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More →Crypto Long & Short: Why real-world assets need fixed-rate loans onchain
You're reading <a href="/newsletters/crypto-long-short/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Crypto Long & Short</a>, our weekly newsletter featuring insights, news and analysis for the professional investor. <a href="/newsletters/crypto-long-short/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Sign up here</a> to get it in your inbox every Wednesday. This is your institutional newsletter, Crypto Long & Short. This week: <em>…and if you’re looking for more institutional insights: ETF Central’s <a href="https://www.etfcentral.com/global-etf-survey/2026" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">>Trackinsight Global ETF Survey 2026</a>, produced with Calamos Investments and S&P Dow Jones Indices, finds nearly 7 in 10 professional investors are reassessing their ETF holdings.</em> <em>Plus, CoinDesk’s latest <a href="/research/digital-assets-quarterly-review-and-outlook-q3" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Digital Assets Quarterly Report</a> is out now.</em> <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/kim-klemballa-80101812/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">>- Kim Klemballa</a> <em>by <a href="/author/peter-gaffney" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Peter Gaffney, co-founder, O2O Capital Partners</a></em> Fixed-rate lending is the clearest growth lever for real-world assets (RWAs) in decentralized finance (DeFi). It unlocks a strategy that credit desks have run for decades but DeFi has never meaningfully implemented: buy a quality income asset, borrow against it at a locked rate below the asset’s yield and buy more of the asset. Stablecoins are steadily sitting around $300 billion in <a href="https://app.rwa.xyz/stablecoins" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">>supply</a> and aggregate <a href="https://o2ocapital.com/research/rwa-vaults-institutional-track-record" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">>vault assets</a> are nearing the $20 billion milestone. Morpho alone carries more than <a href="https://data.morpho.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">>$16 billion</a> in deposits, most of it in variable-rate markets priced on pool utilization, which serve crypto-native traders who manage liquid positions in real time but leave longer-dated borrowers with uncertainty. Fixed-rate, fixed-term lending closes that gap by matching the term of the loan to the duration of the collateral, especially for RWAs whose redemptions can settle anywhere from T+7 to T+90. With the borrow cost and maturity known at entry, institutional counterparties can underwrite an RWA looping vault the same way they approve conventional term financing. This is the same bedrock foundation that formed and grew traditional credit markets to $51 trillion in US <a href="https://www.sifma.org/research/statistics/research-quarterly-fixed-income-outstanding" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">>fixed income</a> versus $1.6 trillion in <a href="https://www.lsta.org/content/morningstar-lsta-leveraged-loan-index-analysis-december-2025/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">
Ken Griffin Says AI Is 'Almost Certainly' in a Bubble—And Compares GPUs to Airline Seats
Ken Griffin, founder of the Wall Street giant Citadel, <a href="https://www.marketwatch.com/story/ai-stocks-are-probably-in-a-bubble-but-might-be-worth-holding-onto-says-citadels-ken-griffin-87f535ce" target="_blank" class="sc-adb616fe-0 dJryYS" rel="nofollow">said</a> Tuesday that investors are “almost certainly” in an AI bubble—though he isn’t telling them to dump their AI stocks. “What’s left in the wake of these bubbles, if we want to use that word, is often game changing for the world. And the companies that are on the other side of that bubble are the market leaders for decades to come,” Griffin said at Citadel’s Future of Global Markets Conference in New York on Oct. 20 This reaches beyond tech investors, since the AI buildout has <a href="https://decrypt.co/359175/nvidia-earnings-steady-markets-ai-spending-debate-intensifies" target="_blank" class="sc-adb616fe-0 dJryYS" rel="nofollow">underpinned equity markets</a> over the past year, so many index funds and retirement accounts hold a slice of it. A bubble is what happens when prices climb far faster than the businesses behind them can justify, until reality catches up. Citadel is a hedge fund, a private firm that invests money for wealthy clients and institutions. But the fact that it seems like a bubble isn’t <i>that</i> big a deal if you look at the big picture, according to Griffin. “Any radical transformation of our economy is generally intertwined with a bubble,” he said, recalling the internet boom and adding that he wishes he had kept his Amazon stock. The companies that emerge on the other side of a bubble tend to lead markets for decades, he argued, though he stopped short of predicting a collapse. His own firm is a case study: Griffin said AI agents, software that carries out multistep tasks on its own, cut some high-level Citadel research from weeks to a couple of hours. Griffin compared GPUs, the graphics chips that many companies use to train and run AI models, to airline seats. Both have a very low marginal cost to run, meaning the extra expense of serving one more customer is tiny, so prices can collapse once supply outstrips demand. He pointed to the telecom boom around 2000, when companies laid more fiber-optic cable than demand required and communication prices fell. He also doubted that chips five or six years old, which still earn rental rates he called extraordinary, will keep doing so for another five or six years. Buyers are getting pickier, Griffin said, sorting which jobs justify premium models from OpenAI and Anthropic and which can run on cheaper open-source alternatives, meaning models anyone can download and run on their own computers. Corporate America has been uneven at extracting value from AI, he added, with companies studying their bills from the labs and asking where the productivity is. Gartner forecasts worldwide<a href="https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2025-09-17-gartner-says-worldwide-ai-spending-will-total-1-point-5-trilli
Gate Live will host a special AMA tonight, focusing on BTC's rebound, the Meme surge, and institutional moves by BlackRock and others.
According to CoinWorld news, Gate Live will host a themed AMA on October 22 at 20:00 (UTC+8), focusing on the BTC rebound, the surge in Meme coins, and institutional capital flows. The livestream will feature multiple guests, with discussions centered on whether BTC's current rebound can be sustained, whether the Meme coin rally still has room to continue, and how the moves of institutions such as BlackRock will affect market expectations.
Baseten overhauled Qwen in a week: the 27B decision model takes the top spot, and the 9B surpasses Jev
Baseten's research team Base Labs has released two open-source decision models, Mammoth-1 and Elephant-1, with 27 billion and 9 billion parameters respectively. The team completed post-training based on Qwen3.5-27B and Qwen3.5-9B in just one week, using 6.21 million training samples. On the Jev Decision Index 0.4 leaderboard, Mammoth-1 ranks first with a score of 71.24, leading 207 other decision models. Elephant-1, with a score of 62.65, surpasses Jev 1.14's 62.2 and becomes the highest-scoring 9B model on the leaderboard. The weights of both models have been released under the MIT license and support self-deployment.
Tesla's robotaxi safety report released: 4.99 million kilometers driven with no injuries
Tesla's first safety report for its robotaxi service was released on October 22. As of October 18, 2026, the fleet had accumulated 4.99 million kilometers of driving, during which there were no injuries, no airbag deployments, and no pedestrians or cyclists struck. Tesla stated that, based on estimates from local police accident data, human driving over the same mileage would be expected to result in about 9 injury-causing accidents and 4 airbag deployments. Tesla's robotaxi service currently operates in 7 cities across Texas, Florida, and California in the United States, and will expand in the future to Las Vegas, Nevada; Jacksonville, Florida; Phoenix, Arizona; and San Antonio, Texas. The Tesla Cybercab has joined Tesla's robotaxi operating fleet in Austin, with service hours running from 6 a.m. to midnight.
A whale was liquidated for 121.33 BTC, worth approximately $9.9 million, due to the market decline.
CoinWorld data: According to Lookonchain monitoring, a whale was liquidated for 121.33 BTC due to the market decline, worth approximately $9.9 million at current prices.
MAGMA surged over 70%, and two traders made a $340,000 profit going long on Aster_DEX.
CoinWorld data: magma rose more than 70% today. Two traders went long on 1.5 million magma tokens (about $775,000) with leverage on Aster_DEX and currently have an unrealized profit of $340,000, a return of 105.84%.
X Layer's trading volume reached 287 million transactions in Q3, with DeFi TVL doubling quarter-over-quarter.
CoinWorld data: Principia Labs' x layer 2026 Q3 report shows that tradezone cumulatively processed 287 million transactions, with EVM average daily transactions growing 262% quarter-over-quarter to 1.22 million. DeFi total value locked (TVL) grew 100% quarter-over-quarter to $173.4 million, ecosystem application fee revenue grew 490% quarter-over-quarter to $1.86 million, and OKB market capitalization grew 53.8% quarter-over-quarter to $2.54 billion.
South Korea's digital asset framework law consultations are nearing completion, and the cryptocurrency taxation plan is facing controversy.
According to a report by Bihang Network, Lee Eok-won, chairman of South Korea's Financial Services Commission, said at a National Assembly hearing that government consultations on the Basic Act on Digital Assets have entered the final stage, and the government will push for the legislation to be enacted. The bill covers a licensing system for crypto exchanges, rules for stablecoin issuance, and legal definitions. South Korea's cryptocurrency taxation plan, originally scheduled to take effect on January 1, 2027, is facing controversy, with two petitions calling for the repeal or postponement of the tax both reaching the threshold of 50,000 signatures. Kim Min-seok, leader of the Democratic Party of Korea, said that opinions from all sides are being reviewed and proposed that a comprehensive review of the taxation plan is necessary. South Korea's National Tax Service plans to complete the draft digital asset tax notice by October 30.
Two wallets opened 2x leveraged long positions on $magma, with unrealized profits reaching $340,000.
According to CoinWorld news, Lookonchain reports that $magma rose more than 70% today. Two wallets opened 2x leveraged long positions on 1.5 million $magma tokens (approximately $775,000), and their unrealized profit has now reached $340,000, with a return rate as high as 105.84%.