Gate Research Institute: Plasma Token has fallen 90% from its early peak | Bitcoin faces $13.6 billion monthly options expiration

Summary

• BTC and ETH have respectively returned to the $90,000 and $3,000 round numbers, market sentiment has clearly recovered, and there are signs of fund rotation in multiple sectors such as platform tokens, public chains, and Memes.
• S&P has downgraded the stability rating of USDT to “Weak”; the Cosmos community has launched research on the new tokenomics of ATOM; Ethereum co-founder Vitalik has pledged to donate to privacy communication.
• Plasma tokens have fallen 90% from their early peak, and the project has yet to realize its grand vision, making it one of the most representative cases of new coin listing failures recently.
• Benefiting from investors' enthusiasm for AI, the stock market continues to strengthen, while the crypto market has been driven down by excessive leverage, with Bitcoin falling over 20% in the past month.
• This Friday, Bitcoin faces a $13.6 billion monthly options expiration, with out-of-the-money contracts accounting for 77%, and hedging behavior may continue to amplify short-term volatility.
• HYPE, SUI, and EIGEN will unlock approximately $359 million, $68.51 million, and $22.62 million worth of tokens respectively over the next 7 days.

Market Interpretation

Market Commentary

• BTC Market —— BTC broke through the consolidation range of 87,000–88,000 USD strongly in the morning of the 27th, quickly rising above 90,000 USD, with an intraday increase of over 3%. On the technical side, MA5 has turned upward and crossed MA10 and MA30, with MA10 subsequently following the upward trend, forming a typical short-term bullish arrangement with the three lines; MA30 has also begun to slowly rise, further confirming the strengthening trend. Currently, the three moving averages show a bullish divergence structure, with the key short to medium-term support around 88,000 USD near MA30. If it breaks below this level, the short-term upward trend may come to an end. Overall, as market sentiment continues to recover, BTC is expected to continue its assault above 92,000 USD.
• ETH Market —— ETH surged in the morning of the 27th, rising in sync with BTC, breaking through the $3,000 threshold and reaching a high of $3,050, with a daily increase of over 3%. From a technical perspective, MA5, MA10, and MA30 are all in a bullish arrangement, with MA30 (approximately $2,960) serving as a key medium-term support that provides momentum for steady upward movement. Overall, ETH's performance is highly correlated with BTC; if BTC can maintain above $90,000, ETH is expected to continue pushing towards the $3,100–$3,150 range. If BTC experiences a pullback, ETH may once again test the $3,000 support level; if it falls below $2,960, the short-term trend may shift to a weak oscillation.
• Altcoins —— Market sentiment has significantly recovered, with funds becoming active again under the influence of BTC and ETH. The trend of market altcoins is spreading towards platform tokens, public chains, and the Meme sector, showing clear signs of rising risk appetite.
• Stablecoins - Currently, the total market value of stablecoins is $305.35 billion, with a growth of $2.131 billion over the past week, almost recovering the losses from last week.
• Gas Fee —— The Gas fee on the Ethereum network has generally remained below 1 Gwei over the past week, with a highest hourly peak of 6.96 Gwei. As of November 27, the average Gas fee for the day was 0.065 Gwei.

Popular Token

In the past 24 hours, the cryptocurrency market as a whole has strengthened. BTC and ETH have returned to the thresholds of $90,000 and $3,000 respectively, boosting overall sentiment and leading to a strong rise in the platform token GT. The hot token sector has performed prominently, with Merlin (MERL) surging over 150% due to mainnet upgrades and short squeezes, XION (+98.6%) showing active performance driven by the Korean won trading pair, and BANANAS31 (+66.6%) seeing trading volume soar to $470 million. The enthusiasm for meme funds has rebounded, and below we will analyze the reasons for the rise of each token.

MERL Merlin (+157.97%, circulating market cap 550 million USD)

According to Gate.io market data, the current price of the MERL token is $0.0552, having increased by over 150% in the last 24 hours. Merlin Chain is a Layer 2 scaling solution designed for Bitcoin, developed by Bitmap Technology, and is set to launch in January 2024. DeFiLlama data shows that Merlin's TVL exceeds $44 million, with a growth of 7.8% in the last 24 hours.

The rise of Merlin comes from the resonance of narrative and funding. Merlin recently underwent a 12-hour mainnet upgrade aimed at enhancing scalability and optimizing ZooKeeper performance for coordinating distributed systems, which will further reduce latency and support more dApp deployments. This is also seen by the community as a short-term price catalyst. In addition, the annualized negative interest rate of MERL's U-based perpetual contracts on major exchanges has reached over 2,000%, with the price remaining strong in the short term due to short-squeeze.

XION XION (+98.6%, Market Cap 30.25 million USD)

According to Gate market data, the current price of the XION token is $0.067, with a 100% increase in the last 24 hours. XION is a Layer 1 blockchain developed by the Burnt team, based on the Cosmos SDK and Tendermint PoS consensus, focusing on “chain abstraction” and consumer-level Web3 experience, aiming to make blockchain “invisible”—no wallets, seed phrases, or gas fees, allowing direct login with Face ID/credit card, and supporting USDC as the gas token.

The rise of XION is driven by Korean investors. Following its recent listing on local exchanges in South Korea and the KRW trading pair, Korean whales have surged into the speculation around XION, with the XION/KRW trading pair accounting for over 30% of its spot trading volume. However, it is important to note that the strategic supporters and team shares of the XION token will begin to be unlocked in batches starting in December, which may introduce hundreds of millions of dollars in selling pressure into the market circulation over the coming months.

BANANAS31 Banana For Scale (+66.62%, Circulating Market Cap $58.7 Million)

According to Gate's market data, the BANANAS31 token is currently priced at $0.0058, having increased by over 60% in the last 24 hours. BANANAS31 is a Memecoin based on BSC, named/wrapped after the internet meme “Banana for Scale” (people use bananas as a scale for photos). The project aims to combine “the humor of internet culture + blockchain / AI / dApp/token economy.”

The recent surge of BANANAS31 is not a “silent price increase,” but is accompanied by active trading + community/fund inflow. Gate.io market data shows that the trading volume of BANANAS31 reached as high as $475 million in the last 24 hours. Moreover, with the recent recovery of the Meme market on BSC, such deeply accumulated Memes with relatively good meme culture are more likely to be favored by speculators.

Highlight Data

S&P Global Ratings downgraded Tether - USDT rating to “Weak”

S&P Global Ratings released a report in November 2025, downgrading the stability rating of Tether - USDT from the previous “4 (constrained)” to “5 (weak)”, which is the lowest level in this rating system. The main reasons for the downgrade include an increase in the proportion of “high-risk assets” in the USDT reserve portfolio (such as BTC, precious metals, corporate bonds, secured loans, etc.); at the same time, S&P believes that Tether has structural deficiencies in information disclosure, asset isolation, hedging mechanisms, and hedging counter-party risks. The report specifically points out that as of the most recent review, high-risk assets behind USDT accounted for approximately 24% of its reserves, a significant increase from about 17% last year; correspondingly, the proportion of the most ideal and safest assets used to support stablecoins—such as U.S. Treasuries/short-term Treasury bills—has decreased.

The recent downgrade by S&P is not a deliberate pressure on USDT out of thin air, nor does it necessarily mean that USDT is facing real problems. Rather, it reflects a trend based on their recent reassessment of the stablecoin industry concerning “risk + transparency + asset structure + redemption safety.” As the cryptocurrency market experiences volatility and traditional financial institutions increase their attention to stablecoin participants, the stability and transparency of stablecoin asset structures have become key factors in determining credibility, especially as stablecoins serve as a digital dollar alternative or bridge. USDT increasingly allocates reserves to BTC, which is seen as a high-risk and high-volatility asset by traditional industries, contradicting the concept of traditional dollar substitutes or currency equivalents. Tether's CEO has publicly responded, “We take pride in being scorned by the old system.”

ATOM has performed poorly in the long term, and the Cosmos community has proposed a restructuring of the ATOM token economics.

Cosmos is an ecosystem/network characterized by “blockchain interoperability”, “modular chains + customized chains + cross-chain communication”. It enables different blockchains to communicate with each other through the Cosmos SDK and the Inter-Blockchain Communication protocol (IBC). However, in recent years, both the Cosmos ecosystem and adoption rate, as well as the market price of ATOM, have not met expectations. In response, the Cosmos community is researching and soliciting opinions to prepare for a comprehensive reconstruction of the economic model of ATOM.

The goal of researching the new economic model is to design a token economics model based on fee income, rather than solely relying on inflation + staking. In other words, it aims to link the value of ATOM more closely with the real economic activities and revenue of the Cosmos ecosystem itself (on-chain usage, dApp fees, IBC cross-chain transactions, infrastructure usage, etc.). This is mainly to address the issues faced by the ATOM token in the original token economics.

• Addressing inflation and sell-off pressure: In the past, the issuance and inflation mechanism of ATOM, along with staking and reward mechanisms, may have led to excess release + holders selling off, undermining long-term value.
• Enhance the value capture ability of ATOM as a base asset or network asset: If the fees generated by the Cosmos ecosystem increase, then ATOM, as the native token, should allow its holders to share in this value.

In addition, ATOM believers also hope to restore the community's trust in Cosmos through this open, transparent, community-driven research and voting process.

Vitalik donated to the privacy communication applications Session and SimpleX Chat, reiterating the importance of privacy protection.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik posted on social media donating 128 ETH to both Session and SimpleX Chat to support their development and advancement in areas such as “privacy communication + decentralization + metadata protection + user permissionless account creation.” Vitalik stated that these two projects are committed to “end-to-end encryption + privacy + decentralization + protection of metadata (such as sender/receiver/time/frequency, etc.) + multi-device support + resistance to Sybil/DoS attacks,” which are crucial for the future of user privacy and the encrypted communication ecosystem.

Session is a decentralized chat application developed by the Australian team Loki Foundation (now renamed to Session Network), operating on a blockchain network. Users can register without a phone number, and messages are relayed through anonymous nodes, making metadata virtually untraceable. SimpleX Chat, on the other hand, adopts a different approach; it does not rely on any fixed servers or user IDs, but instead achieves true decentralized communication through end-to-end ephemeral connections. Both projects are attempting to address the metadata leakage issues that traditional encrypted chat software still cannot avoid—namely, who is talking to whom, when they are talking, and the frequency of communication can still be analyzed and inferred.

However, decentralized communication still does not match traditional social applications in terms of user experience, performance, and scalability. Finding a balance between privacy and convenience will be the biggest technical challenge ahead. But regardless of the outcome, Vitalik's donation undoubtedly sends a signal: outside the noisy market, there are still people in the crypto world who are safeguarding the original ideals - a truly free, uncensored, and privacy-protecting internet.

This Week's Focus

Plasma token has dropped 90% from its early peak, and the project is far from realizing its grand vision.

Plasma has attracted significant attention by claiming to completely transform the stablecoin infrastructure. The project launched its native token XPL, which quickly drew over $500 million in funding shortly after its debut, with the token price once soaring to $1.67 and a market capitalization surpassing $2 billion. The project promises features such as high throughput, instant payments, and seamless scalability, which are characteristic of “next-generation blockchains,” seemingly possessing the full potential to disrupt the stablecoin industry.

However, from the perspective of actual on-chain usage and market performance after its launch, the project has far from realized its grand vision. As the hype has subsided and usage has fallen significantly short of expectations, the price of XPL has quickly collapsed, currently trading in the range of about $0.18–$0.20, a retracement of approximately 88–90% from its peak. Although the project team released an engineering progress update in November, it failed to bring substantial catalysts or restore community confidence. This has become one of the most representative cases of new coin listing failures in the recent crypto market, highlighting the common risks of the so-called “stablecoin infrastructure + high growth narrative” when lacking actual on-chain data and transparent communication. For investors, this incident serves as a reminder that even “infrastructure-type” projects in the future must adhere to observing their real usage data and liquidity before cautiously assessing potential value and risks.

Bitcoin has fallen over 20% in the past month, why is it performing worse than the stock market?

Recently, although Bitcoin still has bullish catalysts, its performance has clearly lagged behind the US stock market. Bitcoin has fallen more than 30% from its peak, dropping below the 50-week moving average, while at the same time, altcoins have seen even larger declines, with many altcoins dropping by 50% or more. In the past month, Bitcoin has fallen 22%, which is a huge drop compared to traditional markets. During the same period, the S&P 500 index only fell by 2.5%, while the Nasdaq index, which has historically moved in line with Bitcoin, also only dropped by 4%.

The reason lies in the fact that the stock market, represented by the S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100, has benefited from investors' enthusiasm for AI, leading to a sustained rally; while the crypto market has turned cautious due to excessive leverage driving previous liquidations and ongoing selling pressure on risk assets. Additionally, profit-taking by institutions and the overlay of macroeconomic uncertainty have led to a continued decline in Bitcoin and mainstream crypto assets, with both technical and capital aspects facing pressure. Many long-term holders have also taken profits at high levels, further weakening overall liquidity and sentiment in the crypto market. However, looking ahead, most market analysts believe that catalysts such as regulatory clarity and interest rate cuts will support Bitcoin's rebound in 2026.

Bitcoin faces a $13.6 billion monthly options expiration, hedging may continue to amplify volatility.

After experiencing a significant pullback, Bitcoin is迎来了 the monthly options expiration day on Friday. During this week's pullback, the price of Bitcoin once fell over 30% to 81,000 USD, and then rebounded to about 90,000 USD, but overall sentiment remains cautious. In the context of defensive positioning, the market is particularly focused on the scale of this expiration. Deribit data shows that the total number of contracts expiring this time is 151,050 BTC, of which the open interest for call options is 94,750 and for put options is 56,300, with a total nominal value of about 13.6 billion USD. The put/call ratio is 0.59, indicating that call positions still dominate, but the demand for downside protection has significantly increased.

The maximum pain price is $101,000, approximately 12% higher than the spot price, highlighting that the current price has significantly deviated from the optimal range for options sellers. Currently, about $3.3 billion in contracts are in the money (about 22%), while the remaining $11.7 billion are out of the money (about 77%), indicating that traders have allocated a large number of positions for a breakout from the current consolidation range. Put options are most concentrated around the $81,000 strike price, while call options are mainly stacked above $120,000, but due to the distance from the spot price, most of these high call positions have not entered the exercise range. Overall, market sentiment remains relatively weak, with a large number of out-of-the-money positions dominating the funding structure. Near key strike prices, market makers' hedging actions may continue to amplify short-term volatility, keeping Bitcoin highly volatile before the expiration on Friday.

Financing Weekly Report

According to RootData, from November 21 to November 27, 2025, a total of 12 crypto and related projects announced the completion of financing or mergers and acquisitions, covering multiple sectors such as fintech, DApp, MPC wallets, RWA, DEX, etc. Below is a brief introduction to the projects with the largest financing scale this week:

Dunamu

On November 26, Naver Financial announced the acquisition of Dunamu through a stock swap, with a transaction valuation of approximately 10.3 billion USD.

Dunamu is a South Korean fintech company that focuses on the blockchain and fintech sectors, operating the largest cryptocurrency exchange in South Korea. South Korean internet giant Kakao holds 10.88% of Dunamu's shares, down from the approximately 20% shares it previously held through its affiliated fund.

Monad

Announced the completion of a $188 million financing on November 22, executed through a public sale on the Coinbase platform.

Monad is building a high-performance Layer 1 blockchain for the next generation of decentralized applications. Monad's mission is to accelerate the disruptive development of decentralization by building a blockchain that is 100 to 1000 times faster than its closest competitors. This will alleviate the severe bottlenecks of existing blockchains and support more complex applications and a wider range of use cases.

Baanx

Announced on November 24th that it has completed a $175 million financing, led by Exodus.

Baanx is a 100% B2B2C service provider focused on API-driven digital and cryptocurrency-friendly financial services, such as debit cards (physical and virtual), digital wallets, IBAN, crypto remittances, remittances/foreign exchange, payment gateways, and more. Through collaboration with CL Technology, Baanx also offers white-label, fully managed applications targeted at user groups, facilitating the global large-scale application of blockchain technology, digital assets, and cryptocurrencies.

Focus Next Week

Token Unlock

According to data from Tokenomist, the market will see significant token unlocks over the next 7 days (2025.11.28 - 2025.12.04). The top 3 unlocks are as follows:

• HYPE will unlock tokens worth approximately $359 million in the next 7 days, accounting for 3.7% of the circulating supply.
• SUI will unlock approximately $68.51 million in the next 7 days, accounting for 1.2% of the circulating supply.
• EIGEN will unlock approximately $22.62 million worth of tokens in the next 7 days, accounting for 8.3% of the circulating supply. <br> Reference Source

• Gate, https://www.gate.com/trade/BTC_USDT
• Farside Investors, https://farside.co.uk/btc/
• Gate, https://www.gate.com/trade/ETH_USDT
• Gate, https://www.gate.com/crypto-market-data
• Coingecoko, https://www.coingecko.com/en/cryptocurrency-heatmap
• Rootdata, https://www.rootdata.com/Fundraising
• Tokenomist, https://tokenomist.ai/
• CoinDesk, https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2025/11/20/why-bitcoin-is-underperforming-equities-despite-bullish-catalysts
• CoinDesk, https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2025/11/26/a-new-crypto-project-vowed-to-transform-stablecoins-then-its-token-crashed-90
• CoinDesk, https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2025/11/25/bitcoin-faces-usd13-3b-monthly-options-expiry-as-btc-trades-well-below-max-pain
• DeFiLlama, https://defillama.com/chain/merlin
• Reuters, https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/tethers-stablecoin-downgraded-weak-sp-assessment-2025-11-26/?utm_source=chatgpt.com
• Cosmos Hub Forum, https://forum.cosmos.network/t/atom-tokenomics-research-kickoff/16462?u=mag

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