Good morning Asia. This is what is making news in the markets:
Welcome to Asia Morning Briefing, a daily summary of top news during US time and an overview of market movements and analysis. For a detailed overview of the US markets, see CoinDesk’s Crypto Daybook Americas.
Bitcoin’s drop below $90,000 seemed like the start of a broad risk-off move, but the market did not behave as it usually does in a deep BTC correction. Crossover pairs held firm and alternative rankings barely budged.
In a note to CoinDesk, Enflux, a Singapore-based market maker, said that the lack of price action that typically occurs during a deep BTC correction is the clearest sign that cryptocurrencies are moving from a liquidity-driven market to one driven by fundamentals.
“Careers without clear income, utility or institutional relevance have fallen by 60 to 80 percent,” the firm wrote. “Traditional alt seasons, 2017-style vertical rotations, or 2021 reflexive leverage cycles were dependent on narratives, excess liquidity, and retail mania. Most of this does not exist at scale in this bull market.”
Enflux also noted that tokens tied to staking, ETFs, or real-world use are holding up.
March Zheng of Byzantine Capital said he is seeing the same dynamic.
“Instead, we are looking at the relative ranking positions of the top twenty coins and how they move relative to bitcoin’s market capitalization,” he said. “So far, the range has been fairly balanced, as Bitcoin’s generally strong corrections trigger major price downgrades in the alternatives.”
Zheng believes the stability suggests the market is not entering a classic alt-season and is instead showing signs of a more orderly structure.
Signs point to a market that is gradually separating durable assets from speculative beta.
Tokens with identifiable users, revenue, or institutional demand continue to hold strong, while weaker large companies absorb most of the stress.
The question is: will this fundamentals thesis hold up over broad speculative rotations?
Market movement
BTC: Bitcoin is trading around $92,234 after recovering from its drop below $90,000 earlier this week.
ETH: Ether remains near $3,099 as it stabilizes along with the broader market.
Gold: Gold fell for a fourth straight day to $4,064.60 an ounce, staying below last month’s record, as traders cut the odds of a December rate cut in the United States to around 50% from nearly 94% a month ago.
Nikkei 225: Asia-Pacific markets traded mixed on Wednesday, tracking tech-led declines on Wall Street on concerns over AI valuation, although Japan’s Nikkei 225 reversed its rise by 0.5%.
Elsewhere in Crypto
- Pump’s New ‘Mayhem Mode’ Fails to Boost Token Drops or Revenue in First Week (The Block)
- ‘Permissionless Assets’: Robinhood’s Three-Phase Tokenization Plan to Disrupt TradFi (CoinDesk)
- Coinbase explains donation to Trump’s ballroom (Axios)
