Cointime reports: Democrats won control of both the House and Senate in this week’s US midterm elections, according to a Standard Chartered Wealth Solutions Chief Investment Office report dated Nov. 5. On oil, the report said that as supply chains gradually adapt to current conditions and Congress oversees defense spending, NYMEX crude prices may gradually fall toward a 12-month target of $80 a barrel.
Cointime reports: DeFi blogger Ignas (@DefiIgnas) said Polymarket’s trading volume has been roughly flat all year despite the recent midterm elections, while active wallets, open interest and trade counts are all declining. Election-related volume is tiny compared with sports and crypto markets and users are mostly speculators, making perpetual futures attractive to Polymarket, he said, adding he would rather the platform improve its prediction-market product and leave perps to HL, Lighter and Variational. Kalshi was excluded from his data due to anomalous wash-trading figures.
Cointime reports: Ether dropped below $2,400 on the latest reading, trading at $2,397.1, even as it remained up 3.37% over the past 24 hours. The move reflects sharp short-term volatility in the ETH price, with market participants advised to manage risk accordingly.
Cointime update: US President Donald Trump said on November 5 that he intends to keep Pete Hegseth in the role of defense secretary. Trump acknowledged he has received calls from people unhappy with Hegseth, saying: “You know, I do get calls like that about him. I don’t know why that is.”
Cointime update: Malacca police arrested 13 people, including 11 Chinese men, one Chinese woman and one Taiwanese man aged 24 to 36, in a raid on a residence at Taman Kota Shahbandar on November 4. The gang allegedly used Telegram, QQ Chat and Soul to lure Chinese victims into trading on a fictitious cryptocurrency exchange with promises of romance and high returns. Police seized 12 laptops, a desktop, 26 phones and a router worth about 50,000 ringgit; the 13 are held until November 8.
Cointime update: Humanoid robot maker Agility Robotics began trading on the Nasdaq on November 5 under the ticker AGLT after completing its merger with special purpose acquisition company Churchill Capital Corp XI. The transaction values Agility Robotics at approximately $2.5 billion and is expected to raise about $465 million. Agility, backed by Nvidia and Amazon, becomes the first dedicated humanoid robot manufacturer listed in the US.
Cointime reports: Voters broadly rejected Trump in Tuesday’s midterm elections, a result that may lift a layer of political pressure from Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh and let him focus more on curbing inflation. Fed watchers said the Republican rout, with cost of living among voters’ top concerns, has fundamentally reversed the political situation around the Fed. Mark Spindel, who has written on the history of Fed independence, said Warsh and his colleagues can now concentrate on monetary policy.
Cointime update: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an interview with German media on November 4 that he hopes a Democratic victory in the US midterm elections would help increase American aid to Ukraine and pressure on Russia. The remarks were reported by Ukrainska Pravda on November 5. Zelensky’s comments tie the future of US military and financial support for Kyiv to the outcome of the congressional vote.
Cointime reports: The attacker behind the CryptoBilis Ledger exploit deposited a total of about 885 ETH, worth roughly $2.14 million, into Tornado Cash, on-chain tracker Lookonchain reported on Nov. 5. The transfers route the exploit proceeds through the sanctioned mixing service, obscuring the trail of the funds.
Cointime update: Backpack founder and CEO Armani Ferrante said on the Rollup podcast on Nov. 5 that rebuilding ETFs like SPY with onchain smart contracts could cut fees to 1 basis point or even zero, versus the roughly 7-9 basis points such funds charge on assets under management. He said Wall Street becoming an API for developers would lower the barrier to launching brokerage and financial applications, and cited efforts to split SpaceX equity into exposure to revenue streams such as Starlink or space data centers.
Cointime reports: Some Federal Reserve watchers judge that midterm election results could ease political pressure on Fed Chair Kevin Warsh, allowing him to focus on controlling inflation. President Trump, who nominated Warsh in May, has repeatedly called for rate cuts since his 2024 re-election. New Century Advisors chief economist Claudia Sahm said if the elections lead Trump to end the Iran conflict and drop further tariffs, the Fed may not need to raise rates again at all.
Cointime update: Baidu open-sourced its latest base model, ERNIE 5.5 Flash Base, on November 5, sending its Hong Kong shares up more than 5% at close and its US shares up over 2% in premarket trading. The model uses a Mixture-of-Experts architecture with 280 billion total parameters and 140 billion activated per token, and posts state-of-the-art results among same-size models on benchmarks covering knowledge, reasoning, math, code, multilingual and long-context tasks.
Cointime update: Seoul Central District Court’s 63rd Civil Division dismissed Dunamu’s lawsuit against Bithumb over alleged copying of API documentation, rejecting all of the plaintiff’s claims and ordering Dunamu to bear the full litigation costs. Dunamu, which operates Upbit, had sought 200 million won in damages; the court did not support the claim.
Cointime reports: The UK’s FTSE 100 trimmed its advance to 0.6% on Nov. 5 after the Bank of England raised its key interest rate by 25 basis points to 4.00%, the first hike since August 2023 and in line with market expectations. The index had been higher before the central bank decision.
Cointime reports: Economist Peter Schiff said on Nov. 5 that gold could easily exceed $10,000 an ounce by the end of the decade, more than double its current level of about $4,000. He argued junior gold miners may offer greater upside than gold itself, predicting consolidation as cash-rich majors such as Newmont, Barrick and Agnico look to acquire juniors with existing reserves rather than fund risky exploration. His Euro Pacific Gold Fund (EPGFX) holds a high allocation to small miners.
Cointime update: Hong Kong’s Acting Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury, Joseph Chan, said international virtual asset trading platforms meeting statutory and Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) requirements may apply for a license to operate in the city, with 13 platforms now licensed by the SFC. Chan said the government and SFC will soon submit a bill to the Legislative Council to bring more types of virtual asset services under the regulatory regime, and that the SFC and Invest Hong Kong are in contact with international platforms.
Cointime update: Xinhua and UBTECH unveiled the world’s first bionic humanoid robot news anchors on Nov. 5 at the 7th World Media Summit’s AI and Chinese Modernization forum. Named “Xinyan” and “Xinyu,” the 1:1 human-scale robots were built for news broadcasting and can deliver on-camera reports, using Xinhua’s AI agent and UBTECH’s bionic skin, embodied-intelligence hardware, operating system and emotion model. Director Zhang Yimou served as lead designer of their appearance.
Cointime update: Huawei Cloud will update its Model-as-a-Service platform on November 15 to launch the openPangu-2.1-Pro flagship model. The release mainly improves ArkTS code-generation quality for native HarmonyOS app development. The update also covers core products including the AgentArts agent platform, CodeArts and OfficeAce, which will connect to the flagship model.
Cointime update: Thailand’s Securities and Exchange Commission has filed a criminal complaint against BG Limited, the operator of Bitget, for allegedly running a digital asset trading business without a license. The regulator said Bitget offered trading services and collected fees from 2022 to 2025, promoting them via a Thai-language website and social media. The Digital Economy and Society Ministry will block access to the platform from December 5, and a separate complaint targets an individual accused of helping promote it.
Cointime reports: President Donald Trump faced strong voter backlash in Tuesday’s elections, a result some Fed watchers say could reduce political pressure on Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh and let him focus on controlling inflation. Since returning to office in 2024, Trump has repeatedly demanded rate cuts and sought to remove a sitting Fed governor. New Century Advisors chief economist Claudia Sahm said the Fed may not need to raise rates again if the election result pushes Trump to end the Iran conflict and drop further tariffs.