Cryptocurrency valuations staged a modest recovery this week after a $19 billion liquidation event. Standard Chartered predicts Bitcoin could rise above $200,000 by year-end. However, a lack of inflows from US spot Bitcoin ETFs is limiting its upside momentum, leading to the worst October performance since 2013.

Hong Kong approved its first spot Solana ETF, with China Asset Management (Hong Kong) listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The ETF will include Chinese yuan and US dollar counters, with a management fee of 0.99% and an estimated annual expense ratio of 1.99%.

Aave’s DAO proposed a $50 million annual token buyback program using DeFi revenues. The plan aims to repurchase Aave tokens weekly, ranging from $250,000 to $1.75 million, to institutionalize buybacks as a recurring mechanism and enhance capital allocation within the DAO.

Chinese AI models are outperforming US counterparts in crypto trading, with DeepSeek generating a 9.1% positive unrealized return. Qwen3 and Grok trailed behind, while OpenAI’s ChatGPT-5 incurred a loss of over 66%. Despite costing less to develop, DeepSeek’s success came from leveraging long positions across major cryptocurrencies.

BNB is winning “Uptober” amid scrutiny over Binance’s market crash role. While Bitcoin’s performance is lackluster this October, BNB reached new highs twice this month. Despite facing scrutiny, BNB remains up 6% since the start of October, competing in memecoin trading and decentralized perpetuals markets.

The DeFi market saw most of the top 100 cryptocurrencies ending the week in the green. Zcash surged over 33% as the biggest winner, followed by Pump.fun’s token with a 26% increase. Total value locked in DeFi continues to show growth and resilience in the evolving space.

Read more at Cointelegraph: $19B Crypto Crash: Catalyst For $200K Bitcoin by 2025: Standard Chartered