Gold declined but still outperformed BTC last week

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Gold continued to fall but still outperformed BTC last week. Macro conditions softened following the Fed’s less dovish-than-expected tone, which saw most crypto segments fall (with AI the notable exception). Today we dive into recent ETF flow divergences, with SOL positive while BTC and ETH are seeing outflows, and the Solana DEX aggregator landscape shift as Titan and DFlow take share from Jupiter.

Indices

Over the past week, Gold extended its decline (-2.6%) to just above $4,000/oz but still outperformed BTC (-4.2%). Equities remained more resilient to macro weakness, with the S&P 500 up +0.3% and the Nasdaq 100 gaining +1.4%, supported by Big Tech earnings beats. 

In crypto, AI was the standout, up 20.2% while most segments declined. L1s fell 6.0% and L2s 16.9%, tracking weaker BTC and a 3.7% drop in network REV.

In AI plays, TAO rose 25.6% for the week, supported by Wednesday’s launch of the Bittensor Staked TAO ETP from Deutsche Digital Assets and Safello. Investors also priced Bittensor’s upcoming halving around Dec. 10, which will cut TAO mining rewards by 50%. VIRTUAL gained 40.6%, coinciding with Virtuals’ integration of Coinbase’s x402 protocol to enable stablecoin micropayments between agents and APIs.

Crypto miners appear to be consolidating after strong quarterly gains, with our index down 5.4% this week. WULF outperformed with an 11.5% gain following the announcement of another HPC colocation deal, while CORZ rose 11.3% after the proposed CoreWeave merger, widely viewed as undervaluing the company, fell through.

Charts for the week

Aggregate crypto ETF flows turned negative last week, dominated by BTC outflows offsetting earlier October inflows that had pushed daily totals above $1 billion. The slowdown reflects cooling demand following a strong early October run-up, compounded by the Fed’s less dovish tone last week despite delivering the anticipated 25bps rate cut.

The weakness was partly explained by a rising Treasury General Account (TGA) balance as US government spending slowed amid the shutdown. Higher TGA balances drain liquidity and have been a persistent headwind for risk assets in recent months.

However, SOL ETF flows picked up over the past few days, averaging roughly +0.04% to market cap per day, the strongest inflows relative to market cap last week. The relative pickup likely reflects renewed attention following the launch of Solana ETFs last week, which expanded institutional access to the asset.

Monthly DEX volume on Solana increased to ~$142 billion in October, up from ~$111 billion in September. The rebound was driven primarily by SOL-stablecoin activity, signaling some renewed momentum across Solana’s DeFi ecosystem.

Total DEX aggregator volume on Solana reached roughly $86 billion in October, also marking a rebound from summer lows. Jupiter remained dominant, but Titan and DFlow gained material market share, recording $7.2 billion and $7.5 billion, respectively, in monthly volume. The trend reflects increasing competition among Solana’s DEX aggregators as new players capture a larger share of trading activity, with October’s developments indicating Jupiter’s dominance may be under threat.

Titan reported a dominant win rate over Jupiter and DFlow throughout October, claiming to execute the majority of trades at the best price. While DFlow’s data feed was discontinued mid-month, Titan’s figures suggest consistent outperformance across most tracked pairs, though independent verification remains limited. Drama emerged in October after both DFlow and Jupiter asked Titan to remove their routers from its meta-aggregator, citing concerns that Titan’s system favored its own quotes while marketing fair competition.

Balancer suffered a major security breach, with onchain estimates showing over $100 million in assets drained. The attack targeted Balancer’s v2 pools, triggering significant outflows from vaults across several chains. The exploit appears to have stemmed from improper authorization during pool setup, allowing attackers to deploy malicious contracts that manipulated vault calls to drain funds across connected pools.

–Sam

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