2 min readSummary
Week 51 has been another volatile week in markers, with the selloff continuing ahead of the big U.S. macro releases, especially CPI on Thursday, which came in lower than estimates, leading to a bounce towards the end of the week. The biggest headline amongst blockchain equities was Hut 8’s US$7 billion deal with Fluidstack, who will now join the ranks of miners who have successfully pivoted towards HPC compute services. On the other hand, we saw more negative news around Oracle, whose longstanding partner in AI data centre projects dropped out of its US$10 billion data centre in Michigan.
Week 51 Key Developments in Blockchain Equities
Index Performance: The index declined 8.7% over the week, on the back of broader equity declines during the week, especially amongst data centre names, driven by negative news around Oracle. Financial institutions had a positive week, but performance was not enough to offset declines in other Index subsectors.
Block Index Key Movers: 7-day top performers: Standard Chartered (+3.0%), Meta (+1.9%), Flow Traders (+1.9%) 7-day worst performers: Galaxy Digital (-24.6%), CleanSpark (-24.4%), Bitfarms (-22.8%).
Hut 8 signs AI co-location deal with Fluidstack: Hut 8 signed a US$7 billion deal with Fluidstack, for 245 MW of critical IT capacity over the course of 15 years, expected to be delivered in Q2 2027. The terms of the deal are similar to other miner/Fluidstack deals, with a financing backstop backed by Google, and similar revenue per MW profile.
Blue Owl out of Oracle's Michigan project: Blue Owl Capital will not be backing Oracle’s US$10 billion data centre in Michigan, which is expected to be used by OpenAI. Oracle stated that its development partner on the project, Related Digital, “chose the best equity partner from a competitive group of options”, and that Blue Owl was not amongst them. Markets took the news negatively and shares in the company dropped c.5% intraday after the news broke.
SEC drops case against AAVE, adding clarity to DeFi: this week the SEC dropped its case against decentralised lending protocol Aave, with no enforcement action recommended, which led to a spike in the token’s price, followed by a sell-off, following other cryptocurrencies during the day. The case dismissal follows Ondo Finance’s investigation closure earlier this month, and provides higher clarity to decentralised protocols and tokenisation initiatives.
Other news: Visa announced the launch of stablecoin settlement in the U.S., via Circle’s USDC. The initial participants include Cross River Bank and Lead Bank, which are settling with Visa in USDC over the Solana protocol, with broader availability to ramp up during 2026. The initiative is a clear result of a growing adoption of blockchain technology in the U.S., driven by better regulation, especially the GENIUS Act, enacted earlier this year. Strategy resumed aggressive Bitcoin acquisitions, by adding 10,645 BTC to its balance sheet, financed mainly through its common shares ATM, an unusual move, given that its mNAV currently trades below 1x (on an equity basis).
