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.

Strive emerges as the top recent Bitcoin buyer

For five years, Michael Saylor’s Strategy was generally the answer to the question of which company bought the most Bitcoin in a given week. That distinction has temporarily shifted.

Strive Asset Management (Nasdaq: ASST), run by Matthew Cole and associated with Vivek, bought 3,311 BTC for approximately $280 million between October 5 and 9. The purchases came as the market sold off, at an average price of about $84,500 per Bitcoin. According to Decrypt, it was Strive’s largest single purchase since January.

The transaction followed purchases of $94.5 million in late September and $169 million in early October. Strive’s total holdings have reached 32,773 BTC, valued at approximately $2.73 billion based on the figures provided.

During the same period, Strategy bought 250 BTC for about $21.5 million, leaving Strive’s purchases roughly 13 times larger. Strategy’s Bitcoin purchases have declined for two consecutive weeks. During the latest week, the company spent nearly nine times as much—$192 million—buying back its own preferred shares as it spent on Bitcoin. The detail underscores how central preferred stock has become to both companies’ Bitcoin strategies, with Strive issuing it to fund purchases and Strategy buying it back.

Strategy’s mNAV also fell below 1.0 for the first time. The measure indicates that the market value of the company was below the value of the Bitcoin on its balance sheet. The ratio is closely watched across the treasury-company sector, because issuing new capital to buy Bitcoin has tended to be most effective for companies trading above the value of their holdings.

The companies remain far apart in total holdings. Strategy held 848,250 BTC, representing a position worth approximately $51 billion and more than 25 times Strive’s holdings. Saylor therefore remains the largest corporate Bitcoin holder, but the titles of “biggest holder” and “most aggressive buyer right now” have diverged.

Strive is seeking to continue its purchases by selling 5 million shares of a new preferred stock at $100 per share. The offering would raise $500 million and carries a fixed 15% rate, with the proceeds earmarked for additional Bitcoin purchases. The arrangement represents a 15% annual coupon and $75 million in yearly cash payments.

STRC was trading at $99.90, its highest level since its May depeg and back near the $100 mark it slipped from in that episode. The price could also allow Strategy’s Bitcoin purchases to resume.

Crypto and markets

Major cryptocurrencies were slightly higher and rebounding ahead of the consumer price index report — the inflation reading that feeds directly into Federal Reserve rate expectations. Bitcoin (BTC) was up 0.2% at $83,600, Ethereum (ETH) gained 0.2% to $2,507, Solana (SOL) rose 1% to $107, HYPE declined 1% to $82, and Zcash (ZEC) increased 3% to $1,250. Among other altcoins, PENDLE rose 8%, STX gained 4%, and VVV advanced 6%.

Oil increased 4% to $96, while gold declined 0.4% to $4,160. Stock futures were mixed ahead of the CPI release, with Dow futures up 0.3% and Nasdaq futures down 0.2%.

Coinbase, which said it custodies roughly 5% of all Bitcoin in existence, outlined a potential approach for protecting Bitcoin against quantum computers — a long-debated risk, since a sufficiently powerful quantum machine could in theory break the cryptography securing exposed public keys. The company backed the BIP-360 (P2MR) and P2TRv2 proposals, describing them as flexible enough to support additional signature types later. Coinbase also proposed a phased rollout under which active wallets could spend using either an existing key or a quantum-safe key. The proposal was reported by CoinDesk.

Solana core developer Anza scheduled the Alpenglow consensus upgrade for mainnet-beta on October 21. The upgrade would replace TowerBFT with Votor, reduce finality from approximately 12.8 seconds to 150 milliseconds, and move validator votes off the chain entirely. Finality — the point at which a transaction is considered irreversible — is one of the core performance benchmarks for competing blockchains. Unchained reported the scheduling.

Interactive Brokers enabled Ethereum staking for clients through infrastructure provider zerohash and added a Staking Dashboard to its Client Portal, a step that brings a crypto-native feature to a conventional brokerage audience, according to Blockhead.

A Bitcoin wallet that had remained active through every market crash since 2020 transferred its entire balance of 4,581.94 BTC, worth about $377 million, on October 12. The holdings were divided among five new addresses, according to Decrypt.

Binance is shutting down Binance Pool and all services connected to it. Miners will be disconnected on November 10, ending Binance’s nine-year presence in the mining sector. The pool represented approximately 2.3% of the Bitcoin network’s hashrate, meaning that share of network mining power will come offline with the shutdown, according to Decrypt.

BNY and Citadel Securities completed a test transaction using tokenized U.S. Treasuries to move the bonds from settlement into financing. The companies said the process is intended to let firms pledge collateral and recycle cash more quickly than current systems allow. Tokenized Treasuries have become one of the flagship use cases for bringing traditional financial assets on-chain. CoinDesk reported the test.

Trezor will end all reseller authorizations on January 1, 2027. The decision came days after Ledger’s security team found wallets from a Southeast Asian retailer that contained a hidden component, according to Decrypt.

Corporate treasuries and ETFs

Bitcoin exchange-traded funds recorded $175 million in net inflows on Tuesday. Ethereum ETFs recorded $25 million in inflows, ending a 10-day period of outflows. Net flows through crypto ETFs are widely watched as a gauge of institutional and traditional-investor demand.

Strive is also offering a second class of preferred stock to finance additional Bitcoin purchases. The company is offering 5 million SATS shares at $100 each, seeking to raise $500 million at a fixed 15% dividend paid daily. The offering follows Strive’s increase to 32,773 BTC, valued at approximately $2.7 billion. If both preferred offerings are fully subscribed, Strive would have up to $1 billion in fresh capital earmarked for Bitcoin purchases.

Meme coins and NFT markets

Meme coins were slightly higher overall. DOGE gained 1%, SHIB was unchanged, PEPE rose 3%, PENGU increased 1%, TRUMP advanced 1%, SPX gained 1%, and BONK was unchanged.

Robinhood chain leaders rebounded by 10% to 25%. Pons rose 18% to a $225 million valuation, AI gained 28% to $107 million, and Cashcat increased 18% to $118 million. Orbio and Boner each rose 18%, Priors gained 30%, and Shroom advanced 50%.

Solana’s leading movers included Veil, up 280%; Altai, up 1,600%; Claudia, up 80%; and Bordr, up 80%.

NFT markets also rebounded. Punks were unchanged at 31.5 ETH, while BAYC rose 6% to 5.5 ETH and Pudgy Penguins gained 8% to 2.37 ETH. Credits increased 40%, Normies rose 29%, and Claus advanced 17%.

zkSnarks announced “Apparitions,” a new character that requires 26 burned zkSnarks to mint.

Token, airdrop and protocol activity

Papertrade led on-chain protocols with $3.76 million in revenue the previous day, followed by Hyperliquid at $2.18 million and Pump.fun at $2.17 million. Revenue figures were tracked through DefiLlama.

Sui processed its first native quantum-safe transaction on devnet. Mysten Labs added ML-DSA-65 signature support in release v1.82.0, with testnet accounts targeted by year-end and mainnet authentication targeted for the first quarter of 2027. The development adds to a broader industry push toward quantum-safe cryptography, the same theme Coinbase raised in its Bitcoin proposals. The development was reported by Crypto Briefing.

Bybit founder Ben Zhou said Bybit is working with Mantle to launch mStocks, a tokenized-stock product, adding to a wave of traditional assets — from Treasuries to equities — moving on-chain. Zhou made the announcement in a post on X.

zkSnarks announced “Apparitions” as a new character requiring the burning of 26 zkSnarks to mint, according to a post on X.