Uncategorized
Crypto Daybook Americas: Bitcoin Whipsaws as Risk Assets Get Feel-Good Boost
By James Van Straten (All times ET unless indicated otherwise)
The past 24 hours have been among the most hectic in the crypto industry for years, and this was reflected in Thursday’s bitcoin (BTC) price, which whipsawed 2% to 3% multiple times in a matter of minutes. Still, it managed to stay above the psychological $100,000 level and is is currently around $105,000.
President Trump’s rhetoric is continuing to help weaken the dollar, which generally boosts risk assets such as cryptocurrencies. The DXY index, a measure of the U.S. currency against a basket of major trade partners, has dropped to the lowest since Dec. 17, so that should give risk-on assets a feel-good boost. U.S. bond yields and WTI crude oil are also heading down, with oil below $75 a barrel, the lowest in two weeks.
On the other side of the world, the Bank of Japan (BoJ) delivered on its promise with another interest-rate increase, taking the policy rate to 0.50%, the highest in more than 16 years. That followed a very hot inflation print, with headline inflation of 3.6% from the previous year, the fastest since January 2023. The question is whether we will get a second iteration of the yen carry trade unwind that occurred in August of last year. Time will tell. Stay alert!
What to Watch
Crypto:
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) Q4 FY 2024 earnings report.
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.
Macro
Jan. 24, 4:00 a.m.: S&P Global releases January 2025 eurozone HCOB Purchasing Managers’ Index (Flash) reports.
Composite PMI Est. 49.7 vs. Prev. 49.6.
Manufacturing PMI Est. 45.3 vs. Prev. 45.1.
Services PMI Est. 51.5 vs. Prev. 51.6.
Jan. 24, 4:30 a.m.: S&P Global releases January 2025’s U.K. Purchasing Managers’ Index (Flash) reports.
Composite PMI Est. 50 vs. Prev. 50.4.
Manufacturing PMI Est. 47 vs. Prev. 47.
Services PMI Est. 50.9 vs. Prev. 51.1.
Jan. 24, 9:45 a.m.: S&P Global releases January 2025’s U.S. Purchasing Managers’ Index (Flash) reports.
Composite PMI Prev. 55.4.
Manufacturing PMI Est. 49.6 vs. Prev. 49.4.
Services PMI Est. 56.5 vs. Prev. 56.8.
Jan. 24, 10:00 a.m.: The University of Michigan releases January U.S. consumer sentiment data.
Index of Consumer Sentiment (Final) Est. 73.2 vs. Prev. 74.
Token Events
Governance votes & calls
Frax DAO is discussing a $5 million investment in World Liberty Financial (WLFI), the crypto project backed by the family of President Donald Trump.
Jan. 24: Arbitrum BoLD’s activation vote deadline. BoLD allows anyone to participate in validation and defend against malicious claims to an Arbitrum chain’s state.
Jan. 24: Hedera (HBAR) is hosting a community call at 11 a.m.
Unlocks
Jan. 31: Optimism (OP) to unlock 2.32% of circulating supply worth $52.9 million.
Jan. 31: Jupiter (JUP) to unlock 41.5% of circulating supply worth $626 million.
Conferences:
Day 12 of 12: Swiss WEB3FEST Winter Edition 2025 (Zug, Zurich, St. Moritz, Davos)
Day 5 of 5: World Economic Forum Annual Meeting (Davos-Klosters, Switzerland)
Day 1 of 2: 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. 6: Ondo Summit 2025 (New York).
Feb. 7: Solana APEX (Mexico City)
Feb. 13-14: The 4th Edition of NFT Paris.
Feb. 18-20: Consensus Hong Kong
Feb. 19: Sui Connect: Hong Kong
Feb. 23 to March 2: ETHDenver 2025 (Denver)
Feb. 25: HederaCon 2025 (Denver)
Token Talk
By Shaurya Malwa
A humorous new decentralized autonomous organization, FartStrategy (FSTR) DAO, is investing user funds into FARTCOIN.
The DAO is leveraging borrowed SOL to acquire the token, offering investors a chance to gain exposure to its price movements through FSTR.
If FSTR trades below its FARTCOIN backing, token holders can vote to dissolve the DAO, redeeming their share of FARTCOIN proportionally after settling any outstanding debts.
The VINE memecoin jumped to a $200 million market capitalization less than 48 hours after issuance.
It was launched on the Solana blockchain by Rus Yusupov, one of the co-founders of the original Vine app, and introduced as a nostalgic tribute to the eponymous platform known for its six-second looping videos. Vine was a significant cultural phenomenon before closing in 2017.
There have been recent discussions around potentially reviving the app, with Yusupov and technocrat Elon Musk expressing interest in its return.
Derivatives Positioning
TRX leads growth in perpetual futures open interest in major coins.
Funding rates for majors remain below an annualized 10%, a sign the market isn’t overly speculative despite BTC trading near record highs on optimism about Trump’s crypto policies.
BTC and ETH call skews have firmed up, with block flows featuring outright longs in higher strike BTC calls and a bull call spread in ETH, involving calls at strikes $5K and $6K.
Market Movements:
BTC is up 2 % from 4 p.m. ET Thursday to $105,450.57 (24hrs: +3.43%)
ETH is up 4.96% at $3,409.62 (24hrs: +6.18%)
CoinDesk 20 is up 2.4% to 3,988.16 (24hrs: +4.79%)
CESR Composite Staking Rate is up 1 bp to 3.16%
BTC funding rate is at 0.0069% (7.58% annualized) on Binance
DXY is down 0.48% at 107.53
Gold is up 0.68% at $2,775.28/oz
Silver is up 1.21% to $30.86/oz
Nikkei 225 closed unchanged at 39,931.98
Hang Seng closed +1.86% to 20,066.19
FTSE is down 0.33% at 8,537.12
Euro Stoxx 50 is up 0.73% at 5,255.47
DJIA closed on Thursday +0.92% to 44,565.07
S&P 500 closed +0.53 at 6,118.71
Nasdaq closed +0.22% at 20,053.68
S&P/TSX Composite Index closed +0.48% at 25,434.08
S&P 40 Latin America closed +0.57% at 2,310.35
U.S. 10-year Treasury was down 13 bps at 4.64%
E-mini S&P 500 futures are down 0.13% at 6,143.75
E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures are down 0.56% at 22,005.50
E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average Index futures are unchanged at 44,709.00
Bitcoin Stats:
BTC Dominance: 58.51 (-0.11%)
Ethereum to bitcoin ratio: 0.032 (0.68%)
Hashrate (seven-day moving average): 784 EH/s
Hashprice (spot): $61.0
Total Fees: 6.8 BTC/ $104,070
CME Futures Open Interest: 191,645
BTC priced in gold: 38.1 oz
BTC vs gold market cap: 10.83%
Technical Analysis
Ether seems have chalked out a falling wedge pattern, characterized by two converging trendlines, representing a series of lower highs and lower lows.
The converging nature of trendlines indicates that sellers are slowly losing grip.
A breakout is said to represent a bullish trend reversal.
Crypto Equities
MicroStrategy (MSTR): closed on Thursday at $373.12 (-1.11%), up 2.55% at $382.62 in pre-market.
Coinbase Global (COIN): closed at $296.01 (+0.05%), up 2.16% at $302.39 in pre-market.
Galaxy Digital Holdings (GLXY): closed at C$33.94 (+3.44%)
MARA Holdings (MARA): closed at $19.95 (+1.32%), up 1.8% at $20.31 in pre-market.
Riot Platforms (RIOT): closed at $12.99 (-1.14%), up 2.62% at $13.33 in pre-market.
Core Scientific (CORZ): closed at $16.34 (+2.32%), up 1.04% at $16.51 in pre-market.
CleanSpark (CLSK): closed at $11.41 (+2.42%), up 2.19% at $11.67 in pre-market.
CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI): closed at $25.65 (+0.47%), up 1.75% at $26.10 in pre-market.
Semler Scientific (SMLR): closed at $61.15 (-1.55%), down 10.89% at $54.49 in pre-market.
Exodus Movement (EXOD): closed at $44 (+7.32%), up 0.75% at $44.33 in pre-market.
ETF Flows
Spot BTC ETFs:
Daily net flow: $188.7 million
Cumulative net flows: $39.42 billion
Total BTC holdings ~ 1.169 million.
Spot ETH ETFs
Daily net flow: -$14.9 million
Cumulative net flows: $2.79 billion
Total ETH holdings ~ 3.663 million.
Source: Farside Investors
Overnight Flows
Chart of the Day
The market capitalization of Tether’s USDT, the world’s largest dollar-pegged stablecoin, has flattened near $138 billion.
The USDC supply continues to increase and has risen to nearly $52 billion this week, the highest since September 2022.
While You Were Sleeping
Bitcoin Steady Near $104K After Bank of Japan Delivers Hawkish Rate Hike (CoinDesk): Bitcoin held steady above $104,000 in early Asian hours Friday despite the Bank of Japan’s rate hike as markets eyed President Trump’s Thursday executive order on crypto and potential U.S. policy changes.
Trump Issues Crypto Executive Order to Pave U.S. Digital Assets Path (CoinDesk): President Trump issued a pro-crypto executive order, directing the creation of a digital asset framework, banning CBDC development and considering a national digital asset reserve.
Vitalik Buterin Calls for Added Focus on Ether as Part of the Network’s Scaling Plans (CoinDesk): In a Thursday post, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin outlined strategies to boost the value of ether including using it as collateral, implementing fee-burning incentives and increasing temporary transaction data called blobs.
Japan Hikes Rates, Solidifying Exit From Rock-Bottom Borrowing Costs (Bloomberg): The Bank of Japan raised its key rate by 25 basis points to 0.5% on Friday, the highest in 17 years, strengthening the yen and lifting 10-year bond yields to 1.23%.
U.S. Stocks at Most Expensive Relative to Bonds Since Dotcom Era (Financial Times): Stocks in the S&P 500 hit record valuations, with the equity risk premium turning negative for the first time since 2002 driven by soaring demand for dominant tech companies.
Trump 2.0 Is Going Well for China So Far. Can the Honeymoon Last? (CNN): In a Thursday interview, President Trump called tariffs a “tremendous power” but suggested deals could avert tougher measures. Beijing cautiously welcomed the reprieve, eyeing negotiations while bracing for future tensions.
In the Ether
CoinDesk Indices presents its daily market update, highlighting the performance of leaders and laggards in the CoinDesk 20 Index.
The CoinDesk 20 is currently trading at 2556.62, up 2.1% (+52.39) since 4 p.m. ET on Monday.
Fifteen of 20 assets are trading higher.
Leaders: SUI (+7.5%) and POL (+7.5%).
Laggards: FIL (-4.5%) and XLM (-1.6%).
The CoinDesk 20 is a broad-based index traded on multiple platforms in several regions globally.
Tally, a leader in on-chain governance tooling, has secured $8 million in Series A funding aimed at scaling its governance technology to more crypto-native decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs).
Tally is best known for the Tally Protocol, which powers infrastructure to help leading protocols conduct effective on-chain governance of their DAOs, including Arbitrum, Uniswap DAO, ZKsync, Wormhole, Eigenlayer, Obol and Hyperlane.
«We’ve built this complete stack of software for operating these on-chain organizations,» Dennison Bertram, CEO and co-founder of Tally Protocol, said in an interview with CoinDesk. «We can take you from your idea to launching your token, to distributing your membership or ownership, all the way to the value accrual for your protocol.»
The platform began as a DAO governance tool and has evolved into the most widely adopted software stack for on-chain organizations across the Ethereum and Solana blockchains, it said in a release.
«On-chain governance and capital formation could, in theory, dramatically reduce the complexity and cost of forming and operating organizations by moving these processes entirely into software rather than traditional jurisdictions guided by platforms like Tally,» Bertram said.
One day, on-chain organizations might be seen as a way to compete with nation states, he argued, referencing the costly and lawyer-intensive process of registering foundations and other legal entities typically used for crypto.
«Whoever embraces crypto really fully might actually be embracing fully the future,» he said.
Fixing vote turnout for better governance
One issue that Tally aims to tackle with funding from the Series A is low voter participation and apathy in DAO governance, which has led to sometimes controversial outcomes.
Last year, for example, a group of CompoundDAO token holders, called Golden Boys, successfully passed a controversial proposal to create a yield-bearing product called goldCOMP.
Despite initially gaining traction, the proposal faced significant controversy due to perceived irregularities, low voter turnout and a lack of widespread community engagement.
Ultimately, the Golden Boys agreed to cancel goldCOMP, which highlighted the broader issue of governance apathy within DAOs rather than any technical exploit or malicious intent.
«Many of the people that you should expect to vote ‘no’ on something like this didn’t show up,» Bertram said in an earlier interview. «What it shows is that the democratic process of governing a DAO is imperfect and needs improvement.»
To address this, Tally has developed staking mechanisms designed to reward active governance participants economically. Users can stake their governance tokens to receive Tally Liquid Staked Tokens (tLSTs), earning passive, auto-compounding yields while retaining voting rights within DAOs.
“This fundraise is really about leaning into the original vision,” Bertram said. “Now that we’ve proven that this works, that you can have these large organizations, it’s time to really scale it up.”
Institutions are getting involved in DAOs
Bertram also emphasized that recent regulatory clarity and shifts in attitude toward crypto governance in the U.S. have opened the door for increased institutional participation in DAOs.
“With this clarity, we’re going to get a lot more participation, not necessarily from average Joe token holders, but actually from large organizations that depend on the infrastructure they’re building on,” he said. “These organizations are going to need and want the ability to actually govern the infrastructure that they operate on.”
Ultimately, Bertram sees Tally’s role as pivotal in advancing decentralized governance and unlocking greater economic value for token holders by directly rewarding active, informed participants.
«Given the new acceptance of crypto as a key driver of future value in America, it’s time to scale it beyond crypto and make it a core primitive for creating new organizations,” he said.
The round was led by Appworks and Blockchain Capital with participation from BitGo amongst others.
Tally previously raised $7.5 million in 2021 across two funding rounds.
Uncategorized
Dutch Bank ING Said to Be Working on a New Stablecoin With Other TradFi and Crypto Firms
Dutch bank ING is working on a stablecoin, looking to take advantage of Europe’s new cryptocurrency regulations that came into force last year, according to two people with knowledge of the plans.
ING’s stablecoin project could take the form of a consortium effort involving other banks and crypto service providers, both people said.
“ING is working on a stablecoin project with a few other banks. It’s moving slow as multiple banks need board approval to set up a joint entity,” one of the sources said.
ING declined to comment.
Europe’s Markets in Crypto Assets regime [MiCA] requires stablecoin issuers across EU member countries to hold an authorization license, while promoting the potential of euro-denominated stablecoins (the vast majority of the stablecoins in circulation are pegged to the U.S. dollar).
MiCA’s stablecoin rules, which also require issuers to maintain significant reserves in banks based in Europe, have strengthened compliant offerings like Circle’s euro stablecoin EURC over its main rival Tether, according to a note early this year from JPMorgan.
Banks like ING entering the European stablecoin space means French lender Société Générale, the first big bank to offer a stablecoin through its SG Forge innovation division, will soon have some competition.
Read more: Stablecoin Market Could Grow to $2T by End-2028: Standard Chartered
CoinDesk 20 Performance Update: SUI and POL Rise 7.5%, Leading Index Higher
Dutch Bank ING Said to Be Working on a New Stablecoin With Other TradFi and Crypto Firms
DAO Infrastructure Provider Tally Raises $8M to Scale On-Chain Governance
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