By Omkar Godbole (All times ET unless otherwise noted)

The crypto market has regained some stability, with BTC rising back to nearly $95K as order books signaled the presence of bargain hunters. Late Wednesday, prices tested the long-term support zone at $90K-$93K, which has successfully halted downward moves at least six times since the second half of November.

This latest layoff will be tested by Friday’s US non-farm payrolls report, which is expected to show an addition of 164,000 jobs in December, following November’s gain of 227,000 per month. FXStreet. The unemployment rate is expected to match November’s pace of 4.2%, while average hourly earnings are expected to fall slightly to 0.3% month-on-month, down from 0.4%.

A stronger-than-expected jobs report could add to existing hawkish Fed fears and push up inflation-adjusted bond yields further. These rates have been rising due to inflation concerns, complicating things for risk assets. The inflation scare and rate volatility likely catalyzed BTC’s rapid decline from $102K to $93K in the past four days.

To illustrate how bearish sentiment was early today, the funding rate in the perpetual markets turned negative, representing a dominance of shorts, even at a time when BTC is only 15% away from its all-time high.

The prevalence of Fed-led pessimism means any sign of weakness in the payrolls figure is likely to trigger sharp market reactions, reinvigorating the case for Fed rate cuts and shifting sentiment significantly in favor of risk assets. If the data misses estimates by a wide margin, BTC could easily make another attempt at $100K, provided the US government, which holds approximately $18.50 billion worth of BTC, refrains from flooding the market with offers to sell. Pay attention.

What to see

• Crypto
  • No major crypto events scheduled today.
  • 12 January at 22:30: Binance halts Fantom token (FTM) deposits and withdrawals and removes all FTM trading pairs. FTM tokens will be exchanged for S tokens at a 1:1 ratio.
  • January 13: Solayer (LAYER) “Season 1” airdrop snapshot for staking participants, liquidity providers and partner ecosystem users. Eligibility and terms information will be available on the Solayer dashboard.
  • January 15: Derive (DRV) to create and distribute new tokens in token generation event.
  • January 15: Mintlayer version 1.0.0 release. The mainnet upgrade introduces atomic swaps, enabling native BTC cross-chain swaps.
  • 16 January at 03:00: Trading of the Sonic token (S) is set to start on Binance, with pairs like S/USDT, S/BTC and S/BNB.
• Macro
  • January 10, 8:30 AM: The US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) releases the December 2024 Employment Situation Summary report.
    • Non-Agricultural Payrolls Est. 160,000 vs. previous. 227,000.
    • Unemployment Rate Est. 4.2% vs. previous. 4.2%.
  • January 10, 10 a.m.: University of Michigan releases January Michigan Consumer Sentiment (provisional). Est. 73.8 vs. previous. 74.0.
  • 14 January at 8:30 am: The US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) releases December 2024 PPI data.
    • PPI MoM Previous. 0.4%.
    • Core PPI MoM Prev. 0.2%.
    • Core PPI YYYY Previous. 3.4%.
    • PPI YoY Previous. 3%.
  • 14 January at 8.55am: US Redbook YoY for the week ending January 11. Prev. 6.8%.
  • 15 January at 8:30 am: The US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) releases the December 2024 Consumer Price Index summary.
    • Core Inflation Rate MoM Previous. 0.3%.
    • Core Inflation Rate YY Previous. 3.3%.
    • Inflation rate MoM Previous 0.3%.
    • Inflation rate YoY Previous 2.7%.
  • 16 January at 02.00: UK Office for National Statistics November 2024 GDP estimate.
    • GDP MoM Previous. -0.1%
    • GDP YY Previous. 1.3%.
  • 16 January at 8:30 a.m.: The US Department of Labor releases the weekly unemployment insurance report for the week ending January 11. Initial Jobless Claims Prev. 201K.

Token Events

• Governance votes and calls
  • No major events scheduled today.
  • January 14: Mantra community call with its co-founder
• Unlocks
  • There are no major unlocks planned today.
  • January 11: Aptos unlocks 1.13% of its APT supply, worth $98.85 million.
  • January 12: Axie Infinity unlocks 1.45% of its circulating supply, worth $14.08 million.
  • January 14: Arbitrum unlocks 0.93% of its circulating supply, worth $70.65 million.
• The token is launched
  • There are no major token launches planned today.
  • January 15: Derive (DRV) is launched, with 5% of the supply going to sENA players.
  • January 17: Solv Protocol (SOLV) to be listed on Binance.

Conferences:

Token Talk

By Shaurya Malwa

• The usual protocol’s USD0++, which is a special version of USD0 where users can earn interest by “staking” it, has dropped from being worth $1 to around 93 cents after the team made changes to how users can get their money back early.
• Traders showed a preference for AI Agent tokens aiXBT, Cookie DAO’s COOKIE and ChainGPT as they surged as much as 50% on Binance spotlists. Viral token ai16z rose 11% and the agent category rose 8% on average, leading growth among all other crypto sectors.
• A deposit box on the upcoming network Berachain hit $1.1 billion in holdings, led by StakeStone at $370 million.
• Arbitrum DAO votes on an Improvement Proposal (AIP) to implement Bounded Liquidity Delay (BoLD) on Arbitrum One and Nova. If approved, it will replace the current validation system with a permissionless one, allowing for wider participation in securing the network.
• Ronin and Virtuals have collaborated to introduce a named AI agent
  $JAIHOZ, created after Ronin’s co-founder @Jihoz_Axie. The token was launched with a supply split between the Base and Ronin blockchains, with some tokens sent to community members.

Derivative positioning

• HYPE, LTC, SHIB, SUI and TON have seen an increase in perpetual futures open interest in the last 24 hours, with XLM leading the decline in open positions in other major tokens.
• Front-end BTC and ETH risk returns show put bias, while longer duration calls continue to draw premiums relative to puts.
• BTC options block traders painted a mixed picture. In ETH’s case, the largest block trade involved a short position in the $3,700 call expiring on February 28 to fund a long position in the $3,200 put with the same expiration.

Market movements:

• BTC is up 3.06% as of 16 ET Thursday at $94,967.46 (24 hours: +1.52%)
• ETH is up 3.46% to $3,306.56 (24h: +0.11%)
• CoinDesk 20 is unchanged at 3,375.16 (24 hours: -0.74%)
• Ether staking yield is down 1bp to 3.14%
• BTC funding rate is at 0.0013% (1.38% annualized) on Binance

• DXY is unchanged at 109.18
• Gold is up 0.91% at $2,708.1/oz
• Silver is up 1.3% at $31.19/oz
• The Nikkei 225 closed -1.05% at 39,190.4
• The Hang Seng closed -0.92% at 19,064.29
• The FTSE is down 0.18% at 8,304.75
• The Euro Stoxx 50 rose 0.19% to 5,027.38
• The DJIA closed Thursday +0.25% at 42,635.20
• The S&P 500 closed +0.16% at 5,918.25
• The Nasdaq closed +0.83% at 19,480.91
• The S&P/TSX Composite Index closed unchanged at 19,478.88
• The S&P 40 Latin America closed +0.27% at 2,210.99
• The US 10-year Treasury rose 2 bps to 4.71%
• E-mini S&P 500 futures are unchanged at 5,948.00
• E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures are unchanged at 21,313.75
• E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average Index futures are unchanged at 42,846.0

Bitcoin statistics:

• BTC Dominance: 58.02
• Ethereum to bitcoin ratio: 0.034
• Hashrate (seven-day moving average): 772 EH/s
• Hash price (spot): $54.3
• Total Fees: 6.6 BTC/$653,353
• CME Futures open interest: 497,207 BTC
• BTC priced in gold: 35.2 oz
• BTC vs Gold Market Cap: 10.09%

Technical Analysis

• BTC has risen to $95K, after holding the head-and-shoulders (H&S) neckline on Thursday.
• Prices need to move above $102,750, the lowest high or right shoulder created on Monday to signal a renewed bullish outlook.
• A UTC close below the horizontal support line would confirm the H&S top and shift focus to deeper support at $75,000.

Crypto stocks

• MicroStrategy (MSTR): closed Thursday at $331.7 (-2.85%), up 2.03% to $338.44 in the premarket.
• Coinbase Global (COIN): closed at $260.01(-1.63%), up 0.73% to $261.91 in premarket.
• Galaxy Digital Holdings (GLXY): closed at C$26.85 (-2.79%)
• MARA Holdings (MARA): closed at $18.34 (-3.83%), up 0.93% to $18.51 in premarket.
• Riot Platforms (RIOT): closed at $12.02 (-3.14%), up 0.83% to $12.12 pre-market.
• Core Scientific (CORZ): closed at $14.05 (-0.5%), up 1% to $14.19 in premarket.
• CleanSpark (CLSK): closed at $10.09 (-5.79%), up 1.09% to $10.20 in premarket.
• CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI): closed at $23.15(-4.93%).
• Semler Scientific (SMLR): closed at $50.19 (-9.14%), unchanged in pre-market.

ETF Flows

US stock markets were closed on January 9, a national day of mourning for former President Jimmy Carter, who died on December 29, 2024.

The ETF data below is as of January 8 and remains unchanged.

Spot BTC ETFs:

• Daily net flow: $676 million
• Cumulative net flows: $31.70 billion
• Total BTC holdings ~ 1,080m

Spot ETH ETFs

• Daily net flow: $132.6 million
• Cumulative net flows: $733.6 million
• Total ETH holdings ~ 3.077 million

Source: Farside Investors

Overnight flows

Today’s chart

• The chart shows the top 10 chains of the month in terms of net volume of assets received using a crypto bridge.
• Coinbase’s layer 2 scaling solution leads the pack with net inflows of $208 million followed by Solana’s distant second at $92 million.

While you were sleeping

• Bitcoin Iceberg: Buyers Await Beneath the Bearish Surface (CoinDesk): Bitcoin faces selling pressure from inflation concerns, while strong bids for lower prices suggest potential stabilization. Traders and investors await the US non-farm payrolls report for Federal Reserve policy signals.
• Polymarket customer data sought by CFTC Subpoena Coinbase, source says (CoinDesk): The US CFTC has reportedly subpoenaed Coinbase for data on Polymarket customers amid legal battles with blockchain-powered prediction markets. Coinbase has apparently warned users that they may disclose the requested information.
• Standard Chartered debuts crypto services in Europe with new license (Cointelegraph): On Thursday, Standard Chartered launched crypto custody services in Europe via Luxembourg, using it as an EU regulatory entry point under the Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) framework.
• China’s swap curve inverts as traders return to rate cut bets (Bloomberg): China’s money markets expect delayed monetary easing to protect the yuan, deepening a rare swap curve inversion as policymakers struggle to balance currency stability and economic support.
• Japan’s household spending falls as price pressures persist (Reuters): Japan’s drop in spending eased in November, but rising prices and stagnant wages are curbing the consumption recovery, leaving analysts skeptical of real wage growth or a rate hike by the Bank of Japan this month.
• Whitehall braces for cuts after UK hit by bond market turmoil (Financial Times): UK faces rising borrowing costs as 10-year gilt yields hit 4.93%, highest since 2008, pound falls to one-year low which triggers warnings of tighter state budgets.

In the ether