Weekly Rollup - January 13, 2026

Market highlights

• Bitcoin whales unwinding their long positions in similar volumes to early 2025.
• Florida lawmakers reintroduced bill to establish a strategic cryptocurrency reserve.
• Trump-linked World Liberty Financial applied for a U.S. national trust bank charter.
• World Liberty Financial also launched its crypto lending platform this week.
• The U.S. Senate’s crypto market structure bill will head to committee vote in late January.
• Wyoming’s Frontier USD stablecoin launched, offering holders yield through defined interest.

Macro market overview

Weak December jobs data and the impending U.S. Federal Open Market Committee’s (FOMC) rate decision on January 28 saw risk assets have another record-breaking week. The S&P 500 and Dow each made new all-time highs, while the Nasdaq saw upward momentum. The gains come as renewed efforts occur for U.S. Congress to pass a bill that would ban representatives from trading stocks. Precious metals, including gold and silver, also saw a bid to start the new week, with gold gaining 2.2% to a new all-time high of US$4,600, while silver jumped almost 7%. The gains come as the U.S. Department of Justice filed a criminal lawsuit against U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. The unprecedented lawsuit raises questions over the central bank’s autonomy and whether precious metals and non-sovereign assets like bitcoin will see further capital flows as a result.

In macro data, the December non-farm employment change came in under forecast at 55,000, while the unemployment rate declined slightly to 4.4%. Earlier in the week, the ISM manufacturing purchasing manager’s index (PMI) disappointed when it came in under forecast at 47.9 (50 and above signals economic expansion). Despite the below forecast economic data, CME Group’s Fed Watch tool currently has a 25-basis-point cut in January at a likelihood of 5%.

In geopolitics, the U.S. capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has seen the Caracas stock index, Venezuala’s stock market index, gain around 124% since U.S. intervention commenced as market participants bet on monetary policy reform. And in Iran, ongoing protests calling for a regime change have seen the U.S. and Iran trade threats of strikes to end the unrest. An escalation of tensions between the U.S. and Iran could cause risk-off sentiment.

This week, market participants will presumably be watching for the U.S. core consumer price index (CPI), core producer price index (PPI), and core retail sales updates.

Weekly performance: S&P 500 +0.6%, Dow Jones +0.5%, Nasdaq +0.9%.

Looking ahead:

• U.S. core CPI - Tuesday, January 13
• U.S. core PPI - Wednesday, January 14
• U.S. core retail sales - Wednesday, January 14

Crypto Market Performance

All crypto sectors saw declines this week, with the exception of privacy coins, which continues to see gains as market participants appear to be valuing networks that support protecting data and user privacy. Real world assets saw the biggest contraction. The crypto fear and greed index is currently in neutral territory at 41.

As crypto sold off from late Monday, January 5, total crypto liquidations reached US$478 million in leveraged positions, with over 90% of those positions longs. The sell-off is presumably due to waning momentum from the New Year rally, plus market participants awaiting further U.S. economic data and the U.S. FOMC’s January 28 rate decision.

Biggest loser

• Real world assets: Ondo (-14.7%) declined despite recently expanding its tokenised stock and exchange-traded fund (ETF) offerings. The declines are presumably due to a broader pullback across the crypto market and outsized gains by key sectors and narratives only in recent weeks.

Bitcoin (BTC)

• Opened the week at US$91,489 and rallied to a weekly high of US$94,825 on Monday, January 5 before retracing as low as US$89,200 as whales and retail holders trim their positions, while institutions buy. Price is now trading around US$90,500 to start the new week (-3.2% 7D).
• BTC dominance ranged between 59.1% and 58.7% this week.
• Bitcoin investment products saw US$405 million of outflows this week. Short bitcoin saw outflows of US$9.2 million.

Throughout the week, bitcoin whales and retail holders closed their long positions. According to TradingView data, these BTC whales have been unwinding in a similar fashion to early 2025. This period saw bitcoin decline to US$74,000 before staging a 43-day rally to US$112,000.

Amongst the large BTC movements this week was a Satoshi-era miner who moved 2,000 BTC, worth approximately US$181 million, from legacy bitcoin addresses to Coinbase. So far, the market has absorbed whale and Satoshi-era selling activity, as major U.S. banks, including Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo and Morgan Stanley, accumulate more bitcoin. While this week’s activity is not a guarantee of future upward momentum, it does point to a shift in ownership and a broadening of market participation.

Florida lawmakers reintroduced a bill to establish a strategic crypto reserve. The bill doesn’t explicitly state that it would be a BTC reserve, but the crypto asset selection criteria names only the top crypto asset by market cap can be held in the reserve. The bill will be active from July 1, 2026 if it passes. It follows two withdrawn attempts in 2025, which sought to allocate up to 10% of Florida’s funds to bitcoin.

In bitcoin buying news:

• Strategy bought 13,627 BTC, it’s largest BTC buy in over five months, bringing its total holdings to 687,410 bitcoin with an average purchase price of US$75,353 per BTC.

Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results.

Ethereum (ETH)

• Opened the week at US$3,143, rallied to a weekly high of US$3,307 on Tuesday, January 6 and then sold off to around US$3,045, which appears to be providing support. Ethereum is now trading around US$3,085 to start the new week (-4.8% 7D).
• Ethereum dominance hovered between 12.3% and 12.2% this week.
• Ethereum-focused funds saw outflows of US$116 million this week.

Ethereum treasury firm, SharpLink Gaming staked US$170 million of its ETH holdings on the layer-2 scaling network, Linea. The move forms part of the company’s plans to stake up to US$200 million of their ETH holdings to take advantage of on-chain yields.

In Ethereum buying news:

• BitMine added 24,000 ETH to its treasury, bringing its holdings to almost 4.2 million ETH, equating to 3.5% of total supply and worth around US$13 billion.

Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results.

Altcoins

The altcoin season index is currently at 39, which is still bitcoin season.

A likely story

• Story gained 38.3% as the network’s recent rally continues. Throughout the rally, volume jumped 789%, with daily trading volume reaching US$157 million. Much of this week’s gains was led by users in South Korea, which accounted for 45% of total trading volume.

Stacking stablecoins

• Polygon gained 24.9%. These gains are presumably due to the launch of the network’s new stablecoin framework, the Open Money Stack. The framework will be rolled out later this year, and aims to allows users to move funds across DeFi using the POL token to pay transaction fees.

Stamp of approval

• XRP declined by 11.8% as the broader crypto market contracted. This week, Ripple, which created XRP, received regulatory approval from the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority, including Electronic Money Institution registration and crypto asset registration, allowing its UK subsidiary to scale regulated crypto payments and cross-border services. Scaling the network’s global coverage may prompt long-term upward momentum.

Crypto ETF News

Digital asset investment products saw outflows of US$454 million this week, as uncertainty increased over whether the U.S. FOMC will deliver a rate cut at its January 28 meeting.

Altcoins bucked the trend, with XRP, Solana and Sui seeing inflows of US$45.8 million, US$32.8 million, and US$7.6 million, respectively.

Morgan Stanley filed to launch an Ethereum Trust. It follows the firm’s registrations for bitcoin and Solana ETFs earlier in the week.

Grayscale’s Ethereum ETF began paying staking rewards. Shareholders will receive US$0.08 per share in rewards earned since October 2025.

Other crypto news

• Wall Street and crypto industry representatives held a private meeting this week to negotiate disagreements over the Senate’s crypto market structure bill. The meeting focused on contentious issues, including how decentralised finance should be regulated and stablecoin yields. Senator Tim Scott has set a key markup vote on the bill for the final week of January. If the bill passes the committee vote, it will proceed to the Senate floor for final consideration.
• World Liberty Financial applied for a national trust bank charter from the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, aiming to offer regulated custody, digital-asset and payment services under federal supervision. Also this week, World Liberty Financial launched a regulated crypto lending platform that offers institutional and accredited investors yield on digital-asset deposits and allows users to borrow against their crypto holdings in stablecoins, ETH or cBTC. The platform has seen US$20 million in supplied assets since launch.
• Wyoming’s Frontier USD stablecoin launched, offering holders yield through a defined interest mechanism. The stablecoin is backed by reserves that include short-duration U.S. Treasuries. The design aims to combine stablecoin liquidity with return potential while maintaining regulatory compliance under Wyoming’s digital asset laws and custodial frameworks. However, crypto natives argue that a state-issued stablecoin is akin to the risks of centralised control that could be exercised through mechanisms such as central bank digital currencies (CBDCs).
• JPMorgan is expanding its JPM Coin to the Canton Network, following its launch on Base. The move will allow tokenised deposits and payments to settle on-chain among network participants, enhancing liquidity and efficiency while maintaining compliance with existing banking and custody standards.
• BNY Mellon is set to launch tokenised deposits on its private blockchain, allowing institutional clients and “digital natives” to represent cash holdings on-chain. Initially targeted for collateral and margin use, the service aims to reduce settlement friction and improve liquidity while keeping funds available through traditional banking systems.
• MSCI postponed a planned decision to remove crypto-focused companies from certain equity indexes. The index provider said it needs more time to assess market conditions and investor feedback before changing component criteria. The deferral gives firms with crypto exposure continued inclusion under existing index methodologies while the review continues.