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Crypto Daybook Americas: Bitcoin Defends $100K as MicroStrategy Votes on Share Increase
By Omkar Godbole (All times ET unless indicated otherwise)
Bitcoin held above $100,000, with VET, ENA, LINK and LDO posting notable gains a day after President Donald Trump bypassed mentioning crypto or a strategic bitcoin reserve in his inauguration speech.
Signals from the bitcoin options market indicate heightened expectations for short-term price turbulence alongside signs of growing risk aversion among traders since Trump’s swearing in, according to Griffin Ardern, head of options trading and research at crypto financial platform BloFin.
That could be due to several reasons, including MicroStrategy’s impending shareholder vote today on expanding its authorized shares to support its bitcoin buying strategy. In addition, the Bank of Japan (BOJ) is expected to increase rates on Friday, which may strengthen the yen. The late July BOJ rate hike torched the currency’s rally, destabilizing risk assets, including cryptocurrencies.
There’s also uncertainty stemming from Trump’s plans to impose tariffs of up to 25% on Canada and Mexico and the looming debt ceiling although, historically, the latter has not had a significant bearish impact on risk assets.
«Markets received a stark reminder of life under President Trump, with more volatility-inducing rhetoric,» QCP Capital said,.
Still, observers remain optimistic.
“Despite a generally disappointing first day for cryptocurrencies under the new administration, Bitcoin managed to remain firmly above $101K, sidestepping the feared ‘sell-the-news’ effect,” Valentin Fournier, an analyst at BRN, noted. Fournier added that while regulatory progress and adjustments to national reserves may take time, conditions are expected to improve in the coming weeks.
The debut of the TRUMP memecoin over the weekend marked «a fundamental shift in the American digital asset landscape, ultimately attracting new buyers, particularly into BTC and SOL,» according to Laurent Benayoun, CEO of Acheron Trading.
«This phenomenon can be seen as a dual narrative: a significant value creation in TRUMP, initially driven by intra-market rotation, which later sparked fresh capital inflows as fundamental investors recognized the broader positive catalysts for digital assets,» Benayoun said. Stay alert!
What to Watch
Crypto
Jan. 21: MicroStrategy (MSTR) shareholders vote on increasing the authorized share capital to help fund bitcoin purchases.
Jan. 23: First deadline for SEC decision on NYSE Arca’s 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 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) reports Q4 2024 earnings.
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.
Feb. 12: Hut 8 Corp. (HUT) reports Q4 2024 earnings.
Feb. 15: Qtum (QTUM) hard fork network upgrade is scheduled to take place at block 4,590,000.
Feb. 20: Coinbase Global (COIN) reports Q4 2024 earnings.
Macro
Jan. 21, 8:00 a.m.: The U.S. Treasury will start taking «extraordinary measures» to stop the government from breaching the $36.1 trillion debt limit.
Jan. 21, 8:30 a.m.: Statistics Canada releases December’s Consumer Price Index.
Core Inflation Rate MoM Prev. -0.1%.
Core Inflation Report YoY Prev. 1.6%.
Inflation Rate MoM Est. -0.7% vs. Prev. 0%.
Inflation Rate YoY Est. 1.7% vs. Prev. 1.9%.
Jan. 22, 8:30 a.m.: Statistics Canada releases December’s Industrial Product Price Index.
PPI MoM Est. 0.8% vs. Prev. 0.6%.
PPI YoY Prev. 2.2%.
Jan. 22, 10:00 a.m.: The Conference Board releases December’s Leading Economic Index (LEI) report for the U.S.
MoM Est. -0.1% vs. Prev. 0.3%.
Token Events
Governance votes & calls
ApeChain is voting on a revamped governance process for 75% of the on-chain treasury to be directed to the DAO treasury contract and the remaining 25% to the Ape Foundation for administrative and support purposes. Voting began Jan. 17 and will last for 13 days.
CoW DAO is discussing the potential allocation of 80 million COW to empower the core treasury team for further liquidity provisioning, economic opportunities, and the development of the DAO’s product roadmap from 2025 to 2028.
Jan. 22: Mantle (MNT) will host a livestream with updates on its 2025 roadmap. at 8 a.m.
Unlocks
Jan. 21: Fasttoken (FTN) to unlock 4.6% of circulating supply worth $76 million.
Jan. 31: Jupiter (JUP) to unlock 41.5% of circulating supply worth $626 million.
Token Launches
Jan. 21: Bybit is listing Solayer (LAYER).
Jan. 22: Jambo (J) is listing on OKX, Bitfinex and Bybit.
Conferences:
Day 9 of 12: Swiss WEB3FEST Winter Edition 2025 (Zug, Zurich, St. Moritz, Davos)
Day 2 of 5: World Economic Forum Annual Meeting (Davos-Klosters, Switzerland)
Jan. 21: Frankfurt Tokenization Conference 2025
Jan. 24-25: 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. 7: Solana APEX (Mexico City)
Feb. 13-14: The 4th Edition of NFT Paris.
Feb. 18-20: Consensus Hong Kong
Feb. 23 to March 2: ETHDenver 2025 (Denver, Colorado)
Token Talk
By Shaurya Malwa
Donald and Melania Trump’s official memecoins have inspired wannabe token creators to issue tokens based on other family members. One such token themed after son Barron Trump just rug pulled for millions of dollars.
A spoof X account impersonating Barron promoted a BARRON token, which quickly gained traction reaching a peak market cap of $87 million.
Initially, a significant amount of liquidity was added to make the token appear legitimate and encourage trading. However, it seems the token was designed to deceive from the start. Once the token reached a high buy volume, all liquidity was removed from the token pools causing the price to crash.
On-chain watchers estimated at least $1 million worth of Solana’s SOL tokens were extracted in the rug pull, based on initial buying and final selling transactions.
Even some industry observers were take in.
Derivatives Positioning
Open interest in TRUMP perpetual futures has increased 8%, suggesting the price drop is at least partly led by fresh shorts. Opposite is the case for AAVE as prices have risen alongside an uptick in open interest.
Other than AAVE, most major coins, including BTC and ETH, have seen negative open interest-adjusted CVD, a sign of net selling pressure.
BTC and ETH calls remain pricier than puts, but the call bias is weaker than a day ago.
Top block trades for the day include BTC bull call spreads and some outright longs in ETH calls, according to data source Amberdata, Deribit and Paradigm.
Market Movements
BTC is down 0.3% from 4 p.m. ET Monday at $103,280.72 (24hrs: -4.66%)
ETH is down 0.43% at $3,307.05 (24hrs: -1.97%)
CoinDesk 20 is down 1.27% at 3,960.57 (24hrs: -5.14%)
Ether staking yield is up 27 bps at 3.58%
BTC funding rate is at -0.0026% (-2.9% annualized) on OKX
DXY is down 0.56% at 108.74
Gold is up 0.36% at $2,718.39/oz
Silver is unchanged at $30.48/oz
Nikkei 225 closed +0.32% to 39,027.98
Hang Seng closed +0.91% to 20,106.55
FTSE is unchanged at 8,521.58
Euro Stoxx 50 is unchanged at 5,160.68
DJIA closed on Friday +0.78% to 43,487.83
S&P 500 closed +1% to 5,996.66
Nasdaq closed +1.51% to 19,630.20
S&P/TSX Composite Index closed on Monday +0.41% to 25,171.58
S&P 40 Latin America closed +1.23% to 2,258.33
U.S. 10-year Treasury is down 4 bps at 4.59%
E-mini S&P 500 futures are up 0.44% at 6,060.00
E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures are up 0.48% at 21,698.75
E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average Index futures are up 0.33% at 43,841.00
Bitcoin Stats:
BTC Dominance: 58.70
Ethereum to bitcoin ratio: 0.03193
Hashrate (seven-day moving average): 786 EH/s
Hashprice (spot): $60.7
Total Fees: 12.37 BTC/ $1.3M
CME Futures Open Interest: 188,825 BTC
BTC priced in gold: 37.8 oz
BTC vs gold market cap: 10.74%
Technical Analysis
BTC remains in bullish territory above the Ichimoku cloud despite Trump failing to mention crypto or strategic BTC reserve Monday.
The resilience may entice more buyers to the market, potentially leading to record highs.
Crypto Equities
Galaxy Digital Holdings (GLXY): closed on Monday at C$31.15 (+4.04%).
MicroStrategy (MSTR): closed on Friday at $396.50 (+8.04%), down 2.22% at $387.70 in pre-market.
Coinbase Global (COIN): closed at $295.48 (+4.92%), down 0.65% at $293.55 in pre-market.
MARA Holdings (MARA): closed at $19.91 (+8.8%), down 0.5% at $19.81 in pre-market.
Riot Platforms (RIOT): closed at $13.38 (0.67%), down 0.3% at $13.35 in pre-market.
Core Scientific (CORZ): closed at $15 (+2.53%), up 0.47% at $15.07 in pre-market.
CleanSpark (CLSK): closed at $11.87 (+6.17%), up 0.51% at $11.93 in pre-market.
CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI): closed at $25.37 (+3.13%).
Semler Scientific (SMLR): closed at $64.68 (+11.06%), down 1.52% at $63.70 in pre-market.
Exodus Movement (EXOD): closed at $38.51 (+1.69%), up 8.47% at $41.77 in pre-market.
ETF Flows
U.S. exchanges were closed on Jan. 20 in observance of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.
The ETF data below is from Jan. 17 and remains unchanged.
Spot BTC ETFs:
Daily net flow: $1072.8 million
Cumulative net flows: $38.18 billion
Total BTC holdings ~ 1.11 million.
Spot ETH ETFs
Daily net flow: $23.9 million
Cumulative net flows: $2.66 billion
Total ETH holdings ~ 3.67 million.
Source: Farside Investors
Overnight Flows
Chart of the Day
The supply of stablecoins on the Solana blockchain has nearly doubled since October.
Most of that is in USDC, the world’s second-largest dollar-pegged stablecoin.
While You Were Sleeping
U.S. to Hit Debt Ceiling on Tuesday. Will Bitcoin Soar or Suffer? (CoinDesk): The U.S. Treasury begins extraordinary measures to avoid breaching the $36.1 trillion debt limit. Historically, drawdowns in the Treasury General Account (TGA), the government’s cash reserve, have coincided with bitcoin price increases.
TRUMP, MELANIA Tokens Plunge 50% as Trump Inauguration Fails to Buoy Bitcoin (CoinDesk): Memecoins TRUMP and MELANIA fell sharply post-inauguration despite trading volumes exceeding many major tokens. QCP Capital speculates that TRUMP’s launch on Solana highlights the chain, potentially aiding U.S. SOL ETF prospects.
World Liberty Financial Buys $112.8 Million in Crypto on Trump’s First Day in Office (The Block): On Monday, World Liberty Financial, a Trump-linked crypto project, commemorated his inauguration by spending a total of $112.8M on ETH, wBTC, AAVE, LINK, TRX and ENA.
Trump’s Plans for Canada, Mexico Tariffs Send Dollar Higher (The Wall Street Journal): The U.S. dollar rose against the Canadian dollar and Mexican peso after Trump’s proposed tariffs. Asian markets showed mixed movements, while oil prices fell as Trump pledged expanded U.S. production.
ECB’s Kazimir Sees Three to Four More Cuts Starting Next Week (Bloomberg): Peter Kazimir, an ECB Governing Council member, expects a rate cut next week and possibly three more. He warns of risks from U.S. trade policies and inflationary pressures from import prices.
China Stocks, Yuan Cautiously Firm After Trump Delays Tariffs (Reuters): Chinese stocks and the yuan rose cautiously after Trump avoided imposing immediate tariffs, offering short-term relief. China is focusing on technological innovation and stimulating consumer spending to boost growth.
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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