Crypto Daybook Americas: ADA Rallies, Bitcoin Looks to Powell's Testimony in Congress

By Omkar Godbole (All times ET unless indicated otherwise)

Cardano's ADA is trading higher, buoyed by Grayscale's recent spot ETF application, while bitcoin (BTC) remains rangebound in a lackluster crypto market as we gear up for Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell's testimony to Congress.

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Powell takes the stage on Capitol Hill later Tuesday for his semi-annual update on monetary policy. He'll start with the Senate and repeat his performance in the House of Representatives on Wednesday.

The testimony is likely to do little to revive BTC's upswing. The consensus is that Powell will uphold his data-dependent approach, reiterating that the central bank isn't in a rush to cut interest rates anytime soon and is keen on observing more progress with inflation.

Data shared by Bloomberg's Lisa Abramowicz shows that market-implied inflation rates for the next two to five years have soared to their highest levels since early 2023. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump's tariffs could underpin inflation. The CME's FedWatch tool currently shows traders anticipate just 50 basis points in cuts by the end of next year, significantly less than the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) outlined in its December forecasts.

However, there's a glimmer of hope: If the Consumer Price Index (CPI) release on Wednesday comes in weaker than expected, it could create some upside volatility.

In other news, Japanese mobile-game studio Gumi said it is planning to purchase bitcoin worth 1 billion yen ($6.6 million), following Tokyo-listed Metaplanet's lead. Metaplanet began buying BTC last year and its shares soared a staggering 4,800% in 12 months.

Social media continues to buzz with debate over the imbalance in Ethereum's ecosystem, where layer-2 scaling products retain most of the generated revenue while contributing only a small percentage back to the foundational layer. Solana, meanwhile, continues to outshine Ethereum and other smart-contract blockchains in decentralized exchange trading volumes and revenue.

In traditional markets, gold is taking bull breather while copper, often seen as proxy for global economic health, is trading lower, snapping a six-day winning streak. Stay alert!

What to Watch

Token Events

Governance votes & calls Aave DAO is discussing recognizing HyperLend as a friendly fork of Aave deployed on the Hyperliquid EVM chain, as well as the deployment of Aave v3 on Ink, Kraken’s layer-2 rollup network. Sky DAO is discussing, among other things, onboarding Arbitrum One to the Spark Liquidity layer, increasing the PSM2 rate limits on Base and minting 100 million USDS worth of sUSDS into Base to accommodate growth on the network. Morpho DAO is discussing a 25% reduction in MORPHO rewards on both Ethereum and Base after another reduction took effect on Jan. 30. DYdX DAO is voting on the dYdX Treasury subDAO taking control over the stDYDX within the protocol’s Community Treasury and any tokens accrued through auto compounding staking rewards. Feb. 12 2 p.m. : Render (RENDER) to host an AI Scout Discord AMA session.

Unlocks Feb. 12: Aethir (ATH) to unlock 10.21% of circulating supply worth $23.80 million. Feb. 14: The Sandbox (SAND) to unlock 8.4% of circulating supply worth $80.2 million. Feb. 16: Arbitrum (ARB) to unlock 2.13% of circulating supply worth $42.93 million. Feb. 21: Fast Token (FTN) to unlock 4.66% of circulating supply worth $78.8 million.

Token Launches Feb. 12: Avalon (AVL) to be listed on Bybit. Feb. 12: Game7 (G7) to be listed on Bybit, Gate.io, HashKey, MEXC, XT, and KuCoin. Feb. 13: EthereumPoW (ETHW) and Polygon (MATIC) to no longer be supported at Deribit.



Conferences:

CoinDesk's Consensus to take place in Hong Kong on Feb. 18-20 and in Toronto on May 14-16. Use code DAYBOOK and save 15% on passes.

Derivatives Positioning

Litecoin's near 10% price surge in the past 24 hours is accompanied by an 18% rise in perpetual futures open interest. HBAR, UNI have also seen notable increases in open interest, according to Velo Data.

Speaking of perpetual funding rates, SOL, SUI are seeing negative readings in a sign of bias for bearish short positions.

At 11%, ETH's CME futures basis is greater than BTC's, which may draw in carry traders, resulting in a strong uptake for ether spot ETFs.

BTC, ETH put skews on Deribit have eased slightly. Flows have been muted.

Market Movements:

BTC is up 0.62% from 4 p.m. ET Monday to $97,989.64 (24hrs: +0.27%)

ETH is up 0.53% at $2,702.45 (24hrs: +2.07%)

CoinDesk 20 is up 1.79% to 3,269.36 (24hrs: +1.77%)

Ether CESR Composite Staking Rate is up 8 bps to 3.05%

BTC funding rate is at 0.01% (10.95% annualized) on Binance

DXY is unchanged at 108.31

Gold is up 0.58% at $2,931.2/oz

Silver is down 0.74% to $32.15/oz

Nikkei 225 closed unchanged at 38,801.17

Hang Seng closed -1.06% at 21,294.86

FTSE is unchanged at 8,767.36

Euro Stoxx 50 is up 0.1% to 5,363.27

DJIA closed Monday +0.38% at 44,470.41

S&P 500 closed +0.67% at 6,066.44

Nasdaq closed +0.98% at 19,714.27

S&P/TSX Composite Index closed +0.85% at 25,658.9

S&P 40 Latin America closed +0.77% at 2,428.87

U.S. 10-year Treasury rate was unchanged at 4.49%

E-mini S&P 500 futures are down 0.33% to 6,068.5

E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures are down 0.47% at 21,743.5

E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average Index futures are down 0.21% at 44,488

Bitcoin Stats:

BTC Dominance: 61.21% (-0.59%)

Ethereum to bitcoin ratio: 0.02752 (0.77%)

Hashrate (seven-day moving average): 802 EH/s

Hashprice (spot): $53.19

Total Fees: 4.58 BTC / $445,648

CME Futures Open Interest: 166,695 BTC

BTC priced in gold: 33.3 oz

BTC vs gold market cap: 9.46%

Technical Analysis

Bitcoin's monthly chart. (TradingView/CoinDesk)

BTC's monthly chart serves as an excellent illustration of how trendlines drawn from major price points act as support levels.

Over the past two months, the downside has consistently been capped at around $90,000. This level is defined by a trendline connecting the twin peaks from 2021.

Crypto Equities

MicroStrategy (MSTR): closed on Monday at $334.62 (+2.16%), up 0.15% at $335.11 in pre-market.

Coinbase Global (COIN): closed at $280.22 (+2.09%), up 0.23% at $280.86 in pre-market.

Galaxy Digital Holdings (GLXY): closed at C$27.24 (+1.3%)

MARA Holdings (MARA): closed at $16.76 (unchanged), up 0.36% at $16.82 in pre-market.

Riot Platforms (RIOT): closed at $11.63 (-0.1%), down 0.1% at $11.62 in pre-market.

Core Scientific (CORZ): closed at $12.82 (+2.07%), up 0.1% at $12.83 in pre-market.

CleanSpark (CLSK): closed at $11.18 (-1.32%), down 0.54% at $11.12 in pre-market.

CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI): closed at $23.50 (+1.51%), unchanged at $23.5 in pre-market.

Semler Scientific (SMLR): closed at $49.61 (+0.83%), up 2.6% at $50.90 in pre-market.

Exodus Movement (EXOD): closed at $51.18 (+5.81%), down 2.31% at $50 in pre-market.

ETF Flows

Spot BTC ETFs:

Daily net flow: -$186.3 million

Cumulative net flows: $40.52 billion

Total BTC holdings ~ 1.177 million.

Spot ETH ETFs

Daily net flow: -$22.5 million

Cumulative net flows: $3.16 billion

Total ETH holdings ~ 3.791 million.

Source: Farside Investors

Overnight Flows

Chart of the Day

Solana and Ethereum's monthly DEX volumes. (Artemis)

Solana-based decentralized exchanges have hosted more trading volume than Ethereum since October.

While You Were Sleeping

In the Ether