Morning digest: November 12, 2026
Bitcoin is stuck near $73,000 as U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs log a fifth straight day of outflows and stablecoin supply shrinks by the most since 2022. MSCI will drop Strategy from its indexes after Nov. 30, and the OKX–ICE tokenized-stock venue is set to open Nov. 23. In health, a 78-trial analysis finds vigorous cardio and HIIT trim visceral fat the most, with the biggest payoff around 750 MET-minutes a week. Locally, a Prince William County jury found Naresh Bhatt guilty of first-degree murder. And three Page County deputies freed a cat from a car’s dashboard.
Blockchain: ETF outflows, an index exit and a Nov. 23 launch date
Bitcoin stuck near $73,000 as ETF outflows hit day five. BTC slipped to about $72,800 after Tuesday’s hot CPI, bounced to roughly $74,600 Wednesday and is testing support near $73,000 this morning; ETH is just above $2,000. U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs lost about $300 million on Wednesday, their fifth straight day of outflows, and crypto didn’t follow stocks higher. Glassnode data show total stablecoin supply fell about $14.2 billion over 30 days, the largest drop since 2022, a sign that money is leaving crypto rather than waiting on the sidelines. The Crypto Fear & Greed Index sits at 28. (FXStreet · KuCoin market report)
MSCI drops Strategy and Metaplanet. Under a new screen for “non-operating” companies, MSCI will remove Strategy, the largest public bitcoin holder with about 850,000 BTC, from its global standard indexes after the close on Nov. 30, and Metaplanet from its Japan Small Cap index. Index funds are expected to sell roughly 13 million MSTR shares, about $1.6 billion. The bigger risk is to Strategy’s funding model: it buys bitcoin by selling stock at a premium to its holdings, and that premium has shrunk to about 1.08 times from 3.4 times. It isn’t forced to sell any bitcoin. (CoinDesk · The Block)
OKX and ICE set Nov. 23 for tokenized stocks. Starting Nov. 23, eligible U.S. customers are due to trade tokenized securities around the clock through the OKXICE Tokenized Securities Venue in the OKX app, under the SEC’s temporary Innovation Exemption. More than 70 assets are expected, including Circle, Coinbase and BitGo, with trading through permissioned Uniswap v4 pools on X Layer and tokenization by Securitize. It is a plan, not yet a live venue, and 67 companies, among them JPMorgan, McDonald’s, SpaceX and Coca-Cola, objected to having their shares tokenized by a third party. (OKX · The Block)
Robinhood Chain DEX loses $2.2 million to a bug. A new account abused how Arcus, a decentralized exchange on the Arbitrum-based Robinhood Chain, handled transfers between a user’s own subaccounts, and withdrew $2,234,391 in USDG. The bridge’s on-chain rate limit held back another $3 million in requests, which were later reversed. Arcus fixed the bug within an hour and covered the full shortfall from its company treasury; no user balances were affected. The flaw was in Arcus’s own code, not Robinhood Chain. (Arcus incident report)
Briefly:
- Kraken’s xStocks go European. Kraken added more than 200 UK and EU shares, including all 40 DAX companies, and xStocks now hold over $1.1 billion. The tokens give price exposure, not ownership, and aren’t available to U.S. or UK investors; Hong Kong stocks are next. (CoinDesk)
- Uniswap lands on Elysium. Uniswap v2, v3 and v4 are now live on Elysium, a Hyperliquid-focused network. (Crypto.news · Uniswap deployments)
- Guardrails for AI trading agents. Coinbase lets users set per-trade and 24-hour volume limits plus an auto-stop threshold for AI agents, enforced on Coinbase’s servers; product-category permissions are “coming soon.” (Coinbase)
- Banks bought bitcoin ETFs in Q3. Quarterly 13F filings show Barclays raised its IBIT stake 48% to 3.94 million shares, about $187 million at Sept. 30, and Citigroup opened a roughly $119 million position in Fidelity’s FBTC and lifted its IBIT holding 50%. (Cointelegraph)
- Tokenized Saudi small-business credit. Nomura’s Laser Digital is advising on ZIG Finance’s zEMS Vault on BNB Chain, which targets $100 million in loans to Saudi small and mid-size businesses from lender Beehive, with stablecoin subscriptions and KYC checks on entry and exit. (The Block)
- Bank-grade security for Korean exchanges. South Korea’s Financial Services Commission will write IT-safety duties and damage liability into its coming digital-asset law and, until then, require 24/7 monitoring, incident reporting, more cold storage and extra reserves, and let exchanges freeze deposits and withdrawals as soon as they suspect a hack. (Digital Today)
Health: a dose for belly fat, isometrics for soreness, training for the brain
How much exercise trims visceral fat. Clinical meta-analysis (78 trial reports, 4,930 adults with overweight or obesity, mean age 43): every exercise type cut visceral fat versus control, and vigorous aerobic exercise and HIIT did best (standardized effect −0.73 each), ahead of combined aerobic-plus-resistance (−0.61), moderate-to-vigorous aerobic (−0.53) and resistance training (−0.50). About 440 MET-minutes a week brought a substantial benefit and about 750 the largest predicted reduction, with a U-shaped curve beyond that. Lever: 750 MET-minutes is roughly 150 minutes a week at about 5 METs, such as brisk walking or easy cycling, less if some of it is vigorous (our rough conversion, not the paper’s). Effects are standardized, with no centimeters or kilograms in the abstract, and the dose thresholds are model estimates. (Obesity Reviews)
Isometrics ease next-day soreness in athletes. Clinical trial (40 university athletes, randomized, sham-controlled): after a protocol designed to make the quadriceps sore, repeated submaximal quadriceps isometric holds cut perceived soreness by 2.55 points on day 1 and 1.90 points on day 3 versus a sham exercise. They did not speed recovery of strength or reduce thigh swelling. Lever: gentle repeated contractions of a sore muscle may take the edge off the worst days. The trial was small, the effects unusually large, and the abstract doesn’t give hold times or sets. (Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport)
Brain training plus diet counseling in mild cognitive impairment. Clinical trial (270 German adults aged 60+ with MCI, 2×2 factorial, fully remote, 6 months): individualized or basic computerized cognitive training, combined with online counseling on either a whole-food plant-based diet or standard German nutrition advice, all went with gains of about 2 MoCA points (1.77 to 2.44), and 55% scored in the non-MCI range at six months. The fancier versions did no better than the basic ones, and with no usual-care control group, practice effects can’t be ruled out. (Alzheimer's Research & Therapy)
Listening-plus-thinking training for older ears. Clinical meta-analysis (older adults with hearing difficulty): training that combined listening exercises, such as speech in background noise, with cognitive tasks improved speech-in-noise thresholds by 1.23 dB, attention (effect 0.50), memory (1.08) and global cognition (3.27 points). Working memory, executive function and hearing itself didn’t change, and most outcomes are low certainty. (JMIR Rehabilitation and Assistive Technologies)
Briefly:
- Going vegetarian didn’t lower blood pressure. Clinical meta-analysis (20 randomized trials, 1,399 adults): vegetarian diets changed systolic pressure by −1.08 mmHg and diastolic by −0.35 mmHg, neither significant (moderate certainty). Sodium reduction, DASH-style eating, weight loss and exercise remain the better bets. (Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics)
- Moving protects kidneys and nerves in diabetes. Observational review (12 cohort studies, about 98% of 2.55 million participants from one South Korean registry): more physical activity went with lower risk of several kidney and nerve complications, mainly in type 2 diabetes; in one cohort of 175 people with neuropathy, more sitting went with 2.95 times the odds of a first foot ulcer. (Diabetes Research and Clinical Practice)
General and local: an Nvidia slide and a verdict in Manassas
Stocks up, Nvidia futures down. On Wednesday the Dow rose 254.60 points (0.49%) to 52,486.49, the S&P 500 1.31% to 7,619.38 and the Nasdaq 1.6% to 25,466.19. Early Thursday, Dow futures were around flat while Nasdaq-100 futures slid about 0.9% and Nvidia fell about 7% premarket, after The Wall Street Journal reported its board is preparing to remove CEO Jensen Huang. The 10-year Treasury yield was about 4.99% as bond trading resumed after Veterans Day. (CNBC · Anadolu Agency)
Bhatt guilty of first-degree murder. A Prince William County jury on Tuesday found Naresh Bhatt, 39, of Manassas Park guilty of first-degree murder, concealing a dead body and defiling a dead body in the 2024 death of his wife, Mamta Kafle Bhatt, 28, whose body has not been found. Jurors rejected his account that she died by suicide. The murder count carries 20 years to life; sentencing is set for March 12, 2027. (NBC4 Washington · WTOP)
Lighter note: a cat in the dashboard. Three Page County sheriff’s deputies stopping for fuel at a 7-Eleven on U.S. 211 in Luray around 9 p.m. last Friday were flagged down for an unusual job: a recently rescued former stray had crawled inside a car’s dashboard while its new caretaker was shopping for supplies at Walmart. They freed the cat without injury, and the sheriff’s office says it was happy to be back with its new family. (Northern Virginia Free Press)
Photo: Page County Sheriff’s Office, via Northern Virginia Free Press.
Bottom line
Crypto money is still heading for the exits, Strategy is losing its index seat, and tokenized stocks get a U.S. launch date. If you want to shrink belly fat, about 150 minutes a week of brisk activity is the sweet spot, and harder work does a bit more. Watch Nvidia at the open. And before you drive off, check the dashboard for cats.