Early Riders | Open Range Weekly | 10.12.25
Bitcoin fell almost 10% on the week, driven by an announcement of a new round of tariffs on China, and a cancellation of President Trump's upcoming meeting with President Xi, causing a risk-off market sentiment.
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Michael, Brian, and Liam discuss the latest in capital formation, market structure, and bitcoin adoption on this week's podcast.
You can find all our episodes on our podcast website as well as listen on YouTube, Apple, and Spotify.
Industry & Institutional Updates
Square introduced “Square Bitcoin,” consolidating merchant and consumer bitcoin tools into a single, integrated experience, with plans to allow merchants to accept bitcoin as payment nationwide on November 10th.
Morgan Stanley dropped digital asset restrictions for wealth clients, broadening access across its platform, and officially recommends bitcoin allocation to clients.
BlackRock’s iBIT approached $100B in AUM, becoming BlackRock’s most profitable ETF to date, now holding over 800,000 BTC.
Coinbase pursued an OCC federal charter, aiming to unify crypto and TradFi products under a national framework.
Meanwhile raised $82M to scale bitcoin denominated life insurance.
Two Prime posted a record Q3: $827M committed loan volume and $2.55B since Mar ’24, reflecting accelerating credit demand.
PayPay (SoftBank backed) acquired a 40% stake in Binance Japan, pairing payments distribution with exchange infrastructure.
Polymarket added bitcoin deposits while NYSE-parent ICE reportedly eyed a $2B investment.
Kraken enabled stock lending for U.S. users, expanding beyond crypto into equities-style income generation.
Samsung expanded its Coinbase partnership via Galaxy Wallet integration in the U.S.
Galaxy raised $460M to convert its Texas bitcoin site into an AI data hub, expanding compute capacity and energy infrastructure.
Regulatory Updates
Luxembourg allocated 1% of its $730m sovereign wealth fund holdings into Bitcoin ETFs.
Reserve Bank of India (RBI) advanced work on an RBI-backed digital currency, signaling continued CBDC momentum and policy experimentation despite shifts away from CBDCs from most other countries.
Bank of Russia announced plans to allow domestic banks limited digital assets operations, but the framework drafted capped exposure at 1% of a bank's capital.
Chart of the Week
More than $2B in leverage was cleansed from the bitcoin market this week following Trump's announcement of an additional round of 100% tariffs on China, and a cancellation of his upcoming meeting with President Xi. Meanwhile, market liquidation across the larger digital asset space was much more severe, as some major altcoins fell more than 50% on the day.
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