By Omkar Godbole (All times ET unless otherwise noted)

“I don’t understand how anyone can think that BTC is not a good buy at these prices…,” Andre Dragosch, head of research – Europe at Bitwise, said X Monday as BTC’s price dipped below $90,000.

While the comment may appear overly optimistic to macro bears, it is not without justification. Although DXY, Treasury yields and Fed interest rate expectations appear to destabilize risk assets, corporate and institutional demand for BTC continues to strengthen.

Intesa Sanpaolo, Italy’s largest bank by market capitalization, has reportedly bought BTC, acquiring 11 BTC for $1 million. That could speed up crypto adoption in the EU’s third-largest economy, which already has 1.4 million citizens holding cryptocurrencies.

If that’s not enough, corporate purchases of BTC have already reached 5,774 BTC in the first two weeks of January, which is faster than the supply of new BTC.

To Dragosch’s credit, BTC has risen above $96K, suggesting an end to the price weakness that began a month ago with record highs above $108K. As usual, it has brought cheers to all corners of the crypto market, with AI, gaming and meme sub-sectors leading the way.

The rally, bolstered by ongoing institutional adoption and rumors that President Donald Trump plans to issue an executive order addressing SEC rules on crypto accounting, suggests bears may find it difficult to assert their influence.

Prices could move into six figures if Tuesday’s US producer price index points to softer inflation in the pipeline, weakening the hawkish Fed narrative. Note that the dollar index’s rally has already stalled amid reports that Trump’s tariffs will be gradual and less than initially feared.

What to see

• Crypto
• Macro
  • 14 January at 8:30 am: The US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) releases December 2024 PPI data.
    • PPI MoM Est. 0.3% compared to the previous one. 0.4%.
    • Core PPI MoM Est. 0.3% compared to the previous one. 0.2%.
    • Core PPI YY Est. 3.7% compared to the previous year. 3.4%.
    • PPI YY Est. 3.4% compared to the previous year. 3%.
  • 14 January at 8.55am: US Redbook YoY for the week ending January 11. Previous. 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 Est. 0.2% compared to the previous one. 0.3%.
    • Core Inflation Rate YoY Est. 3.3% compared to the previous year. 3.3%.
    • Inflation rate MoM Est. 0.3% compared to the previous one. 0.3%.
    • Inflation rate YoY Est. 2.8% compared to the previous year. 2.7%.
  • 16 January at 02.00: UK Office for National Statistics November 2024 GDP estimate.
    • GDP MoM Est. 0.2% compared to the previous one. -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 Est. 214K vs. Previous. 201K.
  • 17 January at 05.00: Eurostat publishes December 2024 inflation data for the euro area.
    • Inflation rate MoM Final estimated. 0.4% vs. previous. -0.3%.
    • Core inflation rate YY Final estimated. 2.7% compared to the previous year. 2.7%.
    • Inflation rate YY Final estimated. 2.4% compared to the previous year. 2.2%.

Token Events

• Governance votes and calls
  • Compound DAO is discussing the creation of a new entity responsible for managing APR incentive campaigns to attract large conservative investors.
  • Maple Finance DAO is discussing using 20% ​​of the fee revenue that the protocol will generate in Q1 to buy back SYRUP tokens and distribute them to SYRUP actors.
• Unlocks
  • January 14: Arbitrum (ARB) unlocks 0.93% of its circulating supply, worth $70.65 million.
  • January 15: Connex (CONX) unlocks 376% of its circulating supply, worth $84.5 million.
  • January 18: Ondo (ONDO) unlocks 134% of its circulating supply, worth $2.19 billion.
• 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 16: Solayer (LAYER) to host token sale followed by five months of point farming.
  • January 17: Solv Protocol (SOLV) to be listed on Binance.

Conferences:

Token Talk

By Francisco Rodrigues

• Holoworld AI has announced the launch of Agent Market, a Solana-based token launch pad that allows users to create, trade and interact with on-chain AI agents and their tokens without coding skills. The marketplace has integration with multiple social channels, including X, allowing agents to be deployed on those channels post-launch.
• Despite enduring a steep correction, AI tokens have outperformed every other basket class in the cryptocurrency space so far this year, owing their returns to a significant increase seen in the first week of the year. CCData’s basket performance shows AI tokens are up 2.5% year-to-date, while the next best performing class, exchange tokens, is up less than 0.5%.
• At the other end of the spectrum, real-world asset (RWA) tokens are down more than 14%, which is significantly worse than memecoins, which fell around 10% in this month’s correction.
• Usual Protocol, the popular decentralized finance protocol that came under fire last week due to an unexpected change in its redemption mechanism, has activated its Revenue Switch for USUALx holders.
• Solana-based token launch pad Pump.fun has moved 122,620 SOL worth over $21 million to Kraken, bringing their total deposited funds to 1,785 million SOL worth $362 million, Onchain Lens revealed.
• The FTX estate has completed its monthly SOL redemption transfer, deferred 182,421 SOL and moved the funds to 20 different addresses. Since November, FTX has redeemed over $500 million in SOL, and it still has $1.18 billion in its stake.

Derivative positioning

• Large cap tokens, excluding XLM, XRP and HYPE, have seen a drop in perpetual futures open interest over the past 24 hours.
• Front-end BTC and ETH options risk reversals show neutral sentiment despite the price rally. Near-dated and long-dated options show a call bias.
• Block flows featured large purchases of $95,000 and $98,000 calls expiring in the next two weeks and an ETH bull call spread involving March 28 expiration calls at $5.5K and $6.5K.

Market movements:

• BTC is up 2.56%% as of 16 ET Tuesday at $96,615.50 (24 hours: +6.44%)
• ETH is up 3.84% to $3,233.91 (24h: +5.76%)
• CoinDesk 20 is up 4.69% to 3,463.07 (24 hours: +6.84%)
• Ether staking yield is up 15 bps to 3.12%
• BTC funding rate is at 0.01% (10.95% annualized) on Binance

• DXY is down 0.35% to 109.57
• Gold is up 0.22% at $2,679.50/oz
• Silver is up 0.76% at $30.32/oz
• The Nikkei 225 closed -1.83% at 38,474.30
• The Hang Seng closed +1.83% at 19,219.78
• The FTSE is up 0.17% at 8,237.93
• The Euro Stoxx 50 rose 1.03% to 5,005.29
• The DJIA closed Monday +0.86% at 42,297.12
• The S&P 500 closed +0.16 at 5,836.22
• The Nasdaq closed -0.38% at 19,088.10
• The S&P/TSX Composite Index closed -0.93% at 24,536.30
• The S&P 40 Latin America closed +0.49% at 2,192.57
• The US 10-year Treasury was unchanged at 4.79%
• E-mini S&P 500 futures rose 0.54% to 5,906.00
• E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures rose 0.71% to 21,096.00
• E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average Index futures rose 0.37% to 42,682.00

Bitcoin statistics:

• BTC Dominance: 58.52
• Ethereum to bitcoin ratio: 0.033
• Hashrate (seven-day moving average): 773 EH/s
• Hash price (spot): $54.3
• Total Fees: 7.77 BTC/$721,654
• CME Futures open interest: 174,105 BTC
• BTC priced in gold: 35.6/oz
• BTC vs Gold Market Cap: 10.14%

Technical Analysis

• Despite the overnight bounce, BTC’s price remains in the Ichimoku cloud, a momentum indicator created by Japanese journalist Goichi Hosada.
• A crossover above the cloud would signal a renewed bullish outlook.

Crypto stocks

• MicroStrategy (MSTR): closed Monday at $328.40 (+0.15%), up 3.19% to $338.89 in the premarket.
• Coinbase Global (COIN): closed at $251.20 (-2.93%), up 3.18% to $259.20 in premarket.
• Galaxy Digital Holdings (GLXY): closed at C$26.04 (-3.8%)
• MARA Holdings (MARA): closed at $17.19 (-3.75%), up 3.61% to $17.81 in the premarket.
• Riot Platforms (RIOT): closed at $11.77 (-1.92%), up 3.65% to $12.20 in premarket.
• Core Scientific (CORZ): closed at $13.6 (-3.13%), up 1.6222.22$13.82 in the premarket.
• CleanSpark (CLSK): closed at $10.19 (+0.99%), up 3.24% to $10.52 in the premarket.
• CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI): closed at $22.22 (-3.85%), up 7.29% to $23.84 in the premarket.
• Semler Scientific (SMLR): closed at $52.70 (+2.61%), up 4.19% to $54.91 in the premarket.
• Exodus Movement (EXOD): closed at $33.58 (-11.09%).

ETF Flows

Spot BTC ETFs:

• Daily net flow: -$284.1 million
• Cumulative net flows: $35.94 billion
• Total BTC holdings ~ 1,131m

Spot ETH ETFs

• Daily net flow: -$39.4 million
• Cumulative Net Flows: $2.41M
• Total ETH holdings ~ 3.535 million

Source: Farside Investors, per 13 January.

Overnight flows

Today’s chart

• The chart shows the results of various crypto market sub-sectors in 2024.
• Memecoins saw a staggering 254% increase last year, outperforming the broader market and bitcoin by a wide margin.

While you were sleeping

• Is Bitcoin Bottoming In? BTC’s price action reverses December peak above $108K (CoinDesk): Bitcoin dipped below $90K on Monday as investment banks speculated on potential Fed rate hikes, but it bounced back to $94K, suggesting the price may have temporarily bottomed after recent volatility.
• Crypto Bank Sygnum Gains Unicorn Status With $58M Round (CoinDesk): Sygnum, a Switzerland- and Singapore-based digital asset bank, achieved unicorn status after raising $58M to support European and Hong Kong expansion, enhanced Bitcoin offerings and acquisition plans.
• Sony’s Layer-2 Blockchain “Soneium” Goes Live (CoinDesk): Sony has launched “Soneium,” a layer-2 blockchain on Ethereum that leverages Optimism’s OP Stack to connect web2 and web3 audiences while supporting game- , financial and entertainment applications.
• As the U.S. dollar rises, here are Europe’s top winners and losers (CNBC): The strong U.S. dollar, fueled by higher yields and capital flows, weakens the euro and pound, raising costs for net importers such as Germany and Britain while benefiting Norway’s oil exports.
• China Will ‘Try Very Hard’ To Halt Yuan’s Fall, UBS’s Wang Says (Bloomberg): UBS says a weaker yuan will provide limited export benefits as Beijing seeks to slow its decline amid U.S. tariff threats, a strong dollar and risks of capital outflow.
• BOJ set to discuss rate hike next week (The Wall Street Journal): Vice Governor Himino says Bank of Japan will discuss potential rate hike on 23-24 January, noting that inflation trends are in line with projections. His remarks lifted bond yields, while the yen weakened briefly before recovering.

In the ether