Start-of-the-year recovery rally stalls: Crypto Daybook Americas

By Omkar Godbole (All times ET unless indicated otherwise)

Major cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin BTC $ 92,012.40, XRP $ 2.2834 and solana SOL $ 137.84, 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.

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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.

(Estimates based on FactSet data)

Token Events

For a more comprehensive list of events this week, see CoinDesk's "Crypto Week Ahead".

Governance votes & calls Jan. 7: Jupiter to host a Planetary Call after the launch of its JupUSD stablecoin. Jan. 7: Axie Infinity to host its first Lunacian Lounge of 2026. Jan. 7: Gnosis to host a community ask me anything (AMA) session on X, YouTube and Discord.

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

BTC's daily chart. (TradingView)

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

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