Morning digest: November 14, 2026
Bitcoin is stuck under $70,000 and U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs are now net sellers for the year, while the Justice Department moves to claw back $1.2 billion from the Binance hack. In health, caffeine gum let trained cyclists do 10 to 13% more work at the same effort, and purposeful walking, not pottering, went with fewer falls. Producer prices rose 0.3% in October, a nationwide FAA ground stop halted U.S. departures for more than four hours, and Jensen Huang is out at Nvidia. A small startup says AI helped it rebuild Photoshop and Acrobat as free open-source apps. And a Texas “sick alligator” turned out to be a pool float.
Blockchain: ETFs turn negative for the year, and the Binance clawback
Bitcoin holds under $70,000. After breaking $70,000 on Thursday, BTC traded around $67,000 to $68,000 Friday, a 12-week low, with ether near $1,900. The dollar index stayed above 103 and futures priced roughly an 88% chance of a Fed rate hike in December. Leveraged liquidations topped $1.6 billion, mostly longs. U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs have lost about $1.9 billion so far in November and are now net negative for the year. (CoinDesk · CoinDesk)
DOJ moves to seize $1.2 billion from the Binance hack. The Justice Department won court approval to seize or restrain more than $1.2 billion of the roughly $6.3 billion stolen from Binance on Oct. 29, a theft attributed to North Korea’s TraderTraitor group and the largest on record; more than $2.7 billion has been frozen overall. Binance reopened withdrawals on 87 networks this week and expects all remaining networks and assets to reopen by the end of next week. (Reuters via Investing.com · The Block)
A custody backdoor at Unocoin. The Indian exchange says funds moved out of its BitGo-custodied multisig wallets, which need several keys to sign, likely through a built-in backup and recovery path, a week after BitGo had frozen the account. It is still counting losses and expects at least another week of downtime. Recovery keys are part of the attack surface, too. (The Crypto Times)
New York Life puts junk bonds on-chain. New York Life Investment Management launched HYB, a tokenized high-yield bond fund on Centrifuge that qualified non-U.S. investors can buy and redeem in USDC instead of bank wires: $100,000 minimum, 0.55% fee, 7.24% yield to worst. It holds only about $638,000 so far against the firm’s roughly $807 billion under management, but it’s another big manager putting credit, not just Treasuries, on-chain. (Mempool Brief)
Briefly:
- Exchanges line up for CFTC crypto rules. With the Clarity Act stalled in the Senate since Sept. 15, CFTC Chairman Michael Selig told CNBC that major exchanges and new entrants want to opt into the agency’s proposed federal framework for retail spot crypto trading. The CFTC also sued Arkansas to defend its authority over prediction markets. (CNBC · CFTC)
- Trading firms rotate bitcoin ETFs. Third-quarter 13F filings, snapshots as of Sept. 30, show Jane Street grew its Fidelity FBTC stake nearly eightfold to 7.01 million shares, about $509 million, while trimming BlackRock’s IBIT by 19%. JPMorgan raised its Strategy stake 36% and holds about $540 million of IBIT. (Cointelegraph)
- Central banks test cross-system FX settlement. The Bank of England, Monetary Authority of Singapore and Bank of Thailand reported on Project Meridian FX APAC, in which a prototype “synchronisation operator” coordinated payment-versus-payment and multilateral net FX settlement across three test systems, including RTGS and blockchain-based ones. It’s an experiment, not live settlement. (Bank of England)
- Pool Party drained of about $215,000. A bug in the DeFi project’s snapshot contracts let an attacker edit their recorded position, deposit 10 USDC and withdraw entire pools: 15 pools on Arbitrum and Base. The flaw has been patched. (SlowMist)
Health: caffeine gum, purposeful steps and workout order
Caffeine gum: more work at the same effort. Clinical crossover trial (12 well-trained young male cyclists, double-blind): chewing caffeine gum at 6 mg/kg for 15 minutes before riding raised the work they chose to do at a fixed perceived effort. Over 10 minutes they produced 53 versus 48 kJ at an easy effort (RPE 4 of 10) and 87 versus 77 kJ at a hard one (RPE 7), about 10% and 13% more, with mean power of 88 versus 79 W and 146 versus 129 W. Heart rate and lactate didn’t differ. Lever: caffeine shortly before effort-paced training lifts what “hard” feels like you can sustain. But 6 mg/kg is a big dose, about 460 mg for a 77 kg rider (our calculation); lower doses weren’t tested, and above about 200 mg caffeine raised anxiety in the meta-analysis in yesterday’s digest. (Nutrients)
Purposeful steps, fewer falls. General population, observational (UK Biobank, 94,422 adults aged 42–78 with wrist accelerometers, median 6.9 years): compared with 3,999 or fewer purposeful steps a day, taken at 40 or more steps per minute, the higher groups had 25%, 35% and 32% lower fall risk (hazard ratios 0.75, 0.65 and 0.68). Purposeful steps were also linked to fewer hip fractures; slow incidental steps showed no significant link. Lever: count deliberate, continuous walking, not just puttering around; the benefit leveled off above the lowest group. Frail people may simply walk less purposefully. (Journal of Global Health)
Cardio first in type 2 diabetes. Clinical randomized trial (56 adults with type 2 diabetes, 8 weeks, 3 sessions a week of 30 minutes’ cycling at 40–70% of heart-rate reserve plus weights at 60–80% of one-rep max): only the group doing cardio before weights saw mean glucose and HbA1c fall from baseline, and it had lower glucose during and after exercise and a bigger overnight drop than weights-first. Weights-first gave steadier glucose with smaller swings. Lever: in combined sessions, cardio first may help average glucose a bit more. The trial was small and short, and the abstract reports p-values rather than between-group effect sizes. (iScience)
150 minutes a week with kidney disease. Clinical cohort, observational (UK Biobank, 3,927 adults with chronic kidney disease, accelerometer-measured, median 7.9 years): 150 or more minutes a week of moderate-to-vigorous activity went with 36% lower mortality (HR 0.64) and 32% fewer cardiovascular events (HR 0.68). Mortality benefit plateaued after 150 minutes, while cardiovascular risk kept falling to about 300. For the least active, swapping 10 minutes a day of sitting for brisk activity went with 30% lower mortality, a statistical model rather than a tested change. Sicker patients move less, so reverse causation likely contributes. (Journal of Physical Activity and Health)
Online breathwork for long COVID. Clinical randomized pilot (188 adults with long COVID, versus waitlist): a 3-week web-based program of Isha Kriya meditation, alternate-nostril breathing and Simha Kriya breathing, practiced daily, reduced fatigue (−2.9 points), total mood disturbance (−10) and somatic symptoms (−2.0) and raised vigor, with no adverse events; stress and quality of life didn’t change. Only 55% of those with adherence data hit the target of four days a week. No blinding or active control, short follow-up, and the designers have a disclosed tie to a related organization. (Journal of Medical Internet Research)
Briefly:
- Long sleep with heart disease is a warning sign. Clinical cohort, observational (3,287 U.S. adults with heart disease, 15 years): sleeping 9 or more hours went with 51% higher mortality than 7–8 hours (HR 1.51), with the lowest predicted risk at 6–7 hours. Long sleep likely partly reflects worse illness, depression or sleep apnea; worth raising with a doctor, not a reason to cut sleep. (PLOS One)
General and local: prices, a ground stop and Nvidia’s new boss
Best week since August. Stocks closed mixed Friday: the Dow rose 50.46 points (0.1%) to 52,347.55, while the S&P 500 fell 0.4% to 7,561.67 and the Nasdaq 0.91% to 25,136.27. For the week, the Dow gained 2.1%, the S&P 500 2.5% and the Nasdaq 2.3%, the best week for all three since early August. (Xinhua)
Producer prices up 0.3%. The October Producer Price Index for final demand rose 0.3%, below the 0.4% expected and down from 1.4% in September. Over 12 months, unadjusted, it’s up 6.5%, the biggest rise since November 2022, with goods prices up 10.2%. Core, excluding food, energy and trade services, rose 0.5% for the month and 4.9% for the year. (BLS · CNBC)
FAA halts every U.S. departure. The FAA issued a nationwide ground stop Friday for all U.S. airports after communication problems at multiple air route traffic control centers. It lasted more than four hours and was lifted around 8:15 p.m. ET; thousands of flights were delayed or canceled. If you’re flying this weekend, check your flight before heading out. (FAA · The Washington Post)
Jensen Huang is out at Nvidia. Nvidia’s board announced Thursday that Huang has resigned as president, CEO and a director, effective immediately. CFO Colette Kress is interim CEO and keeps her finance role while the board searches inside and outside the company; director Harvey C. Jones becomes Nvidia’s first-ever board chair. On Friday the board told CNBC it hadn’t yet picked a search firm or formally engaged any candidates. Nvidia shares fell 2% Friday. (Nvidia · CNBC)
AI rebuilds Photoshop, for free. At the AI Engineer Code Summit, ArtCraft CEO Brandon Thomas said his company has used AI to build 17 open-source versions of popular tools, including PhotoCraft, a Photoshop alternative written in Rust, PdfCraft, an Acrobat clone, a Figma clone and WordCraft. He said PhotoCraft has just passed 60% parity with Photoshop and opens ten times faster; the project’s GitHub claims about 76% for feature breadth and 46% for professional readiness. Thomas says the apps are being downloaded about 1.7 million times a day, the open-source community has grown to about 4,000 developers, and about 300 more community-built apps are in the works. Those are the company’s own figures. (Latent Space)
Photo: PhotoCraft interface, ArtCraft, via Latent Space.
Lighter note: the alligator was a float. Sugar Land, Texas, animal services officers sent to help a reportedly sick alligator found a runaway inflatable pool toy instead. Officials said the resident was right to call it in. (UPI)
Bottom line
Crypto’s selloff has wiped out a year of ETF inflows, but prosecutors are moving to claw back $1.2 billion of the Binance loot and Binance withdrawals should fully reopen next week. If you train, caffeine gum buys more work at the same effort, though at a hefty dose; for everyone else, make your steps purposeful, and if you have diabetes, try cardio before weights. Wholesale prices cooled a little in October, Nvidia is hunting for a new CEO, and if you fly this weekend, check your flight after Friday’s ground stop. And in Texas, the alligator was a float.