Uncategorized
Crypto Daybook Americas: Turmoil Across The Pond as Bitcoin Defends $93K After $300B Wipeout
By James Van Straten (All times ET unless indicated otherwise)
The total cryptocurrency industry is now under $3.2 trillion in market capitalization, as over $300 billion has been wiped out since Jan. 6, taking away all early gains for the year, according to the TradingView metric TOTAL. As a result, bitcoin (BTC) is now hovering above $93,000 but has been making a succession of higher lows starting from Dec. 30.
Adding to the bearish sentiment, market is digesting the unconfirmed reports from DB News which suggest that the U.S. government has been given the green light to liquidate as much as 69,370 BTC ($6.5B) from the Silk Road seizure. This makes the political theatre between the outgoing and incoming U.S. administrations even more intriguing, as president-elect Donald Trump, who is just few days away from being sworn in on Jan. 20, vowed not to sell any of the bitcoin held by U.S. authorities, which, according to Glassnode data, amounts to 187,236 BTC.
The onslaught in the crypto industry stems from an extremely high DXY index, above 109, which measures the value of the U.S. Dollar relative to a weighted basket of major foreign currencies. In addition, for a brief moment, the U.S. treasury yields were rising before retreating slightly yesterday. The benchmark for 10-year yield was as high as 4.73%.
The inflation concerns that paddled the selloff in the broader market is picking up alongside growth expectations, LondonCryptoClub told CoinDesk. «The combination of rising growth and inflation expectations alongside rising term premia as the market struggles to digest huge treasury supply to fund these deficits is pushing U.S. yields higher, which is dragging global yields higher, excluding China.»
However, turmoil is occurring across the pond in the U.K., with gilt yields continuing to march higher this morning. Records were set today, as the 30-year U.K. jumped to almost 5.45%, the highest level since 1998. While the benchmark U.K. 10-year challenged 4.95%, the highest since 2008, the treasury was forced to intervene in the market to calm investors, according to reports from The Telegraph.
LondonCryptoClub mentioned the key reasons for the turmoil, «the U.K. is under pressure after a disastrous budget which has increased borrowing needs with little to no positive growth impact, exacerbating the negative debt/GDP dynamics and driving a larger fiscal deficit.»
As a result, the not-so-Great British pound, falling yet again, is now 1.22 against the dollar, the lowest level since November 2023, and has fallen almost 4% in the past month.
Today, Jan. 9, is declared a mourning day in the U.S. to remember the death of former President Jimmy Carter. Therefore, the stock market will be closed. So, all eyes will be turning to the jobs report on Friday. The market is in a good news is bad news scenario as rate cuts for 2025 get pushed back with only one rate cut expected for 2025.
A strong jobs report could remove this rate cut, with unemployment expected to come in at 4.2%, while nonfarm payroll is estimated at 154,000. A hot jobs print could send the dollar to 110, putting further pressure on risk-assets.
Stay alert!
What to Watch
Crypto
Jan. 9, 1:00 a.m.: Cronos (CRO) zkEVM mainnet upgrades to ZKsync’s latest release.
Jan. 12, 10:30 p.m.: Binance will halt Fantom token (FTM) deposits and withdrawals and delist all FTM trading pairs. FTM tokens will be swapped for S tokens at a 1:1 ratio.
Jan. 15: Derive (DRV) to create and distribute new tokens in token generation event.
Jan. 15: Mintlayer version 1.0.0 release. The mainnet upgrade introduces atomic swaps, enabling native BTC cross-chain swaps.
Jan. 16, 3:00 a.m.: Trading for the Sonic token (S) is set to start on Binance, featuring pairs like S/USDT, S/BTC, and S/BNB.
Macro
Jan. 10, 8:30 a.m.: The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) releases December 2024’s Employment Situation Summary report.
Nonfarm payrolls Est. 154K vs. Prev. 227K.
Unemployment rate Est. 4.2% vs Prev. 4.2%.
Jan. 10, 10:00 a.m.: The University of Michigan releases January’s Michigan Consumer Sentiment (Preliminary). Est. 73.8 vs. Prev. 74.0.
Jan. 14, 8:30 a.m.: The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) releases December 2024’s PPI data.
PPI MoM Prev. 0.4%.
Core PPI MoM Prev. 0.2%.
Core PPI YoY Prev. 3.4%.
PPI YoY Prev. 3%.
Jan. 14, 8:55 a.m.: U.S. Redbook YoY for the week ending on Jan. 11. Prev. 6.8%.
Jan. 15, 8:30 a.m.: The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) releases December 2024’s Consumer Price Index Summary.
Core Inflation Rate MoM Prev. 0.3%.
Core Inflation Rate YoY Prev. 3.3%.
Inflation Rate MoM Prev. 0.3%.
Inflation Rate YoY Prev. 2.7%.
Jan. 16, 2:00 a.m.: The U.K.’s Office for National Statistics November 2024’s GDP estimate.
GDP MoM Prev. -0.1%
GDP YoY Prev. 1.3%.
Jan. 16, 8:30 a.m.: The U.S. Department of Labor releases the Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report for the week ending on Jan. 11. Initial Jobless Claims Prev. 201K.
Token Events
Governance votes & calls
Gitcoin DAO started discussions on the launch of Allo.Capital, an entity focused on building tools for on-chain capital allocation.
Compound DAO is discussing the creation of a New Chains Business Unit to expand into other blockchains.
Unlocks
Jan. 11: Aptos to unlock 1.13% of its APT circulating supply, worth $98.85 million.
Jan. 12: Axie Infinity to unlock 1.45% of its circulating supply, worth $14.08 million.
Jan. 14: Arbitrum to unlock 0.93% of its circulating supply, worth $70.65 million.
Token Launches
Jan. 10: Lava Network (LAVA) to be listed on KuCoin and Bybit at 5 a.m.
Jan. 10: Bybit to delist FTM (FTM) at 5 a.m..
Conferences:
Day 4 of 14: Starknet, an Ethereum layer 2, is holding its Winter Hackathon (online).
Jan. 13-24: Swiss WEB3FEST Winter Edition 2025 (Zug, Zurich, St. Moritz, Davos)
Jan. 17: Unchained: Blockchain Business Forum 2025 (Los Angeles)
Jan. 18: BitcoinDay (Naples, Florida)
Jan. 20-24: World Economic Forum Annual Meeting (Davos-Klosters, Switzerland)
Jan. 21: Frankfurt Tokenization Conference 2025
Jan. 25-26: Catstanbul 2025 (Istanbul). The first community conference for Jupiter, a decentralized exchange (DEX) aggregator built on Solana.
Jan 30-31: Plan B Forum (San Salvador, El Salvador)
Feb. 3: Digital Assets Forum (London)
Feb. 18-20: Consensus Hong Kong
Token Talk
By Shaurya Malwa
A parody token just got its own parody.
AI Agents upstart ai16z, a platform mimicking venture fund a16z that uses AI to manage user funds, saw a mockery of its token raffle among smallcap speculators in the past day, running to a peak of $130 million market capitalization as of European morning hours.
Where ai16z tried to blend AI with investment, LLM — short for “Large Language Model” laughs at the very concept, suggesting that if AI can be anything, it can certainly be a meme with no real utility.
X users were quick to dub LLM as the «McDonald’s version of $ai16z,» mixing fast food with AI, creating a narrative where the only intelligence was in the marketing.
It has no inherent utility or technological backing; its value is purely speculative and community-driven, based on the meme’s popularity and the humor it brings to the crypto conversation.
AI Agent projects virtuals (VIRTUALS), ai16z (AI16Z) and the broader category are down more than 20% since peak on average in the past weeks amid criticism of their claimed AI models, as a CoinDesk analysis previously noted.
Derivatives Positioning
The annualized one-month basis in BTC and ETH CME futures has retreated to 6%-7%, the lowest since the election day. The positioning continues to moderate, with ETH open interest dropping to a one-month low of $2.9 billion, according to data source Amberdata.
Annualized funding rates in perpetual futures tied to large cap tokens now hover at around 5%, down significant from last month’s excessively bullish 80% to 100%. However, the OI-normalized CVD continues to signal net selling pressure in the market.
In options market, front-end skews now show bias for BTC and ETH puts, but longer duration continue to reflect a bullish bias.
Notable block trades include a large short trade in the BTC $55K put expiring on March 29. In ETH, traders shorted calls at strikes $4,800, $5,500 and $6,000.
Market Movements:
BTC is down 1.24% from 4 p.m. ET Tuesday to $93,307.05 (24hrs: -1.8%)
ETH is up 0.23% at $3,307.13 (24hrs: -1.15%)
CoinDesk 20 is down 1.18% to 3,954.73 (24hrs: -2.28%)
Ether staking yield is up 1 bp to 3.15%
BTC funding rate is at 0.0061% (6.66% annualized) on Binance
DXY is up unchanged at 109.19
Gold is up 0.72% at $2,683.8/oz
Silver is up 1.71% to $30.86/oz
Nikkei 225 closed -0.94% at 39,605.09
Hang Seng closed -0.2% at 19,240.89
FTSE is up 0.63% at 8,303.24
Euro Stoxx 50 is unchanged at 4,997.63
DJIA closed +0.25% to 42,635.20
S&P 500 closed +0.16% at 5,918.25
Nasdaq closed unchanged at 19,478.88
S&P/TSX Composite Index closed +0.49% at 25,051.70
S&P 40 Latin America closed -0.87% at 2,204.98
U.S. 10-year Treasury is down 2 bps at 4.68%
E-mini S&P 500 futures are down 0.1% to 5,953.0
E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures are down 0.18% at 21,323.00
E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average Index futures are unchanged at 42,874.00
Bitcoin Stats:
BTC Dominance: 57.85
Ethereum to bitcoin ratio: 0.035
Hashrate (seven-day moving average): 785 EH/s
Hashprice (spot): $55.7
Total Fees: 7.57 BTC/ / $722,439
CME Futures Open Interest: 176,215 BTC
BTC priced in gold: 34.8 oz
BTC vs gold market cap: 9.90%
Basket Performance
Technical Analysis
The chart shows BTC’s downward momentum is weakening.
While prices continue to chalk out lower highs, the momentum oscillator RSI is now moving in the opposite direction, diverging bullishly to signal a potential price bounce ahead.
Crypto Equities
MicroStrategy (MSTR): closed on Wednesday at $331.7 (-2.85%%), up 0.99% at $335.00 in pre-market.
Coinbase Global (COIN): closed at $260.01 (-1.63%), up 0.55% at $261.45 in pre-market.
Galaxy Digital Holdings (GLXY): closed at C$27.62 (-2.23%)
MARA Holdings (MARA): closed at $18.34 (-3.84%), up 0.11% at $18.36
in pre-market.
Riot Platforms (RIOT): closed at $12.02 (-3.14%), unchanged in pre-market.
Core Scientific (CORZ): closed at $14.05 (-0.5%), up 0.36% at $14.10 in pre-market.
CleanSpark (CLSK): closed at $10.09 (-5.79%), unchanged in pre-market.
CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI): closed at $23.15 (-4.93%), down 1.08% at $22.90 in pre-market.
Semler Scientific (SMLR): closed at $50.19 (-9.14%), unchanged in pre-market.
Exodus Movement (EXOD): closed at $37.78 (-3.89%), up 0.21% at $37.86 in pre-market.
ETF Flows
Spot BTC ETFs:
Daily net flow: -$568.8 million
Cumulative net flows: $36.37 billion
Total BTC holdings ~ 1.140 million.
Spot ETH ETFs
Daily net flow: -$159.4 million
Cumulative net flows: $2.52 billion
Total ETH holdings ~ 3.627 million.
Source: Farside Investors, as of Jan. 8.
Overnight Flows
Chart of the Day
The MiCA-led decline in tether’s (USDT) market capitalization has stalled.
So, the ongoing decline in BTC may lose momentum. USDT, the world’s largest dollar-pegged cryptocurrency is widely used to fund crypto purchases.
While You Were Sleeping
Bitcoin ETFs Suffer $582M Net Outflow, Second-Highest Tally Ever (CoinDesk): Bitcoin and ether ETFs saw $582M and $159M in outflows Wednesday as the Fed’s December FOMC meeting minutes noted inflation risks from Trump’s policies and a possible slowdown in rate cuts.
XRP May Surge 40% As ‘Trump Effect’ Boosts Ripple Sentiment (CoinDesk): XRP, up 300% since November amid optimism for Trump’s crypto-friendly policies, could see another 40% surge as technical analysis highlights a bullish breakout from its descending triangle pattern.
Bitfinex Relocates Derivatives Services to El Salvador (The Block): Bitfinex Derivatives is relocating to El Salvador after obtaining its second license to operate under the nation’s crypto-friendly framework, allowing it to enhance its services and strengthen its regional presence.
Bond Market Selloff Jolts Global Investors As Trump Worries Grow (Reuters): A global bond price drop on Wednesday pushed yields to multi-year highs in the U.S., U.K., and Eurozone, driven by inflation risks, heavy bond issuance, and concerns about Trump’s tariff threats.
China Consumer Prices Weaken Further, Adding to Deflation Worries (Bloomberg): China’s inflation slowed for a fourth month in December, with CPI up just 0.1% year-on-year, the National Bureau of Statistics reported, highlighting deflation risks amid global inflation pressures.
Asia’s Central Banks Face a Formidable Challenge: An Ascendant U.S. Dollar (CNBC): The U.S. dollar’s post-election rally has devalued the currencies of Japan, China, South Korea, and India, raising import costs for these nations and complicating their central banks’ economic strategies.
In the Ether
On Friday, cryptocurrency exchange Bybit was allegedly hacked by North Korea’s Lazarus group, which drained nearly $1.4 billion in ether (ETH) from the exchange.
Following the hack, Arthur Hayes, BitMEX co-founder and claiming to be a major ether (ETH) holder, wrote a post on X to Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin on whether he will “advocate to roll back the chain to help @Bybit_Official.” Meanwhile, in an X spaces session, Bybit’s CEO Ben Zhou revealed that his team had also reached out to the Ethereum Foundation to see if it was something the network would consider, noting that such a decision should be based on what the network’s community wants.
Hayes’s post immediately provoked a fierce reaction from the Ethereum community, which was firm in its belief that it wouldn’t happen. Some even questioned whether the BitMEX founder was joking. CoinDesk reached out to Hayes over X to clarify his comments.
Ethereum members, like the core developer teams, are vastly against “rolling back” the network because it would override core elements of decentralization. If Buterin decided on his own that it would happen, then that would be seen as the end of Ethereum’s ethos, which heavily involves various developer teams and other community members when it comes to the health and state of the blockchain.
“Rolling back the chain would give ETH no purpose. What’s the point if you can just change rules,” said user @the_weso in a post on X.
Some outside the Ethereum community pointed to the 2016 DAO hack as an example when $60 million in ETH was stolen. The network went forward with a hard fork, splitting the old network into two, and the new chain continued on as Ethereum.
That hard fork was not a “rollback,” though; it was known as an “irregular state transition.” Ethereum technically can’t “roll back” the network because it relies on an account model, where accounts hold users’ ETH.
At the time of the hack, developers upgraded their nodes to a new client or software. Those who didn’t upgrade their nodes were still on the old chain, which became known as Ethereum Classic.
When the nodes upgraded to the new software, the stolen ETH could move from one Ethereum account address to the next.
“The ‘irregular state change’ that they implemented at the time of the DAO hard fork was this: they airlifted all the ETH in the DAO smart contracts out to a refund contract that would send you 1 ETH for every 100 DAO tokens you sent in,” wrote Laura Shin of Unchained in a post on X.
Major cryptocurrency exchange Bybit has seen total outflows of over $5.5 billion after it suffered a near $1.5 billion hack that saw hackers, believed to be from North Korea’s Lazarus Group, drain its ether cold wallet.
The total assets tracked on wallets associated with the exchange plunged from around $16.9 billion to $11.2 billion at the time of writing, according to data from DeFiLlama. The exchange is now looking to understand exactly what happened.
In an X spaces session, Bybit’s CEO Ben Zhou revealed that shortly after the incident, he called for “all hands on deck” to serve their clients with processing withdrawals and responding to inquiries about what was going on.
During the session, Zhou revealed that the security breach saw the hackers make off with roughly 70% of their clients’ ether, which meant that Bybit needed to quickly secure a loan to be able to process withdrawals. Yet, Zhou found that ether wasn’t the most withdrawn token, with most users instead withdrawing stablecoin from Bybit.
The exchange, Zhou noted, has reserves to cover these withdrawals, but the crisis deepened as, in response to the incident, Safe moved to temporarily shut down its smart wallet functionalities to “ensure absolute confidence in our platform’s security.”
Safe is a decentralized custody protocol providing smart contract wallets for digital asset management. Some exchanges integrated Safe, which allows users to maintain custody of their funds and has multisig functionality to enhance the security of their cold wallets.
While the exchange had reserves to back up users’ withdrawals, $3 billion worth of USDT was in a Safe wallet that had just been shut down as the wallet moved to understand the situation, according to Zhou.
On social media, Safe said that while it had «not found evidence that the official Safe frontend was compromised,» it was temporarily shutting down «certain functionalities» out of caution.
While Zhou and Bybit’s team were figuring out how to securely withdraw their $3 billion, withdrawals were mounting. Within two hours of the security breach, the exchange was facing requests to move over $100,000 off its platform, Zhou revealed.
Responding to the situation, Zhou told his security team to engage Safe to “find a better way to get this money out.” The team ended up developing new software with code “based on Etherscan” to verify the signatures “on a very manual level” to move the stablecoins back to their wallet and cover the withdrawal surge.
The exchange’s team had to remain up all night to be able to fulfill withdrawals, according to Zhou. As the exchange managed to move the $3 billion in stablecoin reserves, it was facing a bank run of “about 50%” of all the funds within the exchange.
Zhou said that since the incident, the exchange has moved a significant amount of funds off of Safe cold wallets and is now determining what system it will use to replace Safe.
Pushing to «Roll Back» Ethereum Was not Off the Table
Since the security breach, Bybit has engaged authorities. During the session, Zhou said that the Singaporean authorities took the issue “very seriously” and that he believes it has already been escalated with Interpol.
Blockchain analysis firms, including Chainalysis, were engaged. Zhou said, “As long as Bybit is there and continues to track [the stolen ether], I hope we can get these funds back.”
Notably, he revealed that pushing to «roll back» the Ethereum blockchain, which was suggested by some industry players on social media, including BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes, had been on the table for some time if the community agreed with it.
“I had my team talking to Vitalik and the Ethereum Foundation to see if there’s any recommendations they can offer to help. I do really thank all these guys on Twitter asking if there is a possibility to roll back the chain. I’m not sure what was the response on their side, but anything that would help we would try,” Zhou said.
When asked if «rolling back» the chain is even possible, Zhou responded he doesn’t know. “I’m not sure it’s a one-man decision based on the spirit of blockchain. It should be a work in process to see what the community wants,” he said.
It’s worth noting that a blockchain «rollback» refers to a state change that would allow for the funds to be recovered. While rolling back the Bitcoin blockchain is technically possible, such a state change on Ethereum would be more complex, given its smart contract interactions and state-based architecture.
Nevertheless, any state change would require consensus and likely lead to a contentious hard fork, drawing criticism from the community. This would likely split the Ethereum blockchain into two networks, each with its own supporters.
As for what exactly caused the hack to occur, is still unclear. Per Zhou, Bybit’s laptops have not been compromised. He said the movements of the transaction’s signers have been scrutinized but appear to have been routine.
“We know the cause is definitely around the Safe cold wallet. Whether it’s a problem with our laptops or on Safe’s side, we don’t know.,” Zhou added.
Uncategorized
Binance Research Survey Shows 95% of Latin American Crypto Users Plan to Buy More in 2025
A vast majority of Latin American cryptocurrency users—95%—plan to expand their holdings in 2025, according to a Binance Research survey of more than 10,000 investors in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico.
The findings show that 40.1% of respondents are expecting to buy more crypto within the next three months, 15.3% are looking to do so in the next six months, and 39.7% within 12 months. Only 4.9% have no plans to keep on investing this year.
Latin America led the world in crypto adoption in 2024, growing by 116%, according to research from payments firm Triple-A quoted in the report. The region now has 55 million cryptocurrency users, making up nearly 10% of total cryptocurrency users.
This rapid expansion has been fueled by rising asset prices, regulatory advancements, and new financial products like spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Brazil has just last week become the first country to approve a spot XRP ETF.
Market performance has also bolstered investor confidence. «Latin America is a rapidly expanding region for the crypto sector, and the results of this research reinforce what we have observed in our operations,” Binance’s regional VP for Latin America, Guilherme Nazar, said.
Binance’s research shows that half of those inquired already use cryptocurrencies for over a year, with most entering the space expecting significant returns and searching for financial freedom.
Portfolio diversification, privacy, and protecting their money were also quoted as motives to invest in the space.
Read more: How a $115M Crypto Fund With Big Ambitions Plans to Invest In Latin America
Ethereum ‘Roll Back’ Suggestion Has Sparked Criticism. Here’s Why It Won’t Happen
Bybit Sees Over $4 Billion ‘Bank Run’ After Crypto’s Biggest Hack
Binance Research Survey Shows 95% of Latin American Crypto Users Plan to Buy More in 2025
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