(3/52) Weekly Market Insight | January Week 5 | Price Divergence

Headline News: Price Divergence

• Bitcoin prices diverged from gold and equities this week, falling over 7%. This decline triggered more than $1 billion in liquidations and resulted in $1.33 billion in net outflows from spot Bitcoin ETFs, effectively erasing the previous week’s inflows. The postponement of the CLARITY Act has left investors on the sidelines, maintaining a patient stance while searching for new catalysts to drive direction.

Macro-Outlook: TACO Victory

• President Trump and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte agreed to a “framework of a future deal” at the World Economic Forum in Davos. The deal reportedly expands US military usage of Greenland and establishes a framework for joint development of critical minerals. Meanwhile, President Trump suspended the February 1 tariffs on European goods.
• President Trump also threatened Canada with 100% tariffs over its potential trade deal with China.
• The Senate Democrats threatened blocking the upcoming government spending bill if Department of Homeland Security spending is included, as Minneapolis protest escalated. The chances of a government shutdown on January 31 increased to 75% on Kalshi.
• The US Q3 GDP increased to 4.4%, slightly above the market estimations of 4.3%.
• The US core PCE increased to 2.8% in November, in line with the market forecasts. The US personal income grew by 0.3% in November, slightly below the market expectations of 0.4%. Meanwhile, US personal spending increased by 0.5% in November, matched with the market expectations.

Upcoming Economic Calendar including,

• Monday, January 26, 9:30pm: US Durable Goods Orders in November
• Thursday, January 29, 3:00am: FOMC Meeting
• Friday, January 30, 3:00am: US PPI in December

Weekly-Cryptos-Overview: Prediction Market Obstruction

• NYSE announced a new digital platform for trading and on-chain settlement of tokenized securities, enabling 24/7 operations, instant settlement, stablecoin-based funding, and fractional trading of US-listed equities and ETFs.
• Delaware Life Insurance announced the addition of BlackRock’s US Equity Bitcoin Balanced Risk 12% Index to its fixed indexed annuity lineup, marking the first US insurer to offer Bitcoin exposure in this retirement product category.
• Coinbase, in partnership with Circle, is supporting Bermuda’s initiative to build the world’s first fully-onchain national economy.
• Grayscale filed S-1 with SEC for a BNB ETF application, aiming to offer publicly traded exposure to Binance’s native token BNB.
• Kalshi faced a preliminary injunction in Massachusetts requiring it to halt sports-related event contracts in the state, as a Superior Court judge ruled the offerings violate local sports betting laws by operating without the required license.
• Polymarket has been ordered blocked in Portugal by gambling regulator SRIJ for operating without authorization and violating the national ban on political betting.

Layer 1 and Layer 2s

• MegaETH initiated a global stress test, targeting 18-35k real TPS with ultra-low fees, opening to all via native bridge.
• Mantle upgraded to Ethereum blobs as primary DA layer, transitioning to full Ethereum ZK rollup status while retaining EigenDA for specialized use cases.
• Celestia introduced Private Blockspace, allowing confidential onchain markets to keep positions, balances, and execution logic private while preserving public verifiability of data availability.
• Stellar completed its X-Ray upgrade, introducing privacy-feature smart contracts on the mainnet.
• Hashed proposed Maroo, a sovereign KRW-native blockchain standard designed for Korea’s digital economy and AI agent commerce with programmable compliance and privacy features.

Dapps

• Pendle announced a new sPENDLE tokenomics with up to 80% of protocol revenue will now fund PENDLE buybacks and distributed to sPENDLE holders, shifting away from the previous vePENDLE manual gauge allocation and multi-year lockup model.
• Jupiter Exchange integrated Ondo Global Markets, bringing 200+ NYSE-backed tokenized US stocks and ETFs to Solana with just-in-time mint/redeem and permissionless liquidity.
• Circle launched Circle Gateway on Solana, enabling chain-abstracted USDC with instant cross-chain availability across 12 networks for DeFi, payments, and treasury use cases.
• Uniswap expanded its Continuous Clearing Auctions on Base, enabling permissionless onchain token launches with credible price discovery and automatic Uniswap v4 liquidity bootstrapping.
• Chainlink launched 24/5 US Equities and ETF data feeds, providing DeFi with continuous pre-market, regular, after-hours, and overnight US stock data, enabling on-chain perpetuals, synthetics, prediction markets, and RWA applications across the $80 trillion US equities market.
• Chainlink also acquired Atlas (by FastLane), expanding SVR (OEV recapture) to new ecosystems including Arbitrum, Base, BNB Chain, Ethereum, and HyperEVM.
• Ranger Finance launched UltraX Arbitrage vault, a delta-neutral funding rate arbitrage strategy targeting 20% APR across Hyperliquid, Drift, Aster, and Lighter perp DEXs.
• Farcaster protocol, app, and Clanker were being acquired by Neynar team while original founders transitioned to new projects.
• DeepBook on Sui launched margin trading alongside a Liquidity Points Program rewarding all interactions (direct or via integrations) to enhance capital efficiency and builder alignment.
• HyENA, a USDe collateral trading engine on Hyperliquid, went fully public with 50% lower fees, boosted 12% collateral APR for all positions, and open referrals.
• World Liberty Financial partnered with Spacecoin to utilise USD1 as payments and settlements for satellite business.
• Basketball.fun, a fantasy hoops platform on Somnia, went fully live, users can now open packs, earn shares, and build NBA rosters powered by real-time stats.

Governance and Upcoming Alpha

• Magic Eden announced that starting February 1, 15% of all platform revenue will flow to the ME ecosystem: 50% for ME buybacks and 50% as monthly USDC rewards to ME stakers, with first claims available in March 2026.
• PancakeSwap successfully passed the proposal to reduce CAKE max supply from 450 million to 400 million tokens, reinforcing long-term sustainability and a deflationary tokenomics model.
• Injective introduced the INJ Supply Squeeze, a new tokenomics overhaul designed to permanently increase the rate of INJ supply reduction by 100%, escalating token deflation.
• Maple Finance opened MIP-020 vote to extend the current Syrup Staker Fund (SSF) buyback and allocation framework for another 6 months.
• Noble announced migration to a standalone EVM Layer 1 on March 18. It is purpose-built for stablecoin issuance, FX, payments, and agentic commerce with sub-second finality.
• Binance applied for EU-wide MiCA license through a new entity in Greece, positioning it to operate crypto services across the entire EU ahead of the July 1 deadline.

Token Unlock

• RON token unlocks on January 28, amount representing 4.16% of the token supply.
• TREE token unlocks on January 30, amount representing 58.1% of the token supply.
• ZORA token unlocks on February 1, amount representing 3.73% of the token supply.
• IO token unlocks on February 1, amount representing 6.09% of the token supply.
• KMNO token unlocks on February 1, amount representing 6.9% of the token supply.
• EIGEN token unlocks on February 2, amount representing 6.78% of the token supply.
• LA token unlocks on February 4, amount representing 5.94% of the token supply.
• BERA token unlocks on February 6, amount representing 46.1% of the token supply.
• LINEA token unlocks on February 10, amount representing 5.74% of the token supply.
• HOME token unlocks on February 10, amount representing 4% of the token supply.