Bitcoin Loses Ground, DeFi Under Attack: Key Events of the Week
Date: 2025-11-10 Author: Oliver Abernathy Categories: CRYPTO PAYMENTS
The past week has been one of the most tense for investors. Bitcoin fell below $100,000 twice, triggering a wave of panic in the market. Mass liquidations reached $1.78 billion in a single day. After a brief recovery to $105,000, the price fell back to $99,000, and is currently hovering around $102,700—almost 8% lower than a week ago. The cryptocurrency's market capitalization now stands at $2.04 trillion.
Following Bitcoin's decline, other assets have also plummeted. Ethereum peaked at $3,000, later rising to $3,400, but lost 11% over the week. Solana, XRP, and BNB also fell by 14%, 10%, and 9%, respectively. The Fear and Greed Index fell to 22 points, reflecting a state of "extreme fear" among market participants.
Amid the overall decline, interest in privacy coins unexpectedly surged: the segment's market capitalization increased by 40% in 24 hours, reaching $41.6 billion. Zcash led the way, gaining 45% over the week, Monero rose 23%, and Decred rose 100%.
ETFs were also affected: $1.22 billion was withdrawn from US Bitcoin funds in a week, while $507 million was withdrawn from Ethereum products. The Solana ETF was an exception, raising $136 million.
Meanwhile, the DeFi sector faced serious problems. On November 3, hackers hacked Balancer and withdrew $128 million by exploiting a vulnerability in its liquidity pools. Following this, the Berachain Foundation was forced to temporarily halt the network and conduct a hard fork to lock the stolen tokens.
The following day, Stream Finance came under attack, losing $93 million and freezing operations. As a result, its stablecoin, Staked Stream USD (xUSD), lost parity, triggering a chain reaction of liquidations. YieldsAndMore analysts estimated the potential damage from the crisis at $285 million. A few days later, the Stable Labs USDX price plummeted to $0.1, and Elixir announced the closure of deUSD support, initiating a buyback of tokens in USDC.
Despite market pressure, Ethereum demonstrated a record throughput of 24,192 transactions per second thanks to the integration of the Lighter L2 solution. This result was made possible by updates to Pectra and Dencun, which significantly accelerated the network. Vitalik Buterin noted that the network is scaling successfully, and analysts expect it to reach 100,000 TPS in the coming months.
Meanwhile, Kazakhstan announced plans to create a national crypto reserve of up to $1 billion. It will be based on assets seized in illegal mining cases. The funds will be invested through exchange-traded funds, and the project will form part of the government's strategy to integrate blockchain technologies into the economy. The launch is scheduled for 2026.
