Bitcoin is back in the driver’s seat, and this time it brought friends. After chopping sideways for days, Bitcoin (BTC) finally punched higher, blasting through its recent range and making a run toward the $94,000–$96,000 resistance zone. Strong inflows into U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs, cooler inflation data, and a generally friendlier regulatory mood helped push BTC above $96,000 at one point, marking its strongest day in weeks and lifting total crypto market cap to roughly $3.2–$3.3 trillion. But this wasn’t just a Bitcoin-only show. As BTC gathered momentum, traders started rotating into the rest of the market. Privacy coins and older alt names suddenly looked very 2021 again: Dash (DASH) ripped more than 45% in a short squeeze that liquidated crowded shorts, and Monero saw renewed speculative interest as privacy plays outperformed. Zcash (ZEC) caught a quieter but important tailwind too, after the SEC closed a years-long probe into the Zcash Foundation without taking action, sending ZEC up double digits on relief and regulatory clarity. Ethereum (ETH) didn’t grab headlines for its price, but it did for its growth. The network is minting new wallets at a record clip — around 327,000 a day — as upgrades and heavy stablecoin activity drive user adoption. Behind the scenes, big players are going all-in: Bitmine Immersion Technologies now controls roughly 4.17 million ETH, with 1.53 million staked, as it marches toward a target of 5% of total ETH supply. That consolidation helps explain a broader 2025–2026 trend flagged by Wintermute: liquidity and capital are increasingly clustering around Bitcoin and Ethereum (ETH), with many altcoins seeing shorter, weaker rallies and persistent outflows since the October 2024 crash. Still, some non-majors are cutting through the noise. XRP (XRP) had an especially loud day. The token broke above key levels near $2.17–$2.20, with analysts citing rising trading volumes, renewed whale interest, and bullish forecasts like Standard Chartered’s much-discussed $8 target. Recent regulatory wins and infrastructure moves are reinforcing that narrative. Ripple secured preliminary approval for an Electronic Money Institution license in Luxembourg, extending its regulatory beachhead in Europe on top of UK FCA authorization, and positioning itself squarely for MiCA-era payments. The result: XRP moved from “left behind” to “back in price discovery” as traders bet on a bigger role in cross-border payments. Other blue-chip infrastructure plays are seeing their own wave of institutionalization. Bitwise launched a zero-fee Chainlink (LINK) ETF on NYSE Arca, the second spot LINK fund in the U.S., driving LINK to monthly highs as investors lean into the idea of oracles as core crypto infrastructure. On the Bitcoin side, Bitdeer quietly became the world’s largest miner by hash rate, hitting 71 EH/s under management and surpassing Marathon, while funding expansion by selling its mined BTC. Traditional finance’s relationship with crypto deepened further across both banks and payments rails. In Germany, DZ Bank, the country’s second-largest lender, secured MiCAR/BaFin approval to launch its “meinKrypto” platform, allowing institutional and corporate clients to trade Bitcoin (BTC), Cardano, and other assets within a fully regulated environment. In Spain, Bankinter joined BBVA and Tether (USDT) in a €30 million-plus round for exchange Bit2Me, backing its MiCA-compliant expansion across Europe and Latin America. On the payments side, Visa pushed ahead with its stablecoin strategy, partnering with BVNK to let businesses send and receive digital dollar payouts via Visa Direct, even outside normal banking hours. Pakistan, meanwhile, inked a deal with SC Financial Technologies, tied to Trump-backed World Liberty Financial, to explore a dollar-pegged USD1 stablecoin for cross-border payments. Ripple’s Europe push, Visa’s stablecoin rails, and Pakistan’s experiment all underscore the same trend: stablecoins and tokenized money are steadily creeping into mainstream payment plumbing. That momentum is not without critics. JPMorgan CFO Jeremy Barnum warned that yield-bearing stablecoins look a lot like unregulated bank deposits, potentially creating a “parallel banking system” without the safeguards that apply to traditional institutions. He argued such products should face tighter regulation akin to the proposed GENIUS Act, especially as billions of dollars in stablecoins now sit at the crossroads of DeFi, fintech, and banking. Regulation and policy were a running theme elsewhere. In the U.S., the Senate Agriculture Committee postponed its crypto market structure bill hearing to January 27, with more than 75 amendments already on the table touching everything from stablecoin yields to conflicts of interest. Galaxy Research sounded the alarm about the current draft, warning it could massively expand Treasury’s Patriot Act–style surveillance powers over crypto, especially DeFi, by allowing broad transaction freezes without court orders. Across the Atlantic, Europe’s MiCA era is forcing some hard decisions. In France, regulators say roughly 30% of crypto firms lacking an EU/MiCA license still haven’t said whether they’ll seek approval or shut down by the July deadline, raising the risk of last-minute exits or rushed compliance. At the same time, banks like DZ Bank and exchanges like Bit2Me are leaning into regulation as a competitive moat rather than a burden. Russia is moving in a very different direction, preparing a major policy shift to open its crypto market to everyday, non-qualified investors. A new draft bill would integrate crypto into day-to-day use, cap retail purchases, and remove its “special financial regulation” status, while still keeping limits and a focus on controlled international use. The aim: boost domestic digital asset activity without fully embracing a free-for-all. Markets are also grappling with a macro backdrop that refuses to sit still. Traders are on edge ahead of a key U.S. Supreme Court ruling on President Trump’s Iran-related tariffs, just as inflation and producer price data come in hotter than some would like. That mix of political and economic uncertainty is feeding volatility, even as Bitcoin and large caps grind higher on ETF demand and improved risk appetite. Institutional appetite is only adding to that push. Financial advisors are now overwhelmingly on board: survey data from 2025 shows they ramped up crypto allocations last year as Bitcoin hit new highs, and 99% say they plan to maintain or increase exposure into 2026. Registered investment advisors have been especially aggressive in adding crypto to client accounts, putting pressure on platforms and custodians to improve access and infrastructure. Under the hood, the crypto market’s plumbing keeps evolving. Binance Wallet integrated Aster (ASTER) to offer self-custodied, on-chain leveraged perpetuals on BNB Smart Chain, giving users direct derivatives access through the wallet’s web interface without third-party dApps. Bitnomial launched the first U.S.-regulated Aptos (APT) futures, bringing the Layer 1 into CFTC-supervised derivatives markets and potentially laying groundwork for future spot products. Not all infrastructure news was positive, though: Sui (SUI) suffered a multi-hour mainnet stall and consensus outage, freezing transactions and dApps on Jan. 14 and raising new questions about reliability just as investors are rewarding more battle-tested chains. Even NFTs and gaming, left for dead more than once, are showing signs of life. Animoca Brands acquired Somo to deepen its Web3 gaming and collectibles stack, at a time when NFT market cap and trading volumes have started to rebound in early 2026. The deal suggests major players still see long-term value in digital ownership, even if the speculative froth has come off. One area flashing bright red is security — or more precisely, social engineering. Chainalysis estimates that AI-driven impersonation scams, powered by deepfakes and phony “support” agents, drove a record $17 billion in crypto losses in 2025. The trend marks a shift away from pure technical exploits toward large-scale psychological attacks, where the weakest link is increasingly the user, not the code. Put together, the day’s moves paint a market that’s maturing and centralizing around a few core assets, even as speculative pockets still deliver eye-popping pops and drops. Bitcoin and Ethereum are tightening their grip on institutional liquidity, stablecoins are marching deeper into global payments, and regulators are scrambling to keep up — sometimes by opening doors, sometimes by tightening screws. For now, the path of least resistance for prices remains higher, with inflows strong, advisors bullish, and macro conditions supportive. But beneath the smooth-looking charts, the battle lines around surveillance, stablecoin risk, and user protection are being drawn — and those fights are likely to shape the next leg of the cycle as much as any breakout on the screen.
Comments
Post a Comment