Bitcoin Drops Below $90K Amid Crypto Slump, Cloudflare Network Failure Hits Crypto Platforms, and Mt. Gox Transfers Nearly $1B

Takeaways

• BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF broke its outflow records by hitting a daily net outflow of roughly $523 million: The fund lost $1.43 billion from Saturday to Wednesday, with net outflows on each of the days. The price of bitcoin has dropped below $87,000 as of mid-day Thursday, erasing its gains year-to-date.
• Web infrastructure giant Cloudflare experienced a global network outage, causing 500 errors across numerous crypto platforms and the wider internet: The firm said it has rolled out a fix and platforms are slowly resuming normal functionality.
• Defunct exchange Mt. Gox transferred 10,608 BTC to an unmarked address and 185.5 BTC to a hot wallet: The value of the transfer was roughly $956 million, with observers suggesting that it could be the precursor to further creditor repayments.
• Strategy purchased an additional 8,178 BTC for roughly $836M between November 10 and November 16: The latest acquisition takes the firm’s holdings to 649,870 BTC at an average cost of $74,433 per coin.
• The Hong Kong Monetary Authority has pushed Project Ensemble to a live pilot, which enables real-value settlements using tokenized deposits and digital assets: The initiative will focus on tokenized fund trades and real-time liquidity throughout 2026.

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BlackRock’s IBIT Sets New Outflow Record as Solana ETFs Continues Inflow Streak

The last time a single-day net outflow of that size occurred was recorded by IBIT in January 2024. The iShares Bitcoin Trust has suffered a 5-day streak of daily net outflows from Saturday to Wednesday, which has seen $1.43 billion removed from the fund.

Some analysts have suggested that the removals could be due to a shift in risk appetite in the wider crypto market, with major cryptos including bitcoin and ether erasing gains. The price of bitcoin has dropped below $87,000 down from from the all-time high of about $126,000 reached in early October and erasing all year-to-date gains. Ethereum has also struggled, dropping below $2,900.

One bright spot in the crypto market: Spot Solana ETFs have logged 16 days of consecutive inflows, totaling more than $420 million, with Bitwise’s BSOL contributing the lion’s share.

Cloudflare Outage Disrupts Crypto Platforms and Major Web 2 Platforms

The outage also impacted major web 2 platforms including X, Spotify, and ChatGPT.

Cloudflare has conducted maintenance on its data centers to identify and address the issues, but not before the incident caused a drop in the firm’s share price. Company engineers have also warned that intermittent issues could persist as the company seeks to address the underlying issue. The incident comes just weeks after AWS suffered its own major outage, causing industry-wide disruption.

Crypto’s 24/7 accessibility makes the industry more vulnerable to server outages such as these, however industry commentators noted that these outages would not have affected the actual underlying blockchain consensus of many protocols. Cloudflare previously suffered an outage in 2019, which caused similar disruption to the crypto industry.

Defunct Exchange Mt. Gox Moves Close to $1 Billion in Bitcoin to Two Wallets

Previously, transfers of this magnitude from Mt. Gox came prior to the exchange repaying creditors.

After collapsing following a 2014 hack which saw 850,000 BTC stolen from the platform, Mt. Gox is in the process of paying out reimbursements in bitcoin to its creditors. The repayments began in July last year, however, the exchange continues to hold roughly 34,689 BTC worth more than $3 billion.

Mt. Gox’s repayment schedule has been marred with delays, with the latest pushing the repayment deadline to October 2026. Some have raised concerns that the planned continuation of in-kind distributions could result in large-scale selloffs which could further dampen bitcoin’s price. Approximately 19,500 creditors have been repaid so far, but some have allegedly received as little as 6% of their repayment claim.

Strategy Buys Additional 8,178 BTC For $836 Million

The firm’s total holdings have now reached 649,870 BTC at an average cost of $74,433 per coin, making the total cost of the stockpile roughly $48.4 billion. Strategy’s bitcoin stash now represents 3% of the total bitcoin in circulation.

Purchased using proceeds from at-the-market sales of the firm’s preferred stock, Michael Saylor reiterated last week that Strategy had no intention to sell any bitcoin. Saylor took to X to announce the latest purchase, posting “₿ig week.” Strategy’s share price has been suffering recently, with MSTR logging a more than 33% drop month-over-month. This downturn however has largely mirrored the wider bitcoin selloff.

Hong Kong Monetary Authority Launches Pilot Of Tokenized Settlements

Analysts have described the pilot as a significant step in Hong Kong’s digital asset strategy and predict that it could bring about more widespread adoption of tokenized settlement.

The pilot will run throughout next year, with its initial focus on tokenized money-market fund transactions. It will also explore solutions for treasury management, among other tokenization strategies. The ultimate goal of the pilot will be to facilitate 24/7 settlement, making use of tokenized central bank money. Eddie Yue, CEO of the HKMA, described the pilot’s launch as a pivotable moment for Hong Kong’s digital asset sector.

-Team Gemini