Uncategorized
Crypto Daybook Americas: Bitcoin, Gold Rally in Tandem on Regulatory Outlook, Muted Tariff Effects
By Omkar Godbole (All times ET unless indicated otherwise)
Bitcoin remains well supported above $100,000 as it eyes record highs, buoyed by reports that the new SEC leadership has established a task force to develop a framework for crypto assets. Pundits have long said regulatory clarity could pave the way for further price appreciation.
Gold’s price rebound from December lows has also gathered pace and is now just 1% shy of setting new highs above $2,790 per ounce. That’s unusual: Bitcoin typically rallies when the price of gold stagnates.
Perhaps gold is saying the Fed will walk back on its hawkish December bias that signaled fewer rate cuts, helping keep BTC bid. And why not? Reports indicate that Trump’s tariffs will be lighter than anticipated and research from MacroMicro shows that their inflationary impact during his previous presidency was minimal.
In the broader crypto market, on-chain data from IntoTheBlock reveals that 80% of addresses holding LINK, one of the recent top performers, are in profit at the going market rate of $25.70. Key resistance levels have been identified at $27 and $29, which acted as barriers last year.
The movement of XRP, another recent outperformer, between addresses owned by whales and centralized exchanges has slowed considerably from the record levels earlier this month. That may be a sign these large holders have slowed their profit-taking activity.
Meanwhile, traders are expressing enthusiasm with sentiments like «we are so back,» especially after Bloomberg’s James Seyffart shared filings for ETF applications involving coins including LTC, SOL, DOGE, XRP and others. It seems the momentum in both the crypto and traditional markets could be setting the stage for an exciting period ahead. Stay alert!
What to Watch
Crypto
Jan. 22, 10:30 a.m.: Solana-powered decentralized exchange (DEX) aggregator Jupiter’s JUP airdrop claim goes live. Jupiter’s users have three months to claim.
Jan. 22, 10:25 p.m.: dYdX Chain (DYDX) will undergo a software upgrade to v8.0 on block 35,602,000.
Jan. 23: First deadline for SEC decision on NYSE Arca’s proposal to list and trade shares of Grayscale Solana Trust (GSOL), a closed-end trust, as an ETF.
Jan. 25: First deadline for SEC decisions on proposals for four spot solana ETFs: Bitwise Solana ETF, Canary Solana ETF, 21Shares Core Solana ETF and VanEck Solana Trust, which are all sponsored by Cboe BZX Exchange.
Jan. 29: Ice Open Network (ION) mainnet launch.
Feb. 4: MicroStrategy Inc. (MSTR) reports Q4 2024 earnings.
Feb. 4: Pepecoin (PEPE) halving. At block 400,000, the reward will drop to 31,250 pepecoin.
Feb. 5, 3:00 p.m.: Boba Network’s Holocene hard fork network upgrade for its Ethereum-based L2 mainnet.
Feb. 12: Hut 8 Corp. (HUT) reports Q4 2024 earnings.
Feb. 15: Qtum (QTUM) hard fork network upgrade is scheduled to take place at block 4,590,000.
Feb. 20: Coinbase Global (COIN) reports Q4 2024 earnings.
Macro
Jan. 22, 8:30 a.m.: Statistics Canada releases December’s Industrial Product Price Index.
PPI MoM Est. 0.8% vs. Prev. 0.6%.
PPI YoY Prev. 2.2%.
Jan. 22, 10:00 a.m.: The Conference Board releases December’s Leading Economic Index (LEI) report for the U.S.
MoM Est. -0.1% vs. Prev. 0.3%.
Jan. 23, 8:30 a.m.: The U.S. Department of Labor releases the Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report for the week ended Jan. 18.
Initial Jobless Claims Est. 215K vs. Prev. 217K.
Jan. 23, 10:00 a.m.: The National Association of Realtors releases December 2024 U.S. Existing Home Sales report.
Existing Home Sales Est. 4.16M vs. Prev. 4.15M.
Existing Home Sales MoM Prev. 4.8%.
Jan. 23, 4:30 p.m.: The Fed releases the H.4.1 report, the central bank balance sheet, for the week ended Jan. 22.
Total Reserves Prev. $6.83T.
Jan. 23, 6:30 p.m.: Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications releases December 2024’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) report.
Inflation Rate MoM Prev. 0.6%.
Core Inflation Rate YoY Est. 3% vs. Prev. 2.7%.
Inflation Rate YoY Prev. 2.9%.
Jan. 23, 10:00 p.m.: The Bank of Japan (BoJ) releases Statement on Monetary Policy.
Interest Rate Decision Est. 0.5% vs. Prev. 0.25%.
Token Events
Governance votes & calls
CoW DAO is discussing the potential allocation of 80 million COW to empower the core treasury team for further liquidity provisioning, economic opportunities, and the development of the DAO’s product roadmap from 2025 to 2028.
Morpho DAO is discussing reducing incentives by 30% across all networks and assets.
Yearn DAO is discussing funding and endorsing a subDAO called Bearn to focus on building and launching products on Berachain.
Jan. 22: Mantle (MNT) will host a livestream with updates on its 2025 roadmap at 8 a.m.
Jan. 23: Pendle (PENDLE) is hosting Pendle Swing Hour at 7 a.m.
Unlocks
Jan. 31: Jupiter (JUP) to unlock 41.5% of circulating supply worth $626 million.
Token Launches
Jan. 22: Jambo (J) is listing on OKX, Gate.io, Bitfinex and Bybit.
Jan. 22: Liquity (LQTY) and Gravity (G) are being listed on Kraken.
Jan. 22: Telegram Gifts are launching as NFTs on TON.
Conferences:
Day 10 of 12: Swiss WEB3FEST Winter Edition 2025 (Zug, Zurich, St. Moritz, Davos)
Day 3 of 5: World Economic Forum Annual Meeting (Davos-Klosters, Switzerland)
Jan. 24-25: Adopting Bitcoin (Cape Town, South Africa)
Jan. 25-26: Catstanbul 2025 (Istanbul). The first community conference for Jupiter, a decentralized exchange (DEX) aggregator built on Solana.
Jan. 30, 12:30 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.: International DeFi Day 2025 (online)
Jan 30-31: Plan B Forum (San Salvador, El Salvador)
Jan. 30 to Feb. 4: The Satoshi Roundtable (Dubai)
Feb. 3: Digital Assets Forum (London)
Feb. 5-6: The 14th Global Blockchain Congress (Dubai)
Feb. 7: Solana APEX (Mexico City)
Feb. 13-14: The 4th Edition of NFT Paris.
Feb. 18-20: Consensus Hong Kong
Feb. 23 to March 2: ETHDenver 2025 (Denver, Colorado)
Token Talk
By Shaurya Malwa
Uniswap to begin v4 deployments this week for builders to test hooks and integrations on-chain. The new architecture of v4, including the singleton contract and flash accounting system, is designed to reduce transaction costs and improve efficiency, which could attract more developers and users to the platform, increasing the overall usage of Uniswap, and, in turn, demand for UNI tokens.
AI16Z and AI Rig Complex’s ARC rallied over 30% on Tuesday while GRIFFAIN, ZEREBRO also booked double-digit advances. President Trump unveiled a $500 billion investment in private sector AI infrastructure investment with firms such as OpenAI, Oracle and Softbank involved.
Derivatives Positioning
TRX, SHIB, PEPE and DOGE lead perpetual futures open interest growth in large-cap tokens. However, TRX is the only one with a positive cumulative volume delta, representing net buying pressure in the past 24 hours.
Front-end call bias in BTC and ETH options on Deribit continues to moderate while on the CME, call skew jumped to highest since the U.S. election Tuesday.
Block flows featured long positions in BTC calls at $110K and $115K strikes and bull call spreads in ETH.
Market Movements:
BTC is down 0.9% from 4 p.m. ET Tuesday at $105,161.32 (24hrs: +1.32%)
ETH is unchanged at $3,312.58 (24hrs: +0.28%)
CoinDesk 20 is up 0.6% at 4,000.99 (24hrs: +2.27%)
Ether staking yield is down 28 bps at 3.3%
BTC funding rate is at 0.0045% (4.9% annualized) on OKX
DXY is down 0.23% at 107.81
Gold is up 0.56% at $2,759.03/oz
Silver is up 0.33% at $30.88/oz
Nikkei 225 closed +1.58% to 39,646.25
Hang Seng closed -1.63% to 19,778.77
FTSE is up 0.41% at 8,583.19
Euro Stoxx 50 is up 0.83% at 5,209.04
DJIA closed on Tuesday +1.24% to 44,025.81
S&P 500 closed +0.88% to 6,049.24
Nasdaq closed +0.64% to 19,756.78
S&P/TSX Composite Index closed +0.44% to 25,281.63
S&P 40 Latin America closed +0.51% to 2,269.78
U.S. 10-year Treasury is unchanged at 4.58%
E-mini S&P 500 futures are up 0.49% at 6,114.25
E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures are up 0.88% at 21,900.00
E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average Index futures are up 0.19% at 44,320.00
Bitcoin Stats:
BTC Dominance: 58.67
Ethereum to bitcoin ratio: 0.031
Hashrate (seven-day moving average): 769 EH/s
Hashprice (spot): $60.7
Total Fees: 10.2 BTC / $1.1 million
CME Futures Open Interest: 502,406
BTC priced in gold: 38.1 oz
BTC vs gold market cap: 10.83%
Technical Analysis
The dollar index (DXY) looks south, having dived out of a bullish trendline from late September lows near 100.
The decline in DXY could add to the bullish momentum in risky assets.
Crypto Equities
MicroStrategy (MSTR): closed on Tuesday at $389.10 (-1.87%), down 0.63% at $386.58 in pre-market.
Coinbase Global (COIN): closed at $294.19 (-0.44%), down 1% at $291.26 in pre-market.
Galaxy Digital Holdings (GLXY): closed at C$31.25 (+0.32%)
MARA Holdings (MARA): closed at $19.56 (-1.76%), down 1.07% at $19.35 in pre-market.
Riot Platforms (RIOT): closed at $12.74 (-4.85%), down 0.24% at $12.71 in pre-market.
Core Scientific (CORZ): closed at $15.27 (+1.8%), down 0.79% at $15.15 n pre-market.
CleanSpark (CLSK): closed at $10.96 (-7.67%), up 0.36% at $11 in pre-market.
CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI): closed at $24.97 (-1.58%).
Semler Scientific (SMLR): closed at $64.94 (+0.4%), down 4.22% at $62.20 in pre-market.
Exodus Movement (EXOD): closed at $40 (+3.87%), down 2.35% at $39.06 in pre-market.
ETF Flows
Spot BTC ETFs:
Daily net flow: $802.6 million
Cumulative net flows: $39.98 billion
Total BTC holdings ~ 1.155 million.
Spot ETH ETFs
Daily net flow: $74.4 million
Cumulative net flows: $2.74 billion
Total ETH holdings ~ 3.622 million.
Source: Farside Investors
Overnight Flows
Chart of the Day
The chart shows XRP’s exchange reserve or balance held in wallets tied to centralized exchanges since June 2024.
The balance has dropped sharply since Jan. 16, signaling a resumption of the broader downtrend.
The renewed exodus of coins from exchanges indicates investor bias for holding.
While You Were Sleeping
Deribit’s Crypto Trading Volume Nearly Doubled to Over $1T in 2024 (CoinDesk): Cryptocurrency exchange Deribit’s total trading volume rose 95% year-on-year to $1.185T in 2024, driven by a 99% surge in options trading to $743B, reflecting institutional adoption and market maturity.
Trump Pardons Silk Road Creator Ross Ulbricht (Cointelegraph): President Trump granted a full pardon to Ross Ulbricht, sentenced to life without parole in 2015 for creating and operating Silk Road, an online marketplace shut down in 2013 that used bitcoin for payments.
Trump-Affiliated World Liberty Financial Makes Another TRX Buy (CoinDesk): World Liberty Financial, a crypto project linked to Trump’s family, added 10.8 million TRX ($2.6 million) to its treasury, raising total TRX holdings to $7.5 million. Sources say WLFI plans to further increase its TRX holdings.
Dollar Could Fall if U.S. Tariffs Less Stringent Than Threatened (The Wall Street Journal): The dollar may weaken if Trump’s tariffs are milder than expected, analysts say. The yuan shows resilience as markets adjust to a potential 10% tariff on Chinese imports, lower than Trump’s campaign pledges of 60%.
BOJ Heads Toward Rate Hike as Markets Take Trump in Stride (Bloomberg): The Bank of Japan is expected to raise rates by 25 basis points to 0.5% on Friday, the highest since 2008, with swaps pricing a 90% chance and 74% of analysts expecting the move.
The Market Is Wrong About US Rates Under Trump in 2025 (Financial Times): In an op-ed, the founder of ABP Invest argues markets are wrong to expect Fed rate cuts in 2025. He predicts robust U.S. growth and Trump’s policies will drive rate hikes from September.
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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