Appold Market Watch - Week ending 24 October 2025
Market Update & Industry News - Week ending 24 October 2025
🔷 BlackRock has launched a Bitcoin Exchange Traded Product (ETP) in the UK, following the lifting of the Financial Conduct Authority’s ban on digital asset ETPs earlier this month. BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin ETP has been listed on the London Stock Exchange.
Appold view: BlackRock already commands a significant share of the global Bitcoin investment product market, with its U.S. spot Bitcoin ETF having over $85 billion in net assets. By introducing its Bitcoin ETP in the UK, BlackRock hopes to leverage its scale, brand, and infrastructure to further reinforce its dominance in this field.
🔷 U.S. digital asset brokerage FalconX is set to acquire 21shares, the Swiss digital asset-native Exchange Traded Product (ETP) issuer. 21shares, which was one of the first asset managers to list Bitcoin Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs) in the U.S., will continue to operate independently.
Appold view: It was noted this week that in the U.S. alone, a record 155 ETP filings have been made since 2024, representing 35 different digital assets. In this context, FalconX aims to establish a foothold in a rapidly expanding market.
🔷 A major Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage resulted in severe disruptions to many digital asset companies. The outage, originating from a regional failure in AWS's US-East-1 data centre, caused widespread downtime for platforms including Coinbase, Robinhood, OpenSea, and MetaMask, with users experiencing login failures, zero balance displays, and halted transactions.
Appold view: This outage once again exposed a critical weakness for many digital asset companies, in a widespread lack of focus on risk management and operational resilience. Many firms, especially those providing front-end services, remain overly reliant on single cloud providers with limited contingency planning and are unable to function during disruptions. This is a stark reminder of the need for diversified infrastructure and greater resilience.
🔷 U.S. President Donald Trump has issued a pardon for Changpeng Zhao, the founder of the digital asset exchange Binance. Zhao had been sentenced to four months in prison in April 2024 after pleading guilty to violating U.S. money laundering laws. Binance had also pleaded guilty and was ordered to pay $4.3 billion after an investigation found that it helped users bypass sanctions.
Appold view: Zhao’s criminal sentence was a highly controversial topic within the digital assets industry, and so will be his pardoning. Zhao’s proponents will argue that the pardon reframes him less as a wrongdoer and more as an innovator stifled by overregulation. Critics, however, will view this as undermining accountability and reinforcing the perception that influence can override the rule of law, especially given the entangled nature of Trump’s businesses with Binance.
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