Crypto Daybook Americas: Bitcoin Whipsaws as Risk Assets Get Feel-Good Boost

The past 24 hours have been among the most hectic in the crypto industry for years, and this was reflected in Thursday’s bitcoin (BTC) price, which whipsawed 2% to 3% multiple times in a matter of minutes. Still, it managed to stay above the psychological $100,000 level and is is currently around $105,000.

President Trump’s rhetoric is continuing to help weaken the dollar, which generally boosts risk assets such as cryptocurrencies. The DXY index, a measure of the U.S. currency against a basket of major trade partners, has dropped to the lowest since Dec. 17, so that should give risk-on assets a feel-good boost. U.S. bond yields and WTI crude oil are also heading down, with oil below $75 a barrel, the lowest in two weeks.

On the other side of the world, the Bank of Japan (BoJ) delivered on its promise with another interest-rate increase, taking the policy rate to 0.50%, the highest in more than 16 years. That followed a very hot inflation print, with headline inflation of 3.6% from the previous year, the fastest since January 2023. The question is whether we will get a second iteration of the yen carry trade unwind that occurred in August of last year. Time will tell. Stay alert!

What to Watch

• Crypto:
  • 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) Q4 FY 2024 earnings report.
  • 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.
• Macro
  • Jan. 24, 4:00 a.m.: S&P Global releases January 2025 eurozone HCOB Purchasing Managers’ Index (Flash) reports.
    • Composite PMI Est. 49.7 vs. Prev. 49.6.
    • Manufacturing PMI Est. 45.3 vs. Prev. 45.1.
    • Services PMI Est. 51.5 vs. Prev. 51.6.
  • Jan. 24, 4:30 a.m.: S&P Global releases January 2025’s U.K. Purchasing Managers’ Index (Flash) reports.
    • Composite PMI Est. 50 vs. Prev. 50.4.
    • Manufacturing PMI Est. 47 vs. Prev. 47.
    • Services PMI Est. 50.9 vs. Prev. 51.1.
  • Jan. 24, 9:45 a.m.: S&P Global releases January 2025’s U.S. Purchasing Managers’ Index (Flash) reports.
    • Composite PMI Prev. 55.4.
    • Manufacturing PMI Est. 49.6 vs. Prev. 49.4.
    • Services PMI Est. 56.5 vs. Prev. 56.8.
  • Jan. 24, 10:00 a.m.: The University of Michigan releases January U.S. consumer sentiment data.
    • Index of Consumer Sentiment (Final) Est. 73.2 vs. Prev. 74.

Token Events

• Governance votes & calls
  • Frax DAO is discussing a $5 million investment in World Liberty Financial (WLFI), the crypto project backed by the family of President Donald Trump.
  • Jan. 24: Arbitrum BoLD’s activation vote deadline. BoLD allows anyone to participate in validation and defend against malicious claims to an Arbitrum chain’s state.
  • Jan. 24: Hedera (HBAR) is hosting a community call at 11 a.m.
• Unlocks
  • Jan. 31: Optimism (OP) to unlock 2.32% of circulating supply worth $52.9 million.
  • Jan. 31: Jupiter (JUP) to unlock 41.5% of circulating supply worth $626 million.

Conferences:

• Day 12 of 12: Swiss WEB3FEST Winter Edition 2025 (Zug, Zurich, St. Moritz, Davos)
• Day 5 of 5: World Economic Forum Annual Meeting (Davos-Klosters, Switzerland)
• Day 1 of 2: 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. 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)
• Feb. 25: HederaCon 2025 (Denver)

Token TalkBy Shaurya Malwa

• A humorous new decentralized autonomous organization, FartStrategy (FSTR) DAO, is investing user funds into FARTCOIN.
• The DAO is leveraging borrowed SOL to acquire the token, offering investors a chance to gain exposure to its price movements through FSTR.
• If FSTR trades below its FARTCOIN backing, token holders can vote to dissolve the DAO, redeeming their share of FARTCOIN proportionally after settling any outstanding debts.
• The VINE memecoin jumped to a $200 million market capitalization less than 48 hours after issuance.
• It was launched on the Solana blockchain by Rus Yusupov, one of the co-founders of the original Vine app, and introduced as a nostalgic tribute to the eponymous platform known for its six-second looping videos. Vine was a significant cultural phenomenon before closing in 2017.
• There have been recent discussions around potentially reviving the app, with Yusupov and technocrat Elon Musk expressing interest in its return.

Derivatives Positioning

• TRX leads growth in perpetual futures open interest in major coins.
• Funding rates for majors remain below an annualized 10%, a sign the market isn’t overly speculative despite BTC trading near record highs on optimism about Trump’s crypto policies.
• BTC and ETH call skews have firmed up, with block flows featuring outright longs in higher strike BTC calls and a bull call spread in ETH, involving calls at strikes $5K and $6K.

Market Movements:

• BTC is up 2 % from 4 p.m. ET Thursday to $105,450.57 (24hrs: +3.43%)
• ETH is up 4.96% at $3,409.62 (24hrs: +6.18%)
• CoinDesk 20 is up 2.4% to 3,988.16 (24hrs: +4.79%)
• CESR Composite Staking Rate is up 1 bp to 3.16%
• BTC funding rate is at 0.0069% (7.58% annualized) on Binance

• DXY is down 0.48% at 107.53
• Gold is up 0.68% at $2,775.28/oz
• Silver is up 1.21% to $30.86/oz
• Nikkei 225 closed unchanged at 39,931.98
• Hang Seng closed +1.86% to 20,066.19
• FTSE is down 0.33% at 8,537.12
• Euro Stoxx 50 is up 0.73% at 5,255.47
• DJIA closed on Thursday +0.92% to 44,565.07
• S&P 500 closed +0.53 at 6,118.71
• Nasdaq closed +0.22% at 20,053.68
• S&P/TSX Composite Index closed +0.48% at 25,434.08
• S&P 40 Latin America closed +0.57% at 2,310.35
• U.S. 10-year Treasury was down 13 bps at 4.64%
• E-mini S&P 500 futures are down 0.13% at 6,143.75
• E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures are down 0.56% at 22,005.50
• E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average Index futures are unchanged at 44,709.00

Bitcoin Stats:

• BTC Dominance: 58.51 (-0.11%)
• Ethereum to bitcoin ratio: 0.032 (0.68%)
• Hashrate (seven-day moving average): 784 EH/s
• Hashprice (spot): $61.0
• Total Fees: 6.8 BTC/ $104,070
• CME Futures Open Interest: 191,645
• BTC priced in gold: 38.1 oz
• BTC vs gold market cap: 10.83%

Technical AnalysisETH’s daily chart. (TradingView/CoinDesk)

• Ether seems have chalked out a falling wedge pattern, characterized by two converging trendlines, representing a series of lower highs and lower lows.
• The converging nature of trendlines indicates that sellers are slowly losing grip.
• A breakout is said to represent a bullish trend reversal.

Crypto Equities

• MicroStrategy (MSTR): closed on Thursday at $373.12 (-1.11%), up 2.55% at $382.62 in pre-market.
• Coinbase Global (COIN): closed at $296.01 (+0.05%), up 2.16% at $302.39 in pre-market.
• Galaxy Digital Holdings (GLXY): closed at C$33.94 (+3.44%)
• MARA Holdings (MARA): closed at $19.95 (+1.32%), up 1.8% at $20.31 in pre-market.
• Riot Platforms (RIOT): closed at $12.99 (-1.14%), up 2.62% at $13.33 in pre-market.
• Core Scientific (CORZ): closed at $16.34 (+2.32%), up 1.04% at $16.51 in pre-market.
• CleanSpark (CLSK): closed at $11.41 (+2.42%), up 2.19% at $11.67 in pre-market.
• CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI): closed at $25.65 (+0.47%), up 1.75% at $26.10 in pre-market.
• Semler Scientific (SMLR): closed at $61.15 (-1.55%), down 10.89% at $54.49 in pre-market.
• Exodus Movement (EXOD): closed at $44 (+7.32%), up 0.75% at $44.33 in pre-market.

ETF FlowsSpot BTC ETFs:

• Daily net flow: $188.7 million
• Cumulative net flows: $39.42 billion
• Total BTC holdings ~ 1.169 million.

Spot ETH ETFs

• Daily net flow: -$14.9 million
• Cumulative net flows: $2.79 billion
• Total ETH holdings ~ 3.663 million.

Source: Farside Investors

Overnight FlowsChart of the DayUSDT and USDC market caps. (TradingView/CoinDesk)

• The market capitalization of Tether’s USDT, the world’s largest dollar-pegged stablecoin, has flattened near $138 billion.
• The USDC supply continues to increase and has risen to nearly $52 billion this week, the highest since September 2022.

While You Were Sleeping

• Bitcoin Steady Near $104K After Bank of Japan Delivers Hawkish Rate Hike (CoinDesk): Bitcoin held steady above $104,000 in early Asian hours Friday despite the Bank of Japan’s rate hike as markets eyed President Trump’s Thursday executive order on crypto and potential U.S. policy changes.
• Trump Issues Crypto Executive Order to Pave U.S. Digital Assets Path (CoinDesk): President Trump issued a pro-crypto executive order, directing the creation of a digital asset framework, banning CBDC development and considering a national digital asset reserve.
• Vitalik Buterin Calls for Added Focus on Ether as Part of the Network’s Scaling Plans (CoinDesk): In a Thursday post, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin outlined strategies to boost the value of ether including using it as collateral, implementing fee-burning incentives and increasing temporary transaction data called blobs.
• Japan Hikes Rates, Solidifying Exit From Rock-Bottom Borrowing Costs (Bloomberg): The Bank of Japan raised its key rate by 25 basis points to 0.5% on Friday, the highest in 17 years, strengthening the yen and lifting 10-year bond yields to 1.23%.
• U.S. Stocks at Most Expensive Relative to Bonds Since Dotcom Era (Financial Times): Stocks in the S&P 500 hit record valuations, with the equity risk premium turning negative for the first time since 2002 driven by soaring demand for dominant tech companies.
• Trump 2.0 Is Going Well for China So Far. Can the Honeymoon Last? (CNN): In a Thursday interview, President Trump called tariffs a “tremendous power” but suggested deals could avert tougher measures. Beijing cautiously welcomed the reprieve, eyeing negotiations while bracing for future tensions.

In the Ether