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Bitcoin Dives to Under $99K as DeepSeek, FOMC Steal Trump Effect

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Bitcoin (BTC) dropped to under $99,000 early Monday as traders took profits ahead of the first U.S. FOMC meeting this year, scheduled for later this week, and China-based AI stalwart DeepSeek impacted U.S. tech sector sentiment.

Traders expect no indications of a rate cut at the two-day FOMC meeting scheduled for Jan. 28 to Jan. 29, which has typically impacted bitcoin prices as investors either prefer or move away from risk assets.

“U.S. economic data shows that there may be less need for a federal interest rate cut in the near term,” Ben El-Baz, managing director of HashKey Global, told CoinDesk in a Telegram message.

“Concerns over trade wars and tariffs linger, but a bullish sentiment remains strong as MicroStrategy and Trump’s World Liberty Financial continue purchasing crypto.”

BTC dropped nearly 6% from a Sunday high of over $105,000, with a steep drop coming as Asian markets opened Monday. This came despite a major catalyst on Friday, when U.S. President Donald Trump ordered the creating of a crypto policy group to advise and drive the country’s industry within six months.

Crypto market capitalization fell 8%, while the broad-based CoinDesk 20 (CD20) fell more than 8.14%.

The drop tracked a fall in U.S. stock indices — whose movements bitcoin tends to mirror — with futures of the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 down as much as 2.15% on Monday ahead of the market open.

Much of the concern draws from a possible overvaluation in U.S. tech companies as DeepSeek’s latest AI model is significantly cheaper to produce and was built using open-source technology that is easy to access.

As CoinDesk reported Monday, data from DeepSeek posted on Hugging Face, a forum of the AI industry, shows that its model outperforms OpenAI, all while being built on a budget of $6 million and a fraction of the Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) that OpenAI uses – which recently closed a $6.6 billion round with a valuation of over $157 billion.

OpenAI has previously asked for trillions of dollars in funding to build AI systems at scale and is part of the new U.S. project Stargate, which has attracted $500 billion in investments and includes Trump SoftBank and Oracle, to build AI data centers in the country.

However, DeepSeek’s reported costs and features threaten the established narrative of needing vast computational resources for AI innovation, potentially reducing the competitive edge of U.S. tech firms and questioning the sustainability of their high valuations — impacting broader market sentiment and bitcoin in the near term.

As such, traders loaded on $95,000 strike options for bitcoin to protect against the downside ahead of the week, indicating that expectations of a move lower remain prevalent in the market.

“The desk observed growing interest in the Jan $95,000 strikes as the market scrambled for downside protection after BTC lost momentum during yesterday’s U.S. session,” traders at Singapore-based QCP Capital said in a Saturday broadcast.

“With no major catalysts before next week’s FOMC meeting, the market is likely to remain range-bound until there is more clarity on how the recent weak CPI reading has influenced the Fed’s upcoming policy decisions,” QCP added at the time.

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Circle Valuation Is ‘Outside Our Comfort Zone,’ Initiate at Underweight: JPMorgan

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Wall Street heavyweight JPMorgan (JPM) initiated coverage of stablecoin issuer Circle (CRCL) with an underweight rating and an underwhelming $80 price target.

The shares were trading 4.5% higher at around $189 at publication time.

Circle is well positioned, the bank said, and its USDC stablecoin has an «early-mover advantage,» with growing use cases in payments.

«We think highly of the Circle management team and are confident in the outlook for outsized stablecoin and USDC growth,» analysts led by Kenneth Worthington wrote.

Still, the analysts see the company’s market capitalization as elevated, and initiated coverage with an underweight rating. The stock priced at $31 a share in its initial public offering (IPO), and hit a record high of $299 last Monday.

Other Wall Street analysts were not as bearish. Broker Bernstein initiated coverage with an outperform rating and a $230 price target, saying Circle was an «investor must-hold.»

«CRCL is building a market-leading digital dollar stablecoin network, with a strong regulatory edge, liquidity headstart and marquee distribution partnerships,» analysts led by Gautam Chhugani wrote.

Bernstein is also bullish about the wider stablecoin market, and expects total market cap to reach around $4 trillion in the next decade from $225 billion today.

Rival broker Canaccord Genuity started coverage of Circle with a buy rating and a $247 price target.

The firm’s analysts view the issuer of USDC as «having many of the key attributes that could make it a long-term winner in this potentially very large and new market for truly digital money.»

Read more: Circle Mania Grips South Korea as Retail Investors Pile Into Stablecoin Play

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Popular Financial Advisor Ric Edelman Says Investors Should Allocate Up to 40% of Wealth to Crypto

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Prominent financial advisor Ric Edelman says investors should consider putting as much as 40% of their wealth into cryptocurrency, a bold recommendation that reflects how far digital assets have come in recent years.

“Today I am saying 40%, that’s astonishing,” Edelman told CNBC’s Crypto World on Friday. “No one has ever said such a thing.”

Edelman, founder of the Digital Assets Council of Financial Professionals, has been active in crypto for over a decade. He first urged investors to allocate part of their portfolios to bitcoin BTC in 2018. In his 2021 book “The Truth About Crypto,” he described even a 1% crypto allocation as “reasonable” for most people.

Now, Edelman believes the case for crypto exposure is far stronger, pointing to what he called a “massive change” in the industry over the past four years. In particular, he highlighted growing political support for digital assets, especially following the election of U.S. President Donald Trump.

“Today, all those questions have been resolved,” Edelman said, referring to regulatory uncertainty and institutional hesitation. “It’s radically changed and is now a mainstream asset.”

Edelman’s firm, Edelman Financial Engines, manages nearly $300 billion in assets. Though traditionally known for retirement planning and wealth management, the firm’s growing attention to digital assets mirrors a broader trend among financial institutions embracing crypto as a legitimate asset class.

Even though Edelman described crypto as the “best investment opportunity of the decade,” he acknowledged that a 40% allocation may not suit everyone, suggesting a more conservative 10% for those with lower risk tolerance.

Edelman’s recommendation marks one of the most aggressive calls from a mainstream financial figure to date. Most financial advisors in the U.S. are currently recommending well under 5% to their clients.

Disclaimer: Parts of this article were generated with the assistance from AI tools and reviewed by our editorial team to ensure accuracy and adherence to our standards. For more information, see CoinDesk’s full AI Policy.

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BitMine Immersion Stock Triples as It Raises $250M for Ether Treasury, Adds Thomas Lee to Board

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BitMine Immersion Technologies (BMNR) has secured $250 million via a private placement of common stock and will use the funds to launch an ether (ETH) treasury.

When the deal closes, expected July 3, the Las Vegas-based miner said it will rank among the largest publicly traded holders of ETH.

The financing, priced at $4.50 a share, brought together investors including Founders Fund, Pantera Capital, Kraken, Galaxy Digital and Republic. Cantor Fitzgerald advised lead investor MOZAYYX, while ThinkEquity placed the deal.

BitMine justified its choice of ether as a primary reserve asset saying Ethereum currently leads in stablecoin payments, tokenized assets, and decentralized financial applications.

“By having a direcT ETH treasury position, the company has access to native protocol-level activities, such as staking and decentralized finance mechanisms, on the Ethereum network,” the company wrote.

The move also reshapes BitMine’s leadership. Fundstrat founder Thomas Lee, long known on Wall Street for his crypto research and bullishness, was newly appointed Chairman of the Board of Directors.

Lee said the round reflects “the rapid and continued convergence of traditional financial services and crypto” and set a new key performance metric for the company: ether per share.

SharpLink Gaming (SBET) is one of the few other publicly traded companies creating and ether treasury, having recently boosted it to 188,478 ETH. Most other companies creating crypto treasuries focus on bitcoin (BTC).

BitMine’s shares have more than tripled in premarket action to nearly $14.

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