Cryptocurrency valuations have seen a modest recovery this week as investor appetite for digital assets returns after the recent market crash.
In a hopeful sign for a correction, the $19 billion liquidation event could be seen as a buying opportunity by investors, and the move could help propel Bitcoin (BTC) above $200,000 by the end of the year, according to Jeff Kendrick, global head of digital asset research at Standard Chartered.
However, the lack of inflows from US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) continues to limit Bitcoin’s upside momentum.
Due to lack of investment, Bitcoin’s October performance is expected to be its worst since 2013, when the last historically strong month ended in the red.
$19 billion market crash paves the way for Bitcoin’s rise to $200,000: Standard Chartered
Despite a record $19 billion in market liquidations and new tariff threats from US President Donald Trump, Bitcoin could still be on track to reach $200,000 by the end of the year, according to Jeff 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, causing the price of Bitcoin to fall to a four-month low of $104,000 by Friday, Cointelegraph reported at the time.
Investors may see this as a buying opportunity as the dust subsides after a major liquidation event. Kendrick said this momentum could push Bitcoin’s rally to $200,000 by the end of 2025. Despite the volatility, he remained confident that Bitcoin will recover as the market stabilizes.
“My official forecast is $200,000 by the end of the year,” he told Cointelegraph in an exclusive interview at the 2025 European Blockchain Convention in Barcelona.
Kendrick said that despite “President Trump’s noise about tariffs,” the year-end bear market could still see price increases of “well over $150,000,” assuming the Federal Reserve continues to cut rates to meet market expectations.
read more
Hong Kong approves first Spot Solana ETF ahead of US
Hong Kong has approved its first Spot Solana ETF, making it the third spot crypto ETF to be approved by the city after Bitcoin and Ethereum.
The Hong Kong 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 a Chinese Yuan counter and a USD counter, allowing you to trade and pay in both currencies. Each trading unit consists of 100 shares, with a minimum investment of approximately $100. The fund is scheduled to debut on Monday.
The ETF’s virtual asset trading platform will be operated by OSL Exchange, with OSL Digital Securities acting as sub-custodian. ChinaAMC has set management fees at 0.99%, and custody and management fees are limited to 1% of the sub-fund’s net asset value, resulting in an estimated annual expense ratio of 1.99%.
read more
Aave DAO proposes $50 million in annual token buybacks leveraging DeFi proceeds
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 of annual revenue to buy back Aave tokens.
The proposal, submitted by the Aave Chan Initiative (ACI) on Wednesday, aims to make share buybacks a permanent part of Aave’s tokenomics. The plan, led by Aave Finance Committee (AFC) and TokenLogic, will buy back between $250,000 and $1.75 million of Aave (AAVE) tokens each week, depending on market conditions, liquidity, and volatility.
If approved, the proposal will go through an Aave Request for Comment (ARFC) stage for community feedback, followed by snapshot voting and final on-chain governance confirmation. Unlike short-term market interventions, the proposal aims to institutionalize share buybacks as a regular mechanism and make DAOs active capital allocators.
ACI said the program builds on the success of other share buyback plans. In April, Aave soared 13% after the community approved a $4 million token buyback.
read more
China’s budget AI overwhelms ChatGPT and Grok in crypto trading
Data from blockchain analysis platform CoinGlass shows that Chinese artificial intelligence models are outperforming US ones in crypto trading as competition intensifies among major generative AI chatbots.
AI chatbots DeepSeek and Qwen3 Max, both developed in China, led an ongoing cryptocurrency trading experiment on Wednesday, with the former becoming the only AI model to generate positive unrealized gains of 9.1%.
According to blockchain data platform Coinglass, the AI model “Qwen3” developed by Alibaba Cloud came in second place with an unrealized loss of 0.5%, followed by “Grok” with an unrealized loss of 1.24%.
OpenAI’s ChatGPT-5 fell to the bottom with a loss of over 66%, going from an initial account value of $10,000 to just $3,453 as of this writing.
The results surprised crypto traders, given that DeepSeek was developed at a fraction of the cost of its US rivals.
DeepSeek’s success came from betting on the rise of the cryptocurrency market. The model leveraged long positions across major cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ether (ETH), Solana (SOL), BNB (BNB), Dogecoin (DOGE), and XRP (XRP).
read more
BNB wins with “Uptober” amid severe Binance market crash
October has historically been one of Bitcoin’s best-performing months, but this year BNB has been stealing the show.
“Uptober” (a term coined to describe Bitcoin’s typically bullish month of October) began to perform well this year, just as the U.S. government shutdown began. Now, with Washington’s funding stalemate going on for more than three weeks, that optimism has faded amid trade tensions and the fallout from a historic liquidation scandal.
Meanwhile, BNB, the native token of Binance’s BNB Chain, has hit new all-time highs twice this month. The network is experiencing a surge in meme coin transactions and directly competes with Hyperliquid in the decentralized perpetual market through the Aster platform.
BNB has since retreated from its all-time high, but has continued to rise about 6% since the beginning of October. Still, these gains come against the backdrop of increased scrutiny over Binance’s alleged role in the recent market crash.
read more
DeFi market overview
Most of the top 100 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization ended the week in the black, according to data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView.
Zcash (ZEC) privacy coin rose more than 33% to be the biggest winner this week, followed by memecoin Launchpad platform’s Pump.fun (PUMP) token, which rose 26% last week.
Thanks for reading our overview of this week’s most influential DeFi developments. Tune in next Friday for more stories, insights, and education on this dynamically evolving universe.