News
The opening shot is being been fired in the new Congress' crypto push with a plan for a Tuesday introduction of a stablecoin oversight bill from Senator Bill Hagerty. The legislation would set up a U.S. regulatory framework for issuing the dollar-denominated tokens, according to a person familiar with the effort.
The Tennessee Republican, who had shepherded a stablecoin effort in the previous session, is now pushing a bill with the backing of the Senate Banking Committee's new chairman, Tim Scott, and the head of its digital assets subcommittee, Cynthia Lummis. That's a big difference from the 2024 effort that couldn't break through the crypto roadblock maintained by previous committee chief Sherrod Brown, the Ohio Democrat who was defeated in November's elections.
Hagerty's bill, which he's calling the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation in U.S. Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act, would define payment stablecoins and set up the procedures for issuing them, including establishing the Federal Reserve as watchdog for the big bank issuers and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency as regulator for nonbank issuers of more than $10 billion, the person said. The legislation additionally outlines the reserves issuers would have to maintain.
State regulators would be in place for the smaller issuers, and for larger firms who can seek waivers.
The distinction between federal and state regulators had been the main sticking point when Democrats and Republicans sought to work out a compromise bill on stablecoins in the previous Congress, and any new version will still have to thread a bipartisan needle. It's unclear whether Hagerty's plan, of which Senator Lummis said she'd be working "to get this bill to the president’s desk," will draw Democrat support with its lighter regulatory approach.
The House of Representatives had approved a stablecoin oversight bill in the previous session, but it met resistance in getting a matching Senate version, which had been sought by Hagerty. He's set to introduce the new legislation today, according to news first reported by Bloomberg News and confirmed by Hagerty in a posting on social media site X.
Stablecoins are designed as steady cryptocurrency tokens whose price is linked to other assets, usually the dollar. The global stablecoin leader is Tether (USDT), and its U.S. rival is issuer Circle (USDC).
Later on Tuesday, President Donald Trump's crypto czar, David Sacks, is set to lead a press conference with congressional leaders to outline their crypto strategy. This stablecoin effort is expected to be raised at that event.
Blockchain firm Neptune Digital Assets (NDA) said it bought 1 million dogecoin (DOGE) tokens through what the company said was a “strategic derivative purchase” on Dec. 27.
The Vancouver, Canada-based company, which focuses on cryptocurrency and blockchain infrastructure, is down significantly on the investment. The memecoin has dropped 27% to 27 cents since the purchase.
Neptune Digital Assets also acquired 20 bitcoin (BTC) at an average price of $99,833 per coin, bringing its total BTC holdings to 376 coins worth $37.2 million.
While many companies have made buying bitcoin a strategic objection, Neptune is only the second publicly traded firm to invest in the meme-inspired DOGE. The first, Spirit Blockchain (SPIR), announced in November that it acquired Dogecoin Portfolio Holding in a move that made it a major participant in the DOGE ecosystem.
“Neptune will be acquiring additional assets, leveraging our enhanced purchasing power through the Sygnum credit line,” CEO Cale Moodie said in the statement. “With a strong focus on BTC, these initial acquisitions show Neptune’s commitment to its growth strategy while meticulously managing leverage risk and debt levels.”
The announcement comes just a week after major asset manager Bitwise filed an S-1 document with the Securities and Exchange Commission for an exchange-traded fund tied to the price of DOGE.
Ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market value, crashed hard Monday as prospects of a U.S.-led trade war weighed on risk assets. Data shows investors likely bought the dip, snapping up coins at lower prices.
According to analytics firm IntoTheBlock, ether worth almost $1 billion left centralized exchanges Monday, the highest single-day net outflow since January 2024. "This indicates traders took advantage of the drop to accumulate ETH," IntoTheBlock said in a Telegram broadcast.
Ether's price crashed as low as nearly $2,000 on some exchanges as market liquidity deteriorated and dealers scrambled to offload futures. While prices have recovered to $2,800, sentiment remains bearish, with data from UltraSound.Money, pointing to an unwinding of the Merge's deflationary effect on ETH.
Ether ETFs See Record Volume
Ether exchange-traded funds (ETFs) experienced record trading volume on Monday amid a volatile day in markets after President Donald Trump imposed and then paused tariffs on Canada and Mexico.
Traders moved around $1.5 billion worth of shares of the nine ETFs, Bloomberg data shows. Half of that volume was captured by BlackRock's iShares Ethereum Trust (ETHA).
Overall flows, however, weren’t out of the norm. According to Farside Investors, the ETFs attracted $83.6 million of net inflows on Monday, with the majority of it going into Fidelity’s Ethereum Fund (FETH). ETHA, still the largest fund out of the nine ETFs, saw no net inflows on Monday.
Late in the U.S. day, Eric Trump, the son of President Donald Trump, encouraged his followers on X to add more ether, claiming it is a good time to buy. The tweet added to the already crazy volatility of the day, with ETH's price spiking to nearly $2,900. At press time, ETH was changing hands at $2,780, ahead 3.5% from 24 hours prior.
Coinbase (COIN) users lost over $65 million to social engineering attacks in the past two months with an estimated $300 million lost to such attacks annually, crypto sleuth ZachXBT said in an X post Monday.
The actual figure lost might be higher, because the amount doesn't include unreported cases, ZachXBT said.
Coinbase has not publicly commented on the matter. When asked for a comment, it highlighted a primer on identifying and avoiding social engineering scams posted to its blog on Monday.
Scammers utilize stolen personal data to deceive users by sending fake emails that mimic Coinbase's official communications, including false case IDs prompting users to transfer funds to scammer-controlled wallets, ZachXBT said.
“Scammers clone the Coinbase site nearly 1:1 and allow the scammers to send different prompts to the target via spoofed emails using panels,” he noted. “The two main groups conducting these scams are skids from the Com and threat actors located in India both primarily targeting US customers.”
“A Coinbase employee told people on X to stop using VPNs to avoid being flagged as suspicious. Meanwhile, threat actors will explicitly block VPNs from phishing sites,” ZachXBT wrote in the now-viral post. “This shows Coinbase’s failure to diagnose the actual problem.”
ZachXBT advised Coinbase to enhance security by making phone number inputs optional, creating a restricted account type for new users, and improving community education on scam prevention.
UPDATE (Feb. 4, 15:57 UTC): Adds Coinbase's blog post on the topic in third paragraph.
CoinDesk Indices presents its daily market update, highlighting the performance of leaders and laggards in the CoinDesk 20 Index.
The CoinDesk 20 is currently trading at 3366.83, down 0.8% (-28.06) since 4 p.m. ET on Monday.
Three of 20 assets are trading higher.
Leaders: ETH (+3.5%) and SUI (+0.9%).
Laggards: UNI (-4.2%) and DOT (-4.1%).
The CoinDesk 20 is a broad-based index traded on multiple platforms in several regions globally.
Almost half of the state governments in the U.S. are either on a path toward putting some of their money into crypto or already have, and much of a suddenly booming interest in tying their financial futures to the digital-assets markets has come after U.S. President Donald Trump showed support for a national stockpile of digit assets.
In the surge of crypto legislative or financial efforts at the state level, 21 states are investing or looking into investing — generally in the industry's leading token, bitcoin (BTC), and sometimes also in less volatile stablecoins that are designed to match the value of the U.S. dollar, according to a CoinDesk analysis. With states such as Arizona, Pennsylvania, Utah and Texas already digging into legislation to open public funds to buy cryptocurrencies, such initiatives may outpace the effort in Congress targeting a so-called Strategic Bitcoin Reserve.
Sixteen state legislatures are looking at bills to either establish digital assets stockpiles or to allow their state retirement funds to be partially invested in crypto, most of them introduced in recent weeks. Officials in another three states are engaged in serious discussions about joining in, and the money managers for two states — Michigan and Wisconsin — have already dipped parts of their public employees' retirement portfolios into crypto exchange-traded funds (ETFs).
If the states begin pouring portions of their public funds into bitcoin and other digital assets, it would potentially lock down billions of dollars of the tokens for extended periods, boosting the value of the assets still openly circulating. Another effect: The states are potentially setting up millions of people to have personal stakes in the health of the crypto sector — whether they want to or not.
In several of the proposals, governments are looking to follow in the footsteps of Michigan and Wisconsin in pushing parts of their retirement funds and state pension investments into digital assets. Retired school teachers, law enforcement officers and other public employees will watch some of their financial security become dependent on the fluctuations of the crypto markets.
Other pieces of legislation would instruct state treasurers to spend as much as 10% of their public funds on a strategic reserve, with some specifying that qualifying digital assets must have at least a $500 billion market cap, leaving only bitcoin currently meeting the mark.
Arizona and Utah are building a lead after getting their efforts passed by legislative committees, but other states weighing some version of a crypto bill also include Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Massachusetts, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Wyoming. Others, such as Alabama, Florida and Kentucky are considering proposals from state officials or on the verge of pursuing legislation. The states interested in digital assets reserves are predominantly Republican-majority in their politics, and the reasons the lawmakers say they're backing the bills include investment diversity and embracing technological innovation.
The amount put away by the states could eventually be overshadowed by the U.S. government's own reserve, if that effort comes to pass. President Trump, in his wider executive order on U.S. crypto policy, called for his administration to "evaluate the potential creation and maintenance of a national digital asset stockpile." The order suggested it may be built from government seizures of crypto in criminal cases.
The idea had initially been pitched by Senator Cynthia Lummis, the Wyoming Republican who devotes much of her political bandwidth to supporting crypto and was named as the first chair of the Senate Banking Committee's digital assets subcommittee. Her bill to set up a U.S. reserve calls for the country to obtain about $20 billion worth of the tokens in the first year and to get another 200,000 in each of the next four years, until the U.S. is eventually holding a million bitcoin.
While Lummis' pitch has called it a "Strategic Bitcoin Reserve," it's not — like the petroleum reserve — designed for deployment when economic conditions warrant it. It's structured more as a long-term investment, requiring the U.S. to hold the assets for at least 20 years.
That would be almost 5% of the eventual, finite supply of global bitcoin going untouched for at least two decades. Combined with whatever the states seek to stockpile, U.S. governments would secure a significant percentage of the asset, in addition to the towering reserves held by the U.S. ETF issuers such as BlackRock and Grayscale and corporate investors led by MicroStrategy.
The states' interest in bitcoin potentially lands Satoshi Nakamoto's ultimate exercise of financial outsiders firmly in the realm of the insiders, adding the asset to the core functions of government. The Bitcoin white paper meant to establish a system of transactions outside of the need of financial-firm intermediaries or government oversight.
States setting up bitcoin funds managed in part by new laws could become some of the most stable of the industry's institutional investors. And naming bitcoin as a "strategic reserve" puts the digital tokens on par with gold and oil as economic mainstays, despite the very different nature of cryptocurrencies and their practical weaknesses as an inflation hedge.
From the perspective of their citizens or public employees, states that grab crypto stakes will come away with two potential outcomes: Millions of people will enjoy more comfortable and well-funded retirements or public services; or millions of people will watch a crypto crash eat into the safety net they're counting on.
It could be "disastrous for tens of millions of retirees if government officials gambled with state pension funds to buy bitcoin or crypto," said Dennis Kelleher, CEO of Better Markets, a Washington-based advocacy group that's critical of the dangers of digital assets.
He called the idea of a government bitcoin stockpile "a brazen attempt by a handful of crypto billionaires and their political allies to take money out of Main Street taxpayers’ pockets to create artificial demand for a highly volatile product that suffers from boom-bust cycles, is full of fraudulent trading and pricing in unregulated markets, and has no socially legitimate use, but is loved by criminals."
Wagers on the prediction site Polymarket have put the odds of one of the states beginning to set aside bitcoin reserves before the end of this month at 11%, and the chances of the U.S. setting up such a reserve this year at the national level are at 45%.
It may already be a trend that governments around the world can't ignore.
"We anticipate more nation-states, central banks, sovereign wealth funds, and government treasuries will look to establish strategic positions in bitcoin," Fidelity Digital Assets researchers predicted in a look-ahead report for 2025. "Facing challenges such as debilitating inflation, currency debasement, and increasingly crushing fiscal deficits, not making any bitcoin allocation could become more of a risk to nations than making one."
The Chicago Mercantile Exchange Group (CME) has revealed that in the first month of the year, its crypto contracts saw an average daily volume (ADV) of 198,000 with a notional value of $13.6 billion.
The CME detailed in a press release on Tuesday that year-over-year, its cryptocurrency ADV rose 180% as its micro bitcoin (BTC) futures registered a 255% rise, while its micro ether (ETH) futures contracts jumped 223%.
While the exchange’s bitcoin and ether futures contracts have a notional value of 5 BTC and 50 ETH, respectively, their micro contracts represent just 0.1 of each cryptocurrency, allowing for more precise trading and risk management given their smaller size.
On top of its full-sized and micro contracts for the top two cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, the CME also offers traders options on these contracts. These options enable more complex strategies to fine-tune their risk exposure.
Options contracts provide traders with the right, but not the obligation, to buy or sell cryptocurrency futures at a predetermined price on or before a specific date.
The futures exchange recorded a total ADV of 25.7 million contracts in January.
Just last week, the CME Group announced it’s eyeing the introduction of options on Bitcoin Friday Futures (BFF) from Feb. 24, although these are pending regulatory approval.
Hong Kong's Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) is looking to increase its headcount, with more than half the added roles dedicated to regulating crypto, according to a two-year budget plan presented to the Legislative Council, the region's legislative body known as Legco.
Despite freezing its headcount in three of the five financial years since 2020, it is looking to add another 15 people, eight of whom will be dedicated to crypto as the regulator furthers its commitment to regulate the industry.
"Eight of the proposed new headcount is for enhancing the staffing support for virtual asset regulatory regimes, market surveillance and enforcement investigations," the budget presented on Monday said.
The growth comes as Hong Kong's administration faces a budget deficit that is forecast to reach $HK100 million ($13 million) this year and is likely to announce budget cuts later this month, the South China Morning Post reported.
In June 2023, Hong Kong initiated a new licensing regime for crypto companies. Last year it said it would also license stablecoin providers. The country's stablecoin bill is still being discussed.
Travala, the travel website that accepts payments in cryptocurrency, has teamed up with trivago (TRVG), adding its inventory of 2.2 million properties to the hotel search platform.
When trivago users select a Travala hotel they will be redirected to the website, where they will have the option of paying in bitcoin (BTC), ether (ETH) and dozens of other cryptocurrencies, the company said in an emailed statement.
Travala has already secured similar tie-ups with travel search sites Skyscanner in September last year and Kayak in November 2023. The agreement with trivago adds to the real-world uses for cryptocurrencies, with hotel bookings now available as well as payments for flights.
The Singapore-based platform founded in 2017 also allows users to earn rewards in bitcoin or Travala's native token AVA, which has dropped more than 50% this year after touching a three-year high of more than $3 on Dec. 13.
Travala, which is backed by the world's largest crypto exchange, Binance, is in talks with potential buyers after receiving a takeover approach late last year, CoinDesk reported last month.
Kayak-owner Booking.com (BKNG) was one previous suitor that decided to pass on a potential acquisition, two people with knowledge of the matter said.
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
