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Crypto Daybook Americas: USDC Takes January Crown as Bitcoin Looks to Core PCE Data
By Omkar Godbole (All times ET unless indicated otherwise)
The crypto market is treading water and the biggest cryptocurrency, bitcoin, is taking a bull breather. Its upward momentum is getting stifled by Trump’s renewed tariff threats, which are also sending gold prices soaring to record highs and propping up demand for the U.S. dollar.
But there is action in some corners of the market. The VIRTUAL token popped after its recent listing on Upbit, and Hyperliquid’s HYPE token has seen a 3% gain. Litecoin is also making waves, with its perpetual futures open interest on centralized exchanges climbing to 5.19 million LTC, the most since Dec. 9, according to Coinglass. The surge hints at fresh capital flowing into the market, likely fueled by hopes of a spot ETF listing in the U.S.
Speaking of stablecoins, USDC is stealing the spotlight as the star performer this month, boasting a remarkable market cap growth of 21% to $53.12 billion. That’s its best month since May 2021, according to TradingView data. In contrast, USDT, the heavyweight champion of dollar-pegged stablecoins, eked out just a 1% increase. USDC even outperformed bitcoin, which grew a respectable 10%.
According to IntoTheBlock, USDC’s outperformance is likely due to its compliance with Europe’s MiCA regulations, while rivals like USDT face tough headwinds. But don’t count USDT out just yet; its market is starting to bounce back, and the simultaneous growth of USDC is offering a bullish impulse for the crypto market.
As we keep an eye on the macro landscape, the pivotal U.S. core PCE — the Fed’s go-to measure for inflation — is set to be released. Expectations are for a hot headline figure, with core reading, which excludes food and energy, showing positive improvements that might help BTC break out of its dull price action near $104,000.
However, ING is cautioning that the dollar might stay strong into the weekend.
“If we don’t receive any news on Canada and Mexico by the end of today, there’s a risk that the dollar could strengthen further as the market starts to price in a higher chance of tariffs being announced tomorrow,” it wrote. So, stay alert!
What to Watch
Crypto:
Jan. 31: Crypto.com is suspending purchases of cryptocurrencies USDT, WBTC, DAI, PAX, PAXG, PYUSD, CDCETH, CDCSOL, LCRO, and XSGD in the EU to comply with MiCA regulations. Withdrawals will be supported through Q1.
Feb. 2, 8:00 p.m.: Core blockchain Athena hard fork network upgrade (v1.0.14)
Feb. 4: Pepecoin (PEPE) halving. At block 400,000, the reward will drop to 31,250 PEPE.
Feb. 5, 3:00 p.m.: Boba Network’s Holocene hard fork network upgrade for its Ethereum-based layer-2 mainnet.
Feb. 5 (after market close): MicroStrategy (MSTR) Q4 FY 2024 earnings.
Feb. 6, 8:00 a.m.: Shentu Chain network upgrade (v2.14.0).
Feb. 11 (after market close): Exodus Movement (EXOD) Q4 2024 earnings.
Feb. 12 (before market open): Hut 8 (HUT) Q4 2024 earnings.
Feb. 13: CleanSpark (CLSK) Q1 FY 2025 earnings.
Feb. 13 (after market close): Coinbase Global (COIN) Q4 2024 earnings.
Feb. 15: Qtum (QTUM) hard fork network upgrade at block 4,590,000.
Feb. 18 (after market close): Semler Scientific (SMLR) Q4 2024 earnings.
Feb. 20 (after market close): Block (XYZ) Q4 2024 earnings.
Feb. 26: MARA Holdings (MARA) Q4 2024 earnings.
Feb. 27: Riot Platforms (RIOT) Q4 2024 earnings.
March 4: Cipher Mining (CIFR) releases Q4 2024 earnings.
Macro
Jan. 31, 8:30 a.m.: The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) releases December’s Personal Income and Outlays report.
Core PCE Price Index MoM Est. 0.2% vs. Prev. 0.1%.
Core PCE Price Index YoY Est. 2.8% vs. Prev. 2.8%.
PCE Price Index MoM Est. 0.3% vs. Prev. 0.1%.
PCE Price Index YoY Est. 2.6% vs. Prev. 2.4%.
Feb. 2, 8:45 p.m.: China’s Caixin releases January’s Manufacturing PMI report.
Manufacturing PMI Est. 50.5 vs. Prev. 50.5.
Token Events
Governance votes & calls
Compound DAO is voting on an upgrade of its governance contracts from GovernorBravo to OpenZeppelin’s modern Governor implementation.
Balancer DAO is voting whether to initiate a token swap between Balancer DAO and CoW DAO involving 200,000 BAL tokens and around 631,000 COW tokens.
Unlocks
Jan. 31: Optimism (OP) to unlock 2.32% of circulating supply worth $46.39 million.
Feb. 1: Sui (SUI) to unlock about 2.13% of its circulating supply worth $261.91 million.
Feb. 2: Ethena (ENA) to unlock about 1.34% of its circulating supply worth $29.53 million.
Token Listings
Jan. 31: Movement (MOVE), Virtuals Protocol (VIRTUAL) and Sundog (SUNDOG) to be listed on Indodax.
Conferences:
Day 3 of 3: Crypto Peaks 2025 (Palisades, California)
Day 2 of 2: Ethereum Zurich 2025
Day 2 of 2: Plan B Forum (San Salvador, El Salvador)
Day 2 of 3: Crypto Gathering 2025 (Miami Beach, Florida)
Day 2 of 3: CryptoXR 2025 (Auxerre, France)
Day 2 of 4: Oasis Onchain 2025 (Nassau, Bahamas)
Day 2 of 6: The Satoshi Roundtable (Dubai)
Feb. 3: Digital Assets Forum (London)
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: CoinDesk’s Consensus Hong Kong
Feb. 19: Sui Connect: Hong Kong
Feb. 23-March 2: ETHDenver 2025 (Denver, Colorado)
Feb. 25: HederaCon 2025 (Denver)
Derivatives Positioning
TRX, TRUMP and OM registered the biggest increase in perpetual futures open interest. Traders, however, seem to be shorting TRUMP, as evident from the negative cumulative volume delta.
BTC, ETH open interest and CVD are little changed. The BTC CME basis is hovering around 10%.
Flows in Deribit’s options market have been muted, but BTC and ETH calls continue to trade pricier than puts.
Market Movements:
BTC is down 0.29% from 4 p.m. ET Thursday to $104,810.50 (24hrs: -0.47%)
ETH is up 2.39% to $3,324 (24hrs: +3.32%)
CoinDesk 20 is down 0.3% to 3,838.81 (24hrs: +0.28%)
CESR Composite Staking Rate is up 4 bps to 3.07%
BTC funding rate is at 0.0012% (1.2961% annualized) on OKX
DXY is up 0.47% at 108.30
Gold is unchanged at $2,794.77/oz
Silver is up 0.19% at $31.60/oz
Nikkei 225 closed +0.15% to 39,572.49
Hang Seng closed +0.14% to 20,225.11
FTSE is up 0.3% at 8,673.13
Euro Stoxx 50 is up 0.39% at 5,302.75
DJIA closed on Thursday +0.38% to 44,882.13
S&P 500 closed +0.53% to 6,071.17
Nasdaq closed +0.25% to 19,681.75
S&P/TSX Composite Index closed +1.31% to 25,808.25
S&P 40 Latin America closed +2.21% to 2,388.03
U.S. 10-year Treasury is up 2 bps at 4.536%
E-mini S&P 500 futures are up 0.43% at 6,125.75
E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures are up 0.79% at 21,795.50
E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average Index futures are up 0.32% at 45,200.00
Bitcoin Stats:
BTC Dominance: 59.21 (-0.11%)
Ethereum to bitcoin ratio: 0.03127 (0.84%)
Hashrate (seven-day moving average): 781 EH/s
Hashprice (spot): $61.7
Total Fees: 4.97 BTC/ $522,698
CME Futures Open Interest: 176,270 BTC
BTC priced in gold: 37.3 oz
BTC vs gold market cap: 10.60%
Technical Analysis
The chart shows $60 has emerged as a strong resistance for BlackRock’s IBIT exchange-trade fund since December, with bulls consistently failing to establish a foothold above that level.
Such patterns represent bullish exhaustion and often pave the way for minor price pullbacks that shake out weak hands, setting the stage for the next leg higher.
Crypto Equities
MicroStrategy (MSTR): closed on Thursday at $340.09 (-0.34%), up 0.2% at $340.77 in pre-market.
Coinbase Global (COIN): closed at $301.30 (+3.54%), down 0.17% at $300.80 in pre-market.
Galaxy Digital Holdings (GLXY): closed at C$29.33 (+0.83%).
MARA Holdings (MARA): closed at $19.18 (+4.13%), up 0.36% at $19.25 in pre-market.
Riot Platforms (RIOT): closed at $11.90 (+6.06%), up 0.76% at $11.99 in pre-market.
Core Scientific (CORZ): closed at $12.26 (+6.98%), up 3.18% at $12.65 in pre-market.
CleanSpark (CLSK): closed at $10.97 (+6.92%), up 0.55% at $11.03 in pre-market.
CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI): closed at $22.50 (+6.33%), up 3.47% at $23.28 in pre-market.
Semler Scientific (SMLR): closed at $52.15 (+0.13%).
Exodus Movement (EXOD): closed at $61.38 (-31.27%), down 2.23%% at $60.01 in pre-market.
ETF Flows
ETF Flows
Spot BTC ETFs:
Daily net flow: $588.2 million
Cumulative net flows: $40.18 billion
Total BTC holdings ~ 1.18 million.
Spot ETH ETFs
Daily net flow: $67.77 million
Cumulative net flows: $2.73 billion
Total ETH holdings ~ 3.65 million.
Source: Farside Investors
Overnight Flows
Chart of the Day
The MOVE index, which represents an options-based measure of how volatile the U.S. Treasury market is likely to become in the next four weeks, has turned lower.
Declining Treasury market volatility often bodes well for risky assets.
While You Were Sleeping
Bitcoin Steady, Gold Tokens Shine as XAU Hits Record High; Inflation in Tokyo Rises (CoinDesk): President Trump’s tariff threats are a headwind for bitcoin, but derivatives data indicate skepticism toward a major downturn, with traders remaining bullish and growing interest in state-level BTC reserves.
Grayscale Files SEC Proposal to Convert XRP Trust Into ETF (CoinDesk): On Thursday, NYSE Arca filed a Form 19b-4 with the SEC to list shares of Grayscale’s XRP Trust as an ETF.
VIRTUAL Surges 28% as Upbit Listing Exposes the Token to Altcoin Savvy South Koreans (CoinDesk): The price of VIRTUAL, the native token of Virtuals Protocol, a decentralized platform on the Base blockchain for creating AI agents, surged after Upbit said it would list the token.
Trump Is Getting the Lower Interest Rates He Demanded From Everyone but the Fed (Reuters): Despite Trump’s calls for rate cuts, the Fed remains hawkish, while the Bank of Canada, Bank of England and European Central Bank are easing monetary policy.
Trump Says 25% Tariffs on Mexico and Canada May Not Include Oil (CNBC): Trump confirmed on Thursday that 25% tariffs on Mexican and Canadian imports will start Feb. 1 but left oil uncertain.
Japan’s Economy Faces Fallout From Trump’s China Tariff Threats (Bloomberg): Japan’s chief economist, Tomoko Hayashi, said a U.S.-China trade war could hurt her country’s economy, though she believes firms are better prepared now than during Trump’s first term.
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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