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Crypto Daybook Americas: Bitcoin Bulls Lose Momentum Before Bessent Confirmation Hearing
By Omkar Godbole (All times ET unless indicated otherwise)
The crypto market has had a bullish 24 hours, thanks to Wednesday’s soft U.S. core inflation print that alleviated hawkish Fed concerns. The momentum, however, has slowed.
With the inflation data out of the way, crypto traders are refocusing on President-elect Donald Trump’s swearing-in on Jan. 20 and possible pro-crypto action on the first day. Some expect bitcoin to set new highs by then, while others are penciling in at least 10% price swings in XRP, SOL, ETH and BTC.
On Polymarket, the probability of the U.S. holding BTC as a part of a strategic reserve has increased to 50% for the first time.
Bitwise, a San Francisco-based crypto asset management company, said on X that it provided information about bitcoin ETFs to a nation-state, adding weight to the sovereign BTC adoption narrative.
Speculation is rife that SEC commissioners Hester Peirce and Mark Uyeda could rekindle crypto policy as early as next week.
That said, don’t overlook the importance and market-moving ability of Treasury nominee Scott Bessent’s confirmation hearing in front of the Senate Finance Committee that kicks off at 10:30 a.m. in Washington. Bessent will likely face scrutiny on various topics, including dollar policy, tariffs and fiscal sustainability.
In released remarks, Bessent said he wants the 2017 tax cuts to become permanent and ensure the dollar remains a dominant global reserve currency. He also said tariffs are a valuable negotiating tool.
According to ING, the dollar could rally if Bessent highlights the supposedly inflationary tariffs as a key tool. A renewed uptick in the currency and Treasury yields may slow BTC’s gains, potentially injecting volatility in risk assets in general. Stay alert!
What to Watch
Crypto
Jan. 17: Oral arguments at the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in KalshiEX LLC v. CFTC, where the CFTC is appealing the district court’s Sep. 12, 2024 ruling favoring Kalshi’s Congressional Control Contracts.
Jan. 23: First deadline for a decision by the SEC on NYSE Arca’s Dec. 3 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 new 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.
Macro
Jan. 16, 8:30 a.m.: The U.S. Department of Labor releases the Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report for the week ended Jan. 11. Initial Jobless Claims Est. 210K vs. Prev. 201K.
Jan. 16, 10:30 a.m.: President-elect Donald Trump’s Treasury Secretary nominee, Scott Bessent, will testify before aSenate Committee during his confirmation hearing. Livestream link.
Jan. 17, 5:00 a.m.: Eurostat releases December 2024’s Eurozone inflation data.
Inflation Rate MoM Final Est. 0.4% vs Prev. -0.3%.
Core Inflation Rate YoY Final Est. 2.7% vs. Prev. 2.7%.
Inflation Rate YoY Final Est. 2.4% vs. Prev. 2.2%.
Token Events
Governance votes & calls
The Aave community is discussing a strategy to scale its GHO stablecoin by deploying a new revenue stream via bitcoin mining. It would use capital from the GHO treasury to purchase hardware.
Balancer DAO will vote on whether to deploy Balancer v3 on the Arbitrum blockchain. Voting starts Jan. 16 and ends Jan. 20.
Unlocks
Jan. 16: Arbitrum (ARB) to unlock 2.2% of its circulating supply, worth $68 million.
Jan. 18: Ondo (ONDO) to unlock 134% of its circulating supply, worth $2.19 billion.
Jan. 21: Fasttoken (FTN) to unlock 4.6% of circulating supply worth $76 million.
Token Launches
Jan. 16: Solayer (LAYER) to host token sale followed by five months of points farming.
Jan. 17: Solv Protocol (SOLV) to be listed on Binance.
Conferences:
Day 11 of 14: Starknet, an Ethereum layer 2, is holding its Winter Hackathon (online).
Day 4 of 12: Swiss WEB3FEST Winter Edition 2025 (Zug, Zurich, St. Moritz, Davos)
Jan. 17: Unchained: Blockchain Business Forum 2025 (Los Angeles)
Jan. 18: BitcoinDay (Naples, Florida)
Jan. 20-24: World Economic Forum Annual Meeting (Davos-Klosters, Switzerland)
Jan. 21: Frankfurt Tokenization Conference 2025
Jan. 25-26: Catstanbul 2025 (Istanbul). The first community conference for Jupiter, a decentralized exchange (DEX) aggregator built on Solana.
Jan 30-31: Plan B Forum (San Salvador, El Salvador)
Feb. 3: Digital Assets Forum (London)
Feb. 18-20: Consensus Hong Kong
Token Talk
By Oliver Knight
Cryptocurrency exchange Kraken has experienced a spike in ether (ETH) inflows after a whale deposited $67 million worth of the token on Thursday.
The wallet in question withdrew a total of 217,513 ETH ($350 million) from Kraken and Coinbase over a 10-day period in 2022 at an average price of $1,611. With ether currently trading at $3,330, the trader has made a total profit of $354 million, Lookonchain reports.
Coinbase’s (COIN) derivatives exchange has listed perpetual swap contracts for AERO, BEAM, DRIFT and S. All tokens are up between 4% and 7% respectively.
Artificial intelligence (AI) agent tokens shrugged off last week’s drop with a significant move to the upside. Virtuals protocol (VIRTUAL) is up 31% in the past 24 hours while AI16Z is up 13%, both outperforming the CoinDesk20 (CD20) index which has risen by 5.7% in 24-hours.
Litecoin is also one of the day’s top performers after exchange-traded fund (ETF) analyst Eric Balchunas said that the Litecoin S-1 ETF application had received comments back from the SEC, potentially paving the way for a spot LTC ETF.
Derivatives Positioning
LTC has emerged as the best-performing major coin in the past 24 hours, with prices rising by 16%. The surge is accompanied by a 21% increase in futures open interest and a positive Cumulative Volume Delta (CVD) indicator, suggesting strong net buying pressure.
HBAR and XRP have seen 10% jumps in open interest with positive CVDs.
Front-end BTC and ETH options no longer show a bias for puts, realigning with bullish long-term sentiment.
Key flows on Deribit and Paradigm featured a BTC bull call spread involving $102K and $110K strikes and a bear call spread in ETH, involving the March 28 expiry options at $3.5K and $4.5K strikes.
Market Movements:
BTC is down 0.47% from 4 p.m. ET Wednesday at $99,217.43 (24hrs: +0.64%)
ETH is down 2.46% at $3,334.68 (24hrs: +3.22%)
CoinDesk 20 is up 0.2% at 3,752.68 (24hrs: +5.68%)
Ether staking yield is down 2 bps at 3.1%
BTC funding rate is at 0.006% (6.52% annualized) on Binance
DXY is unchanged at at 109.13
Gold is up 0.94% at $2,737.90/oz
Silver is up 1.85% at $31.90/oz
Nikkei 225 closed +0.33% to 38,572.60
Hang Seng closed +1.23% at 19,522.89
FTSE is up 0.82% at 8,369.48
Euro Stoxx 50 is up 1.24% at 5,094.68
DJIA closed on Wednesday +1.65% to 43,221.55
S&P 500 closed +1.84% at 5,949.91
Nasdaq closed +2.45% at 19,511.23
S&P/TSX Composite Index closed +0.82% at 24,789.3
S&P 40 Latin America closed +2.49% at 2,262.81
U.S. 10-year Treasury is up 1 bp at 4.67%
E-mini S&P 500 futures are up 0.33% at 6,009.00
E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures are up 0.48% at 21,504.00
E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average Index futures are unchanged at 43,501.00
Bitcoin Stats:
BTC Dominance: 57.66
Ethereum to bitcoin ratio: 0.033
Hashrate (seven-day moving average): 801 EH/s
Hashprice (spot): $56.8
Total Fees: $739,760/ 7.5 BTC
CME Futures Open Interest: 178,810 BTC
BTC priced in gold: 36.5 oz
BTC vs gold market cap: 10.40%
Technical Analysis
BTC is probing dual resistance at around $100K, marked by the descending trendline from record highs and the Ichimoku cloud.
A breakout may motivate momentum traders to join the market, accelerating price gains.
Crossovers above the cloud are said to represent a bullish shift in momentum.
Crypto Equities
MicroStrategy (MSTR): closed on Wednesday at $360.62 (+5.39%), down 1% at $357 in pre-market.
Coinbase Global (COIN): closed at $274.93 (+7.66%), down 0.53% at $273.48 in pre-market.
Galaxy Digital Holdings (GLXY): closed at C$27.93 (+5%)
MARA Holdings (MARA): closed at $18.15 (+4.55%), down 0.55% at $18.05 in pre-market.
Riot Platforms (RIOT): closed at $13.46 (+%), down 0.52% at $13.39 in pre-market.
Core Scientific (CORZ): closed at $14.53 (+4.46%), down 0.21% at $14.50 in pre-market.
CleanSpark (CLSK): closed at $11.2 (+8.21%), down 0.89% at $11.10 in pre-market.
CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI): closed at $24.57 (+6.5%), down 1.14% at $24.29 in pre-market.
Semler Scientific (SMLR): closed at $56.11 (+2.15%), unchanged in pre-market.
Exodus Movement (EXOD): closed at $35.36 (+6.92%), unchanged in pre-market.
ETF Flows
Spot BTC ETFs:
Daily net flow: $755.1 million
Cumulative net flows: $36.48 billion
Total BTC holdings ~ 1.133 million.
Spot ETH ETFs
Daily net flow: $59.7 million
Cumulative net flows: $2.477 billion
Total ETH holdings ~ 3.550 million.
Source: Farside Investors as of Jan. 15.
Overnight Flows
Chart of the Day
Bitcoin funding rates on major exchanges, excluding Hyperliquid, remain well below early 2024 levels and the highs seen in December, when the BTC price broke above $100,000 for the first time.
In other words, it’s cheaper to be long right now than last month and a year ago.
While You Were Sleeping
XRP’s Bullish Momentum Strongest Since January 2018 as Futures Open Interest Hits Record High (CoinDesk): XRP has soared 50% this month to over $3, experiencing its strongest rally since 2018.
Monthly Crypto Trading on CEXs Hits All-Time High in December: CCData (Cointelegraph): December set a new record for crypto trading, with $11.3 trillion in spot and derivatives volume on centralized exchanges.
Nomura-Backed Crypto Firm Komainu Raises $75 Million in Bitcoin (Bloomberg): Komainu, a crypto custodian backed by Nomura, secured $75 million in bitcoin from Blockstream to expand globally, adopt tokenization tools, and create a bitcoin treasury.
UK Economy Returns to Growth, Faces Uncertain Outlook (The Wall Street Journal): The U.K. economy inched up 0.1% in November, missing forecasts, as inflation and high borrowing costs strained growth.
Chinese Citizens’ Doubts Grow Over Official Growth Claims (Financial Times): China is set to report 5% growth for 2024, but skepticism abounds as weak consumer demand, layoffs and a real estate slump weigh heavily on investment, consumption and daily life.
Bank of Korea Leaves Rates Unchanged in a Surprise Move, Warns GDP Growth ‘Highly Likely’ to Miss Forecasts (CNBC): South Korea’s central bank held its benchmark rate at 3%, surprising analysts expecting a cut, citing economic uncertainty. It warned of weaker growth in 2024 and 2025. Stocks and the won rose following the decision.
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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