(03/52) Weekly Market Insights: USD consolidates hawkish stance, BTC gains will spit

Hot News

• Bitcoin prices fell 3.9% last week, affected by multiple factors. Major economic data showed that interest rate cuts may be delayed, further dampening market sentiment; at the same time, the news that the U.S. Department of Justice was approved to sell 69,370 bitcoins seized from Silk Road further exacerbated selling pressure.

Macro Outlook

• The U.S. ISM services PMI rose to 54.1 in December, higher than the market expectation of 53.3.
• The number of job openings increased by 259,000 to 80.98 million in November, up from the upwardly revised 78.39 million in October and exceeding market expectations of 7.70 million.
• The minutes of the December Federal Reserve meeting further solidified the view of most officials that inflation risks are to the upside and suggested only two rate cuts would be made in 2025.
• The number of non-farm payrolls in the United States increased by 256,000 in December, the largest increase in nine months, exceeding the market expectation of 160,000. At the same time, the unemployment rate fell slightly to 4.1% from 4.2% last month, lower than the market expectation of 4.2%.

The upcoming economic calendar includes:

• January 14 (Tuesday) 9:30 p.m.: U.S. December PPI Index
• January 15 (Wednesday) 9:30 pm: US December inflation rate
• Thursday, January 16, 9:30 p.m.: U.S. December retail sales data

Cryptocurrency Market Quick Facts

• The governor of the Czech Central Bank said in an interview that he is considering including Bitcoin as one of the bank's diversified strategy reserves.
• Kenya is preparing legislation to legalize cryptocurrencies, the country’s finance ministry cabinet secretary has said.
• Sol Strategies has raised a total of $52.5 million CAD through credit facilities and ParaFi to facilitate its acquisition of SOL.

Layer 1 and Layer 2 Public Chains

• Arbitrum now supports ElizaOS. Developers can use Trailblazer and Stylus Sprints to fund the development of AI agents on Arbitrum.
• The Solana Foundation encouraged testnet validators to perform the Frankendancer upgrade in Discord. This test is considered the final stage before the official launch of the Firedancer mainnet.
• Solayer announced InfiniSVM in its 2025 roadmap, a hardware-accelerated and infinitely scalable blockchain architecture that can achieve 100 Gbps transaction performance.
• Starknet launched the SN stack, enabling developers to build their own ZK application chains within the Starknet ecosystem.

Dapps

• ElizaOS launched the v0.1.8 upgrade, adding 15 new text-to-speech support, Intel SGX security chip support, and integration functions for multiple protocols including Hyperliquid.
• Nubit launches Goldinals, which uses a trustless mechanism to implement data indexing capabilities for BRC-20, Ordinals, Runes and other asset standards.
• Raydium launches a perpetual contract exchange powered by Orderly Network, offering services with no gas fees and order fees.
• Aiccelerate, a crypto AI proxy investment DAO backed by several well-known KOLs, launched AICC tokens on the dao.fun platform. However, the launch was controversial due to the pre-launch distribution of tokens to 245 whitelisted insiders, resulting in a return of more than 1,000 times on their initial investment.
• Illuvium worked with Virtuals to create interactive NPCs using the GAME framework to provide players with a personalized gaming experience.
• Ether.fi launches Liquid BTC Yield vault, offering 15% APY through 8 protocol credits.
• Phala Network announced the launch of v2.0, an OP Succint layer 2 network based on Ethereum, bringing TEE functionality to more Ethereum developers.
• Thorchain has suspended ThorFi’s savings and loan services for 12 months, with the team saying the complexity of the mechanism and the burden of the redemption mechanism could drive away participants.
• Derive launches Derive Pro, a partnership with Messari that allows users to quickly select trades from research or news on the Messari platform.
• Enso has launched ZKsync, enabling decentralized applications within the ecosystem to seamlessly integrate DeFi functions such as trading, lending or vault functions.

Governance/Project Updates

• Usual announced that the revenue sharing mechanism (expected to increase by approximately 77% on the existing 274% annualized APY) will be activated when 50% of USUAL tokens are staked, otherwise it will be automatically enabled on February 1. Usual also unexpectedly adjusted the hard-coded USD0++ floor price to $0.87, which caused dissatisfaction in the community. To remedy this, the team announced that it will launch the "1:1 Early Unstaking" function this week, allowing users to give up part of their accumulated USUAL rewards to ensure a 1:1 unstaking ratio.
• The first deadline for Grayscale Solana ETF applications is expected to be January 23, while the deadline for VanEck and three other issuers is expected to be January 25. The market generally believes that the SEC will extend the review period for these applications.
• Azuki officially launches the ANIME token, which is expected to go online in January. 50.5% will be allocated to the community, and 76.94% of the token supply will be fully unlocked at the time of issuance.
• Aerodrome expects to launch Slipstream V2 this month, introducing a dynamic fee mechanism that increases rates during periods of high volatility and results in higher annualized APRs for liquidity providers.
• Following the launch of Mode’s AI Agent App Store in November, Mode plans to launch AI Terminal this month, a chat assistant tool that can perform DeFi operations, laying the foundation for DeFAI trading activities on the Mode Network.
• Blast announced that updates to its mobile app and token economics model will be released this month. This token economics update may be related to the December proposal, which plans to use the staking income of ETH and USD on the chain to buy back BLAST tokens.
• Theta plans to release a beta version of the Hybrid Edge Cloud architecture on June 25, 2025, expanding the computing power of Edge nodes and seamlessly integrating cloud GPUs to optimize high-performance computing workloads.
• Ronin has partnered with Virtuals to launch its exclusive AI Agent, JAIHOZ, and plans to open Ronin’s on-chain development in the first quarter of 2025.
• Arbitrum has launched BoLD through a proposal to enable permissionless dispute capabilities for Arbitrum fraud proofs.
• Arbitrum is in talks with Rakuten’s metaverse gaming platform, Caliverse, to integrate it onto the Arbitrum chain. In return, Rakuten may receive the largest grant ever from the Arbitrum Foundation.
• Threshold Network proposed to set up tLabs to lead the development of tBTC and redesign the economic model of T tokens to solve the problems of inflation and token value accumulation. The plan requires the minting of 1.2 billion new T tokens to fund tLabs.

Token Unlock

• ARB tokens were unlocked on January 16th, accounting for 2.2% of the total supply.
• VANA tokens were unlocked on January 16th, accounting for 1.46% of the total supply.
• APE tokens were unlocked on January 17th and account for 2.12% of the total supply.
• MERL tokens were unlocked on January 19th and represent 5.8% of the total supply.
• WELL tokens were unlocked on January 23rd and represent 1.17% of the total supply.
• IMX tokens were unlocked on January 24th and represent 1.43% of the total supply.
• ALT tokens were unlocked on January 25th and represent 10.4% of the total supply.
• RON tokens were unlocked on January 27th, accounting for 8.86% of the total supply.
• GRASS tokens were unlocked on January 28th and represent 1.51% of the total supply.
• OP tokens were unlocked on January 31st and represent 2.38% of the total supply.