Early Riders | Open Range Weekly | 10.26.25
Bitcoin jumped over 5% on the week, reaching over $2.27T in total market capitalization.
Early Riders Media
Michael, Brian, Liam, and guest Gustavo Flores discuss the latest in capital formation, market structure, and the opportunity for Aureo and the rationale behind the investment on this week's podcast.
Early Riders published its investment memo on Aureo. See the press release here.
Early Riders published its investment memo on Argo, as well as a research article Demystifying the Debasement Trade. See the press release here.
You can find all our episodes on our podcast website as well as listen on YouTube, Apple, and Spotify.
Industry & Institutional Updates
Early Riders backed Aureo with $1.1M to scale secure Bitcoin custody and infrastructure across Latin America.
JPMorgan planned to let institutional clients borrow against bitcoin and ether holdings via a third-party custody model by late 2025.
Blackrock bitcoin ETF holdings have increased driven by holders moving their ownership directly into the ETF in kind.
River launched Supercharged Recurring Buys, adding DCA automation with increased purchasing on down bitcoin days.
Bitkey published a proposal for chain-code delegation to improve privacy in collaborative multisig wallets.
Sygnum & Debifi teamed up on BTC-backed financing products, expanding bank-linked credit options for bitcoin holders.
Nevada regulators shut down Fortress Trust due to insolvency, halting operations amid supervisory concerns and impacting client access.
Relai secured a MiCA license from France’s AMF, enabling EU-wide retail bitcoin brokerage under the new regime.
ACI Worldwide & BitPay partnered to enable merchant Bitcoin payments through ACI’s global payments rails.
Galaxy reported a sharp Q3 trading jump, with shares surging on stronger retail and institutional activity, driven by and increase in DATs.
FalconX acquired 21Shares to expand institutional access to crypto ETPs with deeper liquidity and distribution. The firm noted 20-30% of new entrants to the bitcoin space were coming in through ETPs.
Coinbase signed a $375M deal to acquire Echo, a platform which allows founders to sell digital tokens to raise capital for their businesses.
Tether claimed 500M users as stablecoin supply neared $182B, as global stablecoin adoption accelerates.
Regulatory Updates
U.S. Senate Democrats met with crypto executives on a sweeping digital-assets bill, as policy tensions escalated.
President Trump pardoned Binance founder “CZ” Zhao for violating the bank secrecy act. This comes as controversy regarding the Binance founders ties with the Trump family's World Liberty Financial.
What We’re Watching
Just as Square is rolling out its bitcoin POS terminals to more merchants, we're also watching digital assets competing as medium of exchange. The stablecoin market appears to be decoupling from digital asset trading volumes of late, with stablecoin transaction volumes accelerating. Recently, we have also seen an increase in digital asset agentic payment volume ramping up over the past week. Both bitcoin and stablecoin payments should likely accelerate in the next few years.
Chart of the Week
U.S. national debt outstanding hit $38 trillion this week.
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Early Riders is the first bitcoin-denominated venture firm, raising, holding, investing, and returning capital in bitcoin. Learn more about how to get involved www.earlyriders.com.
Make sure to keep up with all our research at earlyriders.com/research.