Early Riders | Open Range Weekly | 11.9.25
Bitcoin fell over 7% on the week, to a market capitalization of $2.04T.
Early Riders Media
Michael, Brian, and Liam discuss the latest in capital formation, market structure, and latest deals on this week's podcast.
Early Riders published a report on Investment Under a Bitcoin Standard, taking lessons learned from investment under a gold standard, and offering a framework for investment during bitcoin's monetization, and the end state of capital allocation under a bitcoin standard.
You can find all our episodes on our podcast website as well as listen on YouTube, Apple, and Spotify.
Industry & Institutional Updates
Fidelity enabled users to withdraw or sending digital assets from their wallets, more than 2 years after enabling buy/sell functionality. Fidelity also received approval for UK Bitcoin ETP.
PwC’s global survey found 55% of hedge funds invested in crypto, with the asset class making up 7% of their portfolios on average.
JPMorgan projected a potential $170,000 bitcoin price in the next 6–12 months in a client note.
ARK Invest trimmed its bitcoin price target of $1.5m by 2030 to $1.2m due to the competing nature of stablecoins.
Coinbase entered advanced talks on a ~$2B acquisition for BVNK, a stablecoin infrastructure issuer, signaling increased focus on the payment space.
Lava raised $200M in debt and equity for a bitcoin-backed line of credit and introduced borrow rates starting at 5%, but managed though significant issues of unilaterally moving users funds from what was marketed as self custody to another option.
Kraken unlocked digital asset collateral for derivatives across the EU, widening margin options.
Strategy raised ~$715m for their European based preferred stock issuance this week.
Strive announced a proposed IPO of SATA preferred stock, estimating $160m in gross proceeds.
Iris Energy (IREN) surged after inking a multi-year AI cloud deal with Microsoft reportedly worth up to $9.7B, as many bitcoin miners expand into cloud offerings as well.
Sequans sold ~$100M in bitcoin from its treasury to reduce debt obligations, as pivoted bitcoin treasury company continues to trade at a discount to its bitcoin holdings due to an unexciting operating business.
Metaplanet borrowed $100M against BTC holdings to acquire additional bitcoin as the public company trades at a discount to its bitcoin holdings.
Robinhood remained cautious on adopting a corporate bitcoin treasury, citing the ability for direct bitcoin access as an alternative, but continue to explore the option.
Ripple raised $500M at a ~$40B valuation from Fortress Investment Group, affiliates of Citadel Securities, Pantera Capital, Galaxy Digital, Brevan Howard, and Marshall Wace, showing just how early we really are.
Balancer announced a $128m exploit this week due to a rounding error in smart contract logic.
Stream Finance plunged as its stablecoin fell ~77%, with the protocol’s fund manager reportedly losing ~$93M due to the liquidation events of October 10th.
Regulatory Updates
President Trump reiterated he wanted the U.S. to “lead in bitcoin,” signaling a favorable policy tone.
Samourai Wallet co-founder was sentenced to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine in a U.S. case over a crypto mixing service.
What We’re Watching
Lava, a bitcoin lender, which originally was marketed as a self custody bitcoin lending platform using discrete log contracts appeared to implement an update to their app which made the app difficult or impossible to use without updating. The update seemed to move user funds into an unknown custodial wallet without their consent.
The ordeal has brought up lending practice concerns, and highlights the need for bankruptcy remote, separately managed accounts, with transparent custody models, and independently verifiable on chain addresses, offered by companies like Arch.
Chart of the Week
Checkmate, an on-chain analyst puts bitcoin's current drawdown in perspective with similar drawdowns experienced in past bull markets.
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