That clever chap, Bloomberg Intelligence’s Mike McGlone, took to the social media platform X (formerly known as Twitter, but do keep up!) on Jan. 31 to deliver a prognosis as bleak as a rainy Tuesday in November. He warns that silver’s valuation is as precarious as a tightrope walker in a gale, leaving it vulnerable to a reversion so painful it’d make one long for a dentist’s chair.
Weekends, those bastions of tranquility, proved no refuge. Liquidity, thinner than a socialite’s patience, gave way to a cascade of automated stop-losses and forced de-leveraging. The result? A drop so dramatic it would make a Waugh protagonist blush with envy.
On the fateful day of Jan. 31, Bitcoin plummeted to an audacious low of $75,555, reminiscent of her humble beginnings back in April 2025. What was the cause, you ask? Why, reports of explosions in Iran, of course! Nothing like a little international drama to send shivers down the spine of the cryptocurrency market.
At 12:15 p.m. on Jan. 31, BTC was trading at $78,993 on Bitstamp, a number that might as well have been written in disappearing ink. The intraday selloff was as sharp as a rusty nail, pushing the price to the lower end of its recent range. The decline, like a stubborn mule, refused to budge after repeated failures to hold above the low-$80,000s. The hourly candles, those flickering omens of doom, accelerated lower into a session low near $78,107. The price action was a symphony of despair, with sellers conducting the orchestra of downfall.
At the stroke of 11:17 a.m. on January 31, our protagonist, XRP, lay prostrate at $1.616, a victim of yet another hourly selloff. Its once-stalwart structure has crumbled, and the bears, those voracious creatures of the market, feast upon its weakness. Rebound attempts, like fleeting hopes in a storm, have been dashed, leaving the near-term tone as fragile as a glass figurine in the hands of a toddler.
It appears Tether’s balance sheet is as solid as my willpower at an all-you-can-eat buffet-after dividends and payouts, they’ve reportedly ended the year with several billion in excess reserves. That’s right, folks, they’re sitting on a cushion of cash that would make even Scrooge McDuck green with envy. Investors are feeling all warm and fuzzy inside, despite the nagging fear about whether a stablecoin can actually be stable when it’s backed by a bunch of numbers and promises.
Bitcoin, that darling of the digital age, has tumbled below its vaunted $81,000 support level, reaching depths not seen since the leaves turned last October. A bear market, they call it, though one might as well call it a circus of despair, with a 35% fall from its 2025 peak.
On the weekly tableau, our dear ADA languishes near the modest figure of $0.30, a stark retreat from its early-2026 heights that flirted with $0.40-$0.45, a time now remembered with bittersweet nostalgia. Since January, the token has issued a continuous series of bearish candles-evidence, if you will, of sustained distribution rather than a mere temporary setback. It now tests a support band of no small significance, stretching between $0.28 and $0.30, a zone of both history and hope-having served as support and resistance in multiple cycles, making one wonder whether it is the market’s good old hiding place or merely a tease.
Yet, as fate would have it, this harmonious performance met an abrupt interruption on the seventh day of January. The once-steadfast inflows began to resemble a leaky bucket, with three days witnessing a reverse tide of outflows that left investors gasping for breath. Among such tumultuous days, one in particular stood out with all the subtlety of a thundering herd.
On a Saturday, when most folks were nursing hangovers or tending to their gardens, Changpeng Zhao, the Binance baron, chimed in. He, like a sage on a dusty hill, pointed out the obvious: Bitcoin, he said, is still wet behind the ears, a mere seventeen years old, a babe in the woods compared to the ancient, weathered faces of gold and silver. “We’re still early,” he drawled, a hint of a smirk playing on his lips, as if he knew something the rest of us didn’t.