By Omkar Godbole (All times ET unless indicated otherwise)

The market is about to be hit with the first big U.S. economic event of 2025: December CPI data.

With hawkish Fed fears in the air and bitcoin strengthening its correlation with tech stocks, Wednesday’s report becomes even more significant for the digital assets market. The stalled liquidity inflows through stablecoins have also raised question marks on the sustainability of price recovery from under $90K, and traders are preparing for potential downside volatility by adding short-dated puts.

Here’s what experts are saying about the upcoming event:

QCP Capital

«In crypto, cautious sentiment is evident in BTC options flows, with puts rolled below the key $90k support. Front-end vols and flies remain elevated, while the VIX stays high at 18.68 – suggesting volatility to persist through January.»

Geoffrey Chen, author of the Fidenza Macro blog

«The rising markets in November and the lifting of election uncertainty pushed business confidence higher, resulting in stronger data. The frontloading of goods imports and the raising of prices to get ahead of tariffs may have also contributed to higher PMIs. On top of that, oil has woken up and rallied over 10% from its December levels, reinforcing the stagflation regime. None of this bodes well for CPI tomorrow [Jan. 15] and the FOMC later this month. These risk events may surprise towards hawkish and stagflationary outcomes, putting more pressure on risk assets.”

Markus Thielen, founder of 10x Research

«Bitcoin continues to trade within a narrowing wedge, with several critical catalysts on the horizon. Expectations for a higher CPI number have risen, creating a scenario where a softer-than-expected inflation reading could trigger a bitcoin rally.»

Focus on XRP and AI

XRP surged to $2.90 early today, matching the December high with technical analysis suggesting a continued run higher. Meanwhile, according to Wintermute, dip buyers have been active in AI coins, namely FAI, GRASS, VIRTUAL, Ai16z and TAO.

These coins, therefore, could chalk out bigger gains in case the CPI spurs renewed risk-taking in financial markets.

What to Watch

Crypto

Jan. 15: Degen liquidity mining airdrop; the last snapshot was taken at the end of Jan. 14 (UTC).

Jan. 15: Mintlayer version 1.0.0 release. The mainnet upgrade introduces atomic swaps, enabling native BTC cross-chain swaps.

Jan. 17: Oral arguments at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in KalshiEX LLC v. CFTC, where the CFTC is appealing the district court’s Sep. 12, 2024 ruling favoring Kalshi’s Congressional Control Contracts.

Jan. 23: First deadline for a decision by the U.S. SEC on the proposal filed on Dec. 3, 2024 by NYSE Arca to list and trade shares of Grayscale Solana Trust (GSOL), a closed-end trust, as an ETF.

Jan. 25: First deadline for decisions by the U.S. SEC on the proposals for four new spot solana (SOL) ETFs: Bitwise Solana ETF, Canary Solana ETF, 21Shares Core Solana ETF, and VanEck Solana Trust, which are all sponsored by Cboe BZX Exchange.

Macro

Jan. 15, 2:00 a.m.: The U.K.’s Office for National Statistics released December 2024’s inflation data.

Core Inflation Rate MoM Act. 0.3% vs. Prev. 0%.

Inflation Rate MoM Act. 0.3% vs. 0.1%.

Core Inflation Rate YoY Act. 3.2% vs. Prev. 3.5%.

Inflation Rate YoY Act. 2.5% vs. Prev. 2.6%.

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 Est. 0.2% vs. Prev. 0.3%.

Core Inflation Rate YoY Est. 3.3% vs. Prev. 3.3%.

Inflation Rate MoM Est. 0.3% vs. Prev. 0.3%.

Inflation Rate YoY Est. 2.8% vs. Prev. 2.7%.

Jan. 16, 2:00 a.m.: The U.K.’s Office for National Statistics November 2024’s GDP estimate.

GDP MoM Est. 0.2% vs. 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 Est. 214K vs. Prev. 201K.

Jan. 17, 5:00 a.m.: Eurostat releases December 2024’s Eurozone inflation data.

Inflation Rate MoM Final Est. 0.4% vs Prev. -0.3%.

Core Inflation Rate YoY Final Est. 2.7% vs. Prev. 2.7%.

Inflation Rate YoY Final Est. 2.4% vs. Prev. 2.2%.

Token Events

Governance votes & calls

Compound DAO is discussing strategies to grow its treasury. The proposal seeks $9.5M of ETH and $5M of COMP, which would be used to generate a yield and boost its USDC holdings.

Balancer DAO is discussing deploying the v3 version of its platform on layer-2 network Base. If approved, Balancer expects deployment by the end of January.

Unlocks

Jan. 15: Connex (CONX) to unlock 376% of its circulating supply, worth $84.5 million.

Jan. 16: Arbitrum (ARB) to unlock 2.2% of its circulating supply, worth $68 million.

Jan. 18: Ondo (ONDO) to unlock 134% of its circulating supply, worth $2.19 billion.

Token Launches

Jan. 15: Derive (DRV) will launch, with 5% of supply going to sENA stakers.
Jan. 16: Solayer (LAYER) to host token sale followed by five months of points farming.

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

Conferences:

Day 10 of 14: Starknet, an Ethereum layer 2, is holding its Winter Hackathon (online).

Day 3 of 12: 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 Oliver Knight

Toshi, a memecoin on layer-2 network Base, has risen by more than 70% in the past 24-hours after it was added to Coinbase’s future listing roadmap. TOSHI’s market cap has now topped $100 million.

Non-fungible token (NFT) trading volume fell by 19% in 2024 compared to the previous year, making it the worst performing year since 2020, a DappRadar report shows.

The Ondo community are bracing for mammoth $2.2 billion token unlock this week as circulating supply is set to jump by 134%. The majority of supply has been allocated to «ecosystem growth,» however $377 million will be distributed to participants of a private sale. Unlocks of this magnitude typically heap pressure on the underlying asset, although a significant increase in short positions could spur a short squeeze, a trend that has been seen since 2023.

Binance Alpha has posted a new batch of projects that are being considered for listing on the exchange. These include VITA, GRIFT, VITA Aimonica, the latter two are AI agent tokens.

Derivatives Positioning

XLM has seen a 27% surge in perpetual futures open interest, the highest among major tokens, with cumulative volume delta pointing to net buying pressure. The combination supports an extension of the past 24 hours’ 11% price rise.

Large positive dealer gamma is seen at $97K, according to Deribit’s options market. Positive gamma means market makers will likely trade against the market direction, arresting price volatility.

In ETH’s case, a large negative gamma is seen closer to its going market rate, suggesting potential for increased price turbulence.

Front-dated risk reversals continue to show bias for BTC, ETH puts.

Notable block flows include a long BTC straddle, involving $97K options expiring on Jan. 24. The strategy profits from a volatility explosion.

Market Movements:

BTC is up 0.51% from 4 p.m. ET Tuesday to $96,951.13 (24hrs: +0.4%)

ETH is down 0.24% to $3,207.75 (24hrs: -0.37%)

CoinDesk 20 is up 1.88% to 3,546.65 (24hrs: +2.35%)

Ether staking yield is unchanged at 3.12%

BTC funding rate is at 0.0059% (6.49% annualized) on Binance

DXY is down 0.23% to 109.02

Gold is up 1.28% to $2,646.45/oz

Silver is up 2.16% to $30.78/oz

Nikkei 225 closed on Tuesday unchanged at 38,444.58

Hang Seng closed +0.34% at 19,286.07

FTSE is up 0.74% to 8,262.35

Euro Stoxx 50 is up 0.34% at 4,997.65

DJIA closed +0.52% at 42,518.28

S&P 500 closed +0.11% at 5,842.91

Nasdaq closed -0.23% at 19,044.39

S&P/TSX Composite Index closed +0.21% at 24,588.60

S&P 40 Latin America closed +0.69% at 2,207.79

U.S. 10-year Treasury is down 2 bps to 4.77%

E-mini S&P 500 futures are up 0.16% to 5,891.50

E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures are up 0.22% to 20,965.25

E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average Index futures are up 0.2% at 42,836.00

Bitcoin Stats:

BTC Dominance: 58.21

Ethereum to bitcoin ratio: 0.033

Hashrate (seven-day moving average): 790 EH/s

Hashprice (spot): $55.2

Total Fees: 6.54 BTC/

CME Futures Open Interest: 177,355 BTC

BTC priced in gold: 36.1 oz

BTC vs gold market cap: 10.26%

Technical Analysis

The above chart shows privacy-focused cryptocurrency’s weekly price changes in a candlestick pattern since late 2020.

XMR recently broke out of a prolonged consolidation/basing pattern and has validated the same with the bullish re-test of the breakout point.

Now, the market may unleash the energy built during consolidation, taking prices higher to resistance at $289, the April 2022 high.

Crypto Equities

MicroStrategy (MSTR): closed on Tuesday at $342.17 (+4.19%), down 0.51% at $340.44 in pre-market.

Coinbase Global (COIN): closed at $255.37 (+1.66%), down 0.17% at $254.93 in pre-market.

Galaxy Digital Holdings (GLXY): closed at C$26.6 (+2.15%)

MARA Holdings (MARA): closed at $17.36 (+0.99%), unchanged in pre-market.

Riot Platforms (RIOT): closed at $12.24 (+3.99%), down 0.25% at $12.21 in pre-market.

Core Scientific (CORZ): closed at $13.91 (+2.2%), up 1.51% at $14.12 in pre-market.

CleanSpark (CLSK): closed at $10.35 (+1.57%), down 0.39% at $10.31 in pre-market.

CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI): closed at $23.07 (+3.83%).

Semler Scientific (SMLR): closed at $54.93 (+4.23%), up 0.31% at $55.10 in pre-market.

Exodus Movement (EXOD): closed at $33.07 (-1.52%), down 1.66% at $32.52 in pre-market.

ETF Flows

Spot BTC ETFs:

Daily net flow: -$209.8 million

Cumulative net flows: $35.71 billion

Total BTC holdings ~ 1.131 million.

Spot ETH ETFs

Daily net flow: -$39.4 million

Cumulative net flows: $2.41 billion

Total ETH holdings ~ 3.540 million.

Source: Farside Investors, as of Jan. 14

Overnight Flows

Chart of the Day

Cryptocurrency whales continue to run down their holdings of wrapped bitcoin (WBTC), an Ethereum token intended to represent bitcoin on the Ethereum-based DeFi applications.

The balance held by whales has dropped to 70.33K WBTC, the lowest in over four years.

While You Were Sleeping

Stalled Stablecoin Supply Casts Doubt on BTC’s Bullish Recovery As U.S. Inflation Report Looms (CoinDesk): Bitcoin’s recovery above $90,000 hints at bullish potential. However, declining stablecoin inflows signal weaker liquidity, increasing the likelihood of volatility following today’s U.S. retail inflation (CPI) data release.

Thailand Mulls Allowing First Bitcoin ETF in Bid to Boost Sector (Bloomberg): Thailand’s SEC is considering allowing Bitcoin ETFs to boost its digital-assets hub ambitions. Its secretary-general said the country must adapt to growing global cryptocurrency adoption while ensuring investor protections.

Crypto Hedge Funds Had a Great 2024, but Failed To Beat Bitcoin (Bloomberg): Crypto hedge funds gained 40% in 2024, according to the VisionTrack Composite Index, but trailed Bitcoin’s 120% surge to over $100,000. Investor sentiment was boosted by optimism around Trump’s pro-crypto stance.

U.K. Inflation Eases in Boost to Rate-Cut Chances (The Wall Street Journal): U.K. consumer inflation eased to 2.5% year-over-year in December, down from 2.6% in November. The slowdown boosts expectations for further BOE rate cuts, though inflation remains above the 2% target.

South Korean Investigators Arrest Impeached President Yoon in Insurrection Probe (Reuters): Impeached South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, the first sitting president arrested, was taken into custody Wednesday on insurrection charges. The Constitutional Court is deliberating whether to uphold his impeachment or reinstate him.

Emerging Market Stocks Slide on Trump Tariff Threats and Strong Dollar (Financial Times): The MSCI Emerging Markets Index, tracking $7.6 trillion in stocks, is down over 10% since Oct. 2, as fears of Trump’s inflationary policies, higher trade tariffs, and rising U.S. Treasury yields drive investor exits.

In the Ether