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More →Crypto Long & Short: Why real-world assets need fixed-rate loans onchain
You're reading <a href="/newsletters/crypto-long-short/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Crypto Long & Short</a>, our weekly newsletter featuring insights, news and analysis for the professional investor. <a href="/newsletters/crypto-long-short/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Sign up here</a> to get it in your inbox every Wednesday. This is your institutional newsletter, Crypto Long & Short. This week: <em>…and if you’re looking for more institutional insights: ETF Central’s <a href="https://www.etfcentral.com/global-etf-survey/2026" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">>Trackinsight Global ETF Survey 2026</a>, produced with Calamos Investments and S&P Dow Jones Indices, finds nearly 7 in 10 professional investors are reassessing their ETF holdings.</em> <em>Plus, CoinDesk’s latest <a href="/research/digital-assets-quarterly-review-and-outlook-q3" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Digital Assets Quarterly Report</a> is out now.</em> <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/kim-klemballa-80101812/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">>- Kim Klemballa</a> <em>by <a href="/author/peter-gaffney" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Peter Gaffney, co-founder, O2O Capital Partners</a></em> Fixed-rate lending is the clearest growth lever for real-world assets (RWAs) in decentralized finance (DeFi). It unlocks a strategy that credit desks have run for decades but DeFi has never meaningfully implemented: buy a quality income asset, borrow against it at a locked rate below the asset’s yield and buy more of the asset. Stablecoins are steadily sitting around $300 billion in <a href="https://app.rwa.xyz/stablecoins" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">>supply</a> and aggregate <a href="https://o2ocapital.com/research/rwa-vaults-institutional-track-record" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">>vault assets</a> are nearing the $20 billion milestone. Morpho alone carries more than <a href="https://data.morpho.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">>$16 billion</a> in deposits, most of it in variable-rate markets priced on pool utilization, which serve crypto-native traders who manage liquid positions in real time but leave longer-dated borrowers with uncertainty. Fixed-rate, fixed-term lending closes that gap by matching the term of the loan to the duration of the collateral, especially for RWAs whose redemptions can settle anywhere from T+7 to T+90. With the borrow cost and maturity known at entry, institutional counterparties can underwrite an RWA looping vault the same way they approve conventional term financing. This is the same bedrock foundation that formed and grew traditional credit markets to $51 trillion in US <a href="https://www.sifma.org/research/statistics/research-quarterly-fixed-income-outstanding" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">>fixed income</a> versus $1.6 trillion in <a href="https://www.lsta.org/content/morningstar-lsta-leveraged-loan-index-analysis-december-2025/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">
Ken Griffin Says AI Is 'Almost Certainly' in a Bubble—And Compares GPUs to Airline Seats
Ken Griffin, founder of the Wall Street giant Citadel, <a href="https://www.marketwatch.com/story/ai-stocks-are-probably-in-a-bubble-but-might-be-worth-holding-onto-says-citadels-ken-griffin-87f535ce" target="_blank" class="sc-adb616fe-0 dJryYS" rel="nofollow">said</a> Tuesday that investors are “almost certainly” in an AI bubble—though he isn’t telling them to dump their AI stocks. “What’s left in the wake of these bubbles, if we want to use that word, is often game changing for the world. And the companies that are on the other side of that bubble are the market leaders for decades to come,” Griffin said at Citadel’s Future of Global Markets Conference in New York on Oct. 20 This reaches beyond tech investors, since the AI buildout has <a href="https://decrypt.co/359175/nvidia-earnings-steady-markets-ai-spending-debate-intensifies" target="_blank" class="sc-adb616fe-0 dJryYS" rel="nofollow">underpinned equity markets</a> over the past year, so many index funds and retirement accounts hold a slice of it. A bubble is what happens when prices climb far faster than the businesses behind them can justify, until reality catches up. Citadel is a hedge fund, a private firm that invests money for wealthy clients and institutions. But the fact that it seems like a bubble isn’t <i>that</i> big a deal if you look at the big picture, according to Griffin. “Any radical transformation of our economy is generally intertwined with a bubble,” he said, recalling the internet boom and adding that he wishes he had kept his Amazon stock. The companies that emerge on the other side of a bubble tend to lead markets for decades, he argued, though he stopped short of predicting a collapse. His own firm is a case study: Griffin said AI agents, software that carries out multistep tasks on its own, cut some high-level Citadel research from weeks to a couple of hours. Griffin compared GPUs, the graphics chips that many companies use to train and run AI models, to airline seats. Both have a very low marginal cost to run, meaning the extra expense of serving one more customer is tiny, so prices can collapse once supply outstrips demand. He pointed to the telecom boom around 2000, when companies laid more fiber-optic cable than demand required and communication prices fell. He also doubted that chips five or six years old, which still earn rental rates he called extraordinary, will keep doing so for another five or six years. Buyers are getting pickier, Griffin said, sorting which jobs justify premium models from OpenAI and Anthropic and which can run on cheaper open-source alternatives, meaning models anyone can download and run on their own computers. Corporate America has been uneven at extracting value from AI, he added, with companies studying their bills from the labs and asking where the productivity is. Gartner forecasts worldwide<a href="https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2025-09-17-gartner-says-worldwide-ai-spending-will-total-1-point-5-trilli
Global stock markets suffered a "Black Thursday," with all three major U.S. stock index futures falling.
According to Biji.com, global stock markets suffered a "Black Thursday" amid the cooling of AI trades and the deterioration of the situation in the Middle East. All three major U.S. stock index futures declined, with Tesla down about 5% in premarket trading. Meanwhile, spot gold fell 2%, spot silver dropped nearly 4%, and Brent crude oil rose 3%. The Nikkei 225 closed down 2.7%, the Shanghai Composite Index closed down 0.89%, and the Hang Seng Index closed down 3.03%.
U.S. initial jobless claims fell to 194,000, below expectations.
According to CoinWorld news, U.S. initial jobless claims fell to 194,000, below the expected 200,000 and the previous 199,000. This indicates that fewer Americans are applying for unemployment benefits, suggesting the labor market remains strong, which weakens the case for the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates. This could push the dollar and Treasury yields higher while putting pressure on stocks and the crypto market.
X Pay completed $1 million in financing, with 9 institutions among the investors.
According to financewire, X Pay, a payment infrastructure provider for AI agents and APIs, has announced the completion of $1 million in funding, with investors including nine institutions such as DCI, Credit Scend, Skyland Ventures, and Zerra Ventures.
Bitmine staked another $3.9 million in Ethereum, bringing its holdings to over 5.2 million ETH.
CoinWorld data: On October 21, 2026, Bitmine once again staked 159,728 ETH to Ethereum, worth approximately $390.6 million, bringing its total staked amount to over 5.2 million ETH, accounting for about 86.5% of its Ethereum treasury. This staking brought Bitmine's total staked ETH to approximately $12.78 billion. According to Lookonchain data, approximately 1.33 million ETH are currently waiting to enter the staking pool, while 149,000 ETH are waiting to exit, indicating increased short-term demand for entering the staking pool. According to Bitwise's quarterly staking report, as of the end of September, the total amount of ETH staked on the Ethereum chain was 43.8 million, accounting for 35.9% of the total supply.
Bybit secures Dubai spot trading license, targets derivatives approval
CoinWorld news: Bybit has announced that its Dubai entity has obtained a spot trading Virtual Asset Service Provider (VASP) license issued by the UAE's Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA), further expanding its local regulated exchange business. According to an announcement on October 21, Bybit Fintech FZE received authorization to provide trading services four years after establishing its international headquarters. This approval marks a new step in the crypto exchange's expansion into the UAE market, allowing its local entity to carry out specified activities under VARA's framework. VARA's public license register identifies Bybit Fintech FZE as an active VASP, with registration records showing the license issuance date as June 20, 2026. Bybit co-founder and CEO Ben Zhou said the company will continue to cooperate with local authorities, and although the license only covers spot trading, Bybit plans to pursue additional authorization for derivatives.
The WAX multi-chain bridge suffered an attack, with approximately 53,000 USDC and other assets stolen.
According to Blockaid monitoring, the WAX network's multi-chain bridge has suffered an attack involving WAX, Solana, and Ethereum. The attacker withdrew mapped tokens on the WAX chain without paying the corresponding assets, causing the bridge contracts on Solana and Ethereum to release the corresponding tokens. The attacker transferred approximately 52,986 USDC, 21,558 USDT, 840 DAI, 2.55 WETH, and 0.11 WBTC through 5 transactions.
U.S. pre-market news at a glance: Musk says Optimus robots may be delivered externally by the end of next year; SK Hynix accelerates deployment of iHBM technology; Anthropic launches AI agent Claude Duet.
Bitcoin World News, [US Stock Pre-Market News Overview: Musk Says Optimus Robots May Be Delivered Externally by the End of Next Year; SK Hynix Accelerates Deployment of iHBM Technology; Anthropic Launches AI Agent Claude Duet] Cailian Press, October 22 - The key US stock market financial news that investors need to focus on is as follows: 1. The three major US stock index futures fell collectively. Dow Jones Index futures fell 0.55%, S&P 500 Index futures fell 0.93%, and Nasdaq 100 Index futures fell 1.59%. 2. International oil prices both rose. WTI crude oil futures prices rose 2.38%, to $99.462 per barrel; Brent crude oil futures prices rose 2.92%, to $111.996 per barrel. 3. International spot gold and silver fell collectively. Spot gold prices fell 1.66%, to $4,072.35 per ounce; spot silver prices fell 3.71%, to $55.80 per ounce. 4. The three major European stock indices all moved lower. The UK FTSE 100 Index fell 0.16%, the French CAC40 Index fell 1.11%, and the German DAX30 Index fell 0.64%. 5. Musk stated that the company's Terafab self-developed chip factory project is progressing rapidly, with the goal of achieving large-scale mass production of some practical chips in the third quarter of 2028. 6. Musk stated that humanoid robots will become the world's largest industry, and Optimus robots are expected to be delivered externally by the end of next year.
Global market risk aversion is rising, and Bitcoin fell $3,000 in 15 hours.
According to data from Bijie.com: As risk aversion intensifies in global markets, Bitcoin fell by $3,000 within 15 hours, causing $165 million in long leveraged positions to be liquidated.