(2/52) Weekly Market Insight | January Week 4 | Debasement Trade

Headline News: Debasement Trade

• Bitcoin reclaimed the $97,000 level last week, driven by growing concerns over Federal Reserve independence and inflation data falling within expectations. On-chain metrics support this momentum, with the Long-Term Holder Net Position Change indicating a deceleration in distribution. Bitcoin Spot ETFs recorded $1.42 billion in net inflows last week, the highest weekly volume since October. Despite these bullish signals, the market remains cautious regarding looming political risks in the week ahead.

Macro-Outlook: Greenland Tug-of-War

• The US Federal Reserve faces DOJ subpoenas threatening criminal indictment over Chair Powell’s testimony, linked to the Fed’s independent rate decisions amid political pressure.
• President Trump announced 10% tariffs (rising to 25% in June) on European nations until a Greenland purchase deal is reached. Meanwhile, the European Union plans to retaliate with €93 billion in tariffs in response to Trump’s threat.
• The US inflation rate remained at 2.7% in December, in line with market expectations. The US PPI increased by 0.2% in December, also in line with market expectations.
• The US Supreme Court decided not to issue a ruling on President Trump’s tariffs last week. The next potential ruling will be on January 20, 10:00 PM SGT.

Upcoming Economic Calendar including,

• Thursday, January 22, 9:30pm: US Q3 GDP
• Thursday, January 22, 11:00pm: US PCE Price Index, Personal Income and Personal Spending in November

Weekly-Cryptos-Overview: InfoFi’s Death Sentence

• The latest drafted crypto market structure bill has not reached bipartisan agreement over subjects such as stablecoin yield restrictions. Coinbase opposes the bill publicly.
• X Platform terminated developer API access for apps rewarding posts (InfoFi), citing AI slop and spam proliferation. Kaito and Cookie both sunsetted their Yaps and Snaps features.
• Google partners with Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair, Target, and Walmart to launch Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), an open standard for AI agents in shopping, enabling native checkout on AI Mode and Gemini apps soon.
• Standard Chartered prepares to launch crypto prime brokerage services.
• DZ Bank (Germany’s second-largest) launched MiCAR-approved crypto platform offering BTC, ETH, LTC, ADA trading.
• London Stock Exchange Group launched blockchain-based Digital Settlement House for faster 24/7 cross-network settlement.
• CME Group launched Cardano, Chainlink, and Stellar futures in standard and micro sizes.
• South Korea ended a nine-year ban on corporate crypto investments, allowing listed companies and professional investors to hold up to 5% of equity in the top 20 cryptocurrencies on major exchanges.
• Nigeria introduced tax law requiring VASPs to collect TIN/NIN for crypto transactions, submit monthly reports, and flag suspicious trades for traceability and compliance.

Layer 1 and Layer 2s

• MegaETH announced deployment of World Markets, an onchain CLOB unifying perps, spot, and lending with extreme leverage and low-latency execution.
• Canton Network launches Temple, a privacy-preserving order book for digital asset trading including Bitcoin, stablecoins, RWAs, and Canton Coin.
• Polygon acquired Coinme and Sequence to build a regulated US payments platform with fiat on/off ramps and one-click cross-chain transactions.
• TRON integrated native support into MetaMask mobile and browser extension for seamless asset management.
• Sui Network resolved a six-hour stall caused by validator consensus divergence.
• Optimism launched Actions SDK for embedding DeFi lending/borrowing/swaps into apps with minimal code.
• Boundless introduced framework for OP Stack rollups offering switchable ZK fraud/validity proofs for faster finality.
• Brevis partners with BNB Chain to build a generalized privacy framework, launching Intelligent Privacy Pool with Bow.
• Celestia unveiled Fibre, achieving 1Tb/s blockspace via ultra-fast ZODA-based DA encoding (881x faster than KZG).

Dapps

• World Liberty Financial launched WLFI Markets on Dolomite, offering lending, borrowing, and future RWA access with USD1 integration and community governance over collateral and incentives.
• Infinex launched browser extension unifying portfolio views, Swidge swaps, and cross-chain support.
• YieldBasis introduced Hybrid Vault requiring crvUSD staking for increased personal caps while enhancing peg support.
• Jumper Exchange launched Earn and Portfolio features, offering personalized DeFi yields and unified cross-chain position management.
• Ether.fi launched physical debit cards (Core, Luxe, Pinnacle tiers) for direct crypto spending, with VIP and corporate options coming soon.
• WalletConnect launched Pay for embedded crypto payments, enabling seamless fiat-to-stablecoin conversions in apps.
• Markets Protocol launched a universal frontend for trading global assets 24/7, unifying traditional and crypto markets with single-balance funding.
• Pendle introduced Scale Orders for automated DCA-style buying/selling across yield ranges, supporting flat, ascending, and descending distributions.
• Huddle01 launched HuddlePad, an Arbitrum-native launchpad using Uniswap’s Continuous Clearing Auctions for fair token distribution.
• MiniPay announced upcoming cards supporting online/in-store purchases and Apple/Google Pay integration.
• Privacy Cash launched Private Swaps on Solana, enabling shielded token exchanges via Jupiter routing.
• Hinkal launched Private Send for shielded transfers from public wallets with split recipients and time windows.
• Fluidkey expanded private payment links to accept USDC/USDT from 9 additional chains plus Bitcoin via NEAR Intents.
• Figure launched OPEN on Provenance for native onchain public equity issuance and continuous trading via its ATS.
• Remora Markets launched tokenized ETFs for gold, silver, platinum, palladium, and copper on Solana.

Governance and Upcoming Alpha

• ZKsync prioritizes real-world infrastructure in the 2026 roadmap, focusing on institutional adoption and coordinated ZK stack development.
• DeFi Saver partners with Summer.fi to manage Summer.fi Pro positions and integrate Lazy Vaults in Q1 2026.
• Sentient unveiled SENT tokenomics with about 20% unlocked at TGE with utilities such as staking, governance, fees and payment.
• ETHGas Foundation introduced GWEI governance token for Realtime Ethereum.

Token Unlock

• PLUME token unlocks on January 21, amount representing 44.2% of the token supply.
• HYPER token unlocks on January 22, amount representing 7.42% of the token supply.
• XPL token unlocks on January 25, amount representing 4.94% of the token supply.
• SAHARA token unlocks on January 26, amount representing 5.02% of the token supply.
• 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.