At 8:30 on Tuesday morning in Washington, the Labor Department published October's inflation report. Core prices (which leave out food and energy) rose 0.296%, the third month in a row at about 0.3%. Economists had expected about 0.2%.

Within five minutes about $200 million of leveraged crypto bets were closed out by force. By the end of the day it was about $580 million.

Bitcoin read $74,256 four minutes before the report. At 17:28 UTC it read $72,957, its first reading below $73,000 on our hourly series since August.

Christopher Waller, one of the seven Fed governors, had set the trigger that morning. Before the report he said he would back a quarter-point rise in December whatever it showed, and that a half-point rise may be needed if core inflation came in around 0.3% or higher. It came in at 0.296%.

Lorie Logan, who runs the Dallas Fed, added after the report that "it may be possible to move more rapidly this winter than the FOMC has moved so far this fall."

Traders believed them. The ten-year Treasury briefly touched a 5% yield, and the two-year had its biggest one-day rise since April 2025.

On Polymarket the bet that the Fed raises by half a point in December went from under 1% yesterday morning to 11% this morning. The same traders put a quarter-point rise at 85%. They give no change at all a 4% chance.

So the cost of money rises in December; the question is by how much. Bitcoin is $73,769 this morning, about $1,700 below the $75,456 average that Strategy (the largest corporate holder) paid for its coins. Ether and solana are both at their lowest daily readings since August.

If you hold crypto, the price of money is what's pushing yours down, and on Tuesday two Fed officials said it may rise faster than anyone expected a week ago.

Anthropic, the AI company, started selling its shares on Tuesday. It's offering 825 million shares at $70 to $78 each, valuing the company at about $1.3 trillion, and the shares are expected to start trading on Nasdaq on Thursday of next week. Google is putting in $10 billion at the IPO price.

Crypto traders have been betting on the price for months. On Hyperliquid a contract called ANT stands for one Anthropic share, and on Tuesday it traded at about $97, 23% above the top of the range. Across Hyperliquid and OKX there is more than $260 million bet on Anthropic's price.

When SpaceX listed, its perps traded at $176 against an offer price of $135, and the stock opened about 17% below where the perps had been. If you hold the Anthropic perp, the last time traders priced an IPO this way they were about 17% too high.

On Tuesday a federal judge in New York refused to stop the state from shutting down Novig, a sports prediction market. The judge ruled that Novig's contracts are not "swaps" under federal commodities law, so New York's gambling laws apply to them.

Kalshi and Polymarket argue that their contracts answer to one federal regulator and nobody else. It's one judge at an early stage and Novig can appeal, but it's the second court this autumn to side with the states.

The same day Politico reported that the CFTC, the federal regulator, has warned Kalshi it may face charges for failing to notify it about dozens of proposed contracts. Kalshi calls it "a procedural error".

If you use Kalshi or Polymarket from the US, who regulates your bets is now an open question in two courts, one agency and the Senate Banking Committee that Elizabeth Warren takes over in January.