Web3 Weekly Research | Market Fell Again After Recovering This Week; Bitcoin Spot ETF Purchases in December Were Close to Three Times the Monthly Output of Miners
Weekly Trend Overview
The overall market situation of the crypto market this week mainly showed another round of rapid decline after a rapid decline last week. Most mainstream coins fluctuated greatly in a week. Due to the volatility and decline of the U.S. stock market, the crypto market was affected and showed more obvious market changes. This week, various mainstream coins mainly maintained rapid rise and fall within a certain price range.
After experiencing a significant decline recently, most mainstream cryptocurrencies have seen a certain intraday recovery in the middle of this week. The market has now entered a relatively obvious downward trend again. As the overall market is trending downward, the market value of each mainstream coin has changed significantly, and the mainstream market sentiment has fallen again.
This week, BTC price performance is relatively typical. It has entered a very obvious downward channel and maintained at around $92,150. The weekly high price is around $102,500. The overall risk of falling is still there. Overall, the prices of key mainstream coins have entered a clear downward channel this week, and the total market value is expected to fall further in the short term. The current market sentiment is around 49, similar to last week’s period. The overall market value growth of the crypto market has dropped significantly, maintaining at around $3.22 trillion, down 2.25% in 24 hours.
The overall performance of the crypto market this week fluctuated greatly. The top mainstream coins have been consolidating recently, and the overall market has changed drastically. The weekly price of BTC has been fluctuating in the price range of 90,000-100,000 recently. The weekly price performance of ETH has a strong correlation trend and has returned to below $3,200 again.
This week’s overall volatility of the crypto market mainly oscillated ups and downs. Most of the top coins rose very little this week, and XDC, as the project with the largest increase in the week, rose by about 10.3%, making it the largest coin in the week.
This weekend, the probability of a large-scale change in the overall crypto market is low. The downward trend is expected to continue during the weekend, and the probability of a significant change in the market trend in the short term is low.
Crypto Market
🔥According to Cointelegraph, in 2024, the transaction volume settled through the Bitcoin network will exceed $19 trillion, more than double the $8.7 trillion settled by the network in 2023, reversing the trend of declining transaction volume in the past two years since 2021.
🔥Exchange BTC inflows (the total amount of BTC transferred to exchanges) and miner outflows (the amount of BTC sent by miners to exchanges) have fallen sharply since November 2024, indicating a reduction in selling pressure.
🔥Satoshi Action Fund (SAF) co-founder and CEO Dennis Porter posted on the X platform that Polymarket said there is a 40% chance that Trump will establish a strategic Bitcoin reserve in 2025.
🔥MicroStrategy founder Michael Saylor has released information related to Bitcoin Tracker for the ninth consecutive week, but this time is different. He said: “Something is not quite right on the website.”
🔥 John Glover, former managing director of Barclays Investment Bank, said that according to the technical analysis tool Elliott Wave Theory, Bitcoin is expected to break through $125,000 in the first quarter of 2025. He pointed out that earlier this week, we saw Bitcoin fall below $92,000, but the correction wave may have been completed. If Bitcoin breaks through $125,000, it may see another pullback and then move toward the top of the cycle near $160,000.
🔥JPMorgan Chase & Co. global market strategists said in a report that 2024 is a critical year for digital assets, with a record $78 billion expected to enter the crypto market, helped by Trump’s victory.
🔥According to Theblock, JPMorgan analysts said that Bitcoin and gold are structurally becoming key components of investors’ portfolios.
🔥Anthony Scaramucci, founder of Skybridge Capital, expects the U.S. government to retain the approximately 200,000 BTC it currently holds and then purchase approximately 500,000 BTC.
🔥The security agency SlowMist recently released the “2024 Blockchain Security and Anti-Money Laundering Annual Report”, which pointed out that according to the statistics of the SlowMist Blockchain Hacked Incident Archive (SlowMist Hacked), a total of 410 security incidents occurred in 2024, with losses as high as $2.013 billion.
🔥JPMorgan Chase & Co. said in a research note that the so-called “depreciation trade” into gold and Bitcoin will “persist” as investors prepare for continued geopolitical uncertainty.
🔥Bernstein analysts released ten predictions for the crypto industry in 2025, reiterating the Bitcoin price target of $200,000, and pointed out that the stablecoin market size will exceed $500 billion, the net inflow of spot Bitcoin ETFs will exceed $70 billion, and the integration of encryption and artificial intelligence will be further deepened.
🔥According to The Block, crypto trading and liquidity services company GSR has obtained approval from the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), and its subsidiary GSR Markets UK Limited can now operate as a registered crypto asset business and provide crypto asset trading and other services to UK customers.
🔥According to a JPMorgan report cited by CoinDesk, Bitcoin (BTC) miner profitability rose for the second consecutive month in December 2024, reaching its highest level since April 2024.
🔥According to Cointelegraph, Bitcoin spot ETF purchases reached 51,500 BTC in December 2024, nearly three times miners’ monthly output of 14,000 BTC. After observing that the balance of the Bitcoin trading platform has dropped to a new low, crypto researcher Vivek said that the supply shock is coming.
🔥According to the Money Times, as competition for resources intensifies, U.S. Bitcoin miners are accumulating crypto funds to help them withstand tightening profit margins.
🔥According to analyst Shaun Edmondson, Bitcoin ETF issuers purchased more than 9,000 BTC on Friday, January 3, and more than 9,600 BTC on Monday. Since the first approval of the Bitcoin ETF, all 12 issuers have become major holders in the industry. In October, they purchased 5 times the global mining output of BTC. Now this number has exceeded 20 times. Analysts believe that bearish market signals will only bring greater purchases.
🔥Omkar Godbole, a technical analyst from the CoinDesk market team, said that since late November 2024, the BTC trend has evolved into a “head and shoulders” (H&S) pattern in technical indicators, indicating that the bullish trend will turn from bearish to bullish.
🔥 Investment bank TD Cowen said the Trump administration could bring positive changes to crypto entities working with banks, but expectations of this new regulatory environment should be within “reasonable ranges.”
🔥Banks have a responsibility to comply with Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) rules and manage risks such as liquidity and concentration, TD Cowen’s Washington research team (led by Jaret Seiberg) wrote in a report.
🔥According to the average data of Apollo and BiTBO, in December, the US spot Bitcoin ETF absorbed as much as 51,500 bitcoins, while miners produced nearly 14,000 bitcoins that month. The US spot Bitcoin ETF’s purchase volume was almost three times miners’ output.
🔥Crypto market research firm Santiment published an article on the X platform stating that the correlation between cryptocurrencies and stocks has remained high since Trump was elected as the 47th President of the United States two months ago.
🔥According to Bloomberg, a federal court in Austin, Texas, recently ruled that early Bitcoin investor Frank Richard Ahlgren III must disclose the passwords to his crypto accounts and related storage devices so that U.S. prosecutors can unlock digital assets worth approximately $124 million.
🔥According to unfolded. data, ETFs and listed companies alone purchased 859,454 bitcoins in 2024. This is equivalent to absorbing 4.3% of the circulating supply in one year, roughly equivalent to the issuance of Bitcoin in the next eight years.
🔥According to the Financial Times, Rostin Behnam, chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), said that regulation of digital assets, including Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, is still insufficient and worrying, according to the Financial Times.
🔥Analyst James Van Straten said that the crypto market has been in a bull market since the end of 2024, but the trend of rising global government bond yields seems impossible to ignore.
🔥Fidelity Digital Assets predicts that 2025 will be a turning point for Bitcoin adoption, with more countries, central banks, sovereign wealth funds, and government finance ministries expected to purchase Bitcoin to build strategic reserves.
🔥According to a report released by NiceHash and Digital Mining Solutions on January 7, public Bitcoin mining companies have followed MicroStrategy’s footsteps and increased their Bitcoin treasury holdings.
🔥Bitwise Chief Investment Officer (CIO) Matt Hougan responded to the news of the Czech Republic’s strategic Bitcoin reserve plan.
🔥Julio Moreno, head of research at CryptoQuant, wrote on the X platform that the current Bitcoin price correction has caused a sharp drop in the unrealized profit margins of on-chain traders. Previously, Bitcoin had exceeded $100,000.
🔥Aurelie Barthere, chief research analyst at Nansen, said crypto investors are looking for new developments to “fuel the bull run.”
🔥Fidelity Digital Assets analysts predict that the inclusion of BTC in the strategic reserves of multiple countries could significantly boost the crypto market by 2025. They believe that inspired by the success of El Salvador and Bhutan, governments may secretly begin accumulating digital assets as a hedge against inflation and coin depreciation.
Regulatory & Macro Policies
🔥According to Hong Kong media Hong Kong 01, the Hong Kong Employment Ordinance stipulates that wages must be paid in the form of money, and cryptocurrency is not a legal tender, so employers using Bitcoin to pay wages may violate the law.
🔥According to Cryptoslate, according to the Ministry of Internal Affairs’ 2024 annual report, India has stepped up its efforts to combat crypto-related scams by working with technology giants Google and Meta (formerly Facebook).
🔥According to a public regulatory filing, Nasdaq has applied to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to increase the position limit of the BlackRock Spot Bitcoin ETF (IBIT) from 25,000 to 250,000.
🔥According to Beincrypto, Michael Barr, Vice Chairman of Supervision of the Federal Reserve, announced that he will resign from the position.
🔥MoonPay, BitStaete, FinTech ZBD, and Hidden Road have obtained the “Crypto Asset Service Provider License” (CASP) issued by the Netherlands Authority for the Financial Markets (AFM), allowing them to operate within the 27 member states of the European Union.
🔥Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s plan to resign from the country’s top job puts the spotlight on opposition leader and prime minister frontrunner Pierre Poilievre, who has pledged to make Canada the “capital of crypto.”
🔥U.S. Senator Dusty Deevers of Oklahoma has submitted the “Bitcoin Freedom Act” numbered SB325, which will allow employees in Oklahoma to choose to receive wages in the form of Bitcoin and allow suppliers to accept Bitcoin payments.
🔥U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Chairman Rostin Behnam will step down as chairman on January 20 to make way for a future appointee from President-elect Donald Trump.
🔥According to the “Guidelines for the Construction of National Data Infrastructure” issued by the National Development and Reform Commission, the National Data Bureau, and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the document proposes the use of blockchain technology, encryption technology, and smart contracts to build a trusted data circulation system.
🔥With Trudeau announcing his resignation as leader of the Liberal Party and as prime minister after the party selects its next leader through a vigorous national competition process, prediction market Polymarket shows that the current probability of crypto-friendly Pierre Poilievre being elected as the Prime Minister of Canada is 92%.
Crypto Market Highlights
⭐️In the past week, the crypto market as a whole has shown a downward trend. Even though there was a slight recovery during the mid-week period, it has now entered a clear downward channel. The main reason for this situation this week is that it was affected by the changes in the U.S. stock market, which led to a short-term downward trend. As the weekend approaches, the probability of further large-scale changes in the overall market is relatively small, and maintaining the current market trend with a small decline will be the mainstream.
⭐️The overall decline in the crypto market this week has limited the rise of the top mainstream growth coins. Due to the recent actions of the ecosystem, XDC has risen by about 10% in a week, but the short-term volatility trend is more obvious. The coin showed a relatively obvious short-term volatility in the week. The high point of the coin’s price was around $0.105, and the low point was around $0.081 during the opening period. However, the price trend of XDC in a week mainly followed the changes in the market, and the overall rise and fall were at an average level.
BTC & ETH Weekly Performance
Bitcoin (BTC)
(Data Courtesy Of TradingView)
Although the price of BTC had a short-term upward trend after the opening this week, it soon fell continuously with the overall market. The coin price remains in the range of $92,000. Although the current market share of BTC remains stable, similar to other mainstream coins, the upward trend of prices in the short term is relatively weak. The coin price is expected to fall below $90,000. If this happens, it may trigger a new round of compensatory decline.
Ethereum (ETH)
(Data Courtesy Of TradingView)
The price trend of ETH this week is still similar to that of BTC, and the price change trend is relatively gentler. However, the obvious downward trend of ETH price this week is mainly due to the changes in the market, and it has directly entered an obvious short-term volatile downward trend. The weekly price low of this coin is in the current range. The coin’s current price remains below $3,200, and the overall price decline is relatively large. ETH’s weekly decline is about -7.5%. The coin is in a continuous small fluctuation channel, and a new round of price changes is expected during the weekend.
Web3 Project Trend
This week, due to the recent market trend, the total market value of the seven types of projects has maintained slight ups and downs in most coins, and the overall market trend is relatively flat. This trend is expected to continue for one to two weeks, and the market will usher in a new round of change cycles.
