The Breakdown - Will Bitcoin Ever Fall Below $100K Again?

Episode Date: October 29, 2025

Standard Chartered’s Jeff Kendrick says if this week goes well, Bitcoin may never drop below $100,000 again. NLW breaks down the key macro catalysts — a dovish Fed, a potential U.S.–China trade thaw, and tech earnings from Microsoft, Meta, Google, Apple, and Amazon — that could make this the decisive week for markets. Plus, updates on MicroStrategy’s credit downgrade, new Solana and Litecoin ETFs, and Coinbase’s major partnerships with Apollo and Citi. 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 Tuesday, October 28th, and is it possible that Bitcoin never falls below 100,000 again? 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, as we discussed on Monday's show, this is going to be a big week in markets. We have a very doveish outlook for Wednesday's Fed meeting, with rate cuts fully priced in for this week and the December meeting. Then on Thursday, President Trump will meet with President Xi, and all signs point to a deal that will de-escalate the trade war.

Many Bitcoin analysts view this as the week that will determine whether the bull market continues or is brought to an abrupt halt. In his Monday note, Jeff Kendrick of Standard Chartered wrote, If this week goes well, Bitcoin may never go below $100,000 again. He added that he's watching for positive confirmation of a new all-time high, saying, as if it comes, this would signify the death knell for those hanging on to the halving season as a reason for Bitcoin prices to peak now. To clarify, I think the halving cycle is dead, ETF flows matter more, but it will take confirmation to convince everyone of this.

To the extent that the halving cycle still exists, we are very deep into it. So much so that if we were following that pattern, the top of $126,000 from early October, should have been the final top of the cycle. As Kendrick highlights, it's been relatively painless to maintain that view for the moment. If you sold a few weeks ago and started preparations for crypto winter, the market is more or less validated that view. However, if Bitcoin breaks out to a new all-time high, the people bearish because of the end of the four-year cycle will need to quickly re-examine their assumptions. Kendrick pointed to two further catalysts

that could make this a big risk-on week. Firstly, it's a huge week for tech earnings, with Microsoft, meta, and Google reporting on Wednesday, and Apple and Amazon reporting on Thursday. There are still many investors who are convinced that the AI bubble has burst and will drag down the Mag 7. Meanwhile, the consensus view on Wall Street is that Microsoft's cloud division will hit a record high 38% growth on the back of outperformance in AI demand. There's potential that many will be caught in an upside surprise and will need to get risk on in a hurry. Micro Strategy and Coinbase are also due to report this week, which could provide a crypto-specific boost. In addition, Kendrick is watching the money drain out of the gold market. He noted that around 2 billion

exited U.S. gold ETFs between Wednesday and Friday last week. If even a fraction of that, flows into the Bitcoin ETFs, it could provide a strong tailwind. Gold is now down 8% from its all-time high last week and doesn't seem to be slowing down. Kendrick believes that Bitcoin should rise on this weakness in gold, writing some ketchup is due. One theory that's starting to permeate Twitter is the idea that Bitcoin OGs were selling according to a calendar rather than paying attention to market conditions. Many have seen four-year cycles come and go, so if you're sitting on a large stack of Bitcoin, it makes sense to sell down as we come into this part of the cycle. However, those time-based selling plans are coming to an end or have already been completed. If we do get another breakout and a

continuation of the bull market, those OGs will be faced with a tough choice. Felix Javan, the host of the Forward Guidance podcast commented, considering the flash crash liquidation and many crypto-native selling and belief were at the end of a four-year cycle, some even shorting, if we really get some momentum going here, the sideline chase could get really juicy. So, going only by the halving cycle, this would be the last week of the bull market. However, looking at the macro tailwinds lining up for this week, many believe it still has a lot more room to run. 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

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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. Another cycle that's absolutely coming to a close is the legislative cycle in Washington. And according to North Carolina Senator Tom Tillis, the crypto market structure bill may have already missed its window. He told Bloomberg on Monday that, I'm not optimistic about us moving much further on anything around digital assets, stable coins, or crypto in this Congress. If we don't get it done by the first part of January, February, then I don't think it happens in this Congress. I think we move into the political season. Although the Senate remains in session,

House Speaker Mike Johnson has suspended regular business during the government shutdown. According to most estimates coming out of the Senate, Thanksgiving is an optimistic deadline for holding a markup hearing for the market structure bill. It would then need to go on the floor for a Senate vote before going through the same process in the House. Crypto lobbyists and pro-crypto senators are still pushing very hard to get it done, but as Tillis flagged, the timeline is starting to get very tight. One sign of momentum ebbing away is the cooling of crypto treasury companies. For the past few months, the premium in these stocks has been slowly melting away. The big names are now trading very close to the valuation of their treasuries, and many in the second tier are now trading in the second tier. at a discount. On Monday, the first Treasury company snapped and declared that they would be selling

crypto to buyback their discounted stock. ETHZILA announced that they've sold 40 million worth of ETH to fund share buybacks. Chairman McAndrew Rudicel said the firm would continue to repurchase shares as long as they trade at a significant discount. ETHZILA currently holds around 400 million of ETH on their balance sheet. Price did respond to the Monday announcement, spiking 14% during the day and another 9% after hours, so maybe they won't need to liquidate the entire stack. However, for many, these treasuries are an overhang that could power, market as they unwind. Felix Javan again commented, Oh good, we finally made it to the next phase of this crap. I see light at the end of the tunnel

and we can finally move forward from this. Sweetman wrote, Who would think, a company named Eath Zilla, would be the first to puked their digital asset treasury? Any company named that surely is very professional and should be taken seriously. Now, the selling shouldn't have much effect on the market directly. Eif easily has the liquidity to soak up $40 million in selling, and Tom Lee's bitmine announced to buy eight times the size on the same day. But the psychological bandaid has been ripped off as we've seen one of those companies throw in the towel and start selling. Among the larger companies, most believe that Micro Strategy is the least likely to sell. Their stock is trading at a 30% premium,

so they won't have to make that call in the near term. However, just because they're not selling doesn't mean that the market is still willing to lend them money. On Monday, S&P Global assigned Microstratology a B-minus credit rating, assigning their securities junk bond status. The ratings agency said that low-dollar liquidity and negative-risk-adjusted capital outweighs strong access to capital markets and prudent debt management. That negative rating for risk-adjusted capital refers to micro-strategy holding their capital in Bitcoin, so it isn't likely to change. This rating may or may not have a large effect on their ability to issue more debt. I kind of doubt that anyone was buying micro-strategy debt thinking that it was pristine AAA paper almost guaranteed to be paid back,

but at the same time, a junk rating could limit their ability to sell to institutional buyers, like pension funds and endowments. Many of those entities are required to only buy investment-grade bonds. It's difficult to know, but it seems that much of the demand for Micro Strategy debt came from hedge funds, prop desks, and other training groups comfortable with high-risk securities. This credit downgrade could make things more difficult at the margins, but it shouldn't really impact demand for the debt. What it might do is add a few percentage points to the interest rates demanded in the market. Microstrategy already needed to offer more than 10% returns to issue their latest round of securities, so the numbers are really starting to climb.

Matthew Sigil of Van Eck offered the technical definition of a B-minus credit rating, able to service debt for now, but vulnerable to shocks. He noted that issuers at this rating have a roughly 15% default risk over five years. Michael Saylor, of course, doesn't seem the least bit concerned. Microstrategy announced the rating in a press release, with Saylor trumpeting this as the first ever rating of a Bitcoin treasury company by a major credit rating agency. Meanwhile, ETF season is here with a ton of alt-coin funds going live this morning. Despite the continued government shutdown, multiple fund managers have decided to go ahead and launch their ETFs. Canary Capital will debut their light coin and Hedera funds,

while Bitwise are launching their Salana Staking ETF. Grayscale Salana Fund is expected to convert to an ETF on Wednesday. According to Bloomberg's James Safart, the SEC gave tacit approval for these funds to go live by giving instructions in their shutdown FAQ. It was pretty clear the SEC was going to give these funds the nod, so there was no real reason that they shouldn't go live in the middle of the shutdown. There are a range of other ETFs waiting in the wings that are eligible to go live over the next month.

However, sources said that this might have been a special case commenting, the SEC is not necessarily as far along with the other assets, so you might not see this done for other assets. In other words, we might have to wait until the shutdown ends to see just how much demand there is for the Dogecoin ETF. Of the three funds that went live this morning, the Salana staking fund is getting the most attention. Bitwise decided to go with a rock bottom 0.2% fee, so they're pricing it extremely aggressively. Several other ETF issuers have Solana funds in the pipeline, but that doesn't include BlackRock. Fidelity is coming, but this could be a very interesting window for Bitwise to set themselves up as the premier Salana ETF.

Coimbase, meanwhile, has announced a pair of new partnerships to push Stablecoin adoption forward. Apollo Global Management is partnering with CoinBase on Stablecoin Credit Services. Apollo is one of the largest private credit firms in the world, a segment that has been rapidly expanding in recent years. The new partnership will allow users to borrow against digital assets and participate in direct lending to borrowers. In addition, Apollo plans to offer tokenized versions of their existing credit products. Anthony Basili, Coinbase's president of asset management, said,

the global stablecoin ecosystem, which operates 24-7 on blockchain rails, creates opportunities not available in traditional private credit portfolios. In addition, Coinbase has announced a partnership with City to explore Stablecoin payments infrastructure, including Fiat to OnChane Stablecoin payout methods. While this sounds like just another on-ramp, City's involvement would integrate the payment corridor as part of their institutional offering. City's head of payments, Debo Pommisen, said, the financial landscape is changing fast, and we're thrilled to join Coinbase to explore new and innovative payment options for

our global clients. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong tweeted, It's not a debate anymore. Crypto and stablecoins are the tools that will update the global financial system. Excited to be collaborating with Citi to work on improving stablecoin utility and digital asset adoption with their clients. Push comes to shove if I had to guess. I think that the Bulls win out over the bears this week, but we'll have to wait and see.

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