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  • 🛒 Crypto went on Black Friday sale early.

🛒 Crypto went on Black Friday sale early.

PLUS: Bitcoin nukes to $82K, leverage unwinds everywhere, altcoins get carpet-discounted, Tether turns into a gold whale and Argentina’s Milei walks into a crypto scandal.

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Cryptopolitan News
November 21, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 8 minutes

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Black Friday is a week away, and crypto didn't wait.

Bitcoin plummeted to about $82,000, the steepest decline in months, and so did everything else (it was like someone clicked a global discount button).

ETH, SOL, AVAX– everything is trading at a discount no one asked for.

And unlike in previous crashes, there’s no villain this time. No FTX. No Luna. No hack. Just an overloaded system finally snapping after weeks of stubborn leverage.

In early October, Bitcoin was coasting over $126K. Then it all went down with a massive $19B liquidation event on October 10th followed by steady bleeding across the entire market. Support levels gave way one after another until there was nothing beneath them but air.

The month of November is now on track to become Bitcoin’s worst such performance since mid-2022 and the Terra collapse that nuked half the industry. But the selloff today is quieter – more mechanical than emotional.

In the past 24 hours, around$1B in longs have been liquidated, open interest dropped 11%, and there was a massive surge of derivative volume as traders attempted to scramble to reposition. The traders who remain aren't confident – they're cautious.

Even equities felt the blowback. Nvidia-linked chip stocks fell across Asia, gold cooled, and the hopes of a near-term Fed rate cut faded after a stronger-than-expected U.S. jobs print. Everything risk-on is under pressure.

This doesn’t feel like panic. It feels like a reset.

Too much leverage accumulating in too many corners, and eventually the market did what it always does – it snapped back.

The question now is whether this is the bottom…

or just another step down in a month where nothing seems to be holding.

Poll: Do you think this Black-Friday-style crypto crash is the bottom, or is more pain coming?

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📊 Market Watch

1️⃣ Tether slowly becomes a gold whale

Tether is now, Jefferies says, one of the largest drivers behind gold’s rally in 2024–25, having hoarded more than 116 tonnes, more than some central banks.

Its gold-backed token XAUt and reserves in USDT that back it now absorb roughly 2% of global quarterly demand, restricting supply and supporting gold’s side near the $4,000/oz level after a modest pullback.

With 100 tons to buy this year, Tether maybe is affecting the gold market more than the Fed, China, or BRICS.

2️⃣ Binance becomes an altcoin casino

Altcoins now account for 60% of all Binance trading, overtaking BTC and ETH activity. It’s not an altseason, it’s simply traders searching for volatility in curated tokens, niche resurgences such as ZEC and deep liquidity pools.

Even as it calms down, Binance alt volumes are higher than they were at the start of 2025 fueled by stablecoin liquidity and perp-driven speculation across CEX + Hyperliquid.

3️⃣ Strategy (MSTR) sinks below its own Bitcoin treasury

The playbook: sell stock, buy BTC is breaking down as the stock falls faster than Bitcoin. Preferred shares are bleeding too, raising fears Strategy may struggle to keep the flywheel running if BTC stays under pressure.

👀 Are You Watching?

One trader on Hyperliquid has been quietly running one of the most profitable shorts in crypto, and he’s still holding.

Address 0x5D2F opened a 20x leveraged BTC short at ~$111K six months ago and is now sitting on $24M in unrealized profit, plus another $9.2M collected in funding fees.

 đŸ¤ Top Tweets

🎭 Culture Watch

Congress in Argentina accuses President Javier Milei of “alleged fraud” after promoting the LIBRA token, which they say played a role in generating millions in losses across 114,000 wallets.

The report asserts that Milei’s post provided LIBRA with the necessary volume to fizzle out, highlighting 16 meetings he had been part of involving those who developed its token sort as proof it was about more than “tech optimism.”

Milei has denied any wrongdoing, claiming he had merely disseminated the project.

But legislators say this resembles another token he pumped — KIP — which also crashed in days.

His party is preventing the report from being released for now, and the incoming Congress is not likely to swiftly resurrect it.

But the charge is direct: Argentina’s “crypto-president” may have shouted a rug, not a revolution.

POLL: Do you think Milei cross the line by promoting LIBRA?

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Friday headline picks

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