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Crypto Daybook Americas: Massive Selloff Doesn’t Stop Bitcoin Institutional Adoption
By Omkar Godbole (All times ET unless indicated otherwise)
«I don’t understand how can anyone think BTC is not a bargain at these prices…,» Andre Dragosch, head of research — Europe at Bitwise, said on X Monday as BTC’s price dipped below $90,000.
While the comment may appear overly optimistic to macro bears, it is not without justification. Even as the DXY, Treasury yields, and Fed rate expectations look to destabilize risk assets, corporate and institutional demand for BTC continues to strengthen.
Intesa Sanpaolo, Italy’s largest bank by market capitalization, has reportedly purchased BTC, snapping up 11 BTC for $1 million. That could accelerate crypto adoption in the European Union’s third-largest economy, which already has 1.4 million citizens holding cryptocurrencies.
If that’s not enough, corporate Treasury purchases of BTC have already reached 5,774 BTC in the first two weeks of January, outpacing the supply of new BTC.
To Dragosch’s credit, BTC has bounced to over $96K, hinting at an end of the price weakness that began a month ago at record highs above $108K. As usual, that has brought cheer to all corners of the crypto market, with AI, gaming and meme sub-sectors leading the charge.
The recovery, supported by ongoing institutional adoption and rumors of President-elect Donald Trump planning to issue an executive order addressing crypto-accounting SEC rules on day one, suggests that bears may find it difficult to assert their influence.
Prices may move into six figures if Tuesday’s U.S. producer price index points to softer inflation in the pipeline, weakening the hawkish Fed narrative. Note that the dollar index’s rally has already stalled amid reports that Trump’s tariffs will be gradual and smaller than initially feared.
What to Watch
Crypto
Jan. 14, 8:00 p.m.: Degen (DEGEN) mainnet upgrades to ArbOS 32.
Jan. 15: Degen liquidity mining airdrop; snapshots will be taken until the end of Jan. 14 (UTC).
Jan. 15: Mintlayer version 1.0.0 release. The mainnet upgrade introduces atomic swaps, enabling native BTC cross-chain swaps.
Macro
Jan. 14, 8:30 a.m.: The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) releases December 2024’s PPI data.
PPI MoM Est. 0.3% vs. Prev. 0.4%.
Core PPI MoM Est. 0.3% vs. Prev. 0.2%.
Core PPI YoY Est. 3.7% vs. Prev. 3.4%.
PPI YoY Est. 3.4% vs. Prev. 3%.
Jan. 14, 8:55 a.m.: U.S. Redbook YoY for the week ended on Jan. 11. Prev. 6.8%.
Jan. 15, 8:30 a.m.: The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) releases December 2024’s Consumer Price Index Summary.
Core Inflation Rate MoM Est. 0.2% vs. Prev. 0.3%.
Core Inflation Rate YoY Est. 3.3% vs. Prev. 3.3%.
Inflation Rate MoM Est. 0.3% vs. Prev. 0.3%.
Inflation Rate YoY Est. 2.8% vs. Prev. 2.7%.
Jan. 16, 2:00 a.m.: The U.K.’s Office for National Statistics November 2024’s GDP estimate.
GDP MoM Est. 0.2% vs. Prev. -0.1%.
GDP YoY Prev. 1.3%.
Jan. 16, 8:30 a.m.: The U.S. Department of Labor releases the Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report for the week ending on Jan. 11. Initial Jobless Claims Est. 214K vs. Prev. 201K.
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
Compound DAO is discussing the creation a new unit responsible for managing APR incentive campaigns to attract large conservative investors.
Maple Finance DAO is discussing using 20% of the fee revenue the protocol will generate in Q1 to buy back SYRUP tokens and distributed them to SYRUP stakers.
Unlocks
Jan. 14: Arbitrum (ARB) to unlock 0.93% of its circulating supply, worth $70.65 million.
Jan. 15: Connex (CONX) to unlock 376% of its circulating supply, worth $84.5 million.
Jan. 18: Ondo (ONDO) to unlock 134% of its circulating supply, worth $2.19 billion.
Token Launches
No major token launches scheduled today.
Jan. 15: Derive (DRV) will launch, with 5% of supply going to sENA stakers.
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 9 of 14: Starknet, an Ethereum layer 2, is holding its Winter Hackathon (online).
Day 2 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 Francisco Rodrigues
Holoworld AI has announced the start of Agent Market, a Solana-based token launchpad allowing users to create, trade, and interact with on-chain AI agents and their tokens without coding skills. The marketplace has integration with multiple social channels including X, allowing for agents to be deployed on these channels after launch.
Despite enduring a steep correction, AI tokens have outperformed every other basket class within the cryptocurrency space so far this year, owing their returns to a significant surge seen in the first week of the year. CCData’s basket performance shows that year-to-date, AI tokens are up 2.5%, while the second-best performing class, exchange tokens, is up less than 0.5%.
On the other end of the spectrum, real world asset (RWA) tokens are down more than 14% , significantly underperforming memecoins, which dropped roughly 10% in this month’s correction.
Usual Protocol, the popular decentralized finance protocol that came under fire last week over an unexpected change in its redemption mechanism, has activated its Revenue Switch for USUALx holders.
Solana-based token launchpad Pump.fun has moved 122,620 SOL worth over $21 million to Kraken, bringing their total deposited funds to 1.785 million SOL worth $362 million, Onchain Lens revealed.
The FTX estate has executed its monthly SOL redemption transfer, unstaking 182,421 SOL and moving the funds to 20 different addresses. Since November, FTX has redeemed over $500 million in SOL, and it still holds $1.18 billion in its staking address.
Derivatives Positioning
Large cap tokens, excluding XLM, XRP and HYPE, have seen a decline in perpetual futures open interest in the past 24 hours.
Front-end BTC and ETH options risk reversals show neutral sentiment despite the price recovery. Near-dated and long-term options show a bias for calls.
Block flows featured large purchase of calls at $95K and $98K expiring in the next two weeks and an ETH bull call spread, involving March 28 expiry calls at $5.5K and $6.5K.
Market Movements:
BTC is up 2.56%% from 4 p.m. ET Tuesday to $96,615.50 (24hrs: +6.44%)
ETH is up 3.84% at $3,233.91 (24hrs: +5.76%)
CoinDesk 20 is up 4.69% to 3,463.07 (24hrs: +6.84%)
Ether staking yield is up 15 bps to 3.12%
BTC funding rate is at 0.01% (10.95% annualized) on Binance
DXY is down 0.35% at 109.57
Gold is up 0.22% at $2,679.50/oz
Silver is up 0.76% to $30.32/oz
Nikkei 225 closed -1.83% at 38,474.30
Hang Seng closed +1.83% at 19,219.78
FTSE is up 0.17% to 8,237.93
Euro Stoxx 50 is up 1.03% to 5,005.29
DJIA closed on Monday +0.86% at 42,297.12
S&P 500 closed +0.16 at 5,836.22
Nasdaq closed -0.38% at 19,088.10
S&P/TSX Composite Index closed -0.93% at 24,536.30
S&P 40 Latin America closed +0.49% at 2,192.57
U.S. 10-year Treasury was unchanged at 4.79%
E-mini S&P 500 futures are up 0.54% to 5,906.00
E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures are up 0.71% to 21,096.00
E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average Index futures are up 0.37% to 42,682.00
Bitcoin Stats:
BTC Dominance: 58.52
Ethereum to bitcoin ratio: 0.033
Hashrate (seven-day moving average): 773 EH/s
Hashprice (spot): $54.3
Total Fees: 7.77 BTC/ $721,654
CME Futures Open Interest: 174,105 BTC
BTC priced in gold: 35.6/oz
BTC vs gold market cap: 10.14%
Technical Analysis
Despite the overnight bounce, BTC’s price remains in the Ichimoku cloud, a momentum indicator created by Japanese journalist Goichi Hosada.
A crossover above the cloud would signal a renewed bullish outlook.
Crypto Equities
MicroStrategy (MSTR): closed on Monday at $328.40 (+0.15%), up 3.19% at $338.89 in pre-market.
Coinbase Global (COIN): closed at $251.20 (-2.93%), up 3.18% at $259.20 in pre-market.
Galaxy Digital Holdings (GLXY): closed at C$26.04 (-3.8%)
MARA Holdings (MARA): closed at $17.19 (-3.75%), up 3.61% at $17.81 in pre-market.
Riot Platforms (RIOT): closed at $11.77 (-1.92%), up 3.65% at $12.20 in pre-market.
Core Scientific (CORZ): closed at $13.6 (-3.13%), up 1.6222.22$13.82 in pre-market.
CleanSpark (CLSK): closed at $10.19 (+0.99%), up 3.24% at $10.52 in pre-market.
CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI): closed at $22.22 (-3.85%), up 7.29% at $23.84 in pre-market.
Semler Scientific (SMLR): closed at $52.70 (+2.61%), up 4.19% at $54.91 in pre-market.
Exodus Movement (EXOD): closed at $33.58 (-11.09%).
ETF Flows
Spot BTC ETFs:
Daily net flow: -$284.1 million
Cumulative net flows: $35.94 billion
Total BTC holdings ~ 1.131 million.
Spot ETH ETFs
Daily net flow: -$39.4 million
Cumulative net flows: $2.41 million
Total ETH holdings ~ 3.535 million.
Source: Farside Investors, as of Jan. 13.
Overnight Flows
Chart of the Day
The chart shows performance of various crypto market sub-sectors in 2024.
Memecoins witnessed a staggering 254% gain last year, outperforming the broader market and bitcoin by a big margin.
While You Were Sleeping
Is Bitcoin Bottom In? BTC’s Price Action is Inverse of December Peak Above $108K (CoinDesk): Bitcoin dipped below $90K on Monday as investment banks speculated about potential Fed rate hikes, but it rebounded to $94K, suggesting the price may have temporarily bottomed after recent volatility.
Crypto Bank Sygnum Gets Unicorn Status With $58M Round (CoinDesk): Sygnum, a Switzerland and Singapore-based digital asset bank, achieved unicorn status after raising $58M to support European and Hong Kong expansion, enhanced Bitcoin offerings, and acquisition plans.
Sony’s Layer-2 Blockchain “Soneium” Goes Live (CoinDesk): Sony has launched «Soneium,» a layer-2 blockchain on Ethereum, leveraging Optimism’s OP Stack to connect web2 and web3 audiences while supporting gaming, finance, and entertainment applications.
As the U.S. Dollar Soars, Here Are Europe’s Biggest Winners and Losers (CNBC): The strong U.S. dollar, fueled by higher yields and capital flows, weakens the euro and pound, increasing costs for net importers like Germany and the U.K., while benefiting Norway’s oil exports.
China Will ‘Try Very Hard’ to Slow Yuan’s Fall, UBS’ Wang Says (Bloomberg): UBS says a weaker yuan will offer limited export benefits, as Beijing seeks to slow its decline amid US tariff threats, a strong dollar, and risks of capital outflows.
BOJ Set to Discuss Whether to Raise Rates Next Week (The Wall Street Journal): Deputy Gov. Himino says the Bank of Japan will discuss a potential rate hike on Jan. 23-24, noting inflation trends align with projections. His remarks lifted bond yields, while the yen briefly weakened before recovering.
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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