The Breakdown - Scott Besson Walks Into a Bitcoin Bar

Episode Date: November 25, 2025

Bitcoin steadied after a brutal week that saw cascading liquidations, battered ETFs, and growing questions about whether the drawdown was macro-driven rather than crypto-specific. Analysts are watching for early bottom signals as funding rates flip negative, long-term buyers nibble, and headline flows finally stabilize. But the bigger story is the macro backdrop: AI stocks sliding, liquidity tightening, Fed speakers clashing, and the White House sending Scott Besson on another weekend media blitz—capped off by his appearance at the PUBKey DC opening. With recession debates heating up, fiscal impulses looming, and rate-cut odds abruptly snapping back, today’s episode dives into why the narrative tug-of-war matters more than any single price tick. 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 24th, and today we're talking about Scott Besson walking into a Bitcoin bar. 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, let's kick off, as always, with a little bit of price chat. After a relatively quiet weekend, some are asking is the bottom finally in for Bitcoin.

Friday saw some nasty price action to end the week, with Bitcoin extending its slide all the way down to 80,500. Around $2 billion in leverage positions were liquidated in another series of sharp moves down. But markets fell quiet on Friday afternoon and remained subdued all weekend. Bitcoin floated up to a weekend high of $88,000 and entered the week, trading it around round 86,000. It's not much to go on so far, but a little bit of stability was enough to trigger some hope among analysts. In his Monday morning newsletter, CheckMaty noted that Bitcoin found support on the true market mean, the average cost basis for all coins acquired in secondary markets. Grimm Capital wrote, Bitcoin funding rates are now starting to roll over into the negative.

This means bottom catchers are starting to give up. A real bottom can now develop. It's nothing inclusive for the moment, but if you are looking for signs of a bottom, they are starting to appear. Looking back at this month's drawdown, J.P. Morgan suggested it wasn't crypto-native sellers driving the price action. In a Friday note, they wrote, instead it has been non-crypto investors, mostly retail investors who typically use spot and Ethereum ETFs to invest in the crypto market that appear to have been mostly responsible for the continuation of the crypto market correction in November. Interestingly, J.P. Morgan doesn't view the ETF flows as institutional investors, but instead, the average retail investor with an e-trade account. The research

note also pointed out that retail buyers have been piling into equities during the drawdown on that side of the market. Analysts wrote, it would thus be a mistake to extrapolate the selling of crypto ETFs as a signal that retail investors are turning bearish on risk assets more broadly, including equities. They argue that all that's really happened so far is an unwind of exuberance from October, not a sustained reversal into a bearish trend. Giving his view of the current market, Bitwise CIO Matt Hogan said, it's a tale of two markets. Short-term investors see global risk-off sentiment, the dat trade unwinding and follow up from the October 10th volatility event, but long-term investors are starting to nibble at these prices. The ETF flows seem

to tell the same story. Outflows have been punishingly large over the past two weeks, including a $900 million outflow on Thursday, one of the largest outflow days since the funds launched. However, Friday saw a strong $238 million net inflow, and that was in spite of BlackRock's iBit seeing $122 million in outflows. If ETF flows are a useful signal, then it's interesting to see them flip to end the week. BitFinex analysts wrote that the massive outflows do not, quote, derail the longer-term move towards institutionalization. The spot ETF channel remains intact, and the outflow likely reflects tactical rebalancing rather than a wholesale exit from the asset class. In other institutional buying, Kathy Woods' arc was bidding hard for crypto equities to end the week. The fund bought roughly

50 million spread across circle, bullish, Bitmine, Robin Hood, and the Bitcoin ETFs. Now, it's difficult to get much signal from the perpetually bullish arc, but this was a significant buy that could speak to conviction that the bottom is in. Speaking more broadly to the nature of the cycle, Lynn Alden believes were unlikely to see a major capitulation to end this drawdown. In an appearance on what Bitcoin did, Alden said, we haven't hit euphoric levels this cycle. Therefore, there is less of a reason to expect a kind of major capitulation. The cycle could go on for longer than people can expect, because it's not driven by the halving. It's driven by broader macro and interest in the asset itself. Still, she cautioned Bitcoiners to temper their expectations adding, it's usually not as good

as people expect, and it's usually not as bad as people expect is often how these things play out. People kind of get in their mindset where they are owed a bull market. No one is owed a bull market. Rather than obsessing over the next week of price action, Alden says she expects Bitcoin to recapture the $100,000 level next year and set new all-time highs in either 26 or 27. Legacy internet and infrastructure are brittle, plagued by downtime, coverage gaps, and outdated financing models. Communities and builders are left behind while capital sits locked out. Althea is changing that. Since 2018, their technology has powered resistance. resilient, sustainable networks across the U.S. and abroad. With Althea L1, they built the world's first

blockchain purpose-built for utilities and telecom, turning infrastructure into a transparent, investable asset class. Through liquid infrastructure, networks can now be financed in real-time, operated more efficiently and scaled to meet the $3 trillion telecom and utilities market. This is fintech for infrastructure, connecting capital directly to builders and returning revenue seamlessly to funders. No middlemen, no bottlenecks, just sovereign, resilient infrastructure 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, an extremely important element to this drawdown is the macro focus rather than being driven by a cryptocentric narrative. Outside of crypto markets,

AI stocks have been crashing amid fears of a bubble, and there has been a very heavy risk-off sentiment across the past week. A lot of the Bitcoin narratives have felt like analysts are searching for a self-referential reason for the drawdown. Crypto Twitter seems to be latching onto the quantum risks of Bitcoin, as if those risks suddenly materialized and started to matter last week. Tom Lee is promoting a view that a large marketmaker is still impaired after the October flash crash and has been unwinding their balance sheet. The far simpler explanation is that macro liquidity is receding and the economy is starting to look very rough. Keeping an eye on macro factors, Macroscope was paying attention to the Friday night opening of the Pub Key Bitcoin bar in

Washington. They tweeted, the Treasury Secretary was at tonight's opening of Pub Key, D.C., in this type of market, signals like this don't matter much. Eventually, traders look back and realize it mattered. Well, that was a little tongue-in-cheek. Scott Besson has been doing economic PR management for the administration all year. This weekend, we got another appearance from Besson on the Sunday shows to jawbone the markets heading into the new week. In an interview on NBC, he said he isn't expecting a recession next year. Instead, he commented, I am very, very optimistic on 2026. We've set the table for a very strong non-inflationary growth economy. Besant talked up the administration's policies, including a wide range of tax relief. There was no mention of the $2,000 tariff dividend checks,

but Bessent was clearly promoting a large fiscal impulse to start arriving soon. TXMC took exception to Besson's view, running through a long list of economic headwinds ranging from inflation to declining liquidity to risk of a slowdown in AI. Sunrunner responded, counterpoint, Scott Bessent literally told you, and I quote, we're going to run it hot like Bernanke in the 90s. The Atlanta Fed's GDP now already has GDP running at above 4% to end the year. The administration's stated preferences to ramp up fiscal policy into already elevated GDP. It's always possible that they failed to do enough, but the base should probably be that the administration will try to juice the economy

heading into an election year. And Besson doesn't exactly have a lot of leniency from the White House. On Wednesday, President Trump fired some pointed words at his Treasury Secretary, telling the press, the only thing Scott's blowing it on is the Fed, because the Fed, the rates are too high. Scott, and if you don't get it fixed fast, I'm going to fire your a bit. While Besson maintains that no short list has been made about Powell's replacement, he does have a few ideas. Speaking on Sunday night from the White House lawn, Besson told Fox News, I can safely say I will not be the Fed chair. I think President Trump would make a great Fed chair. He has an open mind. He understands monetary policy better than a lot of people. Seemed like a joke, but who really knows with this administration.

What's clear is that the White House isn't looking to simply let the economy fall apart, heading into 2026. Another big driver of the drawdown has been Fed policy expectations. Throughout the past week, we have seen a series of Fed speakers delivering very hawkish messages, which drove the odds of a December rate cut way down. That impulse reached a crescendo on Thursday, with the release of the Fed Minutes suggesting there is a majority of the FOMC content to hold rates at the December meeting. Rate cut odds dropped as low as 30% on Thursday after sitting at around 65% earlier in the month. On Friday, New York Fed President John Williams broke the fever and said he sees room for a rate cut. He commented, I view monetary policy as being modestly restrictive,

although somewhat less so than before our recent actions. Therefore, I still see room for a further adjustment in the near term to the target range for the federal funds rate to move the stance of policy closer to the range of neutral, thereby maintaining the balance between the achievement of our two goals. Williams had been penciled in as a potential hot. up until Friday, so his dovish declaration was enough to drive a big sentiment shift. December rate cut odds moved from 30 to 75%. Meaning with two weeks left until the meeting, rate cuts are firmly back on the table. Nick Timmeros of the Wall Street Journal gave a little more background, noting that Williams

is a, quote, top power lieutenant. Arne Pettamiza, as the head of research at AFS Group tweeted, shots fired. Regional Fed presidents in open revolt against a December cut, but Williams still wants to ram one more through. Under normal circumstances, the New York Fed president speaks in one voice with the chair and vice chair. Now, even if the worst is over, this drawdown has done a huge amount of damage to crypto markets. Bitcoin is currently more than 30% off the highs, but meme coins have been decimated and

the already weak all-coin complex has taken an absolute beating. Perhaps most notably, the relatively new segment of crypto treasury companies may have seen enough damage to be permanently impaired. The combined market cap for treasury companies is down 43% from its high in July. That segment managed to reach 176 billion in market cap in aggregate market cap at the highs, putting it in the same ballpark as BNB or XRP. Interestingly, the current market cap is around $99 billion, while the value of their combined treasury is $104 billion.

Each company is suffering in its own way, but this is the first time the group as a whole has been priced below their aggregate crypto holdings. They're starting to trade less like a leverage crypto bet and more like a closed-end fund without a natural arbitrage to keep them priced at par. Bitwise CEO Hunter Horsley believes there is a future for this type of company, but it's not necessarily going to be about accumulating crypto.

He tweeted, most Dats are going to wind up becoming operating companies. As part of that, they will likely acquire and consolidate some of the many of the smaller crypto companies that are currently private. We're in the early innings of what Dats will become. So that is the outlook heading into this week. It'll be interesting to see how much action there is, given this is a shorter week in the U.S. because of Thanksgiving.

For now, this is going to do it for today's breakdown. Appreciate you listening, as always. And until next time, be safe and take care of each other. Peace.