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Equities ripped higher yesterday, with the Nasdaq up 2.15% and the S&P 500 up 1.39% after Nvidia beat earnings and guided for $65 billion in Q4 revenue. Crypto moved the other way: BTC fell, most sectors closed red, and only a few outliers held up. Today we break down the divergence, Aave’s 2.6x YoY TVL growth and new app rollout, and why Solana’s equity-perp ecosystem is lagging Hyperliquid’s HIP-3 flywheel.

Despite the recovery in equities yesterday, BTC continued to show weakness and fell -1.66% on a day when the Nasdaq, S&P 500, and Gold were up 2.15%, 1.39%, and 0.77%, respectively.

Nvidia’s earnings helped calm fears of the AI bubble popping, at least for now. The chipmaker beat analyst expectations with strong data center demand, and projected fourth quarter revenue of $65 billion, compared to the $61 billion estimate. With Nvidia shares up 5% after hours, the tech-heavy indices should continue to see some relief. The case for BTC is less straightforward, with OG Bitcoin whales continuing to sell as BTC struggles to reclaim the key $100K level.

The weakness in BTC spread across the crypto market, with nearly every sector closing in the red. Memes were the rare outlier, rising 0.2% on the day, driven by SPX and MemeCore — which gained 6.3% and 2.3%, respectively. L2s also held up better than most, down only -0.5%. 

Starknet stood out in the group, jumping 20.8% on the day and 81% on the week as it picked up the privacy narrative bid following news that the team plans to launch Ztarknet, a Starknet L2 designed for Zcash.

On the downside, Crypto Miners fell -5.9% despite Nvidia’s strong results reinvigorating the AI trade. The No Revenue index was the next weakest, dropping -4.5%, with XRP and XLM down -4.9% and -3.9%, respectively, on the day. Even tokens with strong fundamentals were not spared, with the Revenue index finishing -3% lower.

— Kunal

It can be hard to stay optimistic in markets like this, but it is worth remembering that some teams are still shipping, still innovating and still strengthening their fundamentals week after week. These are the projects that typically emerge strongest when sentiment finally turns. One name that stands out right now for me is Aave, which rolled out both the new Aave App and Aave v4 this week.

Let’s start with fundamentals. Over the past year, the total value of assets deposited into Aave has grown from $20.5 billion to a peak of $74 billion in early October. Even after the recent market pullback brought that number down to $53.8 billion, Aave is still up roughly 2.6x year over year, which speaks to real, sustained demand for the protocol.

The price of the Aave token may be drifting near April lows, but weekly revenues tell a different story. Revenues today are about 2.6x higher than they were back then, which suggests that the token is seeing multiple compression driven more by sentiment than by fundamentals.

These fundamentals are primed to strengthen further with the launch of the Aave App. The goal is simple: Remove complexity and give everyday users a clean, intuitive savings experience. And the pitch is strong. Aave is offering interest rates of up to 6.5% on USD deposits, well above the 0.40-3.50% range offered by savings accounts.

Onboarding is designed to be easy, with deposits supported through bank accounts and debit cards, and balances advertised as insured up to $1 million. The app is available in early access on iOS with Android support on the way. 

However, the insurance piece deserves a closer look. The coverage is provided by Relm Insurance, a firm that focuses on emerging industries such as fintech, digital assets, AI and the space economy. Relm’s crypto asset insurance includes coverage for risks like smart contract exploits, stablecoin depegs, oracle manipulation, liquidity pool exploits and governance attacks. What remains unclear are the policy limits, the risk premiums Aave is paying and whether Relm has the balance sheet strength or reinsurance in place to backstop large claims. For context, insuring $1 million of USDC on Aave v3 through Nexus Mutual costs about 1.9% annually.

As a potential user, I would want these details around the insurance promise laid out clearly and upfront before I feel comfortable depositing capital into the app. And as an investor, it raises questions about the cost structure of offering both high savings rates and insurance at scale. These uncertainties sit alongside the broader question of how long Aave intends to subsidize the difference between the 6.5% yield offered in the app and the 4% APY available in stablecoin markets on Aave today.

Even with those uncertainties, this moment feels important. The Neobank narrative is gaining momentum, and Aave is now positioned directly in that slipstream. Pair that with the arrival of Aave v4, and you have the foundation for what could be the protocol’s next major growth phase.

— Kunal

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Solana equity perps?

Solana has long positioned itself as a platform purpose-built for institutional trading, with Anatoly describing the vision as "Nasdaq, but on a public, permissionless blockchain." Central to this mission is bringing TradFi assets onchain, a goal that is slowly materializing. Since June 30, 2025, over 60 tokenized stocks from major US companies and ETFs (e.g., Apple, Nvidia, S&P 500) are now available for non-US persons to buy and hold like they would any SPL token.

These tokenized stocks have gained significant traction on Solana, reaching $143 million in AUM compared to just $6.3 million for the EVM-based xStocks version. Furthermore, Galaxy Digital's decision to tokenize its GLXY equity via the Opening Bell platform, along with its work with Superstate, signals that institutional adoption is slowly gaining momentum.

However, on the other side — equity perpetuals — Solana seems to be lagging behind. While Solana is advancing its capabilities by enabling CLOB latency (via BAM) to support trading of synthetic perps, Hyperliquid’s HIP-3 mainnet and subsequent "Growth Mode" (offering a 90% fee discount) has changed the landscape. With TradeXYZ clearing $400 million in daily volume, there is a question of whether Hyperliquid’s dominance is already too far ahead.

The main argument for Solana’s struggle here is Hyperliquid’s distribution advantage via HIP-3. Normally, general-purpose chains benefit from users’ "proximity to capital" — the friction of bridging to a new exchange and setting up a wallet usually makes users prefer to stay within their own ecosystem. However, through Builder codes, Hyperliquid has secured integrations with top distribution channels: Phantom now directly offers HIP-3 equities through its frontend interface.

Alternatively, the argument is that Solana retains a structural advantage due to its proximity to tokenized spot tokens (e.g., xStocks). This simplifies the task for market makers, as they can easily hedge between spot and perps (theoretically, as xStocks currently lack the onchain volume). In this regard, protocols like Drift that focus on scaling composability are well-positioned. For example, users could easily enter delta-neutral positions (collateralizing xStock to short an xStock perp). This could solve a very important problem with perps currently: the extremely high cost of carry.

That being said, most Solana protocols have still not integrated perpetual equities, so it remains to be seen how they execute on this theoretical advantage.

— Shaunda

1. Naver’s Bid For Upbit: Building Korea’s Next Generation Super App

Blockworks Research highlights that Naver’s proposed acquisition of Upbit creates one of the strongest digital finance platforms in South Korea. Upbit matches Coinbase and OKX in monthly volumes despite being Korea-focused, and its last 10 listings saw a 70% median day-one jump, underscoring the power of local retail flows. Regulatory momentum, upcoming KRW stablecoins and local ETFs further reinforce CEX dominance. Strategically, the deal gives Naver a high-margin growth engine and Dunamu access to Naver Pay’s 30 million users. The combined entity would sit at the center of Korea’s digital asset rails and could become one of the most attractive publicly traded plays on the country’s expanding crypto and fintech ecosystem.

2. The State of Crypto Leverage — Q3 2025

Galaxy Digital reports crypto-collateralized lending hit a new all-time high of $73.6 billion, but with far stronger foundations compared to 2021. Onchain lending now makes up two thirds of the market, driven by lending apps rather than CDP stablecoins, while CeFi lenders have shifted toward fully collateralized, transparency driven models after the 2022 blowups. Q3 saw record growth across major lenders, even as the Oct. 10 futures cascade wiped out $19 billion in perps positions, a derivatives-driven event rather than a credit failure. Overall leverage is rising again, but with higher quality collateral, more conservative practices and clearer separation between credit and speculation, thus signaling a more resilient market structure.

3. State of crypto, where my head is at

Knower reflects on the disconnect between weak altcoin performance and increasingly strong structural signals for crypto adoption, highlighting developments such as Stripe’s Tempo stablecoin chain, Citadel’s $200 million investment into Kraken, $35 billion in RWAs onchain, and $175 billion in BTC/ETH ETPs. Despite this progress, he argues that “fun crypto” has deteriorated. As narratives compress, TGEs skew toward venture and research often fails to translate into public-market upside, talent is pushed toward AI and reduces opportunities for the average participant to meaningfully capture value.