Host: Bitcoin fell below $70,000 early Friday, its lowest price since August, and ether dropped below $2,000.

Co-host: That's a sharp drop. Did it feed on itself?

Host: It did. The fall set off large liquidations in futures markets. That's when exchanges close out leveraged bets that have lost too much, and the forced closing can push prices down faster.

Co-host: So traders who borrowed to bet on higher prices get shut out automatically, and their exits push the price down further.

Host: Right. And ether has had the rougher stretch. Over the last 24 hours bitcoin actually fell a bit more, 5.5% against 4.6% for ether. But over the past week ether is down 12.8% against 8.7% for bitcoin, and over 30 days it's down 22.6% against 17.2%.

Co-host: And how far are they from their highs?

Host: Far. Bitcoin is about 45% below its $126,080 peak, and ether is about 60% below its $4,946 high.

Co-host: So what's pushing prices down?

Host: Three things. First, fund money is leaving. Bitcoin ETFs are now more than $1.5 billion in net outflows for the year, and CoinDesk says recent rapid redemptions explain the swoon.

Host: Second, the dollar is strong. The dollar index hit a 19-month high, near 103.2, and CoinDesk says that's pressuring risk assets. That goes together with Fed expectations. Traders expect the Fed to raise rates in December. Tuesday's inflation report ran hotter than expected, and Fed Governor Christopher Waller said the Fed should hike. At Thursday's close, futures priced in 29 basis points of hikes.

Co-host: Remind me what a basis point is?

Host: One-hundredth of a percentage point. So 29 points to a quarter-point move, with only a slim chance of a half-point one.

Co-host: So the market is leaning toward a standard quarter-point hike, not a big jump.

Host: Exactly. The third thing is a long-term trend line breaking. Bitcoin fell below its 200-week moving average, which is roughly its average price over the past four years. Traders often watch it as long-term support.

Co-host: So where does that leave us? Is this mostly a crypto problem?

Host: The Brief's read is that a good share of the push is coming from outside crypto, from the dollar and rate bets, plus the ETF selling inside it. And those forces are hardest on anyone who borrowed to buy at higher prices.

Co-host: Which brings us to the companies that bought crypto at those higher prices.

Host: Yes. Crypto treasury companies hold coins on their balance sheets, and when prices fall, that can turn into a financing problem fast. Three of them show how. Start with Strategy, the largest corporate bitcoin holder. MSCI said Wednesday it will remove Strategy from its USA index at the close on Nov. 30. A new screen labels the company "non-operating," and the rule doesn't mention bitcoin.

Co-host: And funds that track that index have to sell the stock.

Host: They do, by then. Strategy says such funds hold 3.1% of its shares. MSCI hasn't published an estimate of how much selling that means.

Co-host: Does that mean Strategy has to sell bitcoin?

Host: No. Nothing in the rules forces Strategy to sell bitcoin. The pressure lands on the stock instead. And that matters because Strategy relies on a share-price premium to fund new bitcoin purchases by selling stock.

Co-host: So the stock is the engine for buying more bitcoin, and the index change leans on the engine rather than on the bitcoin itself.

Host: That's it. The other two are about borrowing against falling coins. Nakamoto owes Kraken $165 million, which CoinDesk reports is more than the company's entire market value. About 70% of its coins are pledged to the exchange, and they were bought at roughly $118,000 each.

Co-host: So the coins securing the loan are worth far less than when they were bought.

Host: Much less. The third is BTCS, a Nasdaq-listed ether treasury firm. It sold ether at a loss to keep a $64 million loan on Aave healthy. Aave is a lending platform where borrowers post crypto as collateral, and the collateral can be sold if its value falls too far. BTCS has 46,676 ETH backing that loan, and CoinDesk says it could become eligible for liquidation if ether slides to around $1,700. That's about 13% below today's price.

Co-host: How do the bitcoin buy prices compare with where bitcoin is now?

Host: Bitcoin is at about $69,331. Strategy's average cost is $75,456 across 850,364 bitcoin, as of Nov. 8, so bitcoin is about 8% below that. Nakamoto's reported buy price is roughly $118,000, so bitcoin is about 41% below it.

Co-host: So what's the takeaway?

Host: Watch the borrowing more than the buying. A price below what a company paid hurts on paper, but a loan or an index rule can turn it into forced selling. For Strategy, the sources point to pressure on the stock rather than forced bitcoin sales.

Co-host: Let's move to the Binance theft. Where does that stand?

Host: The Justice Department said Thursday it has court authorization to seize or restrain more than $1.2 billion of the roughly $6.4 billion stolen from Binance on Oct. 29. More than $2.7 billion is frozen so far. The FBI blames North Korea's TraderTraitor group. North Korea denies involvement and calls the finding a political provocation.

Co-host: Those three dollar figures are easy to mix up. How do they fit together?

Host: Think of boxes nested inside each other. The $1.2 billion that can be seized or restrained sits inside the $2.7 billion that's frozen, and that sits inside the $6.4 billion stolen. So you can't add them. And the figures are minimums, since each says "more than." On that basis, at least 42% of the theft is frozen. Chainalysis's own count as of Nov. 3 was about $2.8 billion frozen.

Co-host: How fast did the freezing start?

Host: Fast. Chainalysis says freezes began by 5:14 p.m. Eastern, under an hour after funds started leaving around 4:20. But only stablecoins like USDT and USDC can be frozen by their issuers. So the attacker swapped $325 million of stablecoins for $285 million of ether in about 20 minutes, to get ahead of that.

Co-host: And the rest of the money?

Host: The sources don't make clear where the rest sits. At most, it's about $3.7 billion.

Co-host: The Justice Department also had a North Korea announcement about a scam on video calls.

Host: Yes, the same day. It said it seized the infrastructure behind "FaceStealer," a scheme it says North Korean hackers used to steal more than $400 million in crypto over 18 months. The hackers use accounts stolen from earlier victims to invite targets to a meeting. They play prerecorded webcam footage of people the target trusts, and sometimes AI deepfakes. Then they fake a technical glitch and offer a link to "fix" it, and that link installs malware.

Co-host: So the person on the call might not be there at all.

Host: Right. The DOJ also says the hackers increasingly target open-source developers, apparently to enable supply-chain attacks. The takeaway is that fast freezes can save real money, but they only reach what an issuer can freeze. And if a video call suddenly needs you to install something, stop and check with that person another way.

Co-host: Next is Illinois. What does its crypto tax do?

Host: Illinois's Digital Asset Tax Act puts a 0.2% levy on the full value of a digital asset each time an Illinois customer trades, transfers or stores it through a broker. That applies even with no sale or gain, and no other state has anything like it.

Co-host: So even storing it with a broker triggers the tax, with no profit involved.

Host: Yes. Crypto groups sued in state court. This month the Justice Department, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Wall Street lobby SIFMA and a crypto coalition led by the DeFi Education Fund, a16z, Paradigm and Uniswap filed briefs backing the challenge. The DOJ calls the tax discriminatory. SIFMA and the Chamber warn it reaches banks, custodians and advisers that offer crypto products. And the crypto brief says the definitions are vague enough to cover software developers and protocols that can't identify users.

Co-host: Is the tax in effect now?

Host: No. Illinois agreed in October to pause it until July 1, 2027, so it's on hold while the court sorts this out. The Brief reads the unusual alliance as a sign the fight is about how the tax is written, not only about crypto.

Co-host: Now Ethereum. The next big upgrade is on hold?

Host: Yes. The upgrade is called Glamsterdam. The security firm ChainSecurity found some projects that rely on assumptions that two of its changes, EIP-8037 and EIP-8038, would break. Those changes rework how much "gas," the fee for computing work, certain operations cost.

Co-host: So some existing contracts could stop working the way they were built to.

Host: That's the worry. Developers won't activate the upgrade on the Hoodi test network until it's resolved, and there's no new date. Since the Nov. 6 post, four reports have come in about deployed contracts that could break. Audit reports from Dedaub and ChainSecurity are due today, findings get presented Monday, and developers discuss next steps on Nov. 19.

Co-host: Is the upgrade in doubt?

Host: They say no decision is pre-committed, and they could revise the specs if too many contracts are affected. The Brief reads this as a delay, not a cancellation. It's the kind of problem a test network is meant to catch, and how long it lasts depends on what the audits show.

Co-host: There are a few more crypto items that don't depend on bitcoin's price.

Host: Three of them. DTCC, the securities infrastructure giant, plans to bring tokenized stocks, ETFs and U.S. Treasuries to Solana in a 2027 rollout. That adds Solana to Stellar and Arc on its roadmap.

Host: Visa and eligible companies can now settle VisaNet obligations with Western Union's USDPT, a stablecoin issued and held in custody by the federally chartered Anchorage Digital Bank.

Host: And President Trump named two potential commissioners each for the SEC and the CFTC, the first time he has done so in a year.

Co-host: What should listeners take from those?

Host: The Brief reads the first two as slower signs of where big institutions are putting effort, whatever bitcoin does day to day.

Co-host: Let's turn to the rest of the macro picture, starting with oil. It came up behind those rate bets.

Host: It did. Brent crude settled up 3.3% at $95.82 a barrel on Thursday after attacks on Saudi energy infrastructure escalated, and U.S. crude rose 2.6% to $88.74.

Co-host: And the diplomacy with Iran?

Host: President Trump said Washington doesn't need a deal with Iran. Trump asked Vice President JD Vance, who had played a role in the diplomacy, to focus on domestic issues. Qatar and Pakistan are still mediating. Then today, Iran's Revolutionary Guard said it destroyed a U.S. early-warning radar in Bahrain, in response to a strike on a telecom tower in southern Iran. That claim comes from Iranian state media, and the reporting the Brief draws on doesn't include a U.S. confirmation.

Co-host: How does oil connect back to the rate story?

Host: Reuters says oil and gas prices have added to inflation worries since the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran began in February. That's the background to the rate bets weighing on crypto. Treasuries sold off on Thursday too. The 10-year yield reached 5.1169%, its highest since Oct. 21, and closed at 5.105%.

Co-host: So as long as oil stays high, the worry about inflation stays alive.

Host: Yes, and that keeps rate bets, the dollar and yields in play for both crypto and stocks. Hormuz shipping and the mediation talks could change that quickly.

Co-host: On to stocks. The big news was Nvidia.

Host: Nvidia said Thursday that Jensen Huang resigned as CEO, president and board member, effective immediately. CFO Colette Kress is interim CEO while keeping the CFO role, and Harvey Jones becomes the board's first-ever chair.

Co-host: Why did Huang leave?

Host: Nvidia gave no reason, and the board will consider internal and external candidates. The exit followed days of reports about Huang's personal relationships. Huang admitted on Sunday to being unfaithful in the marriage. Reports also linked Huang to a woman US authorities suspect of spying for Beijing, and to a senior Nvidia executive who reported to Huang. Al Jazeera notes there's no established evidence Huang knowingly helped Beijing or that company secrets were compromised, and the board says it has no reason to believe national security was compromised.

Co-host: How did the market react?

Host: Money moved from Nvidia to its rivals. Nvidia fell 4.3%, though it was down more than 14% at one point before recovering. AMD rose 5.9% and Broadcom 5.5%, while the broader semiconductor index slipped just 0.5%.

Co-host: So the chip sector as a whole barely moved. Investors shifted money within it.

Host: That's it. The wider selling stayed fairly contained too: the S&P 500 fell 0.35% and the Nasdaq 0.39%. Nvidia now trades at about 12 times expected earnings, its lowest valuation since 2012, according to Reuters.

Co-host: Is it contained on the political side as well?

Host: No. US lawmakers are looking at the national-security side, and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick faces questions over how the administration oversees chip sales to China.

Co-host: So what's the takeaway for investors?

Host: The Brief reads it as investors treating this as an Nvidia problem, not an AI problem, though it stops short of calling a bottom. Peter Tuz, president of Chase Investment Counsel, told Reuters "there's a lot that remains unknown about this whole episode." Nvidia reports quarterly results Tuesday, Nov. 17, as previously scheduled, its first results since Huang's exit.

Co-host: Last story is about data centers and the Senate.

Host: Republican Senator Josh Hawley called Wednesday for a nationwide moratorium on new data centers until Congress guarantees households won't face higher power bills. Hawley hasn't put out detailed legislation, so it's unclear which projects would stop or for how long.

Co-host: That sounds like the opposite of what the rest of the Senate is doing.

Host: It is. On Monday the Senate voted 73–25 to advance a bipartisan bill that would speed permits for energy projects and transmission lines. It would also make data center operators pay the extra grid costs they cause. So the live Senate debate is about speeding the build-out, not stopping it.

Co-host: What about public opinion?

Host: It's moving. Pew found 60% of Americans uncomfortable with a new data center nearby, including 54% of Republicans and 68% of Democrats. And BlackRock CEO Larry Fink warned last month that a moratorium could trigger a recession, because so much investment now depends on AI infrastructure.

Co-host: So where does the argument stand?

Host: The Brief's read is that it's shifting from whether to build to who pays for the power. And the Senate bill already gives one answer: the operators.