Macro mauling
What's being bought and sold*
TOP TRENDING ASSETS
*Trading activity in the past 24 hours on the Uphold platform, as of 8 a.m. 13th January 2025.
The combined total of buy and sell percentages can exceed 100% due to customers who engage in both buying and selling the same asset within the 24-hour time frame.
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What’s up
Bitcoin Barely Clings To $90K
Crypto experienced a nasty start to the week as the outlook for interest rates dramatically shifted. The U.S. economy is humming. No longer is there a consensus on Wall Street that the Fed is set to cut rates at least a couple of times this year. One bank analyst even floated the possibility of a looming rate hike.
In the past 24 hours, Bitcoin fell 4.6% to $90,400, according to CoinDesk.
Quickly scanning the Top 100 for even a speck of green, we did find one, Fasttoken (FTN), up 0.2% compared to this time yesterday. FTN actually today hit a new all-time high of $3.84 after a 17% surge in the past month. We're not sure why. There's no recent news of a partnership, nor some new listing, nor any such item that could be construed as a catalyst. An X account for FTN (native crypto of the EVM-based Bahamut blockchain) has not been updated since May. FTN has a market capitalization of $1.6 billion, making it the 73rd-largest digital asset, per CoinGecko.
Meanwhile, how about this for something unambiguously on the rise: the degree of difficulty involved in mining Bitcoin.
According to CoinDesk, the mining difficulty adjustment has risen to a new all-time high of 110.45 trillion. Put another way, it's now 110.45 trillion times harder to mine BTC blocks than it was at the time BTC's first-ever block, or "the genesis block," was mined by anonymous developer Satoshi Nakamoto back in January of 2009.
What's down
Some Alts Tank Worse Than Others
How bad is it out here? We've seen worse. It's true there are some altcoins, such as Avalanche (AVAX) and Chainlink (LINK), at this point down more than 20% in the past week. That's as of today at 9:35 a.m. (EST). Right now, total global crypto assets stand at $3.27 trillion, reflecting a 6.7% drop in the past day.
The leader of the losers (over the past day, within the ranks of the 100-largest coins) is No. 51 TKX. It's the native coin of Singapore-based Tokenize Xchange. TKX has tanked by 17.4% in 24 hours. While Singapore is still a pro-crypto hub, officials there have just launched a crackdown on online gambling sites, banning Polymarket.
What's next
Sizing Up A Sideways Slog
Bitcoin sinking to $88K and then sharply rebounding is a scenario being bandied about amidst a dwindling supply of BTC on exchanges, at a seven-year low.
Demand for a falling knife? Who is doing this dip buying? Apparently, hedge funds are.
André Dragosch, head of research at Bitwise, said he sees signals that global hedge funds are dramatically increasing market exposure to BTC and other cryptos. Diminishing amounts of BTC available on exchanges might spell an imminent “supply shock” rally.
However, the market seems stuck betwixt and between, not exactly striving for new highs yet not completely flaming out, either.
“Market sentiment appears to be stabilizing," said Bitget Research's Ryan Lee.
He told Cointelegraph that while BTC selling pressure has decreased, low daily trading volume indicates "a lack of decisive momentum."
