Liquidations Smash $1B as Bitcoin Slips Below $97K

Hi! In today’s edition:

• 💥 Crypto liquidations exceed $1B as BTC falls below $97K – Time to bid?

• 📝 Grayscale files for U.S. IPO

• 📊 XRP ETF breaks 2025 first-day volume records

• 🥊 UFC teams with Polymarket for real-time fan prediction scoreboard

• 🔐 Privacy coins mania and what’s driving it

Today’s newsletter is brought to you by Mantle

Mantle is building the Blockchain for Banking — where TradFi meets Web3. Explore real-world financial tools, powered fully on-chain.

Crypto Liquidations Top $1 Billion as Bitcoin Drops Below $97,000

A large downside move for bitcoin and the wider crypto market sparked a cascade of liquidations across crypto exchanges on Thursday, with total liquidations exceeding $1.1 billion over the last 24 hours.

As of 6 am ET, data from Coinglass showed that $978 million worth of liquidations came from those betting on higher prices, with the majority of positions liquidated being in bitcoin and ether.

Bitcoin dropped 5% to an intraday low of $96,170, while ether saw a sharper decline of 9% to an intraday low of $3,126.

Spot Bitcoin ETFs saw a massive $870 million in net withdrawals on Nov. 13 — the second‑largest on record — while Ethereum funds logged $260 million in outflows for a third straight day.

“Over the last 30 days, pretty much every long trader got hurt — unless they were using very low leverage,” noted Alphractal founder Joao Wedson on X. 

“And almost every time we see a big flush of long liquidations, that’s exactly when the market gets more attractive to open new longs.”

Grayscale Files for US IPO

Crypto asset manager Grayscale has filed to go public in the U.S. via an initial public offering (IPO) — the latest firm to join the wave of digital-asset companies tapping the public markets.

The firm submitted an S-1 form on Thursday as part of the process to become a publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol "GRAY." 

The exact number of shares to be offered and the price range are still yet to be determined.

Grayscale reported revenues of $319 million for the nine months ending September 30, with assets under management of around $35 billion. 

However, the firm’s revenue has declined nearly 20% from the same period last year. Fees from the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust ETF and the Grayscale Ethereum Trust ETF made up 88% of the firm’s revenue over the nine-month period.

XRPC Records Largest First-Day Volume for ETFs Launched in 2025

The Canary Capital XRP exchange-traded fund (XRPC) posted the strongest first-day performance of any ETF launched in 2025, recording around $59.1 million in trading volume on its debut.

Bloomberg ETF analyst James Seyffart shared the fund’s volume data on X, noting that it had marginally surpassed the Bitwise Solana Staking ETF’s (BSOL) first-day volume of $57 million.

The XRPC ETF saw $26 million in trading volume within the first 30 minutes of launch, far exceeding initial volume predictions, and generated $245 million in inflows.

Notably, the strong performance came amid a down day for crypto markets and risk assets, with XRP seeing a 4.5% decline over the last 24 hours.

UFC Partners With Polymarket to Launch Real-Time Fan Prediction Scoreboard in Live Fight Broadcasts

TKO Group Holdings, the parent company of UFC and Zuffa Boxing, has signed a multi-year partnership with prediction market platform Polymarket. The deal will bring real-time fan prediction tools to live UFC broadcasts and in-venue experiences. 

Central to the collaboration is the introduction of a live Fan Prediction Scoreboard, powered by Polymarket, which will show how fans around the world are forecasting each fight as it unfolds during UFC broadcasts.

Polymarket will also activate UFC’s brand across various premium assets, including social media content and live event signage.

“By bringing prediction markets to the broadcast and arena, we’re giving fans a new way to be part of the action — not just watching outcomes but watching the world’s expectations evolve with every round,” said Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan.

Why the Privacy Coins Mania Is Much More Than Price Action

Privacy coins are pumping, but builders say the real story is surveillance, personal protection, and a looming national security problem.

In this episode, Josh Swihart, CEO of the Electric Coin Company, which created Zcash, and Harry Halpin, co-founder of Nym, join Laura to delve into why privacy coins have taken off, and why technology is suddenly at the center of conversations involving governments, financial institutions, and national security officials.

They discuss what’s actually driving the privacy coin renaissance, why transparent ledgers create risks far beyond user behavior, and how technologies like zero-knowledge proofs and mixnets are reshaping what’s possible onchain.

Josh and Harry also break down exchange support, institutional interest, the Zcash DAT, upcoming Zcash upgrades, and whether Ethereum or Solana (or others) can realistically add privacy to chains that were never designed for it.

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pods, Fountain, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform.

We’re now live on Base.

If you’re already spending time onchain, you’ll find us there too.

Unchained now has a mini-app on the Base App (currently in beta), where you can stream episodes directly.

• 💱 Circle introduced an onchain foreign‑exchange engine called StableFX—built on its Arc blockchain—to let institutions trade currency pairs around the clock with instant settlement, while also rolling out a partner program that brings eight regional stablecoins into its payments network.

• ⚡ Bitfarms announced plans to wind down crypto mining and convert a Washington state site into an AI-focused data center, arguing that selling computing power for artificial‑intelligence workloads could earn more than bitcoin ever did as miners rush to pivot amid shrinking crypto margins.

• 📚 The U.S. accounting rulemaker FASB is weighing whether to update its crypto rules by clarifying how companies should handle the removal and transfer of digital assets from their books, potentially expanding the standards it introduced in 2023.

• 🔗 FDIC Acting Chair Travis Hill said the agency is crafting rules for “tokenized deposit insurance,” stressing that deposits moved onto a blockchain still legally function as bank deposits and should not be confused with stablecoins, which act more like digital IOUs tied to government money.

• 📈 The dYdX Foundation said its community voted to redirect 75% of the protocol’s revenue toward buying back DYDX tokens on the open market, while setting aside smaller slices of income for its Treasury SubDAO and the MegaVault.

• 🇨🇿🟧 The Czech National Bank became the first central bank to put bitcoin on its books by assembling a $1 million test portfolio of digital assets to study how holding and managing crypto might shape its future financial operations.

• 📱 Cash App introduced support for stablecoin transfers and Lightning‑powered bitcoin payments—letting users pay with USD even if they don’t hold crypto—as Block expanded the app with AI navigation, new banking perks, and features designed to match rising global interest in digital money.

• 🏛️ BNY Mellon introduced a special money‑market fund built for stablecoin issuers needing to comply with the new GENIUS Act, limiting reserves to ultra‑safe, short‑term assets, as the fast‑growing $305 billion stablecoin sector prepares for stricter rules and massive future expansion.

• 🚀 MoonPay said it would start creating and managing stablecoins for companies across the US, Asia, and Latin America, using its nationwide money‑transmitter licenses to tap surging demand for dollar-pegged tokens after new U.S. regulations encouraged big fintechs to explore faster, cheaper payment alternatives.

• 💼 India’s largest asset manager, SBI Funds Management, is prepping a 2026 Mumbai listing that could raise up to $1.2 billion and value the firm at around $12 billion as it begins selecting banks to run the deal.

1. HRF: Financial Freedom Report #97

2. Wintermute: BTC and the Nasdaq: the correlation that only hurts