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Crypto Daybook Americas: Bitcoin Bargain Hunting Faces Crucial Jobs Report Test

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By Omkar Godbole (All times ET unless indicated otherwise)

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-standing support zone of $90K-$93K, which has successfully halted downward movements at least six times since the second half of November.

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

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

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

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

What to Watch

Crypto

No major crypto events scheduled today.

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. 13: Solayer (LAYER) «Season 1» airdrop snapshot for staking participants, liquidity providers, and partner ecosystem users. Eligibility details and terms will be available on the Solayer dashboard.

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. 160K 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

No major events scheduled today.

Jan. 14: Mantra community call with its co-founder

Unlocks

No major unlocks scheduled today.

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

No major token launches scheduled today.

Jan. 15: Derive (DRV) will launch, with 5% of supply going to sENA stakers.

Jan. 17: Solv Protocol (SOLV) to be listed on Binance.

Conferences:

Day 5 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

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 about 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 rose as much as 50% on Binance spot listings. Viral token ai16z was up 11% and the agents category up was 8% on average, leading growth among all other crypto sectors.

A deposit vault on the upcoming network Berachain hit $1.1 billion in holdings, led by StakeStone at $370 million.

The Arbitrum DAO is voting on an improvement proposal (AIP) to implement the Bounded Liquidity Delay (BoLD) on Arbitrum One and Nova. If approved, it will replace the current validator system with a permissionless one, allowing broader participation in securing the network.

Ronin and Virtuals have collaborated to introduce an AI agent named
$JAIHOZ, fashioned after Ronin’s cofounder @Jihoz_Axie. The token was launched with a supply split between Base and Ronin blockchains, with some tokens airdropped to community members.

Derivatives Positioning

HYPE, LTC, SHIB, SUI and TON have experienced an uptick in perpetual futures open interest in the past 24 hours, with XLM leading the drop in open positions in other major tokens.

The front-end BTC and ETH risk reversals show put bias while longer duration calls continue to draw premium relative to puts.

Block trades in BTC options painted a mixed picture. In ETH’s case, the largest block trade involved a short position in the $3,700 call expiring on Feb. 28 to fund a long position in the $3,200 put with the same expiry.

Market Movements:

BTC is up 3.06% from 4 p.m. ET Thursday to $94,967.46 (24hrs: +1.52%)

ETH is up 3.46% at $3,306.56 (24hrs: +0.11%)

CoinDesk 20 is unchanged at 3,375.16(24hrs: -0.74%)

Ether staking yield is down 1 bp 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% to $31.19/oz

Nikkei 225 closed -1.05% at 39,190.4

Hang Seng closed -0.92% at 19,064.29

FTSE is down 0.18% at 8,304.75

Euro Stoxx 50 is up 0.19% at 5,027.38

DJIA closed on Thursday +0.25% at 42,635.20

S&P 500 closed +0.16% at 5,918.25

Nasdaq closed +0.83% at 19,480.91

S&P/TSX Composite Index closed unchanged at 19,478.88

S&P 40 Latin America closed +0.27% at 2,210.99

U.S. 10-year Treasury is up 2 bps at 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 Stats:

BTC Dominance: 58.02

Ethereum to bitcoin ratio: 0.034

Hashrate (seven-day moving average): 772 EH/s

Hashprice (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 bounced to $95K, having held the head-and-shoulders (H&S) neckline support Thursday.

Prices need to move above $102,750, the lower high or the right shoulder created Monday to signal a renewed bullish outlook.

A UTC close under the horizontal support line would confirm the H&S top and shift focus to deeper support at $75,000.

Crypto Equities

MicroStrategy (MSTR): closed on Thursday at $331.7 (-2.85%), up 2.03% at $338.44 in pre-market.

Coinbase Global (COIN): closed at $260.01(-1.63%), up 0.73% at $261.91 in pre-market.

Galaxy Digital Holdings (GLXY): closed at C$26.85 (-2.79%)

MARA Holdings (MARA): closed at $18.34 (-3.83%), up 0.93% at $18.51 in pre-market.

Riot Platforms (RIOT): closed at $12.02 (-3.14%), up 0.83% at $12.12 in pre-market.

Core Scientific (CORZ): closed at $14.05 (-0.5%), up 1% at $14.19 in pre-market.

CleanSpark (CLSK): closed at $10.09 (-5.79%), up 1.09% at $10.20 in pre-market.

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

U.S. exchanges were closed on Jan.9 in a national day of mourning for former President Jimmy Carter, who passed away on December 29, 2024.

The ETF data below is from Jan.8 and remains unchanged.

Spot BTC ETFs:

Daily net flow: $676 million

Cumulative net flows: $31.70 billion

Total BTC holdings ~ 1.080 million.

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

Chart of the Day

The chart shows the top 10 chains of the month in terms of the 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 $92 million.

While You Were Sleeping

The Bitcoin Iceberg: Buyers Await Beneath the Bearish Surface (CoinDesk): Bitcoin faces selling pressure from inflation concerns, while strong bids at lower prices suggest potential stabilization. Traders and investors await the U.S. nonfarm payrolls report for Federal Reserve policy cues.

Polymarket’s Customer Data Sought by CFTC Subpoena of Coinbase, Source Says (CoinDesk): The U.S. CFTC has allegedly subpoenaed Coinbase for data on Polymarket customers amid legal battles with blockchain-powered prediction markets. Coinbase has apparently warned users it 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 E.U. regulatory entry point under the Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) framework.

China Swap Curve Inverts as Traders Dial Back Rate-Cut Bets (Bloomberg): China’s money markets anticipate delayed monetary easing to protect the yuan, deepening a rare swap curve inversion as policymakers struggle to balance currency stability and economic support.

Japan November Household Spending Falls As Price Pressures Persist (Reuters): Japan’s November spending decline eased, but rising prices and stagnant wages limit consumption recovery, leaving analysts skeptical about real wage growth or a Bank of Japan rate hike this month.

Whitehall Braced for Spending Cuts After UK Hit by Bond Market Turmoil (Financial Times): The U.K. faces rising borrowing costs as 10-year gilt yields hit 4.93%, the highest since 2008, and the pound drops to a year-low, prompting warnings of tighter government budgets.

In the Ether

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Ethereum ‘Roll Back’ Suggestion Has Sparked Criticism. Here’s Why It Won’t Happen

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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.

Read more: Arthur Hayes Floats the Idea of Rolling Back Ethereum Network to Negate $1.4B Bybit Hack, Drawing Community Ire

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Bybit Sees Over $4 Billion ‘Bank Run’ After Crypto’s Biggest Hack

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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.

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Binance Research Survey Shows 95% of Latin American Crypto Users Plan to Buy More in 2025

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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

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