Musings on Blockchain from the Investor Trenches
A hack, an election and a busy week onchain
The largest hack in crypto’s history, a new majority in Congress and a one-day rout in AI stocks all landed within eight days, and crypto markets stayed relatively calm because the businesses underneath kept growing.
When Haseeb Qureshi of Dragonfly spoke at Legends4Legends in October, his key point was that blockchain, or crypto as he calls it, has entered a new phase in which its businesses no longer depend on token prices. Through tariffs, the Iran war and sticky inflation, with the Bitcoin price down, those businesses grew anyway. One example was Hyperliquid, the onchain exchange. As Qureshi put it: "Bitcoin goes up, Bitcoin goes down, Hyperliquid still does what it does."
The past eight days were a harder test. On 29 October hackers linked to North Korea took $6.3 billion from Binance, the largest theft the industry has had. Five days later US voters gave both chambers of Congress to the Democrats. That puts the run of pro-crypto legislation in doubt. Then on 5 November a sell-off in AI stocks took 4.4% off the S&P 500 in a single day, with Nvidia down 9%. Still, crypto markets took it relatively calmly. The businesses Qureshi pointed to are part of why. Onchain finance had one of its busiest weeks, partly because of the news.
On the day of the hack Hyperliquid took $6.4 million in fees, about two and a half times a normal day, and the week of the election was one of its best at $22.4 million. Most of what trades there now is oil, gold and equities. ICE, which owns the New York Stock Exchange, had announced a US-regulated futures market built on Hyperliquid’s technology on 29 October, the day of the hack, as we outlined last week.
Prediction markets, which had many of the midterm races right hours before the television networks called them, did well too. Kalshi raised $1 billion at a $40 billion valuation, while Polymarket took $25 million in fees over the past seven days, one of its best weeks on record and almost double its weekly average this year.
On Wednesday, the day after the vote, Coinbase’s tokenized SpaceX shares went live as collateral on Aave, the largest onchain lender, so a holder outside the US can now borrow dollars against them at any hour of the day.
Stripe went further the same day. Any US business on Stripe can now pay a supplier or contractor in more than 160 countries in USDC, sent straight to their wallet. A wire to the same person passes through a chain of correspondent banks, takes days and picks up a fee at every step.
None of this waited for Congress. And the hack, for all its size, hit one exchange. The networks kept running, and within days Binance had replaced 98% of the stolen funds out of its own capital and resumed normal operations.
This week’s market
BGCI Index
-2.83%
Bitcoin
-2.77%
Ethereum
-0.97%
Solana
-4.64%
All figures are week-to-date as of 6 November, 16:24 CET
From Theta Insights
•Talks and panels from Legends4Legends 2026, from regulation and tokenization to AI and onchain finance (watch the talks)•Blockchain’s moment for serious capital: adoption is running ahead of the money (read here)•Satellite View: Theta’s yearly report on the state of the blockchain industry (get the report)
Blockchain news
•CFTC Clears Perpetual Futures on U.S. Stocks, Bringing Crypto Trading Model to Wall Street (learn more)•Stripe Enables U.S. Businesses to Send Stablecoins to Wallets in More Than 160 Markets (learn more)•Samsung Wallet Adds USDC on Solana, Bringing Stablecoin Payments to Hundreds of Millions of Devices (learn more)•Morgan Stanley Tokenizes US Stocks and Treasuries Through DTCC (learn more)•Base Upgrade Cuts Block Time to 200 Milliseconds (learn more)•Zcash Upgrade Cuts Block Time to 25 Seconds (learn more)•Groma Brings Real Estate to Uniswap (learn more)•Schroders Launches Tokenized Emerging-Markets Debt Fund on Solana (learn more)
Relevant financial updates
•GoMoney, a Brazilian stablecoin payments provider, has been acquired by Yellow Card*•Soter, a specialist insurer for institutional digital asset firms, has raised $23.5mln in a funding round with investments from SBI Holdings and Standard Chartered•Uranium Digital*, a trading and settlement platform for physical uranium, has raised $16.5mln in a Series A round with investments from Blockchain Capital, Portal Ventures, and Apeiron Investment Group•LO:TECH*, a market maker for 24/7 and onchain markets, has raised $12mln in a Series A round led by MMC Ventures with investments from Faction, Atka, and 13books Capital•Takenos*, a stablecoin payments platform for Latin America, has raised $7mln in a Seed extension round co-led by North Island Ventures and Road Capital Management with investments from Variant, Lattice Capital, and Reverie•Lombard Systems*, a financing platform that lets institutions borrow against tokenized securities without moving them out of their accounts, has raised $4mln across pre-seed and seed rounds led by Ethereal Ventures with investments from 5 others•CRSHMARKET*, a livestream prediction market with 60-second settlement, has raised $3.5mln in a Seed round led by 6th Man Ventures with investments from Reciprocal Ventures, Lattice Fund, and Starting Line
*Underlying TBV portfolio position | Prices as per 06/11
Interesting things to read and listen to
•Who earns the margin in AI compute, from data centers to token factories, by Cosmo Jiang and Cody Poh of our manager Pantera Capital (read here)•What the midterms mean for crypto and AI, with Matthew Sigel of VanEck on the Empire podcast (listen here)
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Best wishes,
John
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