While BTC currently trades above $100k with support from Trump policies and strong performance of crypto backed companies, Bank of Japan's expected rate hike from 0.25% to 0.5%, which would be the BOJ's largest since 2007, may destabilize both traditional and digital asset markets and could trigger significant crypto volatility.
The global cryptocurrency market cap currently stands at $3.52 tn, reflecting a 2.80% decline over the past day. In the last 24 hours, the total crypto market trading volume is $147.32 bn, representing a 22.74% decrease. Stablecoins dominate with a trading volume of $135.12 bn, which is 91.72% of the total crypto market's 24-hour volume.
Osprey Funds and Rex Shares have filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to introduce several new cryptocurrency exchange-traded funds (ETFs), including one linked to the newly launched $TRUMP coin, a move that could amplify doubts about the legitimacy and stability of the cryptocurrency market by associating institutional financial products with a highly speculative and contentious memecoin.
Meanwhile, Bitwise Asset Management also submitted documents to register for a Dogecoin ETF.
According to Chainalysis, most $TRUMP and $MELANIA holders are retail investors with less than $100 in profits, while 60 "$TRUMP whales" have gained over $10 million. Almost 50% of the token buyers created their wallets on the same day of their purchase.
BTC ETF flows slowed down but remained positive on Jan 22, recording $248.7m of net inflows. Meanwhile, ETH ETF flows remained slightly below the Jan 21 inflows, recording $70.70m of inflows on Jan 22.
The cryptocurrency mixer Tornado Cash, a protocol that enhances transaction privacy by mixing multiple users' Ethereum transactions to obscure their source and destination, saw its US sanctions overturned when the Fifth Circuit Court ruled that the Treasury overstepped its authority since Tornado Cash's immutable smart contracts can't be classified as "ownable property" under IEEPA, causing its TORN token to surge 160% from $9.50 to over $25 before settling at around $16.
Nasdaq's official X account was compromised to promote a fraudulent memecoin called STONKS (a copycat of an existing Solana token), resulting in a brief pump to $80 million market cap before crashing, marking another incident in a series of high-profile X account hacks used to promote crypto scams.
Blockchain investigator ZachXBT cashed out $3.9 million (16,000 SOL) after receiving 50% of the supply of a memecoin created in his name, causing the token's market cap to plunge from $97 million to $19 million. Through a post on X, he expressed regret about not prioritizing making money. The move drew mixed reactions, with many supporters arguing the sum was well-deserved given his extensive unpaid work exposing crypto scams and fraud.
World Liberty Financial added another 94.94 wBTC worth $9.84m to its portfolio, bringing total holdings to 551.7 wBTC.
