Stocks Plunge After the Midterms. Can Bitcoin Survive the AI Selloff?

The host and a guest frame the week as a violent market reset: a Democratic sweep of Congress briefly lifted risk assets, then a Thursday selloff erased about $2 trillion of S&P 500 value and hit the Nasdaq, semis, and AI infrastructure names especially hard. They argue the move looks partly like an AI bubble correction, even if some Trump-linked assets were uniquely punished by the blue wave. Bitcoin and ETH held up better than many expected, with Bitcoin still hovering around its 50-week moving average, which they treat as an important line for the early bull case.

A major focus is the reported $6.34 billion Binance hack attributed to North Korea. The guest says Binance’s response was unusually strong: it published proof of reserves, covered losses, and helped calm the market. They walk through the social-engineering attack, the freezing of stolen funds by issuers and chains, and the laundering routes through ThorChain and other protocols. They also discuss how the incident raises the stakes for sanctions, validators, and future AI-assisted attacks.

The episode then turns to a $130 million hack of French bank Crédit Mutuel, which the host and guest say shows that traditional finance is not immune to cyber theft. They finish with Devcon and Ethereum’s road map, highlighting Justin Drake’s push to make Ethereum post-quantum by December 2028, along with mixed reactions to Vitalik’s keynote and a more hopeful view of Ethereum’s L2 alignment and infrastructure progress.