BTC below $100k?

A cautious tone is spreading through financial markets this morning. Assets across the board have pulled back, with tech and AI names leading the downturn. Wall Street’s fear gauge – the VIX volatility index – spiked higher. Crypto markets also slid, with BTC dropping below $104,000. While many are pointing to Palantir’s (PLTR) Q3 earnings as the cause, the actual reason is most likely much more systemic than that alone. Meanwhile, Polymarket is showing a 74% chance that BTC drops below $100,000 before 2026. Markets sure do look a bit frothy. Stay frosty.

Before the shutdown, the SEC adopted new listing standards to speed-up launches. Then, one week into the shutdown, it issued guidance allowing issuers to file final S-1s without a delaying amendment, a clause that typically gives the SEC control over launch time. Without it, registration can take effect automatically after 20 days if the SEC does not raise objections and the exchanges grant approval. Bitwise and Canary Capital were the first movers, using the path to launch their SOL, HBAR and LTC ETFs last week.

TLDR? With the SEC being super limited on staff, some products (see more below) could go live without having any explicit sign-off. While its all very confusing, it appears to be more of a process/timing hack, than a legal one – so more power to them. Read more →

On Friday, Bitwise reported a 0.34% fee for its proposed XRP ETF. Yesterday Grayscale disclosed 0.35% for XRP and the same for a DOGE ETF. For fee comparison sake, Bitwise’s Bitcoin ETF (BITB) charges 0.20%, Grayscale’s GBTC is 1.50%, and Grayscale’s Bitcoin Mini Trust (BTC) runs at 0.15% – so the newly proposed XRP & DOGE fees sort of sit between. Sometime in the next two weeks, at least one of these products will be live. Read more →

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