Airdrop Army

Satoshi’s brainchild, Bitcoin, played a slick game this week, almost touching $70K—just a stone’s throw from flipping that psychological barrier. Sitting pretty at $68,800-ish, it clocked nearly a 9% uptick. Ethereum didn’t sleep on it either, posting an 8.3% surge, and Solana slipped right behind with 7.2%. Meanwhile, legacy finance snored, with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq crawling below a 1% rise. So, yeah, crypto was cooking, and TradFi looked sluggish, to put it mildly.

Miner Pumpfest and Stock Rumble

But let’s not get hung up on the numbers alone. Bitcoin’s tear had its ripples—miners woke up in a big way. Hive Digital and Hut 8? Yeah, they flew—talking nearly 15% daily gains. Big dogs like CleanSpark, Riot, and Bitfarms also joined the party, jumping somewhere between 7-10%. Coinbase didn’t miss the hype train, its stock spiking almost 8%, while MicroStrategy, the infamous Bitcoin whale, saw its shares rocket more than 11%.

Of course, when Bitcoin runs, someone’s gotta feel the pain. In the past 24 hours, the carnage on centralized exchanges added up to $113M in liquidations. Bitcoin alone clocked $30M of that, but earlier in the week, a $68K spike led to nearly $300M in liquidated positions in just one chaotic day. So, yeah, big wins for some, but margin traders probably needed a shoulder to cry on.

Big Bank Talk and ETF Tsunami

Then, the suits couldn’t resist—JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley—both hit earnings and smiled at profits. But BlackRock CEO Larry Fink stole the limelight during their Q3 confab, dropping that Bitcoin is, well, an “asset class in itself.” Bold words, but they’re not just lip service. BlackRock’s spot Bitcoin ETF (IBIT) raked in a fat $1.07B in inflows this week alone, marking its best haul since mid-March. Institutions are sniffing around, that much is clear.

As the $70K beast stirs, all eyes are on those next earnings reports—Coinbase, MicroStrategy, Riot Platforms. When Oct 30 rolls around, the numbers will either feed the bulls or bring the bears back to town.