It’s safe to say that few in the crypto community are going to look back on November 2025 with any fondness. The best you can say about it is that it's nearly over. Time to move on.
Today’s forward guidance looks at where we may be going from here, given that breaks to the upside and the downside seem to be equally likely. We also look at why, with market conditions and sentiment being as bad as they are, big crypto industry players are forging ahead with deployments and product launches. Do they know something we don’t?
Speaking of which, Monad launched this week to much fanfare. We look back on the launch and assess whether it’s up only for MON from here, or whether this is just another big fanfare that’s set to fizzle out.
📺 How Much Bitcoin to Retire? 📺
One of the more well-worn debates on the timeline is around how much someone would need to retire. There are plenty of variables, not least where you plan to retire to, how many dependents you have and what sort of lifestyle you want to live. The dollar amount varies widely.
But, what about the amount in BTC? How many sats do you need to stack to make sure the future you is able to live their best life and - crucially - how can those sats be put to work for you? With pension systems across the world coming under increasing strain, these are questions that need answering.
In today’s video, we do just that. We look at how the state pension Ponzi is coming apart at the seams and how Bitcoin offers a way out of a mess that’s only going to get messier. That future you will thank you for your attention in this matter.
You can watch that video here.
📈 Crypto Market Forecast 📈
At the time of writing, Bitcoin is on track to have its worst November since the 2022 bear market, while Ethereum is on track to have its worst November since the 2018 bear market. If that didn’t put things into perspective, November 2022 was when FTX collapsed. As such, you could say that the price action of November 2025 is comparable to the bear market lows of 2022.
This is unprecedented, especially since 2025 is supposed to be a bull market year. The result is that everyone is trying to figure out what comes next. As we mentioned at the start of November, seasonality doesn’t seem to be helpful here. The outcome is everyone looking for correlations with previous cycles, arriving at the conclusion that crypto will get a lower high.
In other words, most participants in the crypto market believe the bear market is starting, but we’re likely to get one more bounce before lower lows. Naturally, everyone is promising themselves that they’ll get out during this bounce, and advising others to do the same. As most of you will know, the market has a habit of doing the opposite of what everyone expects.
If this is the case, then there are two possible scenarios: the crypto market recovers and goes much higher than everyone expects, or the crypto market continues falling lower with no relief rally. Some have argued that the most likely scenario is that the crypto market will continue falling, simply because this would be the most painful scenario for participants, at least in theory.
In practice, the most painful scenario could be that crypto prices recover and rise more than people expect. That’s just because this is how most traders appear to be positioned on exchanges. If you look at liquidation heatmaps, you’ll notice that there are more positions waiting to be liquidated if prices go up vs. positions waiting to be liquidated if prices go down.
Put differently, more traders would lose money if prices went up from here vs. if prices went down from here. This is why you’ll often see traders talking about market makers and whales wanting to ‘grab liquidity’ from traders - purposely push prices up or down to liquidate others. The catch is that these positions could be fake, intended to give the impression of this scenario.
This is called spoofing, and as you might have guessed, it’s quite common in crypto. This begs the question: if you can’t trust these indicators because they can be manipulated, which indicators do you look at to get a sense of which way the markets are headed next? Some would say the answer is to look at what the largest players in crypto are doing, not just saying.
Take Monad for example. It raised over 400 million dollars from some of the biggest players in the crypto industry, and many believe that it was delaying the launch of its MON coin until crypto market conditions were more optimal. If this is the case, then the listing of MON on exchanges last week might be one sign that market conditions could improve in December.
Another example is the announcements we’ve been getting from exchanges such as Coinbase, foreshadowing big developments in December. It stands to reason that these exchanges want to launch these products and services when market conditions are improving, not deteriorating. The caveat is that we’ve seen such announcements at the start of bear markets before.
And this is just what’s going on in crypto. On the macro front, there are multiple catalysts expected for December, such as the Fed ending QT and lowering rates, the Ukraine war ending, and Trump’s tariffs being struck down by the Supreme Court. Logically, these would be bullish for the markets, but there are also bearish macro catalysts that could strike the markets down.
One of these is the US potentially invading Venezuela under the guise of fighting drug cartels, something Trump recently hinted would happen. Some geopolitical experts believe that the US will begin large scale operations in Venezuela after Thanksgiving, which was last week. Taken together, this suggests that December will be very volatile, both in crypto and in macro.
The only question is which way this volatility will go. Given the range of possible catalysts, the answer could be both - to the upside and to the downside. Seeing as crypto is incredibly oversold in the short term, upside volatility seems to be more likely in the next couple of weeks. But again, this is what everyone knows and expects, so it’s possible the opposite will occur.
🔬 Monad Microscope 🔬
It’s been just over a month since we last spoke about Monad in this newsletter.
In that time, Monad released its airdrop claim portal, unveiled its tokenomics, conducted an ICO on Coinbase and launched its mainnet. Safe to say, it’s been a busy month for the ecosystem.
In our previous coverage of Monad, we predicted that it would do well post-launch due to its seemingly strong community. We also speculated that its airdrop could be just as massive as HYPE. So, how did it all pan out?
Well… the Monad airdrop was decent, but it turned out very different from Hyperliquid’s. For one, the total supply of $MON airdropped was 3.33%. This is roughly a tenth of Hyperliquid’s 31% supply airdrop. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that the average airdrop per wallet wasn’t as large as HYPE. The total value of the $MON airdrop at launch was roughly $105M – far from HYPE’s ~$1B.
That said, approximately ~76K wallets were eligible to claim the $MON airdrop, with the average claim per wallet standing at $1,380 (at current prices). A closer look at the data shows that fewer than 500 wallets received an airdrop worth over $25,000, with just 34 of those wallets receiving over $125,000.
As of the time of writing, roughly 60% of all airdropped wallets have sold their allocations completely. On the other hand, ~30% of airdrop wallets have yet to sell a single token from their allocation. Most of the top wallets by airdrop value have at least partially realised profits on their allocation. On one hand, the intense selling from top wallets isn’t really a great sign of long-term confidence. On the other hand, a good chunk of sell pressure from airdrop wallets is now out of the way, potentially indicating price resilience in the short term.
Speaking of which, $MON has been see-sawing up and down in price since launch. A look at the charts shows that it saw a brief dip below its ICO price of $0.025 immediately after launch. However, it then followed up with an impressive ~130% rally that saw it almost touch $0.05 just 48 hours after launch.
While the initial dip is likely from airdrop wallets selling their allocation, the positive price action that came after is most likely due to a mix of ecosystem adoption and some low float, high FDV magic.
You see, $MON currently has only 10% of its total supply unlocked and circulating - giving it a market cap of $400M and FDV of $4B. This low market cap creates a perception of the token being undervalued relative to other layer 1 chains.
Combine this with the fact that the broader market is relatively muted given the PTSD from the 10th October liquidation event and it’s easy to see why speculators would ape into $MON post-launch. Not to mention the notable lack of incentives for ICO participants to sell their tokens. Firstly, the token is still trading close to ICO price. Most sale participants would likely not want to book profits just yet, especially since the next major unlock (team and investors) will be a year from now. The low float bodes well for near-term price action.
Second, the token sale happened on Coinbase’s new ICO platform. You see, it’s almost guaranteed that the BASE token sale will be hosted on this platform – if there ever is such a sale. No one wants to risk losing potential allocation chances for the BASE sale by choosing to sell their MON tokens so soon after launch. In our opinion, these factors contribute quite a bit to MON’s post-launch price resilience. After all, nearly 70% of MON’s current circulating supply comes from coins sold via the Coinbase ICO.
As for whether the Monad mainnet had a successful launch, the jury is still out. Here are the stats for week one:
Defillama shows that TVL has been steadily climbing, rising from $73M on day one to roughly $150M at the time of writing. Most of this TVL growth comes from DeFi yields being farmed on Uniswap, Curve, Morpho, and Upshift.
As for activity, data from Nansen shows that daily active addresses stand at ~120,000 and average daily transactions stand at 3M. Currently, memecoin trading seems to be the main driver of activity on the network.
On that note, here’s a series of words for you – Molandak, Chog, Salmonad, Mouch, Moyaki, Lyraffe, Nads.
No, that’s not an ancient spell for world domination.
Those are the names of various Monad memecoins that were launched this week. Most of these coins did parabolic moves upward and crashed immediately after. Currently, they seem to be struggling to regain the price momentum they initially experienced, with just a single Monad meme currently over $1M in marketcap. In other words, most of this speculative activity likely came from mercenary traders looking to capitalise on the post-launch hype. As of now, memecoin trading seems to have officially peaked in the first couple of days post launch. Data from Wormholescan confirms this - nearly 85% of the funds bridged (volume) to Monad post launch have gone back to other chains.
That said, it isn’t all doom and gloom for Monad. With 38.5% of $MON’s supply set aside for ecosystem development, we could see early activity on the network being driven by token subsidies and rewards.
One of the more notable features of Monad is its user-friendly app directory and discovery page. We suspect early users of apps on Monad’s Momentum (incentive) program could farm rewards that compensate for any possible price decline in the near term. On that note, it might be a good idea to keep a watch on some of the ecosystem dashboards (Monadvision and Nadradar) as they may reveal viral or under-farmed applications within the ecosystem. Currently, Nad.fun seems to have cemented its place as the main token launchpad on Monad. Consumer and gaming apps like Bro.fun, lootGO and Lumiterra are also featured prominently on the Monad app directory.
Overall, the short-term prospects of Monad look good. Whether they can survive a potential bear market is an entirely different story. Might be wise to keep an eye nevertheless.
🔥 Hot Deal Of The Week 🔥
If we are in an extended cycle, then now might be a good time to rebalance that portfolio. To do that, you’ll need a top exchange.
Exchanges this year have implemented a host of new features such as being able to buy and sell on-chain assets easily through an exchange account, AI trading assistants and more. One of the exchanges we are most impressed by is Bitget and we’ve even been able to get you an exclusive bonus up to $50K!
Additionally, we are giving away a $5,000 portfolio to one of our livestream viewers. Make sure you watch our stream to find out how to participate.
🔮 Video Pipeline 🔮
Coin Bureau
* New Altcoin ETFs: New sot altcoin ETFs & if they signal alt outperformance?
* Tether Gold: Worth it?
* Galaxy Report: Insights you need to know!
Coin Bureau Finance
* Economic Collapse: The historical warning signs that indicate we are heading there!
* Dark Side of AI: Psychological harm, cognitive decline and asset bubbles
* Equity Markets: Soaring S&P 500 marks a weakening market!
🏆 What's New at CoinBureau.com This Week? 🏆
* Understanding the Synergy Between Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain
* Monero Mining Explained: Is It Still Profitable In 2025?
* Binance & OKX Comparison 2025: The Battle of the Best Crypto Exchanges!
* How to Buy Zcash (ZEC): Complete Step-by-Step Guide for 2025
📖 Quote of the Week 📖
The only thing more volatile than the markets is our collective crypto sentiment.
“The market is a pendulum that forever swings between unsustainable optimism and unjustified pessimism.” - Jason Zweig
Team Coin Bureau
Disclosure: Authors may own cryptoassets named in this newsletter. These are unqualified opinions, and a Coin Bureau newsletter, is meant for informational purposes only. It is not meant to serve as investment advice. Please consult with your investment, tax, or legal advisor.
The Coin Bureau Editorial Team are your dedicated guides through the dynamic world of cryptocurrency. With a passion for educating the masses on blockchain technology and a commitment to unbiased, shill-free content, we unravel the complexities of the industry through in-depth research. We aim to empower the crypto community with the knowledge needed to navigate the crypto landscape successfully and safely, equipping our community with the knowledge and understanding they need to navigate this new digital frontier.
