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Crypto Daybook Americas: Bitcoin, Gold Rally in Tandem on Regulatory Outlook, Muted Tariff Effects
By Omkar Godbole (All times ET unless indicated otherwise)
Bitcoin remains well supported above $100,000 as it eyes record highs, buoyed by reports that the new SEC leadership has established a task force to develop a framework for crypto assets. Pundits have long said regulatory clarity could pave the way for further price appreciation.
Gold’s price rebound from December lows has also gathered pace and is now just 1% shy of setting new highs above $2,790 per ounce. That’s unusual: Bitcoin typically rallies when the price of gold stagnates.
Perhaps gold is saying the Fed will walk back on its hawkish December bias that signaled fewer rate cuts, helping keep BTC bid. And why not? Reports indicate that Trump’s tariffs will be lighter than anticipated and research from MacroMicro shows that their inflationary impact during his previous presidency was minimal.
In the broader crypto market, on-chain data from IntoTheBlock reveals that 80% of addresses holding LINK, one of the recent top performers, are in profit at the going market rate of $25.70. Key resistance levels have been identified at $27 and $29, which acted as barriers last year.
The movement of XRP, another recent outperformer, between addresses owned by whales and centralized exchanges has slowed considerably from the record levels earlier this month. That may be a sign these large holders have slowed their profit-taking activity.
Meanwhile, traders are expressing enthusiasm with sentiments like «we are so back,» especially after Bloomberg’s James Seyffart shared filings for ETF applications involving coins including LTC, SOL, DOGE, XRP and others. It seems the momentum in both the crypto and traditional markets could be setting the stage for an exciting period ahead. Stay alert!
What to Watch
Crypto
Jan. 22, 10:30 a.m.: Solana-powered decentralized exchange (DEX) aggregator Jupiter’s JUP airdrop claim goes live. Jupiter’s users have three months to claim.
Jan. 22, 10:25 p.m.: dYdX Chain (DYDX) will undergo a software upgrade to v8.0 on block 35,602,000.
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. 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%.
Jan. 23, 8:30 a.m.: The U.S. Department of Labor releases the Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report for the week ended Jan. 18.
Initial Jobless Claims Est. 215K vs. Prev. 217K.
Jan. 23, 10:00 a.m.: The National Association of Realtors releases December 2024 U.S. Existing Home Sales report.
Existing Home Sales Est. 4.16M vs. Prev. 4.15M.
Existing Home Sales MoM Prev. 4.8%.
Jan. 23, 4:30 p.m.: The Fed releases the H.4.1 report, the central bank balance sheet, for the week ended Jan. 22.
Total Reserves Prev. $6.83T.
Jan. 23, 6:30 p.m.: Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications releases December 2024’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) report.
Inflation Rate MoM Prev. 0.6%.
Core Inflation Rate YoY Est. 3% vs. Prev. 2.7%.
Inflation Rate YoY Prev. 2.9%.
Jan. 23, 10:00 p.m.: The Bank of Japan (BoJ) releases Statement on Monetary Policy.
Interest Rate Decision Est. 0.5% vs. Prev. 0.25%.
Token Events
Governance votes & calls
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.
Morpho DAO is discussing reducing incentives by 30% across all networks and assets.
Yearn DAO is discussing funding and endorsing a subDAO called Bearn to focus on building and launching products on Berachain.
Jan. 22: Mantle (MNT) will host a livestream with updates on its 2025 roadmap at 8 a.m.
Jan. 23: Pendle (PENDLE) is hosting Pendle Swing Hour at 7 a.m.
Unlocks
Jan. 31: Jupiter (JUP) to unlock 41.5% of circulating supply worth $626 million.
Token Launches
Jan. 22: Jambo (J) is listing on OKX, Gate.io, Bitfinex and Bybit.
Jan. 22: Liquity (LQTY) and Gravity (G) are being listed on Kraken.
Jan. 22: Telegram Gifts are launching as NFTs on TON.
Conferences:
Day 10 of 12: Swiss WEB3FEST Winter Edition 2025 (Zug, Zurich, St. Moritz, Davos)
Day 3 of 5: World Economic Forum Annual Meeting (Davos-Klosters, Switzerland)
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
Uniswap to begin v4 deployments this week for builders to test hooks and integrations on-chain. The new architecture of v4, including the singleton contract and flash accounting system, is designed to reduce transaction costs and improve efficiency, which could attract more developers and users to the platform, increasing the overall usage of Uniswap, and, in turn, demand for UNI tokens.
AI16Z and AI Rig Complex’s ARC rallied over 30% on Tuesday while GRIFFAIN, ZEREBRO also booked double-digit advances. President Trump unveiled a $500 billion investment in private sector AI infrastructure investment with firms such as OpenAI, Oracle and Softbank involved.
Derivatives Positioning
TRX, SHIB, PEPE and DOGE lead perpetual futures open interest growth in large-cap tokens. However, TRX is the only one with a positive cumulative volume delta, representing net buying pressure in the past 24 hours.
Front-end call bias in BTC and ETH options on Deribit continues to moderate while on the CME, call skew jumped to highest since the U.S. election Tuesday.
Block flows featured long positions in BTC calls at $110K and $115K strikes and bull call spreads in ETH.
Market Movements:
BTC is down 0.9% from 4 p.m. ET Tuesday at $105,161.32 (24hrs: +1.32%)
ETH is unchanged at $3,312.58 (24hrs: +0.28%)
CoinDesk 20 is up 0.6% at 4,000.99 (24hrs: +2.27%)
Ether staking yield is down 28 bps at 3.3%
BTC funding rate is at 0.0045% (4.9% annualized) on OKX
DXY is down 0.23% at 107.81
Gold is up 0.56% at $2,759.03/oz
Silver is up 0.33% at $30.88/oz
Nikkei 225 closed +1.58% to 39,646.25
Hang Seng closed -1.63% to 19,778.77
FTSE is up 0.41% at 8,583.19
Euro Stoxx 50 is up 0.83% at 5,209.04
DJIA closed on Tuesday +1.24% to 44,025.81
S&P 500 closed +0.88% to 6,049.24
Nasdaq closed +0.64% to 19,756.78
S&P/TSX Composite Index closed +0.44% to 25,281.63
S&P 40 Latin America closed +0.51% to 2,269.78
U.S. 10-year Treasury is unchanged at 4.58%
E-mini S&P 500 futures are up 0.49% at 6,114.25
E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures are up 0.88% at 21,900.00
E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average Index futures are up 0.19% at 44,320.00
Bitcoin Stats:
BTC Dominance: 58.67
Ethereum to bitcoin ratio: 0.031
Hashrate (seven-day moving average): 769 EH/s
Hashprice (spot): $60.7
Total Fees: 10.2 BTC / $1.1 million
CME Futures Open Interest: 502,406
BTC priced in gold: 38.1 oz
BTC vs gold market cap: 10.83%
Technical Analysis
The dollar index (DXY) looks south, having dived out of a bullish trendline from late September lows near 100.
The decline in DXY could add to the bullish momentum in risky assets.
Crypto Equities
MicroStrategy (MSTR): closed on Tuesday at $389.10 (-1.87%), down 0.63% at $386.58 in pre-market.
Coinbase Global (COIN): closed at $294.19 (-0.44%), down 1% at $291.26 in pre-market.
Galaxy Digital Holdings (GLXY): closed at C$31.25 (+0.32%)
MARA Holdings (MARA): closed at $19.56 (-1.76%), down 1.07% at $19.35 in pre-market.
Riot Platforms (RIOT): closed at $12.74 (-4.85%), down 0.24% at $12.71 in pre-market.
Core Scientific (CORZ): closed at $15.27 (+1.8%), down 0.79% at $15.15 n pre-market.
CleanSpark (CLSK): closed at $10.96 (-7.67%), up 0.36% at $11 in pre-market.
CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI): closed at $24.97 (-1.58%).
Semler Scientific (SMLR): closed at $64.94 (+0.4%), down 4.22% at $62.20 in pre-market.
Exodus Movement (EXOD): closed at $40 (+3.87%), down 2.35% at $39.06 in pre-market.
ETF Flows
Spot BTC ETFs:
Daily net flow: $802.6 million
Cumulative net flows: $39.98 billion
Total BTC holdings ~ 1.155 million.
Spot ETH ETFs
Daily net flow: $74.4 million
Cumulative net flows: $2.74 billion
Total ETH holdings ~ 3.622 million.
Source: Farside Investors
Overnight Flows
Chart of the Day
The chart shows XRP’s exchange reserve or balance held in wallets tied to centralized exchanges since June 2024.
The balance has dropped sharply since Jan. 16, signaling a resumption of the broader downtrend.
The renewed exodus of coins from exchanges indicates investor bias for holding.
While You Were Sleeping
Deribit’s Crypto Trading Volume Nearly Doubled to Over $1T in 2024 (CoinDesk): Cryptocurrency exchange Deribit’s total trading volume rose 95% year-on-year to $1.185T in 2024, driven by a 99% surge in options trading to $743B, reflecting institutional adoption and market maturity.
Trump Pardons Silk Road Creator Ross Ulbricht (Cointelegraph): President Trump granted a full pardon to Ross Ulbricht, sentenced to life without parole in 2015 for creating and operating Silk Road, an online marketplace shut down in 2013 that used bitcoin for payments.
Trump-Affiliated World Liberty Financial Makes Another TRX Buy (CoinDesk): World Liberty Financial, a crypto project linked to Trump’s family, added 10.8 million TRX ($2.6 million) to its treasury, raising total TRX holdings to $7.5 million. Sources say WLFI plans to further increase its TRX holdings.
Dollar Could Fall if U.S. Tariffs Less Stringent Than Threatened (The Wall Street Journal): The dollar may weaken if Trump’s tariffs are milder than expected, analysts say. The yuan shows resilience as markets adjust to a potential 10% tariff on Chinese imports, lower than Trump’s campaign pledges of 60%.
BOJ Heads Toward Rate Hike as Markets Take Trump in Stride (Bloomberg): The Bank of Japan is expected to raise rates by 25 basis points to 0.5% on Friday, the highest since 2008, with swaps pricing a 90% chance and 74% of analysts expecting the move.
The Market Is Wrong About US Rates Under Trump in 2025 (Financial Times): In an op-ed, the founder of ABP Invest argues markets are wrong to expect Fed rate cuts in 2025. He predicts robust U.S. growth and Trump’s policies will drive rate hikes from September.
In the Ether
So far, crypto markets haven’t behaved as expected under the Trump Administration. Investors hoped that regulatory reform and policies like a Bitcoin Strategic Reserve would drive prices appreciably higher. But it’s been the opposite. Bitcoin has fallen from highs well above $100,000 at the beginning of the year to a trough in the mid-80,000s for most of March.
Crypto prices have suffered from being increasingly correlated with traditional assets like stocks and bonds, which have been hit by macroeconomic uncertainty. Tariffs — surcharges the U.S. places on imports from other countries — have Wall Street worried about a global recession. Crypto investors have been steering clear of crypto assets, which are seen as relatively risky.
“This is all about markets’ ‘risk appetite’ which continues to deteriorate, and for the time being drives a wedge between crypto assets and gold, which continues to be the ‘safe haven’ of choice,” said Marc Ostwald, Chief Economist & Global Strategist at ADM Investor Services International.
“[That’s] in no small part driven by central bank FX reserve managers, who are seeking to reduce USD exposure, which has long been a source of concern to them.”
As the global financial and trade system becomes more fragmented, investors are seeking alternatives to riskier assets, including dollars. For now, that means turning to gold, which is up 18% year-to-date.
But that could change, said Omid Malekan, an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School and author of «The Story of the Blockchain: A Beginner’s Guide to the Technology That Nobody Understands.» Bitcoin could be the new gold soon enough.
“I think the entire [future] is uncertain and in some ways unknowable, because there are many crosscurrents and both crypto and tariffs are new. Some people argue that crypto is just a risk-on tech asset and would sell off due to tariffs. But bitcoin has found footing in some circles as ‘digital gold’ and the physical variety is soaring on the tariff news. So which will it be?”
In other words, economic uncertainty could lead investors to seek out bitcoin just as they have sought out gold in recent months.
Another note of positivity: the impact of tariffs on crypto could be “priced in” and the worst might be over already, said Zach Pandl, head of research at Grayscale, a leading crypto asset management firm.
President Trump is due to announce U.S. tariffs on Wednesday, April 2, at 4 p.m. ET—what’s known as “Liberation Day.” According to reports, he’ll lay out “reciprocal tariffs” against 15 countries that have levied tariffs against the U.S., including China, Canada and Mexico.
Pandl estimates tariffs have so far taken 2% off economic growth this year. But Liberation Day might actually stop the worst of the pain felt in financial markets. “If we see an announcement [on Wednesday] that is tough but phased, and focused on the 15 countries they seem to be targeting, my expectation is that markets will rally on that news,” Pandl told CoinDesk.
“Potentially once we get through this announcement, crypto markets can focus back on the fundamentals which are very positive.”Pandl said announcements like Circle’s IPO wouldn’t be happening if institutions didn’t have a high degree of confidence in the digital assets sector and the policies around it.
Moreover, Pandl, a former macro-economist at Goldman Sachs, believes that tariffs will increase the appetite for currencies that aren’t dollars.
“I think tariffs will weaken the dominant role of the dollar and create space for competitors including bitcoin. Prices have gone down in the short run. But the first few months of the Trump Administration have raised my conviction in the longer term for bitcoin as a global monetary asset.”
Pendl still believes that bitcoin will hit new all-time highs this year, despite current pessimism around prices. “I wouldn’t have quit my Wall Street job if I didn’t think bitcoin will be the winner in the long term,” he said.
Circle, the U.S.-based stablecoin issuer, is going public.
The firm filed an S-1 form with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Tuesday. If approved, the company’s stock will be trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol «CRCL.»
The company said its reserve income from managing its stablecoin-related reserves was $1.7 billion at the end of 2024, representing 99.1% of its total revenue.
Circle is behind USDC, the second largest stablecoin by market capitalization, with $60 billion in supply. The firm’s IPO has been one of the most anticipated in crypto.
It’s not the only crypto-adjacent company looking to go public. Artificial Intelligence (AI) firm CoreWeave (CRWV), which benefits from a strong business relationship with bitcoin mining firm Core Scientific (CORZ), started trading on the public market on March 28.
Bitcoin (BTC) purchases from video game retailer GameStop (GME) could be imminent or may have already begun after the company closed on its offering of $1.3 billion of five-year convertible notes.
The $200 million greenshoe option was fully exercised by the initial purchaser, bringing the total amount of the sale to $1.5 billion. Net proceeds to the company after fees were $1.48 billion, according to a filing Monday after the close of U.S. trading.
Alongside its fourth quarter earnings report last week, GameStop — led by its CEO Ryan Cohen — announced full board approval of an update to the company investment policy to add bitcoin to the GME balance sheet.
GME shares rose 1.35% during the regular session on Monday and are up another 0.8% in after hours action. Bitcoin remains modestly higher over the past 24 hours at $84,900.
Why Trump’s Tariffs Could Actually Be Good for Bitcoin
Stablecoin Giant Circle Files for IPO
GameStop Has $1.5B of Bitcoin Buying Power After Closing Convertible Note Sale
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