Like painstakingly simmering a perfect cheese roux only to immediately drop the container all over the kitchen floor on the way to the fridge, bitcoin has erased nearly a year’s worth of work in just six weeks.

Crypto exploded in late 2024, pushing bitcoin past $100,000 on the promise of the Trump presidency being friendly to the industry. But even now, with loosened regulations and a pro-crypto SEC chair, the market has lost over $1 trillion in the last month and a half, leaving it essentially flat from last year. Monday, the cryptocurrency had dropped below $90,000:

• The last time bitcoin fell under that threshold was when President Trump announced his first tariff plan in April (it dropped to ~$74,400).
• The slide from its peak last month to yesterday’s $93,000 marks a 26% decline, putting it in what Wall Street considers a bear market.

Why the implosion?

Investors are growing nervous about a potential AI bubble and selling off riskier, more speculative assets—like crypto. More and more execs and analysts are sounding the alarm about overvalued AI stocks, especially as companies like OpenAI and Nvidia are caught in a multibillion-dollar spending loop.

More broadly, the market is still struggling to recover from the Trump administration’s earlier threats to place new tariffs on Chinese imports, even though a one-year “trade truce” between the US and China was announced at the end of October. The Oct. 10 announcement led to a record liquidation of nearly $19 billion, according to CoinGlass.

Big picture: The stock market hasn’t escaped the ongoing wipeout. The S&P 500 fell for a fourth straight trading session yesterday, as investors grow pessimistic that the Fed will lower interest rates in December. Much will hinge on Nvidia’s earnings report today and the long-delayed September jobs report tomorrow.—MM

House, Senate pass bill demanding DOJ release Epstein files. In a 427–1 vote, the House of Representatives passed legislation to force the Justice Department to release all of the files pertaining to the investigation into the deceased child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. House Speaker Mike Johnson and most GOP members had sought to delay a vote but relented after President Trump—a former friend of Epstein’s—dropped his opposition to it. Hours later, the Senate unanimously passed the bill as is, despite Johnson’s hopes that it would be amended. Republican Rep. Clay Higgins of Louisiana was the lone “no” vote in the House, saying it doesn’t do enough to protect the names of people who might be innocent. The bill now heads to Trump’s desk to be signed.

Meta won its antitrust trial. A US federal judge ruled that the FTC failed to prove that the Facebook parent company’s acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp constituted an illegal social media monopoly. Initially filed in 2020, the FTC’s suit alleged that Meta’s two blockbuster purchases stifled competition, citing CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s 2008 statement that “it is better to buy than compete.” During his testimony, Zuck denied that Meta acquires competitors that it sees as threats. The ruling is a major win for Meta and a blow to the federal government’s quest across multiple administrations to rein in Big Tech companies. Judges recently ruled that Google operated illegal monopolies in search and advertising, while antitrust cases against Apple and Amazon are pending.

Trump met MBS ahead of expected deals. President Trump hosted Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at the White House yesterday for a meeting that was supposed to be about deals between the US and Saudi Arabia, but Trump made headlines when he played down the 2018 murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, whom US intelligence determined was killed at the behest of bin Salman. “Whether you like him or didn’t like him, things happen,” Trump said of the murder victim. The president also praised the crown prince’s human rights record, which Amnesty International has characterized as “an unprecedented crackdown on freedom of expression.” Today, Saudi Arabia is set to announce several deals with US companies, including Amazon and xAI, according to Semafor.—AE

The roof is leaking and the walls are starting to smell like mold (metaphorically speaking) at the Disney World for dads. Home Depot released Q3 earnings yesterday that showed sales stagnated, which it attributed to high interest rates, shaky consumer confidence, and fewer-than-usual fall storms that thwarted an anticipated rebound in renovation.

The lackluster report marks the third consecutive quarter of missed earnings expectations. The retailer’s stock closed down 6% yesterday. Other details that troubled investors include:

• Home Depot’s sales at US stores open for at least a year increased 0.2% last quarter from the same period in 2024, less than the 1.4% analysts expected.
• The company projected that its 2025 adjusted earnings per share, a key measure of profitability, would decline 5% from last year, a bigger drop than the 2% previously projected.

Grim backdrop

Though interest rates came down this year, they’re still high enough to prevent people from buying new homes with awful carpeting they want to tear out and replace, or from undertaking renovations on their existing dwellings. Plus, Home Depot said jitters related to the government shutdown and accelerating layoffs might also give people pause when it comes to costly home remodeling.

Big picture: Target’s earnings report will be released before the market opens today, and Walmart’s will come out tomorrow. Together, they’ll shed more light on whether shoppers are tightening their belts due to broader economic conditions.—SK

With sales stagnating, Panera Brands CEO Paul Carbone unveiled a bold plan yesterday to win back customers: make everything better.

Panera, once considered the gold standard in American fast-casual dining, has fallen behind competitors like Chipotle and Panda Express, with its sales dropping 5% to $6.1 billion last year. Carbone says the goal is to reach $7 billion in annual sales by 2028 behind “Panera RISE,” a new strategy intended to undo the chain’s cost-cutting measures, which he dubbed “death by a thousand paper cuts.”

The overhaul includes:

• Lettuce: Salads will be fully romaine again and no longer include iceberg. “No one likes iceberg,” said Carbone, who also may have been delivering a four-word review of Titanic. Salads will also have eight ingredients instead of the current five.
• Tomatoes: Starting next year, salads will contain sliced cherry tomatoes (rather than whole ones that were used to save money).
• Drinks: Frescas and “energy refresher” drinks (which have less caffeine than the ones that resulted in two wrongful death lawsuits) are in the offing.
• Portions: The WSJ reports that Panera is “beefing up portions” after shrinking its sandwiches.
• Labor: There will be more workers on hand, and the company is reinvesting in the self-ordering kiosks that haven’t been upgraded in nearly a decade.

Zoom out: Panera is also looking to mimic the value offerings at establishments like Chili’s, but lacks appetizer options. “We haven’t cracked the code yet,” Carbone said.—DL

The song that makes parents around the world stare into the middle distance and contemplate their life choices is officially on the stock market. Pinkfong, the South Korean company responsible for “Baby Shark,” went public on the Kosdaq market of the Korea Exchange this week, spiking as much as 62% and closing Tuesday with a market value of about $406 million, Bloomberg reported.

Depending on whom you ask, “Baby Shark” is either a catchy tune for tykes that keeps them occupied so their parents can feed themselves, or the most nightmarish screeching known to humankind that must be destroyed posthaste. Either way, it’s historically popular:

• “Baby Shark Dance” is YouTube’s most-watched video ever, with more than 16 billion views.
• The song has even made it onto Billboard’s Hot 100 and was at one point No. 1 on Spotify’s Global Viral 50 chart.

And yet, it might not make Pinkfong as much money as you’d think. Due to YouTube’s restrictions on monetizing kids’ content, the company generated only about $67 million in total revenue last year—part of the reason it’s now hoping investors will help it level up.—AE