WEEKLY: $320M Outflows from Ethereum ETFs, BNB Burns Billions, and Trump Faces Lawsuit

The week turned out to be hot and painted in red, as traders once again felt all the risks of leveraged trading during another wave of volatility. Capital is gradually flowing out of spot ETFs, and the overall investor sentiment is closer to expecting a new macroeconomic storm.

But while market charts are making everyone nervous, developers have their own rhythm. Solana rolled out an update that will be talked about in the industry for a long time, while banking giants quietly continue to enter public Ethereum territory. It was also not without high-profile security news, where the Ukrainian trace surfaced once again.

Market Under Liquidation Pressure

Even though Bitcoin somehow held the critical $80,000 mark, it brings little comfort to the bulls. On October 24, a massive liquidation wave of $466.54 million swept the market over 24 hours, with nearly $320 million accounting specifically for traders' long positions. BTC itself lost over $90 million in flushed longs and temporarily dipped below $81,000. 

However, while retail players are locking in losses, large whales are quietly scooping up coins: over the past month, their wallets expanded by nearly 89,000 BTC. Analysts state directly that to restore a positive trend, the market needs a decisive close above $87,000; otherwise, the door opens for a deeper drop toward the $70,000 range.

Outflows from ETFs

Big institutional money decided to take a breather, which immediately impacted the performance of US spot products. Over the week, Bitcoin ETFs shed $228.58 million, with more than half of this amount withdrawn by investors from BlackRock’s IBIT fund. 

An even colder shower hit Ethereum ETFs, which lost $319.97 million, where the main drag was once again caused by BlackRock. Against this backdrop, Tesla's composure remains noteworthy: the company held all of its 11,509 BTC, gained $288 million in unrealized paper profit from revaluation for the quarter, and did not sell a single coin.

Solana's Historic Leap

While markets face turbulence, Solana developers successfully launched the Alpenglow upgrade on the mainnet, already dubbed the most important release in the blockchain's history. The core technological breakthrough is that block finality time dropped from 12.8 seconds to an impressive 150 milliseconds. This should permanently resolve transaction delay issues during peak loads. 

In parallel, banking giant JPMorgan decided to deploy its JPM Coin token onto the public Ethereum network to enable 24/7 dollar deposit settlements for corporate clients.

Circle Shareholder Lawsuit

Politics and the crypto industry intersected in the US once again, as a Circle shareholder filed a lawsuit against the USDC issuer and Donald Trump over $2 billion worth of deals in the UAE. The lawsuit centers around potential conflicts of interest and corporate governance concerns during stablecoin expansion in the Middle East. 

Meanwhile, market interest in privacy coins woke up: open interest in Monero futures jumped by 22%, which analysts compare to silver's behavior ahead of a major rally.

Criminal Schemes and Exploits

Security news this week touched Ukraine again, and the reasons were far from joyous. In Poland, law enforcement busted an $87 million money laundering scheme, arresting eight Ukrainian citizens and a Belarusian woman. 

Meanwhile, in the local social media segment, a user made headlines claiming a loss of $68,000 in USDT from Trust Wallet on an iPhone. The victim attributes the incident to a new set of DarkSword exploits and an outdated iOS version, serving as a reminder of the risks of storing large sums in mobile wallets.

Massive BNB Burn

The BNB ecosystem conducted another supply cleanup, removing 1.65 million tokens worth approximately $1.2 billion from circulation as part of its 37th quarterly burn. This reduced the total coin supply to 131.51 million BNB, confirming strict adherence to the deflationary model. 

Additionally, Zcash developers shared updates, proposing to reduce block intervals from 75 to 25 seconds and permanently close the legacy Sprout privacy pool.

Kursoff Opinion

Right now, the market is simply digesting accumulated negative sentiment and preparing for upcoming macroeconomic signals. The accumulation of positions by whales against the backdrop of falling spot demand indicates the formation of a foundation for a reversal, but until Bitcoin breaks and holds above the $87,000 level, it is too early to relax.