Farewell to Uptober, Flying Tulip Explained and How to Play the CME Gap

This last week has delivered on the news, but not on the price action. We’ve seen the expected rate cut from the Fed, the confirmation that QT will end in December, positive talks between Xi and Trump over tariffs and plenty of crypto-related good news into the bargain - and yet the charts are a bloodbath.

Today’s forward guidance looks at whether there’s any hopium left in the tank as November gets underway, and we also have a sniff of DeFi legend Andre Cronje’s Flying Tulip - one of the more hotly-anticipated ICOs on the horizon. Prices may be in the doldrums, but the building continues.

📉 CME Gaps 📉

If you’re a regular watcher of our Monday live news show, you’ll know that Nic never misses an opportunity to point out when a CME gap has opened up. These peculiar quirks of the crypto market are a consequence of crypto’s 24/7 trading hours being at odds with the more sedate timekeeping of TradFi and they’re a reliable indicator of where Bitcoin’s price is headed.

In today’s video, we explain what CME gaps are, why they occur and why they matter. We also highlight why they may soon become a thing of that past and show you how - with some good risk management - you can use them to book a profit.

You can watch that video here.

📈 Crypto Market Forecast 📈

Historically speaking, October has normally been a very bullish month for the crypto market. The only exceptions have been bear market years, such as 2018 and 2014. A bearish October in what is supposed to be a bull market year is therefore truly unprecedented. Thankfully, history does not suggest that a bearish October means a bearish November, but then again, there isn’t much data there.

In any case, when you realize that almost every asset class in the world, including US stocks, foreign stocks, and precious metals all exploded higher in October, you understand that there must be some factor that has been holding the crypto market down. Consider that last week there were dozens of objectively bullish announcements like this one, but prices did nothing.

Concrete evidence that some factor has been holding the crypto market down can be found in the Global M2 Liquidity vs. Bitcoin chart, which is harder to find on social media these days. That might have something to do with the fact that Bitcoin started decoupling from global liquidity over the summer, which is arguably why the crypto market has struggled since then.

This begs the question of what this factor could be. There are only two possible answers. It’s either a crypto-specific factor, like a systemically important entity within the crypto market went bankrupt sometime over the summer, or a macro factor that’s somehow specific to crypto, like issues in private credit that are creating issues in crypto more so than in other industries.

That said, it’s quite possible that liquidity is nothing more than a narrative, and that the real reason why crypto’s price action has been so unprecedented is because it’s done the inverse of what everyone expected. August was supposed to be green, but it was red, September was supposed to be red, but it was green, and October was supposed to be green, but it was red.

November is looking like a coin toss in this regard, because in 2021 November was red, but in 2017 it was green. November was green in 2013, but some have argued that the 2013 cycle is not as significant since large investors didn’t get involved until 2017. Regardless, the fact is that historical trends haven’t helped in recent months, and they likely won’t this month either.

As such, the only things we can count on are the old reliables: macro and crypto catalysts. The good news is that there are plenty coming up in November, and most of them could be bullish. The bad news is what we’ve all noticed by now, and that’s that bearish catalysts take crypto prices down, and bullish catalysts either have no effect or result in a sell-the-news event.

Even so, it’s worth keeping an eye on these catalysts, because they will start to matter once the factor that’s been holding down the crypto market is addressed or resolved. The main macro catalyst to watch in November is the US government shutdown ending. The latest possible date for this is currently estimated to be around November 21st, according to this recent report.

The reason why the US government shutdown ending is important is because, historically speaking, this corresponded to a drop in the DXY. As you might have seen, the DXY recently started rising, and this has basically become a headwind for assets, especially crypto. If the DXY were to continue rallying from here, the crypto bull market could be over, as seen here.

Another reason why the US government shutdown ending is important is because it will open the door to multiple crypto-specific catalysts, such as the approval of further spot altcoin ETFs by the SEC; the SEC introducing its highly anticipated exemptive relief order; the CFTC easing regulations around TradFi exchanges offering crypto products, and other such announcements.

There’s just one small problem you may have noticed though, and that’s that these catalysts all rest on one thing: the ability for US politicians to get their affairs in order and pass a budget for 2026. No offense to any US politicians reading, but it seems that the capacity for cooperative discourse is minimal these days, to put it lightly. It may require a crisis to get real consensus.

In sum then, the crypto market is beginning November in truly uncharted territory, with multiple crypto and macro catalysts which could take time to appear, and may have a minimal impact on prices. All we can do this week is wait for a clear trend in the crypto market. Just remember that Bitcoin has bottomed in the first 10 days of every month since July 2024 - expect volatility.

🌷 Flying Tulip 🌷

Primary token sales/ICOs have been one of the best performing markets in crypto over the past couple of months. In fact, they’ve become so popular that Coinbase decided to pay $375M to acquire CT legend Cobie’s token sale platform Echo.

After all, most quality ICOs have consistently provided investors with at least a 5x return on their initial capital. The keyword being ‘quality’ there. That said, spotting these quality ICOs has been getting harder as the market gets ever more crowded.

That’s why in this week’s newsletter we’re taking a look at Flying Tulip – one of the more hyped upcoming token sales that we believe qualifies as a quality ICO opportunity.

If this is your first time hearing of Flying Tulip, it’s a soon-to-launch DeFi protocol from Yearn Finance and Sonic Labs founder Andre Cronje – a man widely regarded as the "Father of DeFi." Like his other projects, Flying Tulip is another attempt by Cronje at accelerating DeFi.

In many ways, it’s fair to say that Flying Tulip is the latest in a line of projects attempting to perfect the full-stack DeFi suite. Notably, other projects in this niche include the likes of Hyperliquid and Plasma – both with their own approach to bringing the ‘CEX trading’ experience onchain. That said, Flying Tulip is one of the more innovative projects to take a crack at this niche.

Specifically, Flying Tulip is a full-stack onchain exchange that focuses on capital efficiency. It introduces a single cross-margin system that allows users to use idle or deposited capital across any of its different DeFi product verticals as collateral when trading with leverage. For instance, funds across spot, lending and staking accounts can be used as collateral for perps trading without moving them to a dedicated account. This model promotes capital efficiency by allowing users to simultaneously earn yield on their assets while using them as collateral for trades.

That said, with great yield comes great risk.

No doubt the October 10th liquidation cascade is still fresh in the minds of those who were trading with leverage at the time. Thankfully, Flying Tulip introduces a number of protections in its protocol design that limits account risk during sudden crashes or market manipulation. While we can’t go over all of them in depth, we’ll mention that the most notable ones are its native onchain insurance, oracle-less security model and real-time collateral controls.

For instance, Flying Tulip’s insurance module will allow users to buy coverage against smart-contract exploits, forced liquidations, or market crashes directly inside the same cross-margin account. It uses a user-sourced capital pool model with premiums flowing to depositors that automatically pay validated claims.

Similarly, Flying Tulip protects itself from flash loan attacks by using a flash-resistant, time-weighted pricing sourced from its own order-flow instead of external feeds vulnerable to manipulation or downtime. It also prevents sudden liquidations and protocol bad debt during times of flash market crashes by auto-adjusting its loan-to-value ratios, borrow caps, and leverage limits based on observed volatility in the protocol’s own trading engine.

If all that has got you hooked, let’s circle back to the ICO.

After all, out of all its risk protections, the ICO model is the most impressive of all from an investor perspective. It features a gamified fundraising model that will supposedly protect investors from post-TGE downside. Specifically, it embeds a perpetual put option that lets primary buyers redeem their contributed assets 1-for-1. It does this by using raised capital as locked reserves, the yield on which will fund the team’s operations and ongoing token buybacks.

The ICO sale will see nearly $800M worth of tokens being sold at $1B valuation. Another $200M has already been raised via seed funding from VCs such as Brevan Howard Digital, CoinFund, DWF Labs, Lemniscap, and many more. Notably, there is no founder, team or treasury allocation of tokens. Both the seed and ICO funding are at the same valuation, with 100% of the supply going to these investors.

Besides providing participants with the opportunity for a refund, the perpetual put option introduces a mechanism that effectively burns the allotted token supply when the investor requests a refund. In effect, this creates an interesting dynamic where high conviction investors hold FT tokens in free supply, cautious investors act as vested investors artificially suppressing circulating supply, and low conviction investors seeking refunds burn supply. The tokenomics model rewards liquid token supply holders with an increase in their stake in the project with every token burn.

Also, since the project runs on the yield generated from ICO deposits, the team is incentivised to keep investors from not requesting a refund, since refunds equal less money staked to generate yield and fund operations.

In summary then, Flying Tulip is definitely one to keep on your watchlist. The token sales for the project will occur in four stages, with the first stage happening on Impossible Finance and Coinlist. Announcements around the other stages are expected soon. Keep your eyes peeled.

🔥 Hot Deal Of The Week 🔥

Think we have hit max-pain for altcoins in the short term? Then you’ll want to get your positions ready for the next leg up and get exposure to the narratives you think will run the hardest.

To do that, you’ll need a top exchange! One exchange that is growing increasingly popular amongst our team is Toobit. Over there, we’ve been able to secure you an exclusive bonus up to $100,000 and up to 50% trading fee discount for life!

👉 Try out Toobit now!

🔮 Video Pipeline 🔮

* Coinbase Q4 Report: Q4 outlook, investor sentiment & how the market is maturing?
* US Gov Bitcoin: How the US became the largest BTC holder & what it will do with it?
* Tokenized RWAs: How they work and why they are the future of digital finance?
* CoinGecko Q3 Report: The top crypto trends according to CoinGecko!
* CEX vs DEX 2.0: The pros and cons of each and which we use?
* ISM Cycle Extension: How the crypto bull market could extend into 2026!

🏆 What's New at CoinBureau.com This Week? 🏆

* The Ultimate Guide to the Top Cryptocurrencies to Buy in November 2025
* Comparing Kraken and Coinbase: Which Crypto Exchange is Right for You In 2025?
* How To Survive A Crypto Crash: Navigate the Volatile Market with Confidence!
* Bitget vs Bybit 2025: Which Exchange Should You Choose?  
* Zcash (ZEC) Explained: What It Is, Pros & How To Use It

Press Release:

* Blockchain Life 2025 in Dubai: a record 16,730 attendees and a new launch by Pavel Durov

📖 Quote of the Week 📖

The crypto market may seem irrational, but when you realise how society functions, it may be the most rational of all.

"Too many people spend money they haven't earned, to buy things they don't want, to impress people that they don't like." - Will Rogers

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.