Crypto Daybook Americas: Bitcoin Bulls Lose Momentum Before Bessent Confirmation Hearing

By Omkar Godbole (All times ET unless indicated otherwise)

The crypto market has had a bullish 24 hours, thanks to Wednesday's soft U.S. core inflation print that alleviated hawkish Fed concerns. The momentum, however, has slowed.

With the inflation data out of the way, crypto traders are refocusing on President-elect Donald Trump's swearing-in on Jan. 20 and possible pro-crypto action on the first day. Some expect bitcoin to set new highs by then, while others are penciling in at least 10% price swings in XRP, SOL, ETH and BTC.

On Polymarket, the probability of the U.S. holding BTC as a part of a strategic reserve has increased to 50% for the first time.

Bitwise, a San Francisco-based crypto asset management company, said on X that it provided information about bitcoin ETFs to a nation-state, adding weight to the sovereign BTC adoption narrative.

Speculation is rife that SEC commissioners Hester Peirce and Mark Uyeda could rekindle crypto policy as early as next week.

That said, don't overlook the importance and market-moving ability of Treasury nominee Scott Bessent's confirmation hearing in front of the Senate Finance Committee that kicks off at 10:30 a.m. in Washington. Bessent will likely face scrutiny on various topics, including dollar policy, tariffs and fiscal sustainability.

In released remarks, Bessent said he wants the 2017 tax cuts to become permanent and ensure the dollar remains a dominant global reserve currency. He also said tariffs are a valuable negotiating tool.

According to ING, the dollar could rally if Bessent highlights the supposedly inflationary tariffs as a key tool. A renewed uptick in the currency and Treasury yields may slow BTC's gains, potentially injecting volatility in risk assets in general. Stay alert!

What to Watch

CryptoJan. 17: Oral arguments at the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in KalshiEX LLC v. CFTC, where the CFTC is appealing the district court's Sep. 12, 2024 ruling favoring Kalshi's Congressional Control Contracts.Jan. 23: First deadline for a decision by the SEC on NYSE Arca's Dec. 3 proposal to list and trade shares of Grayscale Solana Trust (GSOL), a closed-end trust, as an ETF.Jan. 25: First deadline for SEC decisions on proposals for four new 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.MacroJan. 16, 8:30 a.m.: The U.S. Department of Labor releases the Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report for the week ended Jan. 11. Initial Jobless Claims Est. 210K vs. Prev. 201K.Jan. 16, 10:30 a.m.: President-elect Donald Trump’s Treasury Secretary nominee, Scott Bessent, will testify before aSenate Committee during his confirmation hearing. Livestream link.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 & callsThe Aave community is discussing a strategy to scale its GHO stablecoin by deploying a new revenue stream via bitcoin mining. It would use capital from the GHO treasury to purchase hardware.Balancer DAO will vote on whether to deploy Balancer v3 on the Arbitrum blockchain. Voting starts Jan. 16 and ends Jan. 20.UnlocksJan. 16: Arbitrum (ARB) to unlock 2.2% of its circulating supply, worth $68 million.Jan. 18: Ondo (ONDO) to unlock 134% of its circulating supply, worth $2.19 billion.Jan. 21: Fasttoken (FTN) to unlock 4.6% of circulating supply worth $76 million.Token LaunchesJan. 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 11 of 14: Starknet, an Ethereum layer 2, is holding its Winter Hackathon (online).Day 4 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 2025Jan. 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 Oliver Knight

Cryptocurrency exchange Kraken has experienced a spike in ether (ETH) inflows after a whale deposited $67 million worth of the token on Thursday.The wallet in question withdrew a total of 217,513 ETH ($350 million) from Kraken and Coinbase over a 10-day period in 2022 at an average price of $1,611. With ether currently trading at $3,330, the trader has made a total profit of $354 million, Lookonchain reports.Coinbase's (COIN) derivatives exchange has listed perpetual swap contracts for AERO, BEAM, DRIFT and S. All tokens are up between 4% and 7% respectively.Artificial intelligence (AI) agent tokens shrugged off last week's drop with a significant move to the upside. Virtuals protocol (VIRTUAL) is up 31% in the past 24 hours while AI16Z is up 13%, both outperforming the CoinDesk20 (CD20) index which has risen by 5.7% in 24-hours.Litecoin is also one of the day's top performers after exchange-traded fund (ETF) analyst Eric Balchunas said that the Litecoin S-1 ETF application had received comments back from the SEC, potentially paving the way for a spot LTC ETF.

Derivatives Positioning

LTC has emerged as the best-performing major coin in the past 24 hours, with prices rising by 16%. The surge is accompanied by a 21% increase in futures open interest and a positive Cumulative Volume Delta (CVD) indicator, suggesting strong net buying pressure.HBAR and XRP have seen 10% jumps in open interest with positive CVDs. Front-end BTC and ETH options no longer show a bias for puts, realigning with bullish long-term sentiment. Key flows on Deribit and Paradigm featured a BTC bull call spread involving $102K and $110K strikes and a bear call spread in ETH, involving the March 28 expiry options at $3.5K and $4.5K strikes.

Market Movements:

BTC is down 0.47% from 4 p.m. ET Wednesday at $99,217.43 (24hrs: +0.64%)ETH is down 2.46% at $3,334.68 (24hrs: +3.22%)CoinDesk 20 is up 0.2% at 3,752.68 (24hrs: +5.68%)Ether staking yield is down 2 bps at 3.1%BTC funding rate is at 0.006% (6.52% annualized) on BinanceDXY is unchanged at at 109.13Gold is up 0.94% at $2,737.90/ozSilver is up 1.85% at $31.90/ozNikkei 225 closed +0.33% to 38,572.60Hang Seng closed +1.23% at 19,522.89FTSE is up 0.82% at 8,369.48Euro Stoxx 50 is up 1.24% at 5,094.68DJIA closed on Wednesday +1.65% to 43,221.55S&P 500 closed +1.84% at 5,949.91Nasdaq closed +2.45% at 19,511.23S&P/TSX Composite Index closed +0.82% at 24,789.3S&P 40 Latin America closed +2.49% at 2,262.81U.S. 10-year Treasury is up 1 bp at 4.67%E-mini S&P 500 futures are up 0.33% at 6,009.00E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures are up 0.48% at 21,504.00E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average Index futures are unchanged at 43,501.00

Bitcoin Stats:

BTC Dominance: 57.66Ethereum to bitcoin ratio: 0.033Hashrate (seven-day moving average): 801 EH/sHashprice (spot): $56.8Total Fees: $739,760/ 7.5 BTCCME Futures Open Interest: 178,810 BTCBTC priced in gold: 36.5 ozBTC vs gold market cap: 10.40%

Technical Analysis

BTC's daily chart with Ichimoku Cloud. (TradingView/CoinDesk)

BTC is probing dual resistance at around $100K, marked by the descending trendline from record highs and the Ichimoku cloud.A breakout may motivate momentum traders to join the market, accelerating price gains.Crossovers above the cloud are said to represent a bullish shift in momentum.

Crypto Equities

MicroStrategy (MSTR): closed on Wednesday at $360.62 (+5.39%), down 1% at $357 in pre-market.Coinbase Global (COIN): closed at $274.93 (+7.66%), down 0.53% at $273.48 in pre-market.Galaxy Digital Holdings (GLXY): closed at C$27.93 (+5%)MARA Holdings (MARA): closed at $18.15 (+4.55%), down 0.55% at $18.05 in pre-market.Riot Platforms (RIOT): closed at $13.46 (+%), down 0.52% at $13.39 in pre-market.Core Scientific (CORZ): closed at $14.53 (+4.46%), down 0.21% at $14.50 in pre-market.CleanSpark (CLSK): closed at $11.2 (+8.21%), down 0.89% at $11.10 in pre-market.CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI): closed at $24.57 (+6.5%), down 1.14% at $24.29 in pre-market.Semler Scientific (SMLR): closed at $56.11 (+2.15%), unchanged in pre-market.Exodus Movement (EXOD): closed at $35.36 (+6.92%), unchanged in pre-market.

ETF Flows

Spot BTC ETFs:

Daily net flow: $755.1 millionCumulative net flows: $36.48 billionTotal BTC holdings ~ 1.133 million.

Spot ETH ETFs

Daily net flow: $59.7 millionCumulative net flows: $2.477 billionTotal ETH holdings ~ 3.550 million.

Source: Farside Investors as of Jan. 15.

Overnight Flows

Chart of the Day

BTC's annualized funding rates on major exchanges. (Velo Data)

Bitcoin funding rates on major exchanges, excluding Hyperliquid, remain well below early 2024 levels and the highs seen in December, when the BTC price broke above $100,000 for the first time.In other words, it's cheaper to be long right now than last month and a year ago.

While You Were Sleeping

XRP’s Bullish Momentum Strongest Since January 2018 as Futures Open Interest Hits Record High (CoinDesk): XRP has soared 50% this month to over $3, experiencing its strongest rally since 2018.Monthly Crypto Trading on CEXs Hits All-Time High in December: CCData (Cointelegraph): December set a new record for crypto trading, with $11.3 trillion in spot and derivatives volume on centralized exchanges.Nomura-Backed Crypto Firm Komainu Raises $75 Million in Bitcoin (Bloomberg): Komainu, a crypto custodian backed by Nomura, secured $75 million in bitcoin from Blockstream to expand globally, adopt tokenization tools, and create a bitcoin treasury.UK Economy Returns to Growth, Faces Uncertain Outlook (The Wall Street Journal): The U.K. economy inched up 0.1% in November, missing forecasts, as inflation and high borrowing costs strained growth. Chinese Citizens’ Doubts Grow Over Official Growth Claims (Financial Times): China is set to report 5% growth for 2024, but skepticism abounds as weak consumer demand, layoffs and a real estate slump weigh heavily on investment, consumption and daily life.Bank of Korea Leaves Rates Unchanged in a Surprise Move, Warns GDP Growth ‘Highly Likely’ to Miss Forecasts (CNBC): South Korea’s central bank held its benchmark rate at 3%, surprising analysts expecting a cut, citing economic uncertainty. It warned of weaker growth in 2024 and 2025. Stocks and the won rose following the decision.

In the Ether

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