While $BTC is sliding and dragging Strategy down with it, the MSDD ETF is doing just fine and printing new all time highs.

💥 This is a simple setup (and also a very risky one). MSDD delivers double exposure to downside in Strategy shares. When MSTR drops by $1, MSDD moves up by $2.

Since May 2025, MSDD has generated over 420% annualized returns.

So while crypto natives are sitting tight waiting for a “BTC bounce” and riding out the drawdown, equity traders are quietly turning that same volatility into cash ☺️

📉 Outflows from spot Bitcoin ETFs reached $2.9 billion as $BTC hit a new low in 2026

Chart: Daily net flows for Bitcoin spot ETFs (USD). Source: CoinGlass

Bitcoin tested the $70,000 level. Over the past 30 days, open interest in Bitcoin ETFs has declined by $55 billion, while rising demand for put options has pushed their delta coefficient up to 13%.

This is the exact risk we warned about as far back as 2018 ☝️

While ETFs have increased market transparency and expanded institutional access to Bitcoin, during periods of sharp spot price declines they tend to amplify downside pressure.

The mechanism is straightforward: $BTC falls → investors sell ETFs → funds liquidate $BTC from reserves to meet redemptions → $BTC prices decline further.

We refer to this process as the “pressure carousel.”

Bitcoin broke below $70,000 for the first time since November 2024.

Looking at the chart now, it’s hard not to think that in 2020 Saylor could’ve started buying gold… 🤔

Weekly crypto recap: pressure on BTC and stablecoins pushing forward

It was a genuinely hot week 🔥

📉 Bitcoin’s drop hit the institutional layer hard. Spot Bitcoin ETFs slipped into negative territory, with BlackRock’s IBIT now showing an overall loss.

Trading volumes in the fund spiked to a record $10B, driven by redemptions and a clear tilt toward put options. More and more, the market reads this as institutional capitulation.

Strategy felt the pressure too: a $12.4B quarterly loss and a 17% drop in its stock.

Meanwhile, stablecoins are doing the exact opposite and keep expanding.

💵 $USDC dominated January in a $10T market, even as Circle’s stock struggled. Tether crossed 500M users, continues to build reserves, and put $150M into Gold.com. Hong Kong is set to start issuing stablecoin licenses as early as March.

🔮 On a separate front, prediction markets are heating up. Polymarket and Kalshi are going head to head while simultaneously picking fights with US regulators.

😬 If Bitcoin right now feels like a drama, prediction markets have already turned into a full-on political and financial thriller.

YC has drawn a clear line for 2026. Mass-market apps are yesterday’s story. Now it’s all about building ecosystems that rewire how industries work 😎

Tried to calculate the market. Didn’t really work out…🤷‍♂️

A bonding curve (also called a price curve) is a mathematical concept that describes the relationship between an asset’s price and its supply.

Inside DeFi, it did make sense. Everything is closed, automated, and governed by protocol rules. Outside DeFi, not so much. Why?

Because math is about science. Markets are about people.

The moment you try to keep price inside a formula, the market disappears. What you get instead is a plan. And plans don’t survive emotions, panic, greed, or FOMO.

Once the human factor breaks loose, the peg snaps. Sometimes in hours. Sometimes overnight.

We’ve seen it before 👀

November 10, 2025 is a textbook case of what happens when someone tries to “calculate” a market and ends up with trillions wiped out 💸💸💸

💵 Funds made their choice again last week.

And once again, money went where things already feel safe and obvious.

📊 $413M entered the market across 7 deals. From Tier-1 names, Blockchain Capital was in.

Where the capital went:

▪️CeFi: $250M
▪️Infrastructure & services: $107M
▪️DeFi: $35M
▪️GameFi: $21M

🌱 Seed rounds? None.

Almost all the capital landed at the strategic stage, where the product already works and the only real question is scale.

The biggest checks went to Anchorage Digital and Gold.com. Which makes the picture pretty clear. Funds are leaning into custody, settlement, and real-world asset tokenization.

Capital is still moving into RWA infrastructure, where institutional demand is already there and needs no convincing.

🕊️ According to Polymarket traders, the Second Coming of Christ could happen before the end of 2026.

Over the weekend, traders betting “yes” pushed the implied probability to 4%, with the contract priced at $0.04. By the time of publishing this post, that probability had already climbed to 5%, and the “yes” side was trading at $0.05.

This is Polymarket we’re talking about here, a platform where markets and public attention can sometimes do miracles. Under the contract terms, confirmation of the Second Coming doesn’t come from the event itself, but from broad, coordinated coverage by major, authoritative media outlets.

🔮 And this is where the real nature of prediction markets shows up.

Outcomes often depend less on reality and more on information consensus.

At that point, the bet turns into a simple economic equation:
potential payout minus PR costs equals profit.

Polymarket increasingly reflects not the probability of events, but the dynamics of online attention at the intersection of politics, pop culture, and religion. Sometimes these contracts end up saying far more about the market than about the events they reference.

🎯 Backpack is preparing a token launch and tying unlocks to an IPO

New exchange token launches almost always pull traders in. Backpack is no exception.

But this time, the setup is very different. Backpack has already disclosed the core mechanics of its tokenomics and made a move you rarely see in this market:

neither the team nor investors receive tokens at launch.

The emission is split into three stages and tightly linked to actual business progress:

▪️ 25% via an airdrop before the pre-IPO stage
▪️ 37.5% once specific business milestones are reached
▪️ 37.5% only after an IPO on a public stock exchange

⏳ The team and the exchange itself intentionally stay out of the token at the start.

This way, Backpack is trying to protect the token from early sell pressure and tie its fate not to insider liquidity, but to the company’s real operational progress.

One key piece is still missing: the token’s utility hasn’t been revealed yet.

From here on, the product will be what matters most.

We’re kicking off Consensus Hong Kong 2026 🇭🇰

And this one matters.

APAC isn’t following the global Web3 narrative anymore. It’s shaping its own.

The 8Blocks team is on the ground this week. Mihhail Tripuz and Sergei Novikov are here to track what’s scaling, what’s just narrative, and where institutional capital is quietly positioning itself.

Consensus brings together the funds, exchanges, infrastructure teams and regulators building that shift. All in one place.

If you’re in Hong Kong, come say hi. Let’s talk! 🔥