Cryptocurrencies

CoinGecko data on 3 November 2026 shows bitcoin at about $77,700 and a market value of about $1.56T, against an all-time high of $126,080 on 6 October 2025. Ether traded near $2,295 with a market value of about $280B.

CoinGecko reported a total market value of about $2.63T on 3 November 2026, with bitcoin at 59.3% and ether at 10.7% of the total.

DefiLlama shows about $296B of USD-pegged stablecoins on 3 November 2026. Tether (USDT) stood at about $178B and USDC at about $71B, so the market is concentrated in the same two issuers as before. A tracker cited in August 2026 reported mid-2026 stablecoin supply near all-time highs while bitcoin traded flat to lower.

CoinGecko lists a circulating supply of about 20.1M BTC on 3 November 2026, out of the 21M cap.

• Regulators missed the 18 July 2026 deadline for final rules under the GENIUS Act; ten rules were proposed but none finalised (Parameter, mid-2026).
• The Act takes effect on 18 January 2027, or 120 days after final rules are published, whichever is earlier (same source).
• The CLARITY Act (market structure) cleared Senate Banking on a 15-9 vote but was not law as of August 2026, with floor action expected to slip into autumn or later (Liquid Mercury, Aug 2026; FinTelegram).

Cointelegraph and CryptoSlate reported US spot bitcoin ETF net assets of $120.68B on 4 December 2025, down about $48.9B from the 6 October 2025 peak, mostly from price rather than outflows. The deck's '2026 peak' bar could not be confirmed from these sources.

Not refreshed: current spot bitcoin ETF assets, adult ownership (560M) and the Chainalysis adoption scores, Cambridge energy estimate, the stablecoin volume comparison, and annualized volatility figures.

Money is just a shared record of who owns what, and until 2009, keeping that record always required a trusted middleman.

Banks, governments and card networks are, at bottom, ledger-keepers we agree to trust.

1. Broadcast: you sign a transaction and send it to the network.
2. Validate: thousands of computers check it against the shared ledger.
3. Bundle: valid transactions are grouped into a 'block'.
4. Chain: the block is linked to all prior blocks, permanently.

1. Central bank (fully centralized): a government issues it.
2. Your bank: one firm, your balance.
3. PayPal / cards: private ledgers.
4. Exchanges: custodial crypto.
5. Stablecoins: issuer-backed tokens.
6. Bitcoin (fully decentralized): no issuer at all.

1. Applications (layer 04): exchanges, wallets, DeFi, NFTs, what users touch.
2. Smart contracts (layer 03): self-executing code that runs the applications.
3. Blockchains, L1/L2 (layer 02): Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, the shared ledgers.
4. Consensus (layer 01): the rules by which the network agrees on truth.

Bitcoin has one job: be digitally scarce money that no one can print, freeze, or inflate away.

It is deliberately simple, slow and rigid. Those are features, not bugs.

1. Compete: miners race to solve a hard maths puzzle.
2. Win: the first to solve it proposes the next block.
3. Reward: the winner earns newly-issued bitcoin plus fees.
4. Secure: this 'work' makes rewriting history astronomically costly.

If Bitcoin is digital gold, Ethereum is a programmable platform: money you can write software on top of.

Its native asset, ether, pays for computation on a global, shared computer.

• DeFi: lending, trading and saving with no bank, just code.
• Stablecoins: most digital dollars live on Ethereum's rails.
• NFTs: provable ownership of digital (and real) assets.
• DAOs: internet-native organisations governed by token holders.
• Tokenization: stocks, bonds and funds issued on-chain.
• Identity: portable, user-owned logins and credentials.

1. 2015Launch: the world computer goes live.
2. 2020DeFi Summer: lending and trading explode.
3. 2022The Merge: switches to proof-of-stake.
4. 2023Rollups: cheaper layer-2 scaling.
5. 2025Institutions: ETFs and tokenized funds arrive.

Culper Research, a short seller, posted on 5 March 2026 that it is short ether and ETH-linked securities, including BitMine, and gains if they fall. It says Fusaka (3 December 2025) left a glut of blockspace, cut gas fees about 90% and validators' tips per unit of gas by 40% to 50%, and that address poisoning inflates the usage counts bulls cite (Culper Research, 5 Mar 2026; CoinDesk, 5 Mar 2026). I could not open the full report (HTTP 403), so this is secondhand.

Fees and burn were lower after the upgrade, but the fall began in late November, when blocks reached 60 million gas, the new default Fusaka raises, days before it activated (block headers; Ethereum Foundation, 6 Nov 2025). Validators keep the unburned fees: their share fell about 40%, then recovered. New issuance, derived from supply and burn, was 2,650 to 2,980 ETH a day in every window, far above burn; supply grew 0.78% from 2 December 2025 to 10 November 2026 (ultrasound.money). The data cannot show whether Fusaka caused the fall, or which comparison gives Culper's 90%.

BitMine had not replied to CoinDesk when it published, and I found no later reply from it or other treasury holders; ether has no issuer to reply. BitMine's 9 November release shows 6,070,092 ETH (4.97% of supply, against a goal of 5%) and a seven-day staking yield of 2.65% (BitMine, 9 Nov 2026). Its 10-K gives 2.5% to 4.0% gross; I found no mention of Culper or Fusaka in it (BitMine, 10-K, 10 Nov 2026).

The most-used crypto isn't volatile at all: stablecoins are digital dollars that move at the speed of the internet.

They are the bridge between the traditional dollar and the crypto economy.

1. Deposit: you send $1 to the issuer (e.g. Circle).
2. Mint: the issuer creates 1 token, backed 1:1.
3. Use: the token moves globally, 24/7, in seconds.
4. Redeem: anyone can swap it back for $1, which anchors the price.

• Dollar access: savers in unstable economies hold digital dollars.
• Remittances: cross-border transfers in seconds, for cents.
• Settlement: businesses settle instantly, 24/7, without banks.
• On-ramp: they are how most people enter and exit crypto.

• Volatility: 70%+ drawdowns are normal, not exceptional.
• Custody and hacks: 'not your keys, not your coins', and exchanges fail.
• Fraud and scams: the open, irreversible system is a fraudster's dream.
• Regulation: rules on stablecoins and exchanges can reshape the market.
• Concentration: a few whales and exchanges hold enormous sway.
• Complexity: most losses come from user error, not the tech failing.

• Stablecoins first: clear rules would legitimise the most useful use case.
• Exchanges next: custody and disclosure rules protect users.
• Securities question: which tokens are securities remains contested.
• Global patchwork: rules differ by country, and capital flows to the friendliest.

1. Do stablecoins keep scaling? The clearest measure of real-world usefulness.
2. Does regulation arrive, and how? Clear rules legitimise; harsh ones fragment.
3. Do institutions keep buying? ETF flows reveal conviction beyond retail.
4. Does Ethereum stay the platform? Or do faster chains erode its lead?
5. Does a real consumer app emerge? Beyond trading, the missing 'why' for most people.

• Blockchain: a shared, tamper-evident ledger held by many computers.
• Private key: the secret that proves you own your coins.
• Wallet: software that stores your keys and signs transactions.
• Mining: spending computing power to secure Bitcoin and earn new coins.
• Staking: locking up coins to secure a proof-of-stake network.
• Smart contract: code that runs automatically when conditions are met.
• Stablecoin: a token pegged 1:1 to a currency like the US dollar.
• DeFi: financial services (lending, trading) run by code, not banks.

Bitcoin is money you cannot inflate; Ethereum is money you can program; stablecoins are money that finally moves like information. Everything else is detail, or noise.

1. One real problem, solved: trustless agreement on who owns what.
2. Bitcoin is not Ethereum is not stablecoins: three different bets, three different risk profiles.
3. Stablecoins are the proof: crypto is already useful, at trillions of scale.
4. The risks are specific: volatility, custody, fraud, regulation, not mystery.
5. Regulation is the swing factor: it will decide whether crypto matures or stalls.

• CoinMarketCap / CoinGecko: market capitalization and price data (2026).
• Chainalysis: 2025 Global Crypto Adoption Index and Geography of Cryptocurrency report.
• Crypto.com: Crypto Market Sizing report (global ownership, 2025).
• DefiLlama: stablecoin supply and market-share data.
• Bloomberg: 'Stablecoin transactions rose to record $33 trillion in 2025' (Jan 2026).
• Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance: Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index (2025).
• ETF issuer filings: spot Bitcoin ETF assets under management (2024-26).
• Bitcoin and Ethereum protocol documentation: supply schedule, consensus, The Merge.
• Figures marked 'illustrative' or 'estimate' are compilations; crypto data is time-stamped and volatile.