Bitcoin's new demand engine

October 22, 2026

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Bitcoin treasury demand fades, but are preferred stocks the new catalyst?

Key points:

  • Preferred stocks have funded +135K Bitcoin purchases, despite Bitcoin treasury demand slump.

  • Fidelity sees it as a ‘powerful new driver’ of Bitcoin’s value if it gets a fraction of the $150T fixed income market. 

News - Bitcoin-focused preferred stock sales funded 135,979 BTC purchases in just over a year. Also known as digital credit, Strategy, Strive, and others use them to offer investors daily yield backed by the firm’s BTC holdings. In return, the proceeds help to buy BTC, and the first year's performance shows a promising future, according to Fidelity.

Fidelity bets on Bitcoin push in fixed income - Strategy began the trend last July, and expanded beyond Stretch [STRC], offering 8-12% annualized yield. Strive, DeFi Development Corp, and other treasury firms copied the model. So far, 135,979 BTC or 0.5% of total BTC supply has been accumulated via this model.

For comparison, U.S Spot BTC ETFs acquired 888,185 BTC in their first year. In other words, ETFs drove 6.5x more demand than BTC-focused preferred stocks. However, Fidelity sees the trend as a ‘success’ and future demand catalyst in the $150T fixed income market.

“The success of the preferred products suggests meaningful demand for a high-yield, fixed-income investment with a Bitcoin focus.”

The third-largest world asset manager added that even a modest adoption of preferred stocks in the massive fixed income market could be a “potentially powerful new driver of long-term value” for BTC.

For Fidelity, preferred stocks are the second demand channel for BTC after ETFs. ETF buyers want direct BTC exposure and associated price appreciation, but preferred stocks investors want yield.

Bitcoin's short-term reactions- In the meantime, Glassnode found that Bitcoin treasuries’ buying has not resumed despite the price staying above their average cost basis of $80K. Given that these firms are in profit, even a slight uptick in buying can lift BTC's price, their stocks, and drive more share sales to fund more BTC buys.

On the ETF front, the inflows turned positive for the past three days, drawing in +$1B. This drove BTC up 5% to nearly $85K. However, the asset saw a sharp pullback on Thursday back to $82.5K amid risk from a spike in short-term leverage and AI bubble fears.

Overall, BTC has a new long-term demand catalyst. However, in the short term, bulls need to defend $80K support again ahead of next week’s Fed rate decision.

Solana’s Alpenglow upgrade goes live

Key points:

  • Solana is now 85x faster after Alpenglow brought down transaction finality from 12.8s to 0.15s.

  • U.S Spot SOL ETFs posted a daily inflow of $600K on Wednesday after the upgrade, breaking a streak of outflows.

News - Solana now rivals Visa, with each platform now taking 0.15 seconds to finalize transactions. That’s 85x faster than the previous 12.8 seconds. This follows Solana’s much-awaited Alpenglow upgrade, which went live on the mainnet beta on 21st October. However, this upgrade goes beyond challenging Visa metrics.

Solana's Alpenglow goal - According to Anza, the team behind Alpenglow, Solana is now ready to scale stablecoins, tokenized assets, and handle new emerging markets after the upgrade.

Highlighting the shortcomings of the previous slow consensus design, Brennan Watt, CEO of Anza, said, “It’s a few seconds (for finality) that’s way too long for snappy, responsive things for payments and emerging use cases.”

“We’re looking to take on traditional finance and centralized exchanges. And that means rethinking something as fundamental as the consensus engine.”

Solana lags behind Ethereum and TRON in stablecoin settlements with about 5% market share. However, it commands a whopping +97% in tokenized stock trading volume, or about $4.4B. Whether the upgrade will help it close the gap in stablecoin settlement and increase traction in AI agents, as projected by Anza’s Watt, remains to be seen.

Impact on SOL’s price- On the SOL market impact, the upgrade coincided with a $600K daily inflow for U.S Spot SOL ETFs on Wednesday. This was the first daily inflow after 12 days of consecutive outflows. However, SOL failed to surpass the $110-mark.

The altcoin is down about 15% in October from its recent peak of $124. In the short term, the $98-level or the 200-day Moving Average of $88 could be retested if bearish sentiment persists ahead of the Fed rate decision.

In the long run, however, Solana treasury firm DeFi Development Corporation projects that SOL will eventually hit $10,000.

Banks say OCC’s final stablecoin rules ‘undermine’ U.S Congress

Key points:

  • OCC finalized stablecoin rules and dropped initially proposed rewards restrictions.

  • American Bankers Association blasted the rules as ‘undermining’ Congress's push to protect local lending.

News - The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency’s (OCC) final stablecoin rules are facing heavy pushback from the banking industry. The banking umbrella group, American Bankers Association (ABA), rejected the final rules, flagging the dropped stablecoin yield restrictions that were initially proposed.

Stablecoin yield fight deepens- In a statement, ABA CEO Rob Nichols disagreed with the regulator’s position on yield, adding that it "will preserve the status quo for crypto platforms despite Congress's clear intent to protect local lending.”

The initial yield restriction proposal sought to ban third-party reward arrangements that are currently done by Coinbase and several other platforms. The GENIUS Act bans the yield on stablecoins to avoid them being treated as deposit instruments.

Ideally, this makes them strictly for payments, but the rules only apply to issuers like Tether and Circle, banning them from sharing the interests with holders. Affiliates aren’t part of that regulatory scope.

With the proposal axed, ABA added that it will present gaps that “risk undermining the distinction Congress drew between payment stablecoins and traditional bank deposits.”

OCC defends the rules- However, OCC backed the move, arguing that the industry is nascent. It added that it will adjust the supervisory framework on a case-by-case basis to the extent that is necessary. The rules will become effective from 18th January, 2027.

But the ABA rejected the delayed supervision on deposit flight, warning that “attempting to address deposit flight and economic harm after it has occurred is the wrong approach.”

Interestingly, the banks managed to negotiate a stablecoin yield compromise that codifies some of the issues they are raising now. It was part of the stalled CLARITY Act deal. However, they shot the bill down after demands for a total yield ban were not met.

XRP Ledger bug fix pushed to 04 November

Key points:

  • XRP Ledger postponed a crucial bug fix to early November after failure to achieve a validator quorum within the 14-day approval window. 

  • At the time of writing, the validator support for the patch had increased to 31 of 35 needed nodes, surpassing the 29 approval threshold.

News - XRP Ledger has delayed a bug that would allow an attacker to mint custom fungible tokens after the validator count missed the 14-day approval window. The fix was expected to happen on 23rd October. However, validator support briefly dropped to 26 on Wednesday, resetting the 14-day clock to 4th November

How XRP Ledger voting works- To change the XRP Ledger network, there must be over 80% support from the trusted 35 validators (29 node operators). The support for the change will be checked every 15 minutes and must stay above 29 validators to be adopted. Any failure below the threshold for any check resets the count.

The said change, the fixCleanup3_4_0, aims to fix a token creation loophole in certain DeFi applications on XRP Ledger. This is different from the earlier massive 10-year-old bug that would allow a hacker to mint unlimited XRP tokens beyond the set limit. The decade-old bug was so critical that it bypassed the validator vote.

Broader impact -That said, the XRP Ledger has been unstable and slow for the past few days. This has affected even the Xaman Wallet.

Solana Crashed 80%—Here’s Why We’re Buying Now

Solana’s price collapsed. Its network didn’t.

While the chart looks ugly, the fundamentals tell a different story: dormant wallets are waking up, app revenue is climbing, stablecoin supply has hit $15B, and institutional ETF inflows remain strong. Lower inflation and the Firedancer upgrade are next.

Stop guessing the bottom. Our free Solana guide lays out the full thesis, key metrics and risks. Enter your email and it’s yours.

Did you know?

  1. Despite significant efforts to be post-quantum ready across the blockchain industry, 99% of the crypto market (about $2.7T) is still at risk. Only 0.3% or $8.3B is safe from quantum threats, led by NEAR, Algorand, and Quantus.

  2. Over half of Bitcoin mining electricity comes from zero-emission sources. 52.4% of the mining consumption now comes from renewables, up from 37% in 2022. However, the consumption is still heavy at over 204 TWh annually, equivalent to Thailand’s power consumption.

  3. Tokenized assets were the primary driver of on-chain trading activity and demand. According to Ark Invest, the segment surged by 9x to $50B in Q3, with a 9% share in the overall spot DEX market.

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Top 3 coins of the day

Lighter (LIT)

Key points:

  • LIT saw a whopping +30% weekly gain thanks to U.S trading license plans.

  • Token was on the verge of flipping bullish if it decisively stays above $4.

What you should know:

Lighter revealed its plans to apply for a U.S license in November and will route some of the trades to Robinhood. The update triggered an 11% jump, extending its mid-week gains to +30%.

The rally was on the verge of flipping the moving averages into support. If so, and the token stays above $4, the market structure would flip bullish. In such a scenario, an upside potential towards $4.7 may be feasible. That would extend the October recovery profits to over 66%. On the contrary, sustained price action below $4 would delay such a bullish outlook.

Monero(XMR)

Key points:

  • XMR extended its mid-October rally to 25%, but faced a key roadblock at $650.

  • Privacy coin was still trading above its key moving averages at press time.

What you should know:

XMR reversed the losses seen in late September and hit $650, extending recovery gains to 25%. However, sellers seem to be trying to regain control at $650 and partly rebuffed bulls, as shown by the upper candlestick wick. If the rally cools off, the immediate support would be the $520-$560, which has been doubling as the first and second bands of the moving averages.

Since the moving averages have acted as support since August, a rebound at the zone could offer new buying opportunities for late bulls. The upside target would be $640-$650. The RSI crossed into the overbought zone, suggesting buyer exhaustion could be likely. This would back a potential short-term pullback with the moving averages as support. A crack below the moving averages would invalidate the bullish outlook.

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Injective (INJ)

Key points:

  • INJ’s price has dropped by 14% in the last 48 hours.

  • Bulls may defend the $7.5-support if bearish sentiment does not worsen.

What you should know:

Injective’s INJ saw one of the major mid-week sell-offs. It posted a 14% loss in the past 48 hours and tagged the first band of the EMA moving averages. The second EMA band at $7.3 coincided with a key support in October.

So, if the market sentiment does not worsen ahead of the Fed rate decision, the altcoin could see relief at $8 or $7.5 support levels. The RSI was still above neutral too, supporting the above bullish reversal thesis.

However, a sustained price dip below $7.3 would embolden sellers to drag the altcoin even lower, invalidating the reversal thesis.

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