Start-of-the-year recovery rally stalls: Crypto Daybook Americas
TL;DR
Crypto markets declined as the start-of-year rally stalled, with major cryptocurrencies dropping over 1.5% and all sector indexes in the red. Analysts question whether the rally was driven by conviction or seasonal factors, with ETF flows and market indicators showing mixed signals.
Key Takeaways
- •Major cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, XRP, and Solana fell over 1.5%, with all 16 CoinDesk sector indexes declining, led by DeFi.
- •The pullback raises questions about whether the recent rally was driven by conviction buying or seasonal factors like new year allocations.
- •Spot bitcoin ETFs saw significant outflows ($243M on Tuesday) after strong inflows earlier, indicating fragile market conditions.
- •Negative Coinbase Premium suggests U.S. investors haven't joined the rally despite ending tax-related selling, though derivatives show some positive signs.
- •Bitcoin's correlation with the yen has strengthened, meaning Japanese market volatility could impact crypto, with upcoming economic data adding to uncertainty.
What to know:
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You are viewing Crypto Daybook Americas, your morning briefing on what happened in the crypto markets overnight and what's expected during the coming day. Crypto Daybook Americas will kickstart your morning with comprehensive insights. If you're not already subscribed to the email, click here. You won't want to start your day without it.
By Omkar Godbole (All times ET unless indicated otherwise)
Major cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin BTC$91,227.36, XRP$2.2045 and solana SOL$135.69, have lost more than 1.5% the past 24 hours. All 16 CoinDesk sectoral indexes are in the red, led by the DeFi Select Index with a 3.6% drop.16 CoinDesk sectoral indexes are in the red, led by the DeFi Select Index with a 3.6% drop.
The pullback has some analysts questioning whether the start-of-the-year bounce was driven by conviction buying or by seasonal factors such as new year allocations. A clue could come from the U.S.-listed spot bitcoin ETFs, which saw over $1 billion in inflows in the first two trading days of 2026 and lost $243 million on Tuesday, according to data source SoSoValue.
"The pullback reflects how fragile the recent rally remains, with price action still sensitive to shifts in liquidity and seasonal factors rather than driven by conviction buying," said Samer Hasn, a senior market analyst at XS.com.
Has explained that tentative signs of improving liquidity supported the recent advance, but those signals remain uneven, which explains why the upside momentum is fading.
Bulls may also be concerned by indicators such as the Coinbase Premium, a proxy for demand from U.S.-based investors. The premium, which measures the difference between BTC's price on Nasdaq-listed Coinbase and offshore giant Binance, continues to be negative, according to Coinglass data. This indicates that U.S. investors have yet to join the rally even though analysts say the tax-related selling from these investors that held back BTC in December has ended.
Still, there are some encouraging signs for the bulls, particularly from the derivatives market, where the cumulative crypto futures open interest has risen to the highest in nearly two months, pointing to renewed investor willingness to take risk.
Funding rates, the periodic fee paid to exchanges for trading perpetual futures tied to cryptocurrencies, are improving in another positive sign.
"Historically, sustained market advances tend to coincide with funding rates holding consistently above ~0.01%, suggesting current conditions remain supportive but not yet decisive," Glassnode said.
In traditional markets, longer-dated Japanese government bond yields hit a record high as fiscal concerns persist, raising alarm on social media on how it could affect risk assets, including BTC. Higher bond yields in Japan could spill over into other advanced nations, as CoinDesk has previously discussed.
As for bitcoin, its correlation with the yen has strengthened, which means potential churn in the Japanese markets could influence the cryptocurrency. The ADP Employment report and the ISM non-manufacturing data due for release later today could add to market volatility. Stay alert!
Read more: For analysis of today's activity in altcoins and derivatives, see Crypto Markets Today
What to Watch
For a more comprehensive list of events this week, see CoinDesk's "Crypto Week Ahead".
- Crypto
- Jan. 7: Ethereum activates its second “Blob Parameter Only” (BPO‑2) hard fork, raising the blob target to 14 and the maximum to 21 blobs per block to expand data capacity for rollups as part of the Fusaka scaling roadmap.
- Macro
- Jan. 7, 8:15 a.m.: Dec. ADP Employment Change Est. 45K.
- Jan. 7, 10 a.m.: Dec. ISM Services PMI Est. 52.3.
- Jan. 7, 10 a.m.: Nov. JOLTS report. Job Openings Est. 7.64M; Job Quits (Prev. 2.941M).
- Earnings (Estimates based on FactSet data)
- Nothing scheduled.
Token Events
For a more comprehensive list of events this week, see CoinDesk's "Crypto Week Ahead".
- Governance votes & calls
- Unlocks
- No major unlocks.
- Token Launches
- Jan. 7: Axie Infinity SLP emissions in Origins end.
- Jan. 7: Binance Wallet’s 44th token generation event for ZenChain (ZTC) occurs.
Conferences
For a more comprehensive list of events this week, see CoinDesk's "Crypto Week Ahead".
- Day 1 of 2: BUIDL Europe 2026 (Lisbon, Portugal)
Market Movements
- BTC is down 1.66% from 4 p.m. ET Tuesday at $91,677.51 (24hrs: -1.77%)
- ETH is down 2.26% at $3,200.70(24hrs: -0.27%)
- CoinDesk 20 is down 1.97% at 2,981.11 (24hrs: -2.08%)
- Ether CESR Composite Staking Rate is up 3 bps at 2.88%
- BTC funding rate is at 0.0084% (9.175% annualized) on Binance
- DXY is unchanged at 98.55
- Gold futures are down 0.19% at $4,473.50
- Silver futures are down 1.53% at $79.30
- Nikkei 225 closed down 1.06% at 51,961.98
- Hang Seng closed down 0.94% at 26,458.95
- FTSE 100 is down 0.53% at 10,069.29
- Euro Stoxx 50 is down 0.27% at 5,915.51
- DJIA closed on Tuesday up 0.99% at 49,462.08
- S&P 500 closed up 0.62% at 6,944.82
- Nasdaq Composite closed up 0.65% at 23,547.17
- S&P/TSX Composite closed up 0.58% at 32,407.00
- S&P 40 Latin America closed up 1.02% at 3,255.61
- U.S. 10-Year Treasury rate is up 1 bps at 4.18%
- E-mini S&P 500 futures are down 0.14% at 6,978.25
- E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures are down 0.28% at 25,748.75
- E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average futures are unchanged at 49,744.00
Bitcoin Stats
- BTC Dominance: 58.8% (-0.15%)
- Ether-bitcoin ratio: 0.03502 (-0.41%)
- Hashrate (seven-day moving average): 1,043 EH/s
- Hashprice (spot): $39.14
- Total fees: 2.76 BTC / $258,065
- CME Futures Open Interest: 110,835 BTC
- BTC priced in gold: 20.5 oz.
- BTC vs gold market cap: 6.15%
Technical Analysis
- The chart shows BTC's daily price swings in candlestick format.
- The recovery rally has stalled at horizontal resistance originating from the Dec. 9 high of 94,635.
- A move above that level would signal a breakout, strengthening the case for a rally to $100,000.
Crypto Equities
- Coinbase Global (COIN): closed on Tuesday at $250.56 (-1.71%), -0.67% at $248.88 in pre-market
- Circle Internet (CRCL): closed at $84.85 (+0.06%), -1.11% at $83.91
- Galaxy Digital (GLXY): closed at $26.08 (-0.84%), -0.46% at $25.96
- Bullish (BLSH): closed at $41.25 (-0.55%), -1.28% at $40.72
- MARA Holdings (MARA): closed at $10.31 (-2.64%), -0.68% at $10.24
- Riot Platforms (RIOT): closed at $14.98 (+1.28%), -0.67% at $14.88
- Core Scientific (CORZ): closed at $16.79 (+0.36%), unchanged in pre-market
- CleanSpark (CLSK): closed at $11.99 (-2.52%), -1.25% at $11.84
- CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI): closed at $44.99 (-2.11%)
- Exodus Movement (EXOD): closed at $15.92 (+1.60%)
Crypto Treasury Companies
- Strategy (MSTR): closed at $157.97 (-4.10%), +3.69% at $163.80
- Semler Scientific (SMLR): closed at $21.26 (+0.95%)
- SharpLink Gaming (SBET): closed at $10.34 (+0.68%), -1.74% at $10.16
- Upexi (UPXI): closed at $2.28 (+0.44%), +1.32% at $2.31
- Lite Strategy (LITS): closed at $1.54 (+0.65%)
ETF Flows
Spot BTC ETFs
- Daily net flows: -$243.2 million
- Cumulative net flows: $57.52 billion
- Total BTC holdings ~1.31 million
Spot ETH ETFs
- Daily net flows: $114.7 million
- Cumulative net flows: $12.8 billion
- Total ETH holdings ~6.16 million
Source: Farside Investors
While You Were Sleeping
- Bitcoin and the Japanese yen are moving together like never before (CoinDesk): The correlation has strengthened as yen weakness tied to Japan’s debt burden and rate constraints increasingly drives global risk sentiment that is also shaping bitcoin trading.
- Venezuela to give U.S. up to 50 million barrels of oil, Trump says (The Wall Street Journal): The plan would ship heavy crude — up to 15% of Venezuela’s current annual oil output — to U.S. refineries, with Trump saying sale proceeds would benefit people in both countries.
- Crypto traders can now take leveraged bets on silver via Binance Futures (CoinDesk): The contract offers up to 50x leverage, is margined and settled in USDT and allows positions as small as $5, lowering the barrier to trading silver-linked derivatives.
- Barclays invests in stablecoin settlement firm as tokenized infrastructure advances (CoinDesk): Ubyx is building a clearing system that let tokenized bank deposits and regulated stablecoins move between institutions at par, addressing a key bottleneck in blockchain-based payments.
- Lloyds Bank completes UK’s first gilt purchase using tokenized deposits (CoinDesk): The trade utilized blockchain-based bank deposits to settle government bonds instantly while keeping funds interest-bearing and protected under existing deposit insurance rules.
- KuCoin recorded over $1.25 trillion in total trading volume in 2025, equivalent to an average of roughly $114 billion per month, marking its strongest year on record.
- This performance translated into an all-time high share of centralised exchange volume, as KuCoin’s activity expanded faster than aggregate CEX volumes, which slowed during periods of lower market volatility.
- Spot and derivatives volumes were evenly split, each exceeding $500 billion for the year, signalling broad-based usage rather than reliance on a single product line.
- Altcoins accounted for the majority of trading activity, reinforcing KuCoin’s role as a primary liquidity venue beyond BTC and ETH at a time when majors saw more muted turnover.
- Even as overall crypto volumes softened mid-year, KuCoin maintained elevated baseline activity, indicating structurally higher user engagement rather than short-lived volume spikes.
You are viewing Crypto Daybook Americas, your morning briefing on what happened in the crypto markets overnight and what's expected during the coming day. Crypto Daybook Americas will kickstart your morning with comprehensive insights. If you're not already subscribed to the email, click here. You won't want to start your day without it.
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