🌐 AVEnews | Weekly Crypto Recap

Week ending 23 November 2025

A week of brutal price action, heavy ETF outflows and rising regulatory warnings — but also of structural cleansing: leverage got flushed, weak hands stepped back, and long-term themes (Bitcoin as macro asset, AI-compute coins, privacy) quietly kept developing.

1. Market Overview — From Euphoria to “Extreme Fear”

Over roughly six weeks the crypto market has shed about $1.2 trillion in value (~25%), driven by a broad flight from speculative assets as investors reassess high-tech valuations and the path of U.S. interest rates. Financial Times

This week, that correction intensified:

Bitcoin traded down towards the $80–90k range, its lowest level in about seven months, roughly 30% below its October all-time high above $120k. Reuters+1

Ether also slumped, hitting a four-month low, part of a wider sell-off across major altcoins. Reuters

Analysts describe this not (yet) as a fundamental collapse, but as a deep de-leverage and sentiment reset after an overheated run-up. Financial Times+1

AVEnews angle: This is what a late-cycle washout looks like: painful in the short term, but often necessary to clear leverage and restore healthier price discovery.

2. Bitcoin & ETFs — Capitulation or Healthy Flush?

Spot price action

Reuters describes Bitcoin as being on “thin ice” after it slid to around $80,500, with some analysts warning that a clean break below $80k could open the door to much steeper losses. Reuters

Earlier in the week BTC fell below $90k, wiping out its gains for 2025 and mirroring risk-off moves in global equities and tech stocks. Reuters+1

ETF flows & volume

U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded their third straight week of net outflows into mid-November, with around $1.1B flowing out of BTC funds and roughly $729M out of ETH funds over one week — one of the largest combined withdrawals to date. 99Bitcoins

At the same time, an updated report shows those same spot ETFs handled a record ~$40B in trading volume last week, suggesting a major rotation and capitulation among institutional holders rather than simple disinterest. CoinDesk

AVEnews angle:
Short-term, ETFs are amplifying volatility; long-term, they’re proving that Bitcoin is now tightly integrated into mainstream capital markets. High volume + outflows = institutions are actively repricing risk, not abandoning the asset entirely.

3. Altcoins & DeFi — Weakness With a Few Bright Spots

The broader crypto market decline pulled DeFi total value locked (TVL) down to around $115B, continuing a multi-week slide as risk appetite shrank. Crypto Adventure

A weekly unlock report highlighted substantial token unlocks, including ZRO and YZY, adding extra selling pressure and circulating-supply shocks in those ecosystems. Tokenomist

Despite the gloom, some themes outperformed the market this week:

A popular trading roundup singled out:

TAO (Bittensor) — riding the AI-compute narrative;

HYPE (Hyperliquid) — benefiting from interest in decentralized derivatives;

ZEC (Zcash) — privacy coins getting renewed attention as global regulations tighten. CoinDCX

AVEnews angle: In drawdowns, narratives compress to the strongest ideas. This week those were AI-compute, real DeFi infrastructure, and financial privacy — all long-horizon themes.

4. Regulation & Systemic Risk — Louder Warnings, No Ban Talk

A mid-month regulatory update flagged that global watchdogs, including the Financial Stability Board (FSB), are again warning about insufficient safeguards in the crypto market and the possibility of spillover into traditional finance. OANDA

The concern is not just price volatility but high leverage, interconnected platforms, and ETF-driven feedback loops — all of which this week’s crash made very visible. Financial Times+1

AVEnews angle:
The rhetoric is about risk management, not prohibition. For a rational-optimist and radical-centrist view, this is actually positive: regulators are slowly shifting from “Should crypto exist?” to “How do we integrate and supervise it sensibly?”

5. Sentiment, Leverage & Macro Backdrop

The crypto Fear & Greed Index slid into “Extreme Fear”, reflecting heavy risk-off positioning as traders reacted to uncertainty over future U.S. rate cuts and broader equity market weakness. Financial Times+1

Multiple reports point to mass liquidations of leveraged long positions — with one earlier October event (“10/10”) still echoing through the system and this week adding billions more in forced selling. Financial Times+2New York Post+2

At the same time, some analytics shops note that:

Retail sentiment has turned sharply negative,

While whales and some institutions quietly increase accumulation on the way down. Alpha Node Capital

AVEnews angle:
From a macro-cycle perspective, this is classic late-stage capitulation behavior: pessimistic headlines, heavy liquidations, but also stealth accumulation by long-term players.

6. AVEnews Perspective — What This Week Really Means

From an Armenian, international, rational-optimist point of view:

Volatility is the price of admission.
When Bitcoin is integrated into ETFs, leveraged derivatives, and global macro positioning, crashes like this become inevitable. That’s not a bug; it’s what a maturing, globally traded asset looks like.

Regulation is converging on “serious, not hostile.”
FSB-style warnings and ETF monitoring are exactly what you’d expect when crypto begins to matter systemically. The direction is toward rules, transparency and risk controls, not toward erasing the technology.

Narratives that survived this week matter.
AI-linked compute tokens, permissionless derivatives, and privacy coins all held relative strength. In a rational-optimist frame, that’s the market voting on which experiments feel most essential.

For long-term builders and savers:
This week was bad for portfolios in the short term, but good for flushing leverage and speculative excess. If Bitcoin and crypto are to play a durable role in the next decade’s financial architecture, weeks like this are part of the consolidation phase — not the end of the story.