The following article is adapted from The Block’s newsletter, The Daily, which comes out on weekday afternoons.
Happy Tuesday! While a Cloudflare outage took down multiple crypto front-ends this morning, markets are looking a little less shaky. Let's get you up to speed on the latest.
In today's newsletter, bitcoin briefly dips below $90K before recovering, Mt. Gox moves nearly $1 billion in BTC, El Salvador discloses a $100 million bitcoin "purchase," and more.
Meanwhile, Standard Chartered says the bitcoin sell-off is likely over, eyeing a year-end rally.
P.S. Don't forget to check out The Funding, a biweekly rundown of crypto VC trends. It's a great read — and just like The Daily, it's free to subscribe!
Bitcoin briefly dips below $90,000 before staging recovery
Bitcoin briefly slipped below $90,000 to a seven-month low early Tuesday as institutional repositioning and short-term profit-taking intensified sell pressure.
- Analysts flagged the level as a "significant" psychological break, with ETF outflows topping $3 billion over the past three weeks, though the price of bitcoin has since recovered back above $93,000.
- Kronos Research CIO Vincent Liu said leveraged traders and funds adjusting exposure continue to weigh on prices despite long-term holder confidence.
- Liquidity remains tight after the U.S. government shutdown limited its ability to spend on non-essential operations, with macro uncertainty compounding market fragility.
- The next major support levels to watch sit at $85,000 to $87,000, according to BTC Markets analyst Rachael Lucas, with $80,000 a critical line that could open a path toward February's $74,000 lows, per Liu.
- Meanwhile, traders are focused on December's Fed decision and Thursday's U.S. jobs data, with analysts warning that year-end tax harvesting and geopolitical headlines could amplify volatility.
Mt. Gox moves nearly $1 billion worth of bitcoin to unmarked addresses
Defunct crypto exchange Mt. Gox transferred 10,608 BTC worth about $956 million late Monday to unmarked addresses, according to Arkham data.
- The transfers fit a pattern of bitcoin movements that have previously preceded creditor repayments, though the motive for these latest sends remains unclear.
- Mt. Gox's trustee recently delayed full repayments until October 2026, even though some creditors previously began receiving distributions through Kraken and Bitstamp.
- Mt. Gox still holds 34,689 BTC across its wallets, per Arkham, a $3.2 billion stash that continues to loom over the market as rehabilitation efforts drag on.
Cloudflare global network outage hits multiple crypto front-ends in widespread disruption
Cloudflare's global network outage on Tuesday disrupted front-ends across major crypto exchanges, DeFi protocols, block explorers, and data dashboards, triggering widespread "500" errors.
- Cloudflare identified the issue and subsequently implemented a fix, though some users may continue to experience intermittent errors as remediation progresses.
- The incident highlights the sector's dependence on a small group of cloud and network providers, echoing past outages that similarly knocked major crypto and Web2 services offline.
- Industry experts warned that repeated outages at Cloudflare, AWS, and others show why crypto platforms must build infrastructure assuming failures, not rely on single-vendor resilience.
'Game on': Asset management giant Fidelity debuts Solana ETF
Asset management giant Fidelity launched its Solana ETF, FSOL, on Tuesday, becoming the latest issuer to debut a spot SOL fund in the U.S. after Bitwise, Grayscale, and VanEck.
- The fund also introduces Fidelity's first staking feature, which the firm says offers investors a new yield opportunity while enhancing network security.
- "Easily the biggest asset manager in this category with BlackRock sitting out," Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas noted on X. "Game on."
- Meanwhile, Canary Capital also launched its SOLC Solana ETF on Tuesday, offering spot SOL exposure with staking rewards powered by Marinade Select's curated validator set.
El Salvador discloses largest single-day BTC purchase of $100 million
El Salvador's Bitcoin Office disclosed a 1,090 BTC addition worth about $100 million — its largest single-day increase — bringing total holdings to 7,474 BTC, worth roughly $676 million.
- The purchase coincided with bitcoin's drop below $90,000, though questions persist over whether it was a true market buy given the country's IMF loan agreement that bars new public-sector acquisitions.
- Conflicting statements from President Nayib Bukele and government finance officials, along with IMF reports attributing increases to wallet consolidation, continue to cloud the transparency of El Salvador's bitcoin strategy.
In the next 24 hours
- UK CPI inflation data are due at 2 a.m. ET on Wednesday. Eurozone CPI figures follow at 5 a.m. The latest U.S. FOMC meeting minutes are scheduled for release at 2 p.m.
- U.S. FOMC members Thomas Barkin and John Williams will speak at 12:45 p.m. and 2 p.m., respectively.
- YZY is set for a token unlock.
- Devconnect continues in Buenos Aires.
Never miss a beat with The Block's daily digest of the most influential events happening across the digital asset ecosystem.
