Bitcoin's brutal month masks a far more resilient story

Bitcoin shed more than $18,000 in November, with its year-to-date decline placing it among the worst-performing asset classes of 2025.

I have never been a Bitcoin loyalist and have never cared whether the coin is in the green or red on any given day. My only concern, inherited from my commodity trading years, is to end up on the right side of the industry.

I felt the same about oil, gas or carbon – direction matters, not ideology. What I do believe in, however, is that blockchain as a technology, and as a category to invest in, is here to stay. It has already become institutional and, once that happens, retail stops being the marginal price setter. In other words, large financial institutions now drive most of the trading volume, not individual investors.

What's behind the Bitcoin slump? 01:53

With that context in mind, it becomes easier to look at what happened in November and where things may be heading.

Flash crash

After the sudden and sharp drop in October caused by forced liquidations and thin liquidity, November opened with a near 10 per cent fall from $110,000 to $100,000 in a matter of days. Bitcoin tried to claw back some ground but ran straight into the headwinds of the broader artificial intelligence trade unwinding as investors pulled money out of AI-linked stocks after months of heavy inflows.

Nvidia, now a $5 trillion giant worth more than twice the entire Bitcoin market capitalisation, posted strong earnings that beat expectations. The celebration lasted about two hours before markets sent the stock lower. This was not surprising. Cracks had been visible across the AI complex for months.

Some commentators have criticised what they call the circular AI economy, where one AI company books a $500 billion order from another, which then books an order from a third, and so on.

One transaction gets counted as revenue four times. It sounds dramatic until you realise this is no different from how money velocity works in everyday economic life. You earn Dh100 ($27.22), spend Dh80 on flowers, the florist spends Dh70 on eggs and the farmer spends Dh60 on fertiliser. As long as these transactions are not financed by leverage, the system functions.

The problem arises when they are.