Uncategorized
Crypto Daybook Americas: The Sea of Red May Not Ebb as Fast as Expected
By Omkar Godbole (All times ET unless indicated otherwise)
Crypto markets are a sea of red alongside a growing risk aversion in traditional markets, and Trump’s tariffs are to blame. Late Friday, the president imposed a 25% tariff on imports from Canada and Mexico and 10% on China, provoking retaliatory measures that have reignited a trade war reminiscent of 2018.
The consensus on social media and among the analyst community is that this tariff-induced slide in the crypto market is temporary and that bitcoin (BTC) will quickly rebound. However, there are reasons to believe otherwise.
Firstly, Trump has shattered the crypto market’s belief that he is looking to pump markets and would use small tariffs merely as a negotiating tactic. In fact, he has threatened to increase tariffs if trading partners retaliate. Since Canada and Mexico responded with their own measures, the potential for further tariff hikes looms large.
Geo Chen, a macro trader and author of the popular Substack-based newsletter, Fidenza Macro, shared his perspective in an email to subscribers: «My view is that they will remain in place for several months with the risk of increasing, as Canada has pledged to retaliate and China has initiated a lawsuit against the U.S. in the World Trade Organization. These responses could escalate the situation. The best we can hope for is a partial rollback of tariffs once negotiations conclude.»
Chen emphasized that the tariffs are driven by trade deficit concerns rather than the fentanyl crisis, as Trump likes to portray, adding that markets may take days or weeks to grasp this, leading to persistent volatility. Besides, the latest tariffs are on $1.3 trillion worth of goods that the U.S. imports from the three nations, which is seven times bigger in value than the first shot fired in 2018.
All this makes the latest episode appear more destabilizing than back then, when the S&P 500 initially dropped 9% from its peak in March before quickly rebounding. In other words, the potential pain may be greater this time around, which poses a challenge for risk-on assets like BTC.
As one crypto trader choosing to stay anonymous said: «Despite the talk of deals, this move doesn’t feel temporary.» Stay alert!
What to Watch
Crypto:
Feb. 4: Pepecoin (PEPE) Halving. At block 400,000, the reward will drop to 31,250 PEPE.
Feb. 5, 3:00 p.m.: Boba Network’s Holocene hard fork network upgrade for its Ethereum-based L2 mainnet.
Feb. 6, 8:00 a.m.: Shentu Chain network upgrade (v2.14.0).
March 11 (TBC): Ethereum’s Pectra upgrade.
Feb. 13: Start of Kraken’s «gradual» delisting of the USDT, PYUSD, EURT, TUSD, UST stablecoins for EEA clients. The process ends March. 31.
Macro
Feb. 3, 9:45 a.m.: S&P Global releases January’s U.S. Manufacturing PMI Final report.
Est. 50.1 vs. Prev. 49.4
Feb. 3, 10:00 a.m.: The Institute for Supply Management (ISM) releases January’s Manufacturing PMI Report on Business.
Est. 49.5 vs. Prev. 49.3
Feb. 4, 10:00 a.m.: The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) releases December’s Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) report.
Job Openings Est. 7.88M vs. Prev. 8.098M
Job Quits Prev. 3.065M
Feb. 5, 9:45 a.m.: S&P Global releases January’s US Services PMI (Final) report.
Est. 52.8 vs. Prev. 56.8
Feb. 5, 10:00 a.m.: The Institute for Supply Management (ISM) releases January’s Services ISM Report on Business.
Services PMI Est. 54.3 vs. Prev. 54.1
Services Business Activity Prev. 58.2
Services Employment Prev. 51.4
Services New Orders Prev. 54.2
Services Prices Prev. 64.4
Earnings
Feb. 5: MicroStrategy (MSTR), post-market, $0.09
Feb. 10: Canaan (CAN), pre-market
Feb. 11: HIVE Digital Technologies (HIVE), post-market
Feb. 11: Exodus Movement (EXOD), post-market, $0.14 (2 ests.)
Feb. 12: Hut 8 (HUT), pre-market, C$0.01
Feb. 12 (TBA): Metaplanet (TYO:3350)
Feb. 12: Reddit (RDDT), post-market
Feb. 13: CleanSpark (CLSK), $-0.05
Feb. 13: Coinbase Global (COIN), post-market, $1.61
Feb. 18: CoinShares International Ltd (STO:CS), pre-market
Feb. 18: Semler Scientific (SMLR), post-market, $0.26 (1 est.)
Feb. 20: Block (XYZ), post-market, $0.88
Feb. 26: MARA Holdings (MARA), $-0.15
Feb. 26 (TBA): Sol Strategies (CSE: HODL)
Feb. 27: Riot Platforms (RIOT), $-0.18
March 4: Cipher Mining (CIFR), $-0.09
March 6 (TBA): Bitfarms (BITF)
March 17 (TBA): Bit Digital (BTBT)
March 18 (TBA): TeraWulf (WULF)
March 27 (TBA): Bitdeer Technologies Group (BTDR)
March 28 (TBA): DeFi Technologies (NEO:DEFI)
March 31 (TBA): Galaxy Digital Holdings (TSE:GLXY)
April 11 (TBC): KULR Technology Group (KULR)
April 22: Tesla (TSLA), post-market
Token Events
Governance votes & calls
Compound DAO is discussing the creation of Morpho-powered lending vaults on Polygon curated by Gauntlet. Polygon Labs is set to offer $1.5 million in POL, matched with $1.5 million in COMP to incentivize usage.
Arbitrum DAO is voting on whether to transfer 1,885 ETH in Nova transaction fees to its Treasury through the modernized fee collection infrastructure outlined in the ova Fee Router Proposal.
Aave DAO is nearing the end of a vote on deploying Aave v3 on Sonic, a new layer-1 Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) blockchain with a high transaction throughput.
Feb. 4, 1 p.m.: TRON DAO and CryptoQuant to host a network review diving into performance, adoption and key metrics.
Feb. 4, 12 p.m.: Stellar to host its Q4 quarterly review.
Unlocks
Feb. 5: XDC Network (XDC) to unlock 5.36% of circulating supply worth $75.9 million.
Feb. 9: Movement (MOVE) to unlock 2.17% of circulating supply worth $30.06 million.
Feb. 10: Aptos (APT) to unlock 1.97% of circulating supply worth $64.92 million.
Token Launches
Feb. 4: Vine (VINE), Bio Protocol (BIO), Swarms (SWARMS), and Sonic SVM (SONIC) to be listed on Kraken.
Conferences:
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, Colorado)
Feb. 25: HederaCon 2025 (Denver)
March 2-3: Crypto Expo Europe (Bucharest, Romania)
March 8: Bitcoin Alive (Sydney)
March 19-20: Next Block Expo (Warsaw)
March 26: DC Blockchain Summit 2025 (Washington)
March 28: Solana APEX (Cape Town, South Africa)
April 23: Crypto Horizons 2025 (Dubai)
April 23-24: Blockchain Forum 2025 (Moscow)
May 1-2: Sui Basecamp (Dubai)
May 12-13: Filecoin (FIL) Developer Summit (Toronto)
May 20-22: Avalanche Summit London
May 29-30: Litecoin Summit 2025 (Las Vegas)
Token Talk
By Shaurya Malwa
Hyperliquid’s HYPE is holding strong in the market bloodbath, with a 5% jump in the past 24 hours.
The decentralized exchange generated nearly $4 million in fees over the past 24 hours, and part of the revenue is being used to buy back HYPE, helping support its price amidst a bearish market.
Elsewhere, prices of long-forgotten Jeo Boden (BODEN), a parody token mimicking Joe Biden that was worth $1 billion by market capitalization at peak, rose as much as 300% in the past 24 hours.
It registered trading volumes of over $8 million, the highest since July 2024, for no immediately apparent reason, which swiftly shifted prices of the once-behemoth token that now has a tiny $3.5 million capitalization.
Derivatives Positioning
Major altcoins like ETH, XRP, BNB, SOL, DOGE, ADA are seeing negative perpetual funding rates, a sign of dominance of short positions.
OM and HYPE tokens stand out with flat open interest-adjusted cumulative volume delta, pointing to a neutral flow. Other tokens exhibit negative CVD, which imply net selling.
BTC, ETH short-dated options show a bias for puts, with ETH reflecting greater downside fears relative to BTC.
Block flows featured a large short position in the BTC $120K call expiring on March 28 and a bear put spread in ETH $2.8K and $2.5K strikes.
Market Movements:
BTC is down 6.3% from 4 p.m. ET Friday at $95,631.55 (24hrs: -3.25%)
ETH is down 21.9% at $3,734.92 (24hrs: -15.28%)
CoinDesk 20 is down 15.9% at 3,154.76 (24hrs: -10.32%)
CESR Composite Staking Rate is up 3 bps at 3.03%
BTC funding rate is at 0.0036% (3.97% annualized) on Binance
DXY is up 0.95% at 109.41
Gold is unchanged at $2,801.09/oz
Silver is down 0.31% at $31.28/oz
Nikkei 225 closed -2.66% to 38,520.09
Hang Seng closed unchanged at 20,217.26
FTSE is down 1.17% at 8,572.04
Euro Stoxx 50 is down 0.4% at 5,203.52
DJIA closed on Friday -0.75% to 44,544.66
S&P 500 closed -0.5% to 6,040.53
Nasdaq closed +0.83% at 19,480.91
S&P/TSX Composite Index closed -1.07% to 25,533.10
S&P 40 Latin America closed -0.73% to 2,370.49
U.S. 10-year Treasury was unchanged at 4.54%
E-mini S&P 500 futures are down 1.38%% at 5,983.50
E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures are down 1.59% at 21,247.00
E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average Index futures are down 1.23% at 44,149
Bitcoin Stats:
BTC Dominance: 61.62 (1.35%)
Ethereum to bitcoin ratio: 0.02725 (-7.22%)
Hashrate (seven-day moving average): 833 EH/s
Hashprice (spot): $55.93
Total Fees: 4.56 BTC / $435,584
CME Futures Open Interest: 177,260 BTC
BTC priced in gold: 33.9 oz
BTC vs gold market cap: 9.65%
Technical Analysis
BTC has bounced from the double top support line at $91,384, trimming losses.
The series of red candles, however, suggests the path of of least resistance is on the lower side for now.
A close (UTC midnight) under the support line would trigger a double top bearish reversal pattern, opening doors to a potential drop to $75,000.
Crypto Equities
MicroStrategy (MSTR): closed on Friday at $334.79 (-1.56%), down 5.37% at $316.81 in pre-market.
Coinbase Global (COIN): closed at $291.33 (-3.31%), down 5.69% at $274.74 in pre-market.
Galaxy Digital Holdings (GLXY): closed at C$28.48 (-2.90%)
MARA Holdings (MARA): closed at $18.34 (-4.38%), down 5.34% at $17.36 in pre-market.
Riot Platforms (RIOT): closed at $11.88 (-0.17%), down 4.21% at $11.40 in pre-market.
Core Scientific (CORZ): closed at $12.27 (+0.08%), down 6.68% at $11.45 in pre-market.
CleanSpark (CLSK): closed at $10.44 (-4.83%), down 5.08% at $9.91 in pre-market.
CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI): closed at $22.55 (+0.22%), down 6.34% at $21.12 in pre-market.
Semler Scientific (SMLR): closed at $51.96 (-0.36%), down 6.08% at $48.80 in pre-market.
Exodus Movement (EXOD): closed at $49.88 (-18.74%), up 2.25% at $51 in pre-market.
ETF Flows
Spot BTC ETFs:
Daily net flow: $318.6 million
Cumulative net flows: $40.50 billion
Total BTC holdings ~ 1.172 million.
Spot ETH ETFs
Daily net flow: $27.8 million
Cumulative net flows: $2.76 billion
Total ETH holdings ~ 3.634 million.
Source: Farside Investors
Overnight Flows
Chart of the Day
Ethereum has seen the highest amount of net inflows through crypto bridges in the past 24 hours, while the usual leaders Base, Solana, Arbitrum have seen most outflows.
That’s a classic risk-off investor behavior, where the move to the oldest and biggest smart contract blockchain, anticipating deeper market swoon.
While You Were Sleeping
XRP, Dogecoin Plunge 25% as Crypto Liquidations Cross $2.2B on Tariffs Led Dump (CoinDesk): On Sunday, major cryptocurrencies including XRP, DOGE, and ADA slumped as U.S. tariffs on Canada and Mexico announced on Saturday fueled trade war fears and $2.2 billion in futures liquidations.
Chance of Bitcoin Tanking to $75K Doubles as Trump’s Tariffs Ignite Trade War, Derive’s Onchain Options Market Shows (CoinDesk): Derive.xyz’s on-chain options now indicate a 22% chance bitcoin will drop to $75K by March 28 — double last week’s odds.
USDe Stable Despite Trade War Volatility (CoinDesk): Ethena’s synthetic stablecoin USDe maintained its $1 peg amid volatile crypto markets, likely aided by its yield-generating mechanism.
Dollar Soars, Stocks Fall as Trump Imposes Tariffs: Markets Wrap (Bloomberg): The tariffs announced Saturday propelled the dollar to a two-year high as global stocks, U.S. equity futures, and crypto prices plunged amid mounting fears of rising inflation and economic disruption.
Beijing Prepares Its Opening Bid to Talk Trade With Trump (The Wall Street Journal): China will reportedly contest Trump’s 10% tariffs via the WTO and resume trade talks to revive the Phase One deal by pledging increased U.S. purchases and investments.
Bank of England Expected to Cut Interest Rates Again as U.K. Economy Stagnates (Financial Times): With stagnant growth and easing inflation, the Bank of England is expected to cut rates by 0.25% this week, though rising energy costs and trade tensions may trigger stagflationary pressures.
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
-
Fashion4 месяца agoThese \’90s fashion trends are making a comeback in 2017
-
Entertainment4 месяца ago
The final 6 \’Game of Thrones\’ episodes might feel like a full season
-
Fashion4 месяца ago
According to Dior Couture, this taboo fashion accessory is back
-
Entertainment4 месяца ago
The old and New Edition cast comes together to perform
-
Sports4 месяца ago
Phillies\’ Aaron Altherr makes mind-boggling barehanded play
-
Entertainment4 месяца ago
Disney\’s live-action Aladdin finally finds its stars
-
Business4 месяца ago
Uber and Lyft are finally available in all of New York State
-
Sports4 месяца ago
Steph Curry finally got the contract he deserves from the Warriors