Waiting on a trend

Investors are more than a little anxious over a weighty U.S. government employment report set to be released today. As potential macro catalysts go, the Bureau of Labor Statistics' non-farm payrolls numbers do warrant some attention, as they'll serve as a tone setter. Some analysts are projecting a +169K increase for January, down from December's number (256K).

"Weaker employment data would bring forward rate cuts, lower yields and reduce dollar strength, generally bullish for equities and Bitcoin," said widely followed trader/pundit Skew in a post on X. "Robust employment data or mixed wouldn't change this trend much."

Following a surge to $102,000 on Tuesday, BTC has since been mired in the $96,000-$98,000 range even as federal overlords and lawmakers sing the praises of digital assets.

But the siren song of coming regulatory clarity is either not as sweetly enchanting as previously thought or is being played on a stereo system with its speaker wires crossed.

Skew, per Cointelegraph, suspects that some external catalyst is needed to spur on a more discernable price trend. “Another very-much-pinned market until resolution, usually driven by macro,” Skew said.

Meanwhile, in a noteworthy decoupling from digital assets, stocks keep climbing. The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq 100 closed yesterday with gains. Nvidia got a boost from a Morgan Stanley analyst who remains bullish on AI chips. Meta is green streaking, notching a positive daily return for the 14th session in a row.

Berachain, a layer-1 blockchain based on a Proof-of-Liquidity (PoL) consensus mechanism — and boasting of a remarkable ability to imitate the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) — went live on Thursday. The airdropped BERA token almost instantly hit $1B in total market capitalization but its bout with gigantism has given way to gravitational laws.

The smashing debut wasn't a surprise. Via its own pre-launch liquidity platform, Berachain had already garnered a whopping $3B worth of liquidity. Berachain's PoL approach in and of itself helped greased the skids.

Separating gas from governance via a dual-token model, Berachain's BERA token is used for paying transaction fees, and as a staking token. The Berachain network also emits a second token, BGT, which is a non-transferrable governance token.

Why would users want to farm a non-transferrable token? Blockworks, citing Ox Research, put it bluntly: BGT is a bribe token. It's styled after so-called Vote Escrowed tokens, or "veTokens," which are willingly locked in exchange for governance rights (and typically are non-transferable).

In BGT's case, it can be kept in the family, directed to validators, handing them the power to steer future BGT emissions to the liquidity providers of their choosing. Ideally, from the perspective of the user who has directed BGT to a validator, that validator would in turn direct those future BGT emissions to the platform on which the user had staked liquidity.

BGT can be burned 1:1 for BERA. But this is a one-way function. BERA cannot be converted into BGT. The ability to earn from the chain's economic incentives rests solely with BGT holders, forging a direct link between liquidity providers and block validators, as Ox Research explained.

"In contrast to the multiyear lockups on other veTokenomics models, such as Curve’s, Berachain lets you exit when you like," Ox Research said. "But the exit is permanent. You can't buy your way back in."

Berachain, incidentally, is backed by $142 billion in private funding raised since April of 2023.

As of Thursday morning (EST), BERA had reached as high as $15 per token. Checking it on Friday morning, sure, we weren't shocked to see it hibernating. As of Friday, at 8 a.m. (EST), BERA was $7.55, down 49% from the opening day peak. Its market cap stood at $800M, making it the 105th-largest digital asset, according to CoinGecko.

A flurry of XRP-ETF-related applications arrived at the SEC on Thursday.

The Cboe Exchange submitted four separate filings seeking approval to list and trade spot XRP ETFs that are currently in the works at WisdomTree, Bitwise, 21Shares and Canary.

"Even though some on Wall Street have yet to see full-throated demand for crypto ETFs, major asset managers are now vying to launch the first spot XRP ETFs in the U.S.," Decrypt said.

XRP hasn't yet received the kind of clear-cut legal status that has so far has been granted to Bitcoin and Ethereum. A protracted court battle between the SEC and Ripple, the ledger technology company with which XRP is associated, isn't finished yet. The agency in January appealed a judge's split-decision partly ruling that XRP, in one instance, was not a security, and partly ruling, in another instance, that it was. The SEC now has a new regime. If the agency withdraws its appeal, obviously watch out for a massive spike in XRP; although uncertainty blankets the situation (FXEmpire).

The SEC is also considering Grayscale’s filing for a Solana ETF. Additionally, the Chicago-based Cboe last week filed paperwork for four separate SOL products,

Asset managers are implementing safeguards to bolster their chances of products getting blessed, with particular attention to concerns that regulators had flagged in the past, Decrypt said. These proactive safety measures include: surveillance and market monitoring; custody with licensed third-party custodians; and a means to halt intraday trading, according to Decrypt.