The most extraordinary corrective impulse for gold in the modern era has the audacity to look modestly ordinary. From a $5,600 peak, it has fallen in a mere three days to $4,400-a 21% cascade, as merciless as a critic’s pen.
In the hushed chamber of pre-market panic, crypto-connected stocks sagged as traders gnawed over President Trump’s Friday whim-Kevin Warsh as Fed chair-an announcement that trembled the weekend and toppled more than a few crypto dominoes. Strategy (MSTR), the herd’s largest publicly traded bitcoin custodian, sagged past six percent; Galaxy Digital (GLXY) slid more than seven; bitcoin-mining and AI-adjacent firms, IREN and Cipher Mining (CIFR), sagged about four percent; Coinbase (COIN) followed suit in its own dreary chorale.
Investors, those ever-restless souls, are now turning their backs on the altcoin king, their hands itching to sell as if it were a hot potato passed in a game of financial musical chairs. Yet, in this theater of the absurd, there is a silver lining-a glimmer of hope that the very excess of despair might sow the seeds of a robust recovery. After all, what is a tragedy without its redemptive arc?
Meanwhile, in the crypto circus, XRP is drowning in dollar waters, Shiba Inu is doing its best impression of a lead balloon, and Bitcoin is flirting with a $50k cliff. Spoiler alert: it’s not a romantic comedy.
Over recent weeks, as if awakening from a long slumber, we have observed a change in the marketplace’s fickle favor. The old days, when Bitcoin miners were judged solely by the size of their coin sacks, gave way to a new paradigm-credible HPC/AI exposure. Investors, with a keen eye and a skeptical brow, now see through the smoke and mirrors, valuing those with real commitments over mere promises.
The new Fed chair, Kevin Warsh, is seen as hawkish and not likely to whack out interest-rate cuts with the enthusiasm of a coupon hunter, given his stance on inflation.
On-chain data and market indicators, that most punctilious of statisticians, sketch a mood more blue than a clerical dinner party. The long view reveals a pattern of lower highs and lower lows, a downtrend which, like a stubborn footman, refuses to retire.
Now, January kicked off with a whopper-a 2010-era whale decided to offload 2,000 BTC, like it was throwin’ a garage sale after a decade-long nap. But don’t let that fool you; the rest of the month was about as exciting as watchin’ paint dry, according to btcparser.com. Beyond that vintage whale, 40 wallets from the same era stirred, and 2017 wallets logged the second-highest number of movements-though they didn’t exactly break the bank.
Apparently, Lighter aims to shed its quirky image as just a fancy trading desk and become a big, juicy platform for Ethereum-based games-er, applications. More use cases, more fun, more chaos.
Behold, the wise sages at CertiK, guardians of the blockchain, proclaim that 40 misadventures cost the industry a modest $370.3 million. Yet, with a flourish, the total swells to $400.3 million, thanks to a late entrant-a $30 million exploit on the Solana stage, starring Step Finance.
