By James Van Straten (All times ET unless otherwise noted)
The past 24 hours have been among the most hectic in the crypto industry in years, and that was reflected in Thursday’s bitcoin (BTC) price, which whipped 2% to 3% multiple times in a matter of minutes. Still, it managed to stay above the psychological $100,000 level and is currently around $105,000.
President Trump’s rhetoric continues to help weaken the dollar, which generally boosts risk assets such as cryptocurrencies. The DXY index, which measures the U.S. currency against a basket of major trading partners, fell to its lowest since Dec. 17, so that should give risk-on assets a feel-good boost. US bond yields and WTI crude are also on the decline, with oil below $75 a barrel. barrel, the lowest in two weeks.
On the other side of the globe, the Bank of Japan (BoJ) made good on its promise with another rate hike, taking the key rate to 0.50%, the highest in more than 16 years. It followed a very warm inflationary run with headline inflation at 3.6% from the previous year, the fastest since January 2023. The question is whether we will have another iteration of the yen-carry trade unwind that took place last August year. Time will tell. Pay attention!
What to see
Crypto:
January 25: First deadline for SEC decisions on proposals for four spot solana ETFs: Bitwise Solana ETF, Canary Solana ETF, 21Shares Core Solana ETF and VanEck Solana Trust, all of which are sponsored by the Cboe BZX Exchange.
January 29: Ice Open Network (ION) mainnet launch.
February 4: MicroStrategy Inc. (MSTR) earnings report for Q4 2024.
February 4: Pepecoin (PEPE) halving. At block 400,000 the reward will drop to 31,250 pepecoin.
5 February at 15:00: Boba Network’s Holocene hardfork network upgrade to its Ethereum-based L2 mainnet.
Macro
24 January at 04:00: S&P Global releases January 2025 reports from the Eurozone HCOB Purchasing Managers’ Index (Flash).
Composite PMI Est. 49.7 vs. previous. 49.6.
Manufacturing PMI Est. 45.3 vs. previous. 45.1.
Services PMI Est. 51.5 vs. previous. 51.6.
24 January, 04:30: S&P Global publishes January 2025 UK Purchasing Managers’ Index (Flash) reports.
Composite PMI Est. 50 vs. previous. 50.4.
Manufacturing PMI Est. 47 vs. previous. 47.
Services PMI Est. 50.9 vs. previous. 51.1.
24 January at 9:45 AM: S&P Global releases January 2025 US Purchasing Managers’ Index (Flash) reports.
Composite PMI Prev. 55.4.
Manufacturing PMI Est. 49.6 vs. previous. 49.4.
Services PMI Est. 56.5 vs. previous. 56.8.
24 January at 10:00 a.m.: University of Michigan releases January data for US consumer sentiment.
Consumer Satisfaction Index (Final) Est. 73.2 vs. previous. 74.
Token Events
Governance votes and calls
Frax DAO discusses a $5 million investment in World Liberty Financial (WLFI), the crypto project backed by President Donald Trump’s family.
January 24: Arbitrum BoLD activation voting deadline. BoLD allows anyone to participate in validation and defend against malicious claims to an Arbitrum chain’s state.
January 24: Hedera (HBAR) hosts a community call at 11 a.m
Unlocks
January 31: Optimism (OP) to unlock 2.32% of circulating supply worth $52.9 million.
January 31: Jupiter (JUP) unlocks 41.5% of circulating supply, worth $626 million.
Conferences:
Day 12 of 12: Swiss WEB3FEST Winter Edition 2025 (Zug, Zurich, St. Moritz, Davos)
Day 5 of 5: World Economic Forum Annual Meeting (Davos-Klosters, Switzerland)
Day 1 of 2: Bitcoin Adoption (Cape Town, South Africa)
25.-26. January: Catstanbul 2025 (Istanbul). The first community conference for Jupiter, a decentralized exchange (DEX) aggregator built on Solana.
30 January, 12:30 to 17:00: International DeFi Day 2025 (online)
Jan 30-31: Plan B Forum (San Salvador, El Salvador)
30 January to 4 February: Satoshi Roundtable (Dubai)
February 3: Digital Assets Forum (London)
5.-6. February: The 14th Global Blockchain Congress (Dubai)
February 6: Ondo Summit 2025 (New York).
February 7: Solana APEX (Mexico City)
13.-14. February: The 4th edition of NFT Paris.
18.-20. February: Consensus Hong Kong
February 19: Sui Connect: Hong Kong
February 23 to March 2: ETHDenver 2025 (Denver)
February 25: HederaCon 2025 (Denver)
Token Talk
By Shaurya Malwa
A humorous new decentralized autonomous organization, FartStrategy (FSTR) DAO, is investing user funds in FARTCOIN.
The DAO leverages borrowed SOL to acquire the token, giving investors a chance to gain exposure to its price movements through the FSTR.
If FSTR trades under its FARTCOIN backing, token holders can vote to dissolve the DAO and redeem their share of FARTCOIN pro rata after settlement of any outstanding debt.
VINE memecoin jumped to a market cap of $200 million less than 48 hours after issuance.
It was launched on the Solana blockchain by Rus Yusupov, one of the co-founders of the original Vine app, and introduced as a nostalgic tribute to the eponymous platform known for its six-second looping videos. Vin was a significant cultural phenomenon before it closed in 2017.
There have recently been discussions surrounding a potential revival of the app, with Yusupov and technocrat Elon Musk expressing interest in its return.
Derivative positioning
TRX leads growth in perpetual futures open interest in major coins.
Funding rates for majors remain below 10% year-on-year, a sign that the market is not overly speculative despite BTC trading near record highs on optimism about Trump’s crypto policies.
BTC and ETH call biases have strengthened, with block flows of outright longs in higher-strike BTC calls and a spread of bull calls in ETH involving calls to strikes $5K and $6K.
Market movements:
BTC is up 2% as of 16 ET Thursday at $105,450.57 (24 hours: +3.43%)
ETH is up 4.96% to $3,409.62 (24h: +6.18%)
CoinDesk 20 is up 2.4% to 3,988.16 (24 hours: +4.79%)
CESR Composite Staking Rate is up 1bp to 3.16%
BTC funding rate is at 0.0069% (7.58% annualized) on Binance
DXY falls 0.48% to 107.53
Gold is up 0.68% at $2,775.28/oz
Silver is up 1.21% at $30.86/oz
The Nikkei 225 closed unchanged at 39,931.98
The Hang Seng closed +1.86% at 20,066.19
The FTSE is down 0.33% at 8,537.12
The Euro Stoxx 50 rose 0.73% to 5,255.47
The DJIA closed Thursday +0.92% at 44,565.07
The S&P 500 closed +0.53 at 6,118.71
The Nasdaq closed +0.22% at 20,053.68
The S&P/TSX Composite Index closed +0.48% at 25,434.08
The S&P 40 Latin America closed +0.57% at 2,310.35
US 10-year Treasury fell 13 bps to 4.64%
E-mini S&P 500 futures are down 0.13% at 6,143.75
E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures are down 0.56% at 22,005.50
E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average Index futures are unchanged at 44,709.00
Bitcoin statistics:
BTC Dominance: 58.51 (-0.11%)
Ethereum to bitcoin ratio: 0.032 (0.68%)
Hashrate (seven-day moving average): 784 EH/s
Hash price (spot): $61.0
Total Fees: 6.8 BTC/$104,070
CME Futures open interest: 191,645
BTC priced in gold: 38.1 oz
BTC vs Gold Market Cap: 10.83%
Technical Analysis
Ether appears to have charted a descending wedge pattern, characterized by two converging trend lines representing a series of lower highs and lower lows.
The converging nature of the trend lines indicates that the sellers are slowly losing their grip.
A breakout is said to represent a bullish trend reversal.
Crypto stocks
MicroStrategy (MSTR): closed Thursday at $373.12 (-1.11%), up 2.55% to $382.62 in premarket.
Coinbase Global (COIN): closed at $296.01 (+0.05%), up 2.16% to $302.39 in premarket.
Galaxy Digital Holdings (GLXY): closed at C$33.94 (+3.44%)
MARA Holdings (MARA): closed at $19.95 (+1.32%), up 1.8% to $20.31 in the premarket.
Riot Platforms (RIOT): closed at $12.99 (-1.14%), up 2.62% to $13.33 in premarket.
Core Scientific (CORZ): closed at $16.34 (+2.32%), up 1.04% to $16.51 in the premarket.
CleanSpark (CLSK): closed at $11.41 (+2.42%), up 2.19% to $11.67 in the premarket.
CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI): closed at $25.65 (+0.47%), up 1.75% to $26.10 in the premarket.
Semler Scientific (SMLR): closed at $61.15 (-1.55%), down 10.89% to $54.49 in premarket.
Exodus Movement (EXOD): closed at $44 (+7.32%), up 0.75% to $44.33 in premarket.
ETF Flows
Spot BTC ETFs:
Daily net flow: $188.7 million
Cumulative net flows: $39.42 billion
Total BTC holdings ~ 1.169M
Spot ETH ETFs
Daily net flow: -$14.9 million
Cumulative net flows: $2.79 billion
Total ETH holdings ~ 3,663 million
Source: Farside Investors
Overnight flows
Today’s chart
The market capitalization of Tethers USDT, the world’s largest dollar-pegged stablecoin, has flattened to nearly $138 billion.
USDC supply continues to rise, rising to nearly $52 billion this week, the highest since September 2022.
While you were sleeping
Bitcoin Steady Near $104K After Bank of Japan Delivers Hawkish Rate Hike (CoinDesk): Bitcoin held steady above $104,000 in early Asian hours Friday despite the Bank of Japan’s rate hike as markets eyed President Trump’s Thursday executive order on crypto and potential US policy changes.
Trump Issues Crypto Executive Order to Pave US Digital Assets Path (CoinDesk): President Trump issued a pro-crypto executive order directing the creation of a digital asset framework, banning CBDC development and considering a national digital asset reserve.
Vitalik Buterin calls for extra focus on ether as part of network scaling plans (CoinDesk): In a Thursday post, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin outlined strategies to increase the value of ether, including using it as collateral, implementing fee-burning incentives and increasing temporary transaction data called blobs.
Japan raises interest rates, bolsters exit from bottom of borrowing costs (Bloomberg): The Bank of Japan raised its key interest rate by 25 basis points to 0.5% on Friday, the highest in 17 years, strengthening the yen and lifting 10-year bond yields to 1, 23 per cent
US stocks are most expensive relative to bonds since the Dotcom era (Financial Times): Shares in the S&P 500 hit record highs, with the equity risk premium turning negative for the first time since 2002, driven by rising demand for dominant technology companies.
Trump 2.0 is going well for China so far. Can the honeymoon last? (CNN): In an interview Thursday, President Trump called tariffs a “tremendous power” but suggested deals could stave off tougher measures. Beijing cautiously welcomed the reprieve, watching the talks while bracing for future tensions.
In the ether
