Uncategorized
Crypto Daybook Americas: Forex Markets Signal Bitcoin Upside Amid Tariff-On/Tariff-Off Trading
By Omkar Godbole (All times ET unless indicated otherwise)
If you follow financial markets, you’ve probably come across the terms «risk-on» and «risk-off.» Now we seem to be entering a new era of «tariffs on/tariffs off.»
In a risk-on environment, growth-sensitive assets like stocks and cryptocurrencies tend to rise due to expectations of economic expansion or accommodative monetary policy. Conversely, risk-off situations reflects a lack of investor confidence, leading to sell-offs and a preference for safer assets.
But this week, President Trump’s tariffs announcement have single-handedly guided markets. Early Monday, bitcoin (BTC) plummeted to nearly $91,000 as Canada and Mexico retaliated against Trump’s tariffs. That was «tariffs on» trading.
Later, it rebounded above $100,000 after Trump paused the Mexico tariffs for the 30 days and announced the creation a sovereign wealth fund, which generated hopes of potential investments in BTC. That was «tariffs off.»
The bullish momentum ran out of steam early Tuesday as China retaliated against Trump’s import tax, reviving «tariffs on» trading. BTC fell over 3% to $98,000, dragging altcoins lower. Nasdaq futures dropped over 0.5% and the dollar drew haven bids.
Bitcoin and the broader crypto market will likely rebound should Trump announce an 11th-hour deal with China, just as he did with Mexico and Canada on Monday. Foreign-exchange market activity suggests that’s likely. The AUD/CAD is down just 0.3% for the day, a sign traders don’t expect a prolonged tariff war between the U.S. and China. (The Australian dollar is widely seen as a proxy for China).
«A cross like AUD/CAD should trade sharply lower in this situation given Canada has dodged tariffs and China has not, but it is only 0.5% lower on the day. That signals markets are pricing in a good chance that the US and China will also strike a deal and delay tariffs,» ING said in a note to clients.
That said, you can never be sure of Trump. So, expect heightened volatility and stay alert!
What to Watch
Crypto:
Feb. 5, 3:00 p.m.: Boba Network’s Holocene hard fork network upgrade for its Ethereum-based L2 mainnet.
Feb. 6, 8:00 a.m.: Shentu Chain network upgrade (v2.14.0).
Feb. 13: Start of Kraken’s «gradual» delisting of the USDT, PYUSD, EURT, TUSD, UST stablecoins for EEA clients. The process ends March. 31.
Macro
Feb. 4, 10:00 a.m.: The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) releases December’s Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) report.
Job Openings Est. 7.88M vs. Prev. 8.098M
Job Quits Prev. 3.065M
Feb. 4, 2:30 p.m.: White House AI and Crypto Czar David Sacks, along with four congressional leaders, hold a press conference on digital assets cooperation. Livestream link.
Feb. 4, 7:30 p.m.: Fed Vice Chair Philip N. Jefferson is giving a speech titled «U.S. Economic Outlook and Monetary Policy.»
Feb. 5, 9:45 a.m.: S&P Global releases January’s US Services PMI (Final) report.
Est. 52.8 vs. Prev. 56.8
Feb. 5, 10:00 a.m.: The Institute for Supply Management (ISM) releases January’s Services ISM Report on Business.
Services PMI Est. 54.3 vs. Prev. 54.1
Services Business Activity Prev. 58.2
Services Employment Prev. 51.4
Services New Orders Prev. 54.2
Services Prices Prev. 64.4
Feb. 5, 10:00 a.m.: U.S. Senate Banking Committee hearing on “Investigating the Real Impacts of Debanking in America,” featuring four witnesses including Nathan McCauley, co-founder and CEO of Anchorage Digital. Livestream link.
Feb. 5, 3:00 p.m.: Fed Governor Michelle W. Bowman is giving a speech titled “Brief Economic Update and Bank Regulation.”
Earnings
Feb. 5: MicroStrategy (MSTR), post-market, $-0.09
Feb. 10: Canaan (CAN), pre-market, $-0.08
Feb. 11: HIVE Digital Technologies (HIVE), post-market, $-0.11
Feb. 11: Exodus Movement (EXOD), post-market, $0.14 (2 ests.)
Feb. 12: Hut 8 (HUT), pre-market, break-even
Feb. 12: IREN (IREN), post-market
Feb. 12 (TBA): Metaplanet (TYO:3350)
Feb. 12: Reddit (RDDT), post-market, $0.25
Token Events
Governance votes & calls
Compound DAO is discussing the creation of Morpho-powered lending vaults on Polygon curated by Gauntlet. Polygon Labs is set to offer $1.5 million in POL, matched with $1.5 million in COMP to incentivize usage.
Arbitrum DAO is voting on whether to transfer 1,885 ETH in Nova transaction fees to its Treasury through the modernized fee collection infrastructure outlined in the ova Fee Router Proposal.
Aave DAO is nearing the end of a vote on deploying Aave v3 on Sonic, a new layer-1 Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) blockchain with a high transaction throughput.
Lido DAO is discussing distributing rewards to LDO stakers based on the protocol’s net revenue, as well as the use of a percentage of its annual revenue to buyback LDO tokens.
Feb. 4, 1 p.m.: TRON DAO and CryptoQuant to host a network review diving into performance, adoption and key metrics.
Feb. 4, 12 p.m.: Stellar to host its Q4 quarterly review.
Unlocks
Feb. 5: XDC Network (XDC) to unlock 5.36% of circulating supply worth $81.58 million.
Feb. 5: Kaspa (KAS) to unlock 0.67% of circulating supply worth $17.29 million.
Feb. 9: Movement (MOVE) to unlock 2.17% of circulating supply worth $31.60 million.
Feb. 10: Aptos (APT) to unlock 1.97% of circulating supply worth $68.20 million.
Token Launches
Feb. 4: Vine (VINE), Bio Protocol (BIO), Swarms (SWARMS), and Sonic SVM (SONIC) to be listed on Kraken.
Conferences:
Feb. 5-6: The 14th Global Blockchain Congress (Dubai)
Feb. 6: Ondo Summit 2025 (New York).
Feb. 7: Solana APEX (Mexico City)
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. 25: HederaCon 2025 (Denver)
Token Talk
By Shaurya Malwa
Entities behind President Donald Trump’s memecoin TRUMP amassed nearly $100 million in trading fees within two weeks of its Jan. 17 introduction.
The fees were generated on Meteora, a DeFi exchange where the initial TRUMP coins were traded. Here, fees are charged for liquidity provision, which benefits the coin’s creators by allowing them to earn from trading activities indefinitely, according to Reuters.
A marketwide drop on Monday sent the token spiraling further down, bringing losses from the peak to a staggering 75%.
The president continues to endorse the token on his social media platform, Truth Social, where he posted «I LOVE $TRUMP!!» alongside a link to purchase the token over the weekend.
Derivatives Positioning
Perpetual funding rates for SOL, DOGE, ADA, LINK and AVAX remain negative, indicating a bias for short positions. These coins may see outsized gains on the back of a short-squeeze should the market environment flip back to «tariffs off» during the American hours.
Deribit’s ETH volatility index has retreated to 70% from above 100%. BTC’s volatility has faded from Monday’s spike to 61%.
The perpetual futures open interest-adjusted cumulative volume delta for most large-cap tokens, excluding TRX, is negative for the past 24 hours. That raises a question on the sustainability of the price recovery.
Deribit’s BTC, ETH options expiring this month continue to exhibit downside fears. The broader bias for bullish calls remains intact.
Block flows featured a bear call spread in SOL, a calendar spread in BTC and long positions in the ETH $3K and $3.2K calls.
Market Movements:
BTC is down 1.85% from 4 p.m. ET Monday at $99,347.23 (24hrs: +4.4%)
ETH is up 2.3% at $2,777.08 (24hrs: +7.45%)
CoinDesk 20 is down 2.21% at 3,154.76 (24hrs: +5.33%)
CESR Composite Staking Rate is up 88 bps at 3.91%
BTC funding rate is at 0.0035% (3.76% annualized) on Binance
DXY is down 0.39% at 108.57
Gold is down 0.16% at $2,814.16/oz
Silver is up 0.18% at $31.65/oz
Nikkei 225 closed +0.72% at 38,798.37
Hang Seng closed +2.83% at 20,789.96
FTSE is down 0.12% at 8,572.97
Euro Stoxx 50 is up 0.13% at 5,224.71
DJIA closed on Monday -0.28% at 44,421.91
S&P 500 closed -0.76% at 5,994.57
Nasdaq closed -1.2% at 19,391.96
S&P/TSX Composite Index closed -1.14% at 25,241.76
S&P 40 Latin America closed +0.25% at 2,376.48
U.S. 10-year Treasury is up 2 bps at 4.58%
E-mini S&P 500 futures are down 0.16% at 6012.75
E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures are unchanged at 21,398.50
E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average Index futures are down 0.21% at 44,472.00
Bitcoin Stats:
BTC Dominance: 61.70 (1.06%)
Ethereum to bitcoin ratio: 0.02750 (-3.27%)
Hashrate (seven-day moving average): 833 EH/s
Hashprice (spot): $57.5
Total Fees: 6.1 BTC / $592,574
CME Futures Open Interest: 164,925 BTC
BTC priced in gold: 35.0 oz
BTC vs gold market cap: 9.94%
Technical Analysis
Bitcoin’s daily chart shows a classic «stair step» bull run, characterized by price rises followed by consolidations, representing accumulation periods.
The latest consolidation between $90,000 and $110,000 is the third such pattern since 2023. A breakout would mean continuation of the uptrend.
Note, however, that gains seen after the second consolidation between $50,000 and $70,000 were significantly less than those seen after the first breakout in late 2023.
Crypto Equities
MicroStrategy (MSTR): closed on Monday at $347.09 (+3.67%), down 1.35% at $342.40 in pre-market.
Coinbase Global (COIN): closed at $284.41 (-2.38%), down 0.47% at $283.08 in pre-market.
Galaxy Digital Holdings (GLXY): closed at C$28.02 (-1.62%)
MARA Holdings (MARA): closed at $17.95 (-2.13%), down 1.23% at $17.73 in pre-market.
Riot Platforms (RIOT): closed at $11.99 (+0.93%), down 0.58%% at $11.92 in pre-market.
Core Scientific (CORZ): closed at $12.33 (+0.49%), down 1.05% at $12.20 in pre-market.
CleanSpark (CLSK): closed at $10.59 (+1.44%), down 0.85% at $10.50 in pre-market.
CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI): closed at $22.69 (+0.62%).
Semler Scientific (SMLR): closed at $50.46 (-2.89%).
Exodus Movement (EXOD): closed at $59.59 (+19.47%), unchanged in pre-market.
ETF Flows
Spot BTC ETFs:
Daily net flow: -$234.4 million
Cumulative net flows: $40.26 billion
Total BTC holdings ~ 1.177 million.
Spot ETH ETFs
Daily net flow: $83.6 million
Cumulative net flows: $2.84 billion
Total ETH holdings ~ 3.648 million.
Source: Farside Investors
Overnight Flows
Chart of the Day
Google trends for the worldwide search query «how to buy crypto» shows retail investor interest in digital assets has cooled since hitting a peak of 100 last month.
While You Were Sleeping
Ethereum Raises Gas Limits for First Time Since 2021, Boosting ETH Appeal (CoinDesk): Ethereum’s gas limit rose to nearly 32 million units, which should help increase the network’s throughput and potentially lower transaction costs during periods of high demand.
Lending Protocol Aave Processes $200M in Liquidation Without Adding to Bad-Debt Burden (CoinDesk): Aave processed $210 million in liquidations on Monday, the most since August, without adding new debt. Strong risk controls reduced existing liabilities by 2.7% amid market volatility.
TRON, Movement Labs Deny ‘Token Swap’ Deal for World Liberty Financial Inclusion (CoinDesk): Representatives from TRON and Movement Labs rejected allegations of token swap deals for treasury inclusion with World Liberty Financial (WLFI).
Yuan Extends Loss With China Proxies as US Trade War Reignites (Bloomberg): China’s retaliatory tariffs on U.S. coal, LNG, oil and agricultural equipment spooked Asia-Pacific markets, pressuring offshore Chinese yuan. Talks between the U.S. and China could help deescalate the trade war.
Stocks Erase Gains After China Retaliates Against U.S. (Financial Times): Shortly after Trump’s 10% tariff on all Chinese goods took effect on Tuesday, Beijing hit back by imposing import tariffs on various U.S. goods, causing global stocks to give back some of Monday’s gains.
Euro Stays Weaker Amid Tariff Risks (The Wall Street Journal): Danske Bank’s Stefan Mellin says Trump’s threats of tariffs on EU imports are likely to keep the euro under pressure over the next several weeks even though these might just be «primarily a negotiating tool.»
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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