This weekend, I looked at three pieces of news side by side, and it felt like they were all saying the same thing: risk appetite in traditional finance is cooling, and sooner or later the crypto market will feel the chill too.
First, AI. According to the WSJ, OpenAI originally wanted to raise $30 billion in this round, but ended up getting only about $11 billion. Its target has now been lowered to a maximum of $20 billion, at a valuation of around $1.25 trillion. Even the hottest AI company is finding it harder to raise money. I don’t think this means people have lost faith in AI; it looks more like big money in the private markets doesn’t want to double down at this price. When private-market investors pull back, tech stocks lose one layer of support.
Next, crypto stocks. There’s a Nasdaq-listed company called NXTT with a market cap of around $7.8 million. Its books show it holds about 5,833 BTC, worth more than 50 times its own market cap at current prices. On October 30, U.S. Eastern Time, the board approved in writing a resolution allowing those coins to be sold in batches or used as collateral for financing. The rationale specifically mentioned the risks of quantum computing. Of the holdings, 5,000 BTC were bought in March 2025 at a cost of about $31,600 per coin, so if they are sold, they would be sold at a profit on paper.
What I care about isn’t these few thousand coins; it’s not a huge amount in the context of the whole market. What I care about is the shift in their role. These companies used to tell a story about accumulating coins: the more coins they held, the greater the potential upside for their stock price. Now the board has explicitly included selling in its resolution. Crypto stocks holding far more in coins than their market caps have shifted from buyers to potential sellers. The market will now start checking the books: how many other companies have the same setup?
The third item is the Moscow Exchange. It plans to pilot spot trading in BTC, ETH, and USDT starting December 1. Retail investors will first have to pass a knowledge test, and each intermediary will be allowed to buy no more than 300,000 rubles’ worth per year. The limit is small, but the direction is clear: traditional exchanges are racing to become gateways to crypto.
What’s interesting is that all these things happened in the same week. Money is tightening on one side, while the door is opening on the other. More access points are a good thing in the long run, but that answers who will be able to get in later; it doesn’t answer whether people are willing to take risks right now. In the short term, risk appetite still depends on how U.S. tech stocks are doing.
The Nasdaq fell 2.9% on Friday, but crypto basically didn’t follow that night. Crypto hasn’t followed yet this time; we’ll see on Monday whether it catches up with a decline.
For now, I’m watching just two things. First, whether U.S. tech stocks can stop falling on Monday. Second, whether another treasury company comes out and says it plans to sell coins.
If tech stocks stabilize on Monday, and no second treasury company follows suit and says it plans to sell over the next week or two, then my view that cooling risk appetite will spill over into crypto is invalid. I’ll own that.
A quick check on my SOXL call from yesterday. I said semiconductor leverage was taking a hit overnight, but that it hadn’t spilled over into crypto, and that we’d check the 70 level again at Monday’s open. SOXL is currently around 79.1 on Gate, with a 24-hour low of 76.75, still a long way from 70. But trading is thin over the weekend, so this doesn’t tell us much. This one is still waiting on Monday.
For observation only; not investment advice.
First, AI. According to the WSJ, OpenAI originally wanted to raise $30 billion in this round, but ended up getting only about $11 billion. Its target has now been lowered to a maximum of $20 billion, at a valuation of around $1.25 trillion. Even the hottest AI company is finding it harder to raise money. I don’t think this means people have lost faith in AI; it looks more like big money in the private markets doesn’t want to double down at this price. When private-market investors pull back, tech stocks lose one layer of support.
Next, crypto stocks. There’s a Nasdaq-listed company called NXTT with a market cap of around $7.8 million. Its books show it holds about 5,833 BTC, worth more than 50 times its own market cap at current prices. On October 30, U.S. Eastern Time, the board approved in writing a resolution allowing those coins to be sold in batches or used as collateral for financing. The rationale specifically mentioned the risks of quantum computing. Of the holdings, 5,000 BTC were bought in March 2025 at a cost of about $31,600 per coin, so if they are sold, they would be sold at a profit on paper.
What I care about isn’t these few thousand coins; it’s not a huge amount in the context of the whole market. What I care about is the shift in their role. These companies used to tell a story about accumulating coins: the more coins they held, the greater the potential upside for their stock price. Now the board has explicitly included selling in its resolution. Crypto stocks holding far more in coins than their market caps have shifted from buyers to potential sellers. The market will now start checking the books: how many other companies have the same setup?
The third item is the Moscow Exchange. It plans to pilot spot trading in BTC, ETH, and USDT starting December 1. Retail investors will first have to pass a knowledge test, and each intermediary will be allowed to buy no more than 300,000 rubles’ worth per year. The limit is small, but the direction is clear: traditional exchanges are racing to become gateways to crypto.
What’s interesting is that all these things happened in the same week. Money is tightening on one side, while the door is opening on the other. More access points are a good thing in the long run, but that answers who will be able to get in later; it doesn’t answer whether people are willing to take risks right now. In the short term, risk appetite still depends on how U.S. tech stocks are doing.
The Nasdaq fell 2.9% on Friday, but crypto basically didn’t follow that night. Crypto hasn’t followed yet this time; we’ll see on Monday whether it catches up with a decline.
For now, I’m watching just two things. First, whether U.S. tech stocks can stop falling on Monday. Second, whether another treasury company comes out and says it plans to sell coins.
If tech stocks stabilize on Monday, and no second treasury company follows suit and says it plans to sell over the next week or two, then my view that cooling risk appetite will spill over into crypto is invalid. I’ll own that.
A quick check on my SOXL call from yesterday. I said semiconductor leverage was taking a hit overnight, but that it hadn’t spilled over into crypto, and that we’d check the 70 level again at Monday’s open. SOXL is currently around 79.1 on Gate, with a 24-hour low of 76.75, still a long way from 70. But trading is thin over the weekend, so this doesn’t tell us much. This one is still waiting on Monday.
For observation only; not investment advice.