Morning Minute: Crypto Plummets as Jensen Huang Exits Nvidia
Morning Minute is a daily newsletter written by Tyler Warner. The analysis and opinions expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Decrypt. And check out our daily news show 'FOMO HOUR' covering all of the top stories and market action.
GM!
Today’s top news:
- Crypto majors fall further, BTC tags 200-week ma; BTC at $69.2k
- Jensen Huang leaves NVDA; stock falls then rebounds
- U.S. DOJ moves to seize $1.2B in crypto from NK’s Binance hack
- Binance publishes proof of reserves, says exchange now fully replenished
- ETF outflows slow, smallest outflows in 7 sessions
→📉 Crypto Sells Off as Jensen Huang Exits Nvidia
Two weeks ago, The New York Times reported that Nvidia’s CEO had a close relationship with an executive at a Singapore chip buyer under US export-control investigation. Things escalated quickly from there.
On Sunday, Jensen Huang told employees he had been unfaithful to his wife of 40 years, and Nvidia’s board opened an investigation into whether he had been targeted by a foreign intelligence operation. On Wednesday, The Times reported a second relationship, this one with an executive who reports directly to him. Three Republican committee chairs were preparing a subpoena.
Thursday morning he resigned as president, CEO and board member, effective immediately. The company gave no reason.
CFO Colette Kress takes over as interim CEO while keeping the CFO job. She has been Nvidia’s finance chief since 2013, through the entire AI buildout, and spent 13 years at Microsoft before that. The board also named Harvey Jones, formerly of Synopsys, as its first-ever chair, and started a search that will consider internal and external candidates with no timeline attached.
The stock fell as much as 14% before recovering to close down about 4%. Nvidia has now shed more than a trillion dollars in market value this month.
Crypto did not sit this one out.
Bitcoin fell roughly 4% to a twelve-week low near $68,000, down from above $76,000 earlier in the week. ETH lost about 3% and is now below $2,000. Solana, BNB and XRP all fell between 3% and 5%. The broad market index was off about 4% on the day and 7% on the week.
It’s a bleak picture. But there are some local reasons for hope.
First, this is the exact price action that we mapped out in Wednesday’s newsletter, after analyzing the SPCX impact on Bitcoin and what similar price action for the Anthropic IPO would mean. TLDR - it mapped to a bottom on Nov 12 around the 200-week moving average (which hit last night).
Second, Binance reported Thursday afternoon that it has completed coverage of the assets affected by its $6.34 billion hack and published an expanded Proof of Reserves snapshot covering all 44 cryptocurrencies impacted. Many believe that the Binance post-hack aftermath has been weighing on crypto prices, and now perhaps this coverage will help alleviate some pain.
And then Nvidia reports fiscal Q3 results on Tuesday. Any positive news about Jensen succession planning, the Q3 results and/or future growth will likely stop the bleeding on one of the biggest assets across markets (also helping crypto most likely).
We will find out soon if it’s enough to stop the bleeding…
🌎 Macro Crypto and Markets
- Crypto majors are red but rebounding after a big overnight selloff; BTC -5% at $69.2k; ETH -3% at $1,960; SOL -2% at $81; HYPE +5% at $74; ZEC even at $965
- LIT (+5%), INJ (+6%), and PYTH (+4%) led top alt movers
- Oil +2% at $88; Gold -1% at $3,900
- Stock futures are slightly green as NVDA rebounds; DOW +0.14%, Nasdaq +0.14%
- Tech and crypto founders largely blamed Nvidia’s board rather than Jensen Huang for his exit, with CZ saying “it’s a mistake for Nvidia to let Jensen resign”
- Senator Josh Hawley called for a nationwide moratorium on new AI data centers until Congress guarantees taxpayers no electricity rate increases, listing it among five Republican priorities before Democrats take the Senate
- The Justice Department obtained court approval to seize more than $1.2 billion of the roughly $6.4 billion stolen from Binance on October 29, part of $2.7 billion frozen so far, and separately dismantled a North Korean scheme the FBI calls FaceStealer that took more than $400 million over 18 months
- Binance published an off-cycle proof-of-reserves snapshot dated November 12 showing user Bitcoin balances up 0.35% from November 4 to roughly 687,900 BTC, ether up 1.04% to 3.48 million and BNB up 1.03%, while USDT holdings fell 3.68%, or about 928 million tokens; the extra review follows the October 29 hack the exchange says it has now fully replenished
- The Justice Department, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and a crypto coalition led by a16z, Paradigm and Uniswap lined up against Illinois’ Digital Asset Tax, a 0.2% levy on the full value of an asset every time it is traded, transferred or stored through a broker, whether or not anything is sold
- DTCC will connect its tokenization service to Solana in the second half of 2027, letting eligible DTC-custodied securities including Russell 1000 stocks, major index ETFs and Treasuries be issued as Solana tokens
- Anchorage Digital made Western Union’s USDPT settle on VisaNet, the first Anchorage-issued stablecoin Visa and eligible companies can use to settle obligations on its network
Corporate Treasuries & ETFs
- The Bitcoin ETFs saw $48M in net outflows on Thursday; the ETH ETFs saw $8M in outflows
Meme Coin Tracker
- Meme leaders were very mixed; DOGE -2%, SHIB even, PEPE +2%, PENGU even, TRUMP -1%, SPX -2%, BONK +1%
- Robinhood chain leaders were mixed; Pons +5% to $104M; Cashcat -2% at $50M; Orbio -11% at $26M; AI -10% at $26M; PRIORS +10% and HMM +10% led top movers
- Solana top movers included Mask +130%, GTA6 +20%, and Jimothy +22%; Stonk +9% at $38M, Ansem -13% at $50M
💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker
- Hyperliquid led onchain protocols in revenue on the day with $2.03M, followed by Papertrade at $1.61M and Pump.fun at $1.3M
- Latin American exchange Bitso integrated Hyperliquid into Bitso Alpha, giving its 10 million-plus users access to Hype’s more than 200 perpetual markets
- SoFi added Polygon as a third network for SoFiUSD, the first stablecoin issued by a US national bank, letting its 17 million members buy, hold and convert it in the app without a separate wallet or manual bridging
🚚 What is happening in NFTs?
- NFT leaders were mostly green; Punks -1% at 30 ETH, BAYC +9% at 6.33 ETH, Pudgy +2% at 2.35 ETH
- Otherdeeds (+20%) and MAYC (+12%) led top movers
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