The Breakdown - Bitcoin’s $100K Test and the Return of Stimmy Checks

Episode Date: November 11, 2025

After one of Bitcoin’s sharpest sell-offs of the cycle, sentiment across crypto turned fearful as whales dumped billions and ETFs saw record outflows. But a weekend surge of political and fiscal news — from Trump’s proposed $2,000 “tariff dividend” to 50-year mortgages and a government-reopening deal — reignited markets and sent Bitcoin rebounding. NLW breaks down what’s driving the volatility, how institutional analysts are recalibrating their price targets, and why macro liquidity may still be the ultimate bull case. Enjoying this content? SUBSCRIBE to the Podcast: https://pod.link/1438693620 Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheBreakdownBW Subscribe to the newsletter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://blockworks.co/newsletter/thebreakdown⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Join the discussion: https://discord.gg/VrKRrfKCz8 Follow on Twitter: NLW: https://twitter.com/nlw Breakdown: https://twitter.com/BreakdownBW

Welcome back to The Breakdown with me, NLW. It's a daily podcast on macro, Bitcoin, and the big picture power shifts remaking our world. What's going on, guys? It is Monday, November 10th, and today we are talking about weather. Well, the whole thing is all over. Before we get into that, however, if you are enjoying the breakdown, please go subscribe to it, give it a rating, give it a review, or if you want to dive deeper into the conversation, come join us on the Breakers Discord. You can find a link in the show notes or go to bit.ly slash breakdown pod.

All right, friends. Well, we had a very big week of news while I was away, but for Bitcoin, it's hard to rank any piece of news above the dramatic price action. Bitcoin had one of its most impactful sell-offs of this cycle last week, briefly falling below 100K on Tuesday and Friday. Bitcoin was already in the middle of a downtrend to begin last week, but a sharp sell-off saw a 3.6% loss on Monday and a 4.7% loss on Tuesday. Now, the 100K level hasn't been tested since June, and although the level held up, it was troubling to see it tested twice in a week. That level represents a 20% drawdown, and while that's still within the normal range for a Bitcoin bull market, many are starting to think the cycle might be over.

Sentiment was certainly some of the worst we've seen this cycle. Crypto Quant head of research, Julio Moreno, warned that there is nothing but air below 100K, stating, if the price doesn't manage to hold the $100,000 area and breaks downwards, there are higher risks of targeting $72,000 in a one-to-two-month period. Others were far more sanguine about the price move. Nick Puckran, the co-founder of Coin Bureau, said, Bitcoin under 100,000 tends to fill crypto investors with an almost biblical level of dread. But despite the drops, Bitcoin is only about 20% below its all-time high.

This is crypto, not the bond market. A 20% fall is often just a buying opportunity. Timothy Misher, the head of research at BRN, said, Tuesday's sell-off was violent but not terminal. This was leveraged, not belief, exiting the system. The system is leaner, healthier, and less vulnerable to cascading risk now. But sentiment remains brittle, and patience remains the most valuable position on the board. Now, there are a wide range of catalyst for the sell-off that are all worth touching upon.

Within the crypto markets, whale selling is taking a huge share of the blame. According to sentiment analysis firm Santiment, Bitcoin whales have sold approximately 32,500 Bitcoin since mid-October, around $3.5 billion worth. Every seller has a buyer and those coins were snatched up by smaller Bitcoin holders. However, sentiment warned, historically prices tend to follow the direction of the whales, not retail. On-chain analyst Checkmate also dug into the whale selling. He noted that 52 billion in coins five years or older have transacted this year. In dollar terms, this is the second largest year for OG sellers second only to 2024. Both years dwarf the 10 billion that was sold in 2021. While

price action was still down earlier last week, Checkmate wrote, there has been a tremendous rotation of coins in 2025, and a lion's share of it has occurred above 95,000. We don't want to see the price fall below 95,000, but I also expect the bulls to mount one hell of a fight to defend it. Prepare for a bear, but don't believe the Dumers. They are wrong. Bitcoin is the perfect asset for this environment and dips are opportunities for winners to stay humble and stack sats. Watch for signs of capitulation, have a plan to buy pain, and execute if we get there. Troy Cross of the Bitcoin Policy Institute commented, OG dumping is telling the market that Bitcoin is not different. It is just an IPO. The OGs don't believe in Bitcoin's future actually. You're supposed to, though.

In addition to OG selling, Bitcoin ETFs were being rated last week. They saw $1.2 billion in combined net outflows. This was the largest outflow streak since April and the largest week of outflow since February. ETF traders were consistently cashing in their chips day after day in massive size. Outside of Bitcoin, we had a plethora of options to explain the drawdown. For those who believe Bitcoin is just leveraged NASDAQ, the tech index suffered its worst drawdown since April losing 3%. Palantir failing to forecast strong growth next year cascaded into open AI's CFOs suggesting they might need the government backstop. And while the bursting of the AI bubble was the narrative, it was also a clear signal that the sentiment had gone risk off. In Washington, the government

shutdown dragged on, which became the longest in history this week. The suspension of food stamps dominated the news, the FAA warned that up to 10% of flights would be canceled, and government workers went without paychecks. Heading into the weekend, the mood was pretty sour, but we got a string of announcements that gave Bitcoin a boost. First, President Trump announced $2,000 stimulus checks in the form of a tariff dividend. The president said this would be paid to everyone but, quote, not high-income people. Many were quick to point out that the previous stimulus checks required an act of Congress and couldn't be done by presidential decree. A very tired-looking Scott Bessent went on ABC to clarify the policy. The Treasury Secretary said, the $2,000 dividend could come in lots of forms.

It could just be no tax on tips, no tax on Social Security, deductibility on auto loans. Those are substantial deductions that are being financed through the tax bill. Valuations quipped, it could just be the friends we made along the way. Lo, bro, looks absolutely exhausted. Still, most market participants weren't reading below the headline with the Kobayisi letter tweeting, stimulus checks are officially back. We later got FHA director Bill Pulte, announcing 50-year mortgages that many believed would put rocket fuel under the housing market. To cap off the weekend, late on Sunday night, we got a deal to reopen the government. According to Bloomberg, a group of moderate Senate Democrats had agreed to support a deal. Agriculture, Veterans Affairs,

and Congress itself will be funded for the next year, while other agencies will be funded through January 30th. Federal workers would receive back pay and laid-off agency employees would be reinstated to their positions. Bitcoin or an NFL veteran Russell Okung tweeted, in other words, every political crisis now ends in debt monetization. There was indeed a pretty unified take on Twitter around this triad of news. Former hedge fund manager James Levish wrote, Trump is floating two-k stimmy checks, the FHFA is considering 50-year mortgages, and the U.S. government continues to run $2 trillion dollar deficits. Please tell me again how the era of easy liquidity and asset inflation is ending. Geiger Capital tweeted, we're not even in a recession and both parties are handing out helicopter

money. Realize where we are. Calvin Froedge wrote, this weekend we got inflation stimmies and 50-year mortgages. Ben Hunt of Epsilon theory commented, they're going to run it hot like you can't even believe. Bitcoin and stocks responded aggressively on Sunday night. Nasdaq futures were up 1.4% while Bitcoin regained the 106K level to erase much of last week's price action. analysts had a pretty bullish view for markets moving forward. Crypto McKenna wrote, All My Signals fired full mean reversion on the highest timeframes. Strong bet that the bottom is in, and 2026 will be a positive year for risk, albeit with some volatility. Zero X Gumshue tweeted, I think bear's only argument is that charts look topped on stocks. Bulls have U.S. government

shutdown over, QT ending, more rate cuts, balance sheet expansion starting soon, $2,000 stimulus for tens of millions of people. Crypto's underperformance will flip into outperformance. All the bullish catalysts are directly tied to liquidity, which is what Bitcoin feeds off of. Evan SS6 commented, Trump throwing out 2K stimmy checks and about to take over the Federal Reserve, and you are bearish because the price went below a line you drew with a Crayola crayon. Basically, after all the commotion, Bitcoin seems to be heading back up to begin another week. Legacy internet and infrastructure are brittle, plagued by downtime, coverage gaps, and outdated financing models.

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that works for people, communities, and investors alike. Learn more at Althea.net and find them on Crackin to join the future of infrastructure finance. Now, while retail sentiment was dower, institutional commentators had a tempered but still bullish view. Arks Kathy Wood trimmed her long-term bullcase by 300,000 in an appearance on CNBC's Squawk Box. Her firm had maintained that Bitcoin will get to $1.5 million by 2030, but interestingly, the trim came as a result of stablecoin adoption. Wood said, Stablecoins are usurping part of the role that we thought Bitcoin would play in developing markets. Given what's happening to stablecoins, we could take maybe $300,000 off of that bullish case. J.P. Morgan analysts published a price target of $170,000 over the next 6 to 12 months.

They leaned on the gold-to-b Bitcoin ratio, arguing that there's a catch-up trade waiting for Bitcoin. The note stated that Bitcoin had become, quote, more attractive to investors by virtue of gold's volatility spiking during its recent run-up. Their volatility-adjusted fair market value model of Bitcoin implied a theoretical Bitcoin price of close to 170,000. They wrote this, quote, mechanical exercise thus implies significant upside for Bitcoin over the next six to 12 months. Alex Thorne of Galaxy Digital was the outlier, adjusting his end-of-year price target down from 185,000 to 120,000. In an interview with CNBC, Thorne said, Bitcoin was the hottest trade of the year at the start of the year. That's just not true for the rest of the year. There were a lot of other places to get gains

this year that impeded the allocation to Bitcoin. Still, he added attention will come back to Bitcoin. It always does. Notably, Thorne has a privileged look at some of the whales selling from inside galaxy that could be informing his view. He did comment, we're entering a much more mature era where distribution from old hands to new is incredibly healthy for distributing the ownership of Bitcoin. And yet, a healthy rotation is not enough to produce a new all-time high by year end in Thorne's view. Now, the potential end of the Bitcoin Treasury Company continues to be a major subplot in this market. Over this past month, we've seen the first few examples of crypto treasury companies selling their tokens to buy back their stock and defend the price.

So far, it's only been relatively small companies actually doing so and only in small size, but it was enough to present a narrative headwind. Over the past week, we got a handful of interesting headlines in that direction. During Robin Hood's earnings call, their CFO rejected the idea of a Bitcoin treasury, saying, is it the best use of our capital? There's a lot of different things you're doing, you know, from new products for growth, investing in engineering, so we have this debate constantly. I think the short answer is we're still thinking about it. Meanwhile, the Block reported that several former SEC lawyers have told them the probe into insider trading of crypto treasury companies would likely recommence once the government reopened.

Some expect subpoenas to go out within the next one to two months. Metaplan and announced that they would borrow $100 million against their Bitcoin holdings to buy the dip. They said that Bitcoin collateral was only a small fraction of their holdings, but this is the first example of collateralized lending to a Bitcoin Treasury company. It puts some of their treasury at risk if Bitcoin falls lower and the loan is called. While it's a fairly contained risk, this is still another Rubicon being crossed, as the Bitcoin Treasury company search for new capital. Still, the big story has been Micro Strategy

and their stretch for capital. The company will issue preferred stock denominated in Euros for the first time. The idea of the preferred stock is that it should trade at a stable price with an annual cash dividend of 10%. The European issue was upsized to more than double, gathering around $715 million in fresh capital. This is the most significant raise for Micro Strategy in several months, so could fuel a much larger wave of Bitcoin buying than we've seen in some time. On the other hand, many are questioning whether Micro Strategy can afford to keep up with debt payments. The company boosted the yield on their U.S. preferred stock at the end of last month, raising it 25 basis points to 10.5%. It's a relatively modest increase by itself, but Micro Strategy now has almost 700 million in interest payments to make next year.

Heading into Europe could imply the U.S. markets are basically tapped out, which doesn't bode well for meeting their liabilities. Jason Calcanus of the All In podcast tweeted, no Bitcoin bailouts. If Microstrategy is forced to liquidate Bitcoin to pay interest in Bitcoin crashes, most of folks believe that's the next best buying opportunity we're going to see. Note, I don't know if it's a Ponzi or just overly complicated, but I would never touch it. Now, Jason is not normally a go-to-bit Bitcoin analyst and admittedly has no idea about micro-strategy's debt structure, but the comment is a useful sentiment indicator heralding another round of micro-strategy fud. One hopeful one to round us out, Congressional leaders are set to meet with Cryptozar David Sachs to hash out the market

structure bill. According to Politico, Republican Senator John Boosman and Democrat Senator Cory Booker will sit down with Sachs to negotiate on language for a discussion draft. Over the past few months, reporting has suggested that actually getting everyone in the room to go over the bill has been difficult to say the least, so this is pretty major progress. If a bipartisan draft can be formulated, there's still hope that the bill could go through committee in the coming weeks and potentially stay on track to be passed by early next year. Speaking with Bloomberg, last Tuesday, Senator Cynthia Lummis seemed hopeful, stating, right now we're working at the staff level every single day to get the votes necessary in committee to get it out of committee. These

are bipartisan discussions. They are down at the granular level. We're making tremendous progress. Now, from the beginning, the analysis has been that this year is likely the best shot to pass crypto legislation for several years. Next year's midterms could see the Democrats win back both chambers of Congress and take crypto completely off the agenda. That risk was crystallized during last week's elections. The new socialist mayor of New York was the major story, but the election was a landslide against the GOP across the country. A blue wave at next year's midterms certainly isn't a guarantee, but it is looking more likely after last week. For that reason, market structure needs to move now if it's going to pass, and so we will be

keeping an eye on that. For now that, that's going to do it for the breakdown. Appreciate you listening. As always, good to be back. Until next time, be safe and take care of each other. Peace.