By Omkar Godbole (All times ET unless otherwise noted)

Bitcoin and most major cryptocurrencies are weaker after the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, a proxy for institutional activity, rejected reports of listing futures linked to XRP and SOL. Traditional markets are also holding their breath for the expected rate hike from the Bank of Japan on Friday.

Despite BTC’s continued range play above $100,000, retail demand remains robust. Glassnode’s shrimp-crab cohort, which includes addresses with up to 10 BTC, has absorbed 1.9 times the newly mined supply last month, totaling over 25,600 BTC. Meanwhile, long-term owners have slowed their spending and profit-making activities, indicating a cautious but firm commitment to their investments.

Still, dropping below $100,000 can be expensive. According to Wintermute’s OTC trader Jake Ostrovskis, it would “hit Monday’s opening as a sell-news event, and the narrative could change pretty quickly.”

Reports suggest that the number of wallets holding between 1 million and 10 million XRP has risen to an all-time high of 2,083, signaling increased accumulation and confidence in its future performance.

In the world of innovation, chatter around Bitcoin Synths is gaining traction on X. These synthetic assets allow users to profit from bitcoin’s price movements without actually owning the cryptocurrency. Bitcoin Synths can be traded or used as collateral in lending protocols and avoid the complexities associated with wrapped tokens and specialized bridges.

Ethereum layer-2 protocols are also making headlines with record transaction volumes, although concerns about their capacity approaching limits persist.

On the macroeconomic front, the latest Labor Department data shows that the “all renters” index, an indicator of housing inflation in the consumer price index (CPI), rose at a slower pace last quarter. The data suggest that recent worries about inflation may be overblown and that the Fed may swing away from its hawkish forecast, which would be a positive sign for risk assets. Pay attention!

What to see

• Crypto
• Macro
  • 23 January at 8:30 a.m.: The US Department of Labor releases the weekly unemployment insurance report for the week ended January 18.
    • Original Unemployment Claims Est. 215,000 vs. previous. 217,000.
  • 23 January at 10:00 AM: The National Association of Realtors releases the December 2024 US Existing Home Sales report.
    • Existing home sales Est. 4.16 million vs. previous. 4.15 million
    • Existing home sales MoM Prev. 4.8%.
  • 23 January at 4:30 p.m.: The Fed publishes the H.4.1 report, the central bank balance sheet, for the week ended January 22.
    • Total reserves Previous. $6.83T.
  • 23 January at 6:30 p.m.: Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications publishes the December 2024 Consumer Price Index (CPI) report.
    • Inflation rate MoM Previous 0.6%.
    • Core Inflation Rate YoY Est. 3% compared to the previous one. 2.7%.
    • Inflation rate YoY Previous 2.9%.
  • 23 January at 22:00: Bank of Japan (BoJ) releases monetary policy statement.
    • Interest rate decision Est. 0.5% compared to the previous one. 0.25%.

Token Events

• Governance votes and calls
  • Morpho DAO is discussing reducing incentives by 30% across all networks and assets.
  • Yearn DAO is discussing funding and backing a subDAO called Bearn to focus on building and launching products on Berachain.
  • Frax DAO discusses a $5 million investment in World Liberty Financial (WLFI), the crypto project backed by US President Donald Trump’s family.
  • January 23: Livepeer (LPT) hosts a Core Dev call.
  • 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.
• The token is launched
  • January 23: Sky (SKY) gets listed on Bitget.
  • January 23: Animecoin (ANIME) launches, with claims starting at 8. The token will be listed on multiple exchanges including Binance, OKX and KuCoin.

Conferences:

Token Talk

By Francisco Rodrigues

• Azuki, a collection of non-fungible tokens (NFT), is introducing its Animecoin (ANIME) today on Ethereum and Arbitrum. The token was announced on January 13.
• An airdrop will include Azuki NFT holders, Hyperliquid HYPE stakes, some Arbitrum ecosystem participants and Kaito yappers.
• It will also include certain anime communities and BNB token holders who between January 17 and January 20 subscribed to Simple Earn with their tokens on Binance.
• The debut builds on a growing trend of NFT collections launching their own tokens, a trend that started in 2021 when Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) launched ApeCoin.
• Other examples include DeGods’ DUST and Pudgy Penguins’ PENGU tokens, which have a market cap of $1.6 billion.
• Other signs indicate that the NFT market is heating up, with Nansen recently pointing out that a Crypto Punk sold for 170 ETH (around $540,000) while an Azuki sold for 165 ETH. Azuki NFT had been bought a month before for 105 ETH.

Derivative positioning

• The cumulative volume delta indicator reveals that major cryptocurrencies, with the exception of TON, have experienced net selling pressure in the perpetual futures markets over the past 24 hours.
• Blockstreams on Deribit and Paradigm featured long positions in short-dated BTC puts at $100K, $95K and $70K. One entity bought $2.9K worth of ETH.
• Front-end BTC and ETH calls are now traded at the level of puts.

Market movements:

• BTC is down 4.1% as of 16 ET Wednesday at $102,020 (24 hours: -2.71%)
• ETH is down 3.85% to $3,206.18 (24h: -2.83%)
• CoinDesk 20 is down 3.61% to 3,799.21 (24h: -3.58%)
• The CESR Composite Ether Staking Rate is down 15 bps to 3.15%
• BTC funding rate is at -0.0019% (-2.08% annualized) on OKX

• DXY is unchanged at 108.25
• Gold is down 0.35% at $2,761.10/oz
• Silver is down 0.73% at $30.57/oz
• The Nikkei 225 closed up 0.79% at 39,958.87
• The Hang Seng closed up 0.4% at 19,700.56
• The FTSE is unchanged at 8,538.7
• The Euro Stoxx 50 is unchanged at 5203.6
• The DJIA closed +0.3% at 44,156.73
• The S&P 500 closed +0.61% at 6,086.37
• The Nasdaq closed +1.28% at 20,009.34
• The S&P/TSX Composite Index closed +0.12% at 25,311.5
• The S&P 40 Latin America closed +1.21% at 2,297.32
• The US 10-year Treasury rose 3 bps to 4.59%
• E-mini S&P 500 futures are down 0.19% at 6,109.00
• E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures are down 0.56% at 21,876.75
• E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average Index futures are unchanged at 44,384.00

Bitcoin statistics:

• BTC Dominance: 58.59
• Ethereum to bitcoin ratio: 0.031
• Hashrate (seven-day moving average): 781 EH/s
• Hash price (spot): $58.9
• Total Fees: 8.5 BTC/$876,410
• CME Futures open interest: 188,396 BTC
• BTC priced in gold: 37.1 oz
• BTC vs Gold Market Cap: 10.56%

Technical Analysis

• BTC’s pullback from Monday’s high teases the formation of a double top bearish reversal pattern.
• A move below the horizontal line would confirm the pattern and potentially bring more chart-led sellers to the market.

Crypto stocks

• MicroStrategy (MSTR): closed Wednesday at $377.31 (-3.03%), down 1.89% to $370.19 in the premarket.
• Coinbase Global (COIN): closed at $295.85 (+0.56%), down 2.59% to $288.18 in premarket.
• Galaxy Digital Holdings (GLXY): closed at C$32.81 (+4.99%)
• MARA Holdings (MARA): closed at $19.69 (+0.66%), down 2.54% to $19.19 in the premarket.
• Riot Platforms (RIOT): closed at $13.14 (+3.14%), down 1.75% to $12.91 in the premarket.
• Core Scientific (CORZ): closed at $15.97 (+4.58%), down 1.63% to $15.71 in the premarket.
• CleanSpark (CLSK): closed at $11.14 (+1.64%), down 2.51% to $10.86 in the premarket.
• CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI): closed at $25.53 (+2.24%), up 2.58% to $28.27 in the premarket.
• Semler Scientific (SMLR): closed at $62.11 (-4.36%), up 2% to $64.90 in premarket.
• Exodus Movement (EXOD): closed at $41.00 (+2.5%), down 2.07% to $40.15 in the premarket.

ETF Flows

Spot BTC ETFs:

• Daily net flow: $248.7 million
• Cumulative net flows: $39.23 billion
• Total BTC holdings ~ 1,161m

Spot ETH ETFs

• Daily net flow: $70.7 million
• Cumulative net flows: $2.81 billion
• Total ETH holdings ~ 3,648 million

Source: Farside Investors

Overnight flows

Today’s chart

• The chart shows an increase in the number of active addresses on Solana.
• Addresses with USDC led the growth as TRUMP token frenzy gripped the market over the weekend.

While you were sleeping

In the ether