Bitcoin Surges Above $71,000

According to CNBC, Morgan Stanley has cut its rating on crypto exchange platform Coinbase (COIN) from Equal Weight to Underweight, and slashed its price target from $258 to $120, implying roughly 16% downside from last Friday's close. Analyst Michael Cyprys said in a Monday client note that while the company is still pursuing its broader strategy, weak recent trading trends, soft forward revenue outlooks, and uncertainty in the crypto market have made the "earnings recovery" narrative harder to justify. Cyprys noted that Coinbase's crypto trading activity weakened in October, with fourth-quarter trading revenue of roughly $165 million as of Oct. 25. At that pace, full-year revenue would come to around $607 million, roughly 11% below the market consensus estimate of $685 million. COIN shares have fallen around 22% over the past month. After rival Binance suffered a roughly $6 billion hack last week, crypto trading activity may stall further, weighing on Coinbase's earnings and stock price. Morgan Stanley has cut its 2027 revenue forecast for Coinbase by 28% and its adjusted EBITDA forecast by 47%. The rating runs counter to Wall Street consensus: LSEG data shows that among 41 analysts covering Coinbase, 26 rate it Buy or Strong Buy, while 13 hold a Hold rating.

According to @zachxbt, an EU entity is suspected of losing $106M+ from multiple centralized exchange accounts. The attacker used wallet 0x9eca to buy 27,553 $ETH($62.97M) on-chain at an average price of $2,286 and moved the funds through multiple platforms.

Binance founder CZ wrote that an increasing number of countries will realize issuing their own national stablecoins will boost demand for their domestic currencies and government bonds, as the U.S. dollar already holds a huge lead in this space.

According to data from the BIT stock platform, U.S. optical module industry leader Marvell announced an all-stock acquisition of optical chip leader Lumentum. However, the deal news failed to reverse the downward trend: MRVL turned down 1.48% in pre-market trading (after earlier rising more than 3%), while LITE fell 2.99% following the resumption of trading.

Strive CEO Matt Cole posted on social media that the firm acquired 124 BTC last week for $10 million, with an average cost of $80,526 per Bitcoin, bringing its total BTC holdings to 43,124. Most of the purchase was funded by existing cash, and this marked Strive’s first use of SATS ATM (market-priced stock offering), which accounted for 100% of the firm’s ATM fundraising proceeds this week.

According to market sources, MicroStrategy added 810 Bitcoin (BTC) to its holdings, bringing its total BTC position to 849,327 units.