Crypto Talkies November 28th 2025

Tonight’s Crypto Talkies lands in a market that can’t quite decide if it wants to panic or front‑run the next rally. On the blue‑chip side, Bitcoin (BTC) is doing its best roller‑coaster impression. After whales dumped over 9,000 BTC onto exchanges and dragged price down to seven‑month lows, it clawed back above the $90,000 mark and is now drifting in the low‑$90Ks. The rebound looks decent on the chart, but heavy whale and institutional selling is still hanging over the market like a storm cloud. If that wasn’t enough drama, JPMorgan filed for a leveraged, Bitcoin‑linked structured note. On paper, it’s a vote of confidence from TradFi. In practice, it has Bitcoin loyalists fuming over fears that complex Wall Street products could force treasuries and corporates holding BTC into awkward sell‑offs during volatility. Ethereum (ETH) is playing the quieter, more methodical game. Price has reclaimed the $3,000 level, and analysts are watching the $3,000–$3,400 zone as the line between “just another bounce” and “here comes the next leg up.” Under the surface, accumulation looks stronger than the headlines suggest. BitMine Immersion Technologies just bought 14,618 ETH for around $44 million, now holding roughly 3% of the total supply and gunning for 5%. Tom Lee is on record targeting $7,000–$9,000 ETH by early 2026, and he’s putting corporate money where his mouth is. On the sovereign side, the Kingdom of Bhutan quietly added to the validator set, staking 320 ETH via Figment, continuing its unusual role as a nation‑state that actually runs infrastructure on public chains. Institutions in Europe are also leaning into Ethereum’s rails. Amundi, the continent’s largest asset manager, has tokenized a multi‑billion‑euro money market fund directly on Ethereum, offering investors traditional access or on‑chain tokens to the same underlying vehicle. It’s a hybrid model that doesn’t scream “revolution,” but it does quietly normalize the idea that mainstream assets can live natively on a public chain. Not every big experiment is going smoothly, though. MegaETH’s attempt to launch its USDM product turned into a masterclass in what not to do. Outages, shifting caps, and a misconfigured multisig pushed the project from “ambitious” to “alarming,” and now the team is refunding the roughly $500 million it collected in pre‑deposits. Calling the rollout “sloppy” might be generous, but the full refund is a rare example of a reset button actually being hit. Security, meanwhile, was front and center. South Korea’s largest exchange, Upbit, suffered a roughly $30 million hit in a fresh breach, with investigators pointing the finger at North Korea’s Lazarus Group yet again. It’s another reminder that crypto exchanges are not just juicy targets for lone‑wolf hackers, but also for well‑resourced, state‑backed teams. South Korean regulators are responding on the policy side as well, tightening anti‑money‑laundering rules so that even transfers under 1 million won (about $680) now fall under the Travel Rule and strict identity checks, with new powers for preemptive account freezes. The regulatory wave wasn’t limited to Asia. In the UK, tax officials floated a “no gain, no loss” regime for DeFi lending and liquidity provision. The idea: putting assets into a lending pool or a DeFi protocol wouldn’t automatically trigger a taxable disposal, easing a major headache for active on‑chain users. Core tax rates stay the same, but how DeFi is treated becomes more realistic for actual behavior. In South Africa, the central bank hit pause on a retail CBDC, arguing that a digital rand for everyday users doesn’t solve the country’s core financial issues. Instead, they’re focusing on wholesale and cross‑border use cases and upgrades to existing payment rails. Then there’s Turkmenistan, which chose a very different path: it passed a sweeping crypto law, effective 2026, legalizing and heavily regulating mining, trading, and exchanges. Expect stringent licensing, tight registration, and possibly state‑run ledgers shaping what “crypto” looks like within its borders. On the exchange and infrastructure front, KuCoin’s EU arm secured a MiCA license from Austria’s financial regulator, opening the door to regulated operations across 29 European Economic Area countries. In a post‑MiCA Europe, that kind of passport is quickly becoming table stakes for any exchange that wants lasting credibility. DeFi and protocols had their own repair work to do. Balancer DAO (BAL), still digging out from a more than $110 million exploit, moved forward with a plan to distribute roughly $8 million in recovered tokens to affected liquidity providers. The assets will be claimable in their original tokens, offering partial but meaningful relief to users who stuck around long enough to be made at least somewhat whole. Layer‑1s and large communities, meanwhile, are deep in planning mode. Cardano (ADA) is requesting a 70 million ADA budget from its treasury to fund 2026 infrastructure upgrades, strengthen security, and lure more DeFi and institutional use after a recent AI‑induced chain split raised some uncomfortable questions about resilience. Shiba Inu (SHIB) is playing a different game: the team announced a big privacy upgrade to Shibarium via Zama’s encryption tech, promising private smart contracts by mid‑2026, plus an AI gaming partnership. Those plans, combined with a swingy token burn rate, have lifted near‑term sentiment, but charts still flash the possibility of a larger bearish move in the background. Meme‑adjacent majors had a mixed day. Dogecoin (DOGE) is coiled just above the $0.15 line in the sand; stay above, and a bullish reversal is back on the table, fall through it, and traders will be looking lower. XRP (XRP) is as polarizing as ever. On one hand, analysts warn of near‑term downside after big volatility and a pullback in market cap. On the other, XRP has outperformed the S&P 500 over the last decade, is consolidating above $2 after a flash crash, and a growing camp of bulls sees this as a “brand new beginning,” with some calling for moves toward $8. The ETF story is fueling that optimism: multiple spot XRP ETFs launched or are in the pipeline in the U.S., with assets under management expected to top $1 billion soon as institutional money looks for regulated exposure. Offsetting that, CoinShares quietly scrapped plans for XRP, Solana (SOL), and Litecoin (LTC) ETFs in the U.S., citing regulatory headwinds and shifting its focus to higher‑margin opportunities ahead of a planned $1.2 billion Nasdaq SPAC listing. Stablecoins and mining also had their moment. Tether (USDT) shut down its Bitcoin (BTC) mining operations in Uruguay, cutting about 30 jobs after a dispute with the state power company over high and uncompetitive energy costs. It’s a reminder that cheap energy is still the lifeblood of proof‑of‑work, regardless of how big your balance sheet is. Politics and brand risk spilled into the spotlight too. A new report from House Judiciary Democrats accuses Donald Trump and his family of turning the White House into a “crypto cash machine,” claiming they pulled in more than $800 million from token ventures and sales in just the first half of 2025. The allegations add another layer of controversy to an already heated election‑year conversation about crypto’s role in U.S. politics. Over in Europe, FC Barcelona is catching flak for a $22 million sponsorship deal with a little‑known, Samoa‑registered crypto firm. Critics say the club did weak due diligence on a partner with opaque ownership and a suddenly launched token, potentially steering fans toward speculative products at a time when the club itself is deep in debt. The day wasn’t all scandals and sell‑offs. After one of Hong Kong’s worst residential fires in decades, major crypto exchanges and firms, including Binance and Bitget, pledged over $3 million in donations to support victims and families. It’s a reminder that, for all the volatility and noise, a global, always‑on industry can still mobilize quickly when real‑world crises hit. As markets head into the night session, Bitcoin is hovering in a fragile but hopeful range, Ethereum is quietly attracting whales, asset managers, and even governments, and regulators are drawing sharper lines around what’s in bounds. Underneath the daily price swings, the bigger story is slowly taking shape: crypto is being forced to grow up, one exploit, law, ETF, and on‑chain experiment at a time.

/>