Bitcoin slumps 7% in sharpest drop since March

Good morning. Here's what happened overnight and what you need to know today.

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1.

Crypto bruise: US stockmarkets were lower as Bitcoin slumped more than 7% to USD84,555, putting it on track for its sharpest daily percentage fall since March. The drop followed a tough November, where bitcoin shed more than USD18,000 and fell 17%. The cryptocurrency is now down about 33% since its 6 October intraday high of USD126,272.76, according to Dow Jones Market Data. The losses pressured crypto-related stocks. Strategy Inc, the biggest corporate holder of bitcoin, cut its 2025 earnings forecast citing the weak run in the token. Its shares fell more than 11%. The company also said it had set aside a USD1.4 billion reserve to fund future dividend and interest payments. Coinbase, Bitfarms and Ether were also sharply lower. The broader crypto market has lost more than USD1 trillion from its peak, according to CoinGecko. Equities also edged lower. The Dow was trading 0.48%, the S&P 500 0.3% lower and Nasdaq down 0.35%. That was even when traders now price an 87.6% chance of a 25bp Fed rate cut in December, according to CME data. (WSJ)(Bloomberg)(Reuters)

2.

Déjà vu: After yet another high-profile technology failure, pressure is mounting on the ASX to restore confidence in its systems and leadership, as regulators, investors and listed companies await answers. Monday’s outage shut down the exchange’s announcements platform just before 9am AEDT, halting trading in about 50 companies and leaving others in limbo. ASX said in a statement the issue was “largely resolved” by 6.45pm. The failure disrupted capital raisings, investor calls and earnings disclosures. Metcash was forced to halt trading after being unable to publish its first-half results presentation before market open. CEO Doug Jones told The Australian Financial Review he still hadn’t been told what caused the disruption. Meanwhile, fund managers reportedly received equity raising term sheets in their inboxes before the trading halts appeared on the ASX announcements platform, including a $25 million placement and USD40 million convertible note for QPM Energy. The outage adds to a string of serious missteps now under scrutiny in a formal ASIC-led inquiry. Chief executive Helen Lofthouse did not comment, but as the year ends repeated failures have raised questions about the ASX’s ability to run key market infrastructure, as a weakened rival in Cboe Australia leaves regulators with few alternatives. (Capital Brief)(AFR)

3.

AI merry-go-round: Nvidia bought USD2 billion ($3.1 billion) of Synopsys’ common stock as part of a strategic engineering and design partnership the companies said on Monday. The deal will see Synopsys accelerate its portfolio of compute-intensive applications, progress agentic AI engineering, expand cloud access and develop joint go-to-market initiatives. Nvidia said it bought the shares at USD414.79 apiece, compared with a closing price of USD418.01 on Friday. Nvidia has invested in several companies during the AI boom including OpenAI, CoreWeave and Intel, which has fed concerns about deals that inflate the valuations of certain tech companies. Separately, Nvidia released Alpamayo-R1, a new open-source AI model for autonomous vehicles that uses natural language to describe its decision-making. Nvidia’s Katie Washabaugh told Reuters the goal was to give developers insight into how such models operate and help create evaluation standards across the industry. Elsewhere, OpenAI said it would take an ownership stake in Thrive Holdings, an investment vehicle set up earlier this year by Thrive Capital, adding to a growing list of circular deals involving the ChatGPT maker and its backers. DeepSeek debuted new AI models to rival Google and OpenAI, while Runway unveiled its new AI video model. (FT) (Nvidia)(Capital Brief)(Bloomberg)

4.

Pyramid pressure: Top consultancies have frozen graduate starting salaries for a third year, as AI begins to reshape the industry and challenge the traditional “pyramid” staffing model, The Financial Times reported. Job offers for 2026 from firms including McKinsey, BCG and Bain show no increase from current levels, according to Management Consulted and the paper’s sources. Packages for first-year undergraduate hires in the US remain between USD135,000 and USD140,000, while MBA hires can expect between USD270,000 and USD285,000. Starting salaries at the Big Four (Deloitte, EY, KPMG and PwC) have shown no increase since 2022. PwC has cut graduate hiring for 2025 and in October said it would fall short of its goal to grow its global workforce by 100,000 by 2026. Executives at two Big Four firms estimated graduate recruitment across the UK’s largest consulting and accounting firms would drop by about half in the coming year. Some firms are seeking more mid-career specialists as they shift away from generalist roles, but McKinsey, PwC and Accenture have all announced job cuts. (FT)

5.

Sustainability c(AI)veat: Investing in power-hungry data centres will come with sustainability expectations and unions will help to shape the future of AI, under Australia’s first national plan dedicated to the emerging technology. The Albanese government will release Australia’s first national AI plan today, describing the rapidly evolving technology as presenting “both opportunities and challenges”. The plan aims to have “fully AI capable” workplaces by the end of the decade, with digital infrastructure supporting the technology’s growth. Authors Innovation Minister Tim Ayres and Assistant Technology Minister Andrew Charlton stress the need to create a “world-class digital and physical infrastructure” to attract investment. That will include designing a set of national data centre principles, positioning Australia as a leading destination for data centre investment, boosting cybersecurity across critical infrastructure, and expanding the National Broadband Network. Labor’s data centre principles will set “clear expectations for sustainability” and that workers and unions “will play an important role” in shaping uptake across the economy. (Capital Brief)

6.

Please explain: Pauline Hanson's One Nation is attracting record levels of support from Coalition voters, according to new data which suggests a growing nationwide swing to the right-wing minor party. In polling conducted by DemosAU during October and November, made exclusively available to Capital Brief, One Nation recorded a 17% primary vote – up 10.6 percentage points since the May Federal election. At the same time, the Coalition registered a 24% primary vote, down 7.6 percentage points from May, with one in five people who backed it in the election having since shifted to One Nation. The party is now gaining support in rural and outer metropolitan parts of other mainland states, beyond Hanson’s home state of QLD. DemosAU Head of Research George Hasanakos said that if the results were replicated in an election, One Nation could win 12 seats in the House of Representatives across QLD, NSW, VIC and WA. (Capital Brief)

7.

Active ETF: Goldman Sachs is buying ETF provider Innovator Capital Management for USD2 billion ($3.1 billion), getting a fast-growing platform of defined-outcome funds popular with investors seeking downside protection. The deal, expected to close in the second quarter of 2026 pending regulatory approvals, will add USD28 billion in assets across 159 ETFs to Goldman Sachs Asset Management (GSAM), lifting its ETF assets to USD79 billion. That would place Goldman among the 10 largest active ETF issuers, according to Bloomberg. Based in Wheaton, Illinois, Innovator launched the first so-called buffer ETFs in 2018 and is now the second-largest provider behind First Trust. The funds use options contracts to protect against market losses while capping potential gains. Goldman’s own buffer ETFs, launched earlier this year, have accumulated USD36 million. More than 60 Innovator employees will join Goldman’s asset management business. CEO David Solomon said Innovator’s experience “complements our mission to enhance the client experience with sophisticated strategies that seek to deliver targeted, defined outcomes for investors.” (GS)(Bloomberg)(WSJ)

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Gentle development: The Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA) found that if governments increase so-called “gentle density” development, Australia could increase its housing supply by 9%. The CEDA research due for release today found that the development of terraces, townhouses, low-rise apartments and dual occupancy in well-located and serviced areas of the country’s five largest cities could result in one million new homes, easing pricing pressures. According to the ABC, the report estimated that the moderate-density approach would add around 12% more homes in Sydney, 15% more in Melbourne, 16% increases in Brisbane and Adelaide and more than a 17% increase in Perth. The report argued that the debate around housing is currently predominantly focused on "the extreme ends of the housing supply spectrum — high-density inner-city developments or new 'masterplanned' communities in sprawling outer suburban or regional areas" and overlooks the potential of medium-density housing. (ABC)(SMH)(Capital Brief)