Author: 行政
Gold and copper have moved higher even as the Federal Reserve continues to signal patience on rate cuts, a divergence that shows how markets tend to price liquidity conditions ahead of formal policy shifts rather than wait for confirmation from central banks.These metals are responding to changes in real yields, funding conditions, and forward expectations, and that behavior has often appeared in earlier stages of easing cycles. In previous cycles, Bitcoin reacted later to the same forces, with its strongest advances arriving only after metals had already repositioned for looser financial conditions.The current setup looks familiar. Gold is attracting defensive…
European Central Bank chief economist Philip Lane delivered a warning that most markets treated as European housekeeping: the ECB can stay on its easing path for now, but a Federal Reserve “tussle” over mandate independence could destabilize global markets through higher US term premiums and a reassessment of the dollar’s role.Lane’s framing matters because it names the exact transmission channels that matter most to Bitcoin: real yields, dollar liquidity, and the credibility scaffolding that holds the current macro regime together.The immediate catalyst for cooling was geopolitical. Oil’s risk premium faded as fears of a US strike on Iran receded, pulling…
More than 36 million ETH is now staked in Ethereum’s proof-of-stake system, close to 30% of the circulating supply and worth over $118 billion at recent prices.Graph showing the amount of ETH staked in the Ethereum network from Oct. 16, 2025, to Jan. 16, 2026 (Source: ValidatorQueue)That headline number sounds like a clean vote of confidence: holders are locking up their ETH to secure the network, collect yield, and signal they’re in no rush to sell. The trouble with using “confidence” as a metric is that it counts coins, not motivations, and it treats one whale the same as a…
Bitcoin’s price, and thus the entire crypto market, is increasingly being anchored by flows through regulated wrappers. Crypto is increasingly being subsumed by TradFi rather than offering an alternative to the broken system Satoshi criticized.U.S. spot ETF subscriptions and redemptions are now posting day-to-day swings that increasingly dominate the daily narrative tape.In practice, “priced by ETF flows” means the ETF print has become the cleanest, most legible proxy for marginal U.S.-dollar demand during U.S. hours, often the first number desks check before debating what happened on crypto-native venues.According to Farside Investors’ Bitcoin ETF flow dashboard, the U.S. complex logged a…
By mid-January, open interest in Bitcoin options rose to about $74.1 billion, edging past Bitcoin futures open interest of roughly $65.22 billion.Open interest is the stock of outstanding contracts that have not been closed or expired, so it measures position inventory, not trading activity. So, when options inventory exceeds futures, it often shows a market that’s leaning less on raw directional leverage and more on structured exposure: hedges, yield overlays, and volatility positioning.Futures remain the simplest way to take leveraged exposure to Bitcoin’s direction. However, options let traders and institutions shape risk with much more precision through payoff profiles that…
Corporate credit quality is deteriorating beneath a surface that looks deceptively calm. JPMorgan tallied roughly $55 billion in US corporate bonds that slid from investment-grade to junk status in 2025, the so-called “fallen angels.”At the same time, only $10 billion returned to investment-grade status as “rising stars.” Another $63 billion of investment-grade debt now sits near the edge of junk, up from about $37 billion at the end of 2024.Yet, spreads remain remarkably tight: as of Jan. 15, FRED data shows investment-grade option-adjusted spreads at 0.76%, BBB spreads at 0.97%, and high-yield spreads at 2.71%.Those are levels that suggest investors…
Two senators have introduced a short bill with an unusually big ambition: to stop US law from treating people who write and publish blockchain software as if they were running a shadow payments company.The proposal, titled the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act of 2026, aims to clarify that “non-controlling” developers and infrastructure providers (i.e., those who don’t have the legal right or unilateral ability to move other people’s funds) should not be swept into the legal bucket reserved for money transmitters.It’s an argument crypto has been making for years, unfortunately, often in the abstract language of decentralization and autonomy.But the stakes…
Bitcoin’s first difficulty adjustment of 2026 was anything but dramatic. The network nudged the dial down to about 146.4 trillion, a pretty small retreat after the late-2025 grind higher.Graph showing Bitcoin’s mining difficulty from Oct. 14, 2025, to Jan. 14, 2026 (Source: CoinWarz)But small isn’t the same as meaningless in mining, a business where margins are measured in fractions of a fraction and the main input (electricity) can turn from bargain to backbreaker in a week. Difficulty is Bitcoin’s built-in metronome: every two weeks or so, the protocol recalibrates how hard it is to find a block so that blocks…
XRP has become the default trading chip of South Korea, bypassing Bitcoin and Ethereum to dominate the country’s high-velocity retail market.While institutional capital worldwide typically gravitates toward Bitcoin as a store of value, South Korean trading patterns tell a different story.Data from the country’s largest exchanges reveals that when the market heats up, domestic traders consistently prioritize XRP for its liquidity and speed. This preference is a structural anomaly that has defined the local retail playbook for 2025.Dunamu, the operator of the dominant Upbit exchange, listed XRP as the platform’s most-traded asset for the year, ranking it ahead of the…
On Jan. 9, Tennessee’s sports betting regulator sent a set of letters that, at first glance, looked like the kind of paperwork most crypto natives scroll past.The message was blunt: stop offering sports-related event contracts to Tennessee residents, void unsettled positions, and refund customers by Jan. 31.The recipients, Kalshi, Polymarket, and Crypto.com, sit on the border between finance and gambling.A “yes/no” trade on a game outcome can be framed either as a federally regulated derivative or as an unlicensed sportsbook.Within days, the fight moved to federal court.A US district judge in Nashville, Aleta Trauger, issued a temporary restraining order blocking…