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Crypto Daybook Americas: ADA Rallies, BTC Looks to Powell’s Testimony on Capitol Hill
By Omkar Godbole (All times ET unless indicated otherwise)
Cardano’s ADA is trading higher, buoyed by Grayscale’s recent spot ETF application, while bitcoin (BTC) remains rangebound in a lackluster crypto market as we gear up for Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s testimony to Congress.
Powell takes the stage on Capitol Hill later Tuesday for his semi-annual update on monetary policy. He’ll start with the Senate and repeat his performance in the House of Representatives on Wednesday.
The testimony is likely to do little to revive BTC’s upswing. The consensus is that Powell will uphold his data-dependent approach, reiterating that the central bank isn’t in a rush to cut interest rates anytime soon and is keen on observing more progress with inflation.
Data shared by Bloomberg’s Lisa Abramowicz shows that market-implied inflation rates for the next two to five years have soared to their highest levels since early 2023. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump’s tariffs could underpin inflation. The CME’s FedWatch tool currently shows traders anticipate just 50 basis points in cuts by the end of next year, significantly less than the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) outlined in its December forecasts.
However, there’s a glimmer of hope: If the Consumer Price Index (CPI) release on Wednesday comes in weaker than expected, it could create some upside volatility.
In other news, Japanese mobile-game studio Gumi said it is planning to purchase bitcoin worth 1 billion yen ($6.6 million), following Tokyo-listed Metaplanet’s lead. Metaplanet began buying BTC last year and its shares soared a staggering 4,800% in 12 months.
Social media continues to buzz with debate over the imbalance in Ethereum’s ecosystem, where layer-2 scaling products retain most of the generated revenue while contributing only a small percentage back to the foundational layer. Solana, meanwhile, continues to outshine Ethereum and other smart-contract blockchains in decentralized exchange trading volumes and revenue.
In traditional markets, gold is taking bull breather while copper, often seen as proxy for global economic health, is trading lower, snapping a six-day winning streak. Stay alert!
What to Watch
Crypto
Feb. 13: Start of Kraken’s gradual delisting of the USDT, PYUSD, EURT, TUSD, UST stablecoins for EEA clients. The process ends March. 31.
Feb. 13: Story (IP) mainnet launch.
Feb. 14: Dynamic TAO (DTAO) network upgrade goes live on the Bittensor (TAO) mainnet.
Feb. 14, 2:30 a.m. (Estimate): Qtum (QTUM) hard fork network upgrade.
Feb. 18, 10:00 a.m.: FTX Digital Markets, the Bahamas-based subsidiary of FTX, will start reimbursing creditors.
Feb. 21: TON (The Open Network) will become the exclusive blockchain infrastructure for messaging platform Telegram’s Mini App ecosystem.
Macro
Feb. 11, 10:00 a.m.: Fed Chair Jerome Powell presents his semi-annual report to the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. Livestream link.
Feb. 11, 2:30 p.m.: U.S. House Financial Services Subcommittee («Digital Assets, Financial Technology, and Artificial Intelligence») hearing titled «A Golden Age of Digital Assets: Charting a Path Forward.» Witness include Jonathan Jachym, who is Kraken’s deputy general counsel. Livestream link.
Feb. 12, 8:30 a.m.: The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) releases January’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) report.
Core Inflation Rate MoM Est. 0.3% vs. Prev. 0.2%
Core Inflation Rate YoY Est. 3.1% vs Prev. 3.2%
Inflation Rate MoM Est. 0.3% vs. Prev. 0.4%
Inflation Rate YoY Est. 2.9% vs. Prev. 2.9%
Feb. 12, 10:00 a.m.: Fed Chair Jerome Powell presents his semi-annual report to the U.S. House Committee on Financial Services. Livestream link.
Feb. 13, 8:30 a.m.: The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) releases January’’s Producer Price Index (PPI) report.
Core PPI MoM Est. 0.3% vs. Prev. 0%
Core PPI YoY Est. 3.3% vs. Prev. 3.5%
PPI MoM Est. 0.3% vs. Prev. 0.2%
PPI YoY Prev. 3.3%
Feb. 13, 8:30 a.m.: The U.S. Department of Labor releases the Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims report for the week ended Feb. 8.
Initial Jobless Claims Est. 216K vs. Prev. 219K
Earnings
Feb. 11: Exodus Movement (EXOD), post-market, $0.14 (2 ests.)
Feb. 11: HIVE Digital Technologies (HIVE), post-market, $-0.15
Feb. 12: Hut 8 (HUT), pre-market, $0.05
Feb. 12: IREN (IREN), post-market, $-0.01
Feb. 12: Reddit (RDDT), post-market, $0.25
Feb. 12: Robinhood Markets (HOOD), post-market, $0.41
Feb. 13: Coinbase Global (COIN), post-market, $1.89
Feb. 14: Remixpoint (TYO: 3825)
Token Events
Governance votes & calls
Aave DAO is discussing recognizing HyperLend as a friendly fork of Aave deployed on the Hyperliquid EVM chain, as well as the deployment of Aave v3 on Ink, Kraken’s layer-2 rollup network.
Sky DAO is discussing, among other things, onboarding Arbitrum One to the Spark Liquidity layer, increasing the PSM2 rate limits on Base and minting 100 million USDS worth of sUSDS into Base to accommodate growth on the network.
Morpho DAO is discussing a 25% reduction in MORPHO rewards on both Ethereum and Base after another reduction took effect on Jan. 30.
DYdX DAO is voting on the dYdX Treasury subDAO taking control over the stDYDX within the protocol’s Community Treasury and any tokens accrued through auto compounding staking rewards.
Feb. 12 2 p.m. : Render (RENDER) to host an AI Scout Discord AMA session.
Unlocks
Feb. 12: Aethir (ATH) to unlock 10.21% of circulating supply worth $23.80 million.
Feb. 14: The Sandbox (SAND) to unlock 8.4% of circulating supply worth $80.2 million.
Feb. 16: Arbitrum (ARB) to unlock 2.13% of circulating supply worth $42.93 million.
Feb. 21: Fast Token (FTN) to unlock 4.66% of circulating supply worth $78.8 million.
Token Launches
Feb. 12: Avalon (AVL) to be listed on Bybit.
Feb. 12: Game7 (G7) to be listed on Bybit, Gate.io, HashKey, MEXC, XT, and KuCoin.
Feb. 13: EthereumPoW (ETHW) and Polygon (MATIC) to no longer be supported at Deribit.
Conferences:
CoinDesk’s Consensus to take place in Hong Kong on Feb. 18-20 and in Toronto on May 14-16. Use code DAYBOOK and save 15% on passes.
Feb. 12-13: Frankfurt Digital Finance (FDF) 2025
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. 24: RWA London Summit 2025
Feb. 25: HederaCon 2025 (Denver)
Derivatives Positioning
Litecoin’s near 10% price surge in the past 24 hours is accompanied by an 18% rise in perpetual futures open interest. HBAR, UNI have also seen notable increases in open interest, according to Velo Data.
Speaking of perpetual funding rates, SOL, SUI are seeing negative readings in a sign of bias for bearish short positions.
At 11%, ETH’s CME futures basis is greater than BTC’s, which may draw in carry traders, resulting in a strong uptake for ether spot ETFs.
BTC, ETH put skews on Deribit have eased slightly. Flows have been muted.
Market Movements:
BTC is up 0.62% from 4 p.m. ET Monday to $97,989.64 (24hrs: +0.27%)
ETH is up 0.53% at $2,702.45 (24hrs: +2.07%)
CoinDesk 20 is up 1.79% to 3,269.36 (24hrs: +1.77%)
Ether CESR Composite Staking Rate is up 8 bps to 3.05%
BTC funding rate is at 0.01% (10.95% annualized) on Binance
DXY is unchanged at 108.31
Gold is up 0.58% at $2,931.2/oz
Silver is down 0.74% to $32.15/oz
Nikkei 225 closed unchanged at 38,801.17
Hang Seng closed -1.06% at 21,294.86
FTSE is unchanged at 8,767.36
Euro Stoxx 50 is up 0.1% to 5,363.27
DJIA closed Monday +0.38% at 44,470.41
S&P 500 closed +0.67% at 6,066.44
Nasdaq closed +0.98% at 19,714.27
S&P/TSX Composite Index closed +0.85% at 25,658.9
S&P 40 Latin America closed +0.77% at 2,428.87
U.S. 10-year Treasury rate was unchanged at 4.49%
E-mini S&P 500 futures are down 0.33% to 6,068.5
E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures are down 0.47% at 21,743.5
E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average Index futures are down 0.21% at 44,488
Bitcoin Stats:
BTC Dominance: 61.21% (-0.59%)
Ethereum to bitcoin ratio: 0.02752 (0.77%)
Hashrate (seven-day moving average): 802 EH/s
Hashprice (spot): $53.19
Total Fees: 4.58 BTC / $445,648
CME Futures Open Interest: 166,695 BTC
BTC priced in gold: 33.3 oz
BTC vs gold market cap: 9.46%
Technical Analysis
BTC’s monthly chart serves as an excellent illustration of how trendlines drawn from major price points act as support levels.
Over the past two months, the downside has consistently been capped at around $90,000. This level is defined by a trendline connecting the twin peaks from 2021.
Crypto Equities
MicroStrategy (MSTR): closed on Monday at $334.62 (+2.16%), up 0.15% at $335.11 in pre-market.
Coinbase Global (COIN): closed at $280.22 (+2.09%), up 0.23% at $280.86 in pre-market.
Galaxy Digital Holdings (GLXY): closed at C$27.24 (+1.3%)
MARA Holdings (MARA): closed at $16.76 (unchanged), up 0.36% at $16.82 in pre-market.
Riot Platforms (RIOT): closed at $11.63 (-0.1%), down 0.1% at $11.62 in pre-market.
Core Scientific (CORZ): closed at $12.82 (+2.07%), up 0.1% at $12.83 in pre-market.
CleanSpark (CLSK): closed at $11.18 (-1.32%), down 0.54% at $11.12 in pre-market.
CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI): closed at $23.50 (+1.51%), unchanged at $23.5 in pre-market.
Semler Scientific (SMLR): closed at $49.61 (+0.83%), up 2.6% at $50.90 in pre-market.
Exodus Movement (EXOD): closed at $51.18 (+5.81%), down 2.31% at $50 in pre-market.
ETF Flows
Spot BTC ETFs:
Daily net flow: -$186.3 million
Cumulative net flows: $40.52 billion
Total BTC holdings ~ 1.177 million.
Spot ETH ETFs
Daily net flow: -$22.5 million
Cumulative net flows: $3.16 billion
Total ETH holdings ~ 3.791 million.
Source: Farside Investors
Overnight Flows
Chart of the Day
Solana-based decentralized exchanges have hosted more trading volume than Ethereum since October.
While You Were Sleeping
Ether Has Underperformed, but Total Value Locked on Ethereum Is Rising: Citi (CoinDesk): A Citi research paper says ether has underperformed bitcoin this year, despite Ethereum’s improving fundamentals, rising total value locked (TVL), continued ETF inflows and potential for crypto-friendly U.S. regulation.
Hedge Funds Are Short Ether CME Futures Like Never Before. Is It Carry Trade or Outright Bearish Bets? (CoinDesk): Hedge funds hold record ether futures shorts on CME, mainly for carry trades profiting from the difference between spot ETH ETF and ETH futures pricing. Bearish bets may also be contributing.
Trump Sets 25% Tariffs on Steel, Aluminum, Widening Trade War (Bloomberg): President Trump placed a 25% tariff on all imported steel and aluminum, effective March 12, with the aim of boosting domestic production and creating new jobs.
Chinese Companies Don’t Know Where to Put Their Cash — and It’s Sparking a Record Rise in Dividend Payouts (CNBC): Chinese companies are offering record dividends and share buybacks, encouraged by government reforms to improve shareholder returns.
UK Inflation Threat Receding, Says BoE Rate-Setter Who Voted for Big Cut (Financial Times): Catherine Mann, an external member of Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee, said she had voted for a 50 basis point rate cut last week, citing reduced inflationary pressures.
WazirX Offers 85% of Stolen User Funds as Rebalancing Ends (CoinDesk): Indian crypto exchange WazirX, hacked last year, hopes to start initial fund distribution in April, aiming to return 85% of the dollar value of users’ crypto holdings, with more to come later.
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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