Cryptocurrency valuations recovered modestly this week as investor appetite for digital assets returned following the recent market crash.
The $19 billion liquidation event could be seen by investors as a buying opportunity, which could fuel Bitcoin (BTC) to rise beyond $200,000 before the end of the year, according to Geoff Kendrick, global head of digital asset research at Standard Chartered.
However, Bitcoin’s upward momentum continues to be limited due to a lack of inflows in U.S. spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs).
The lack of investment is causing Bitcoin to post its worst October performance since 2013, the last time a historically strong month ended in the red.
$19 billion market crash paves the way for Bitcoin to rise to $200,000: Standard Chartered
Despite U.S. President Donald Trump’s clearing of a record $19 billion market and threats of new tariffs, Bitcoin is still expected to reach $200,000 by the end of the year, according to Geoff Kendrick, global head of digital asset research at Standard Chartered.
Cryptocurrency markets experienced a record $19 billion liquidation event over the weekend of October 10, which sent the price of Bitcoin to a four-month low of $104,000 by Friday, Cointelegraph reported at the time.
As things calm down following a major liquidation event, investors may see this as a buying opportunity. This dynamic could see Bitcoin rise to $200,000 by the end of 2025, Kendrick said. Despite the volatility, he was confident Bitcoin would bounce back once the market stabilized.
“My official prediction is that it will be $200,000 by the end of this year,” he told Cointelegraph during an exclusive interview at the 2025 European Blockchain Convention in Barcelona.
Kendrick said he sees prices rising “well past $150,000” in a bear market later this year, assuming the U.S. Federal Reserve continues to cut interest rates to meet market expectations despite “Trump’s noise about tariffs.”
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Hong Kong approves first spot Solana ETF before US
Hong Kong has approved its first spot Solana ETF, making it the third cryptocurrency ETF approved by the city after Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) on Wednesday granted approval for the China Asset Management (Hong Kong) Solana ETF to be listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, according to a report in the Hong Kong Economic Times.
This product includes Chinese Yuan counters and US Dollar counters, allowing transactions and payments in both currencies. Each trading unit consists of 100 shares and the minimum investment amount is approximately $100. The fund is scheduled to debut on Monday.
The ETF’s virtual asset trading platform will be operated by OSL Exchange, and OSL Digital Securities will act as a sub-custodian. ChinaAMC set the management fee at 0.99% and limited storage and management fees to 1% of the sub-fund’s net asset value, estimating the annual expense ratio at 1.99%.
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Aave DAO proposes $50 million in token buybacks per year using DeFi profits.
Aave’s Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) has introduced a proposal to create a long-term protocol-funded buyback program that would use up to $50 million in annual revenue to repurchase Aave tokens.
The proposal, submitted on Wednesday by the Aave Chan Initiative (ACI), aims to make share buybacks a permanent component of Aave token economics. Under the plan, the Aave Finance Committee (AFC) and TokenLogic will lead the implementation by repurchasing between $250,000 and $1.75 million in Aave (AAVE) tokens each week, depending on market conditions, liquidity and volatility.
Once approved, the proposal will go through the Aave Request for Comments (ARFC) stage for community feedback, followed by a snapshot vote and final on-chain governance confirmation. Unlike short-term market interventions, this proposal aims to institutionalize buybacks as a recurring mechanism, making DAOs active capital allocators.
ACI said the program builds on the success of other share buyback plans. In April, the price of Aave surged 13% after the community approved a $4 million token buyback.
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China’s budget AI is outperforming ChatGPT and Grok in cryptocurrency trading.
As competition among leading generative AI chatbots intensifies, Chinese artificial intelligence models are outperforming their American counterparts in cryptocurrency trading, according to data from blockchain analytics platform CoinGlass.
Chinese-developed AI chatbots DeepSeek and Qwen3 Max led the ongoing cryptocurrency trading experiment on Wednesday, with the former being the only AI model to generate a positive unrealized return of 9.1%.
Qwen3, an AI model developed by Alibaba Cloud, ranked second with 0.5% unrealized loss, followed by Grok with 1.24% unrealized loss, according to blockchain data platform CoinGlass.
OpenAI’s ChatGPT-5 fell to last place with a loss of more than 66%, reducing its initial account value from $10,000 to $3,453 at the time of this writing.
Considering that DeepSeek was developed at a fraction of the cost of its U.S. competitors, the results surprised cryptocurrency traders.
DeepSeek’s success came from betting on the rise of the cryptocurrency market. The model has taken leveraged long positions in major cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ether (ETH), Solana (SOL), BNB (BNB), Dogecoin (DOGE), and XRP (XRP).
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BNB Gets “Uptober” Amid Binance Market Crash Investigation
October has historically been one of Bitcoin’s best performing months, but BNB has been the biggest performer this year.
Coined to describe a typically strong October for Bitcoin, “Uptober” started the year on a high note as the U.S. government shutdown had just begun. Now, with the funding impasse in Washington lasting more than three weeks, trade tensions and the aftermath of a historic liquidation event have dashed that optimism.
Meanwhile, BNB, the native token of the Binance BNB Chain, has hit all-time highs twice this month. The network is experiencing a surge in memecoin trading and is competing directly with Hyperliquid in the decentralized perpetual market through its Aster platform.
BNB has since pulled back from its highs, but has maintained an upward trend of around 6% since early October. Nonetheless, these gains come against the backdrop of increasing scrutiny over Binance’s alleged role in the recent market crash.
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DeFi Market Overview
Most of the top 100 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization closed in the green this week, according to data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView.
The Zcash (ZEC) privacy coin was the biggest winner of the week, up more than 33%, followed by the memecoin launchpad platform Pump.fun (PUMP) token, up 26% over the past week.
Thank you for reading our roundup of the most influential DeFi developments this week. Join us next Friday for more stories, insights and education about this dynamic and evolving space.