While most market participants were resting, the crypto industry was living its own life: bitcoin made a powerful surge, Cosmos Labs faced a serious security threat, and Standard Chartered and Base took important steps toward institutional adoption.
Market on the rise: bitcoin and altcoins storm local highs
Over the past 24 hours, the market demonstrated impressive momentum. Bitcoin (BTC) strengthened by 4.65% and is trading near the $80,692 mark, although volatility was high during the day — the price fluctuated in the range of $76,750–$81,000. This is a classic example of how the liquidation of short positions accelerates an upward move.
Ether (ETH) also rose, gaining 2.47% and reaching $2,508. Among the top-25 altcoins, Monero (XMR) stood out with a gain of 8.52%, Solana (SOL) — 8.10%, and Cardano (ADA) — 3.32%. In the top-100, the best result was posted by Stacks (STX), which surged 18.17%, while Aerodrome Finance (AERO) and Virtuals Protocol (VIRTUAL) added 16.19% and 15.92%, respectively.
The day's laggard was Aave (AAVE), which lost 8.52%. It was followed by Ethena (ENA) with a decline of 6.58% and Lighter (LIT) with a drop of 6.19%.
ETF inflows and a cascade of liquidations
Institutional interest continues to grow. Spot crypto ETFs recorded inflows across all major assets: bitcoin funds attracted $337.56 million, Ethereum products — $115.57 million, Solana — $33.49 million, XRP — $13.82 million. This is a clear signal that large capital views current levels as attractive.
The market rally triggered a cascade of liquidations: over the past day, positions of 95,896 traders were closed for a total of $646.93 million. The main blow hit short sellers — $457.28 million versus $189.65 million for long positions. The largest liquidation order was recorded on Bitget for the BTCUSDT pair — $103.54 million.
Incident in Cosmos EVM and other overnight events
The Cosmos Labs team reported an ongoing security incident in the Cosmos EVM module that affected users. Developers strongly recommend that validators of related networks halt operations until the vulnerability is fixed. The nature of the issue, the list of affected networks, and the scale of losses have not yet been disclosed — a detailed report will be published after the investigation is completed.
Meanwhile, Standard Chartered became the first bank to begin distributing one of Hong Kong's two regulated stablecoins — HKDAP from issuer Anchorpoint Financial. The token is already available to qualified institutional clients. In the fourth quarter, the bank plans to launch subscription and settlement services for tokenized money market funds, and is also testing HKDAP for intra-group payments and cross-border operations.
Coinbase's Base network launched tokenized Apple and NVIDIA shares under the B20 standard. The tokens are backed by real securities on a 1:1 basis, held with regulated custodians. Users will be able to use them within the Base DeFi ecosystem, with asset management handled through broker and custodian Alpaca. This opens new opportunities for on-chain trading and lending.
My view: Tokenization of real-world assets is not just a trend but a fundamental shift. The fact that Standard Chartered and Base are moving in this direction simultaneously suggests that traditional finance and DeFi have finally found common ground. However, the Cosmos EVM incident serves as a reminder: security remains the main challenge for the entire industry, and any failure can undermine the trust we have been building for so long.