Jan 29, 2026
🍪 Today's Snack
Crypto slipped after the Fed held rates steady, with dollar weakness lifting gold more than Bitcoin. Sentiment stayed in Fear, and flows still look tentative.
📈 24h Crypto Market Snapshot
Total crypto market cap slipped to $2.98T while Fear & Greed ticked to 38 (Fear), keeping the mood cautious.
Asset | Price (USD) | 24h Change | Market Cap |
|---|---|---|---|
BTC | $88,163 | -1.02% | $1.76T |
ETH | $2,952 | -1.78% | $356B |
BNB | $898 | -0.01% | $122B |
SOL | $123 | -2.89% | $69B |
ADA | $0.35 | -1.83% | $12B |
Selloff – a controlled risk-off fade as Fed + DXY crosscurrents kept buyers hesitant.
🔥 Top 3 Movers & Shakers
Worldcoin (WLD) – +12%
WLD jumped on reports OpenAI may explore biometric verification, including Worldcoin’s Orb, for a bot-resistant social network.
Takeaway: Proof-of-personhood is back in focus, but this move looks headline-driven without confirmed terms.Zcash (ZEC) – -6.9%
ZEC fell after 200,000 ZEC was unshielded and a whale moved $35.75M worth of ZEC to Binance.
Takeaway: Unshielding often precedes selling, hinting at distribution pressure despite the SEC closing its Zcash review without enforcement action on January 14.FIGHT – -12.9%
FIGHT dropped as post-airdrop selling followed its January 22 Binance Alpha listing, with extreme turnover after the launch pump.
Takeaway: Classic post-listing distribution, with low circulating supply and high velocity keeping swings sharp.
🏦 ETF & Institutional Flows
Bitcoin spot ETFs recorded $19M in net outflows on 2026-01-23, while Ethereum ETFs saw $28M inflows.
Flow read: Modest interest after a brutal selloff, with institutions testing support but conviction still fragile after the five-day exodus you noted.
🌍 Market Context
Macro Pulse: The Fed held rates at 3.5%–3.75% as equities pushed higher and gold hit a new ATH above $5,300 on a weaker dollar. Trump’s dollar comments and tariff noise kept macro uncertainty elevated.
On-Chain Highlights: BTC exchange reserves rose 0.20% over January 21–27 while stablecoin supply kept contracting, which points to tighter liquidity and more “sell-side availability” on exchanges.
🔍 Deep Dive – Crypto crime is shifting to ops failures
2025’s biggest crypto losses are increasingly about custody and operational security, not just smart-contract bugs. TRM Labs says illicit crypto volume hit $158B in 2025, with sanctions volume now the majority, while Chainalysis estimates at least $154B (up 162% YoY) driven mainly by sanctioned entities.
Losses also concentrated: TRM says $2.87B was stolen across nearly 150 hacks, with the Bybit breach at $1.46B (51% of the total). And it’s not just exchanges – on January 28, Reuters reported the U.S. Marshals Service is investigating a possible breach of government digital-asset accounts, after an on-chain investigator alleged over $60M was stolen from seizure wallets in late 2025.
What it suggests: The main attack surface is now key management and the human/process layer, where one failure can dominate an entire year.
📰 Top News
Fed + markets: The Fed held rates while equities stayed strong, but crypto faded and gold kept leading the hard-asset trade.
Tether + gold: Tether said it will allocate 10%–15% of its portfolio to gold (and 10% to Bitcoin), reinforcing tokenized-gold momentum.
Stablecoins: ERC-20 stablecoin supply fell over the past week, signaling tighter on-chain liquidity.
U.S. government wallets: The U.S. Marshals Service is probing a possible breach of government digital-asset accounts, raising custody questions.
📚 Education Bits
💡 Pro Tip: When DXY drops and BTC doesn’t respond, treat it as a sentiment tell – the market may be pricing “risk-off” over “debasement.”
📊 Metric Explained: In privacy coins, “unshielding” is an early signal because it turns private balances into transparent ones that can be sent to exchanges.
📊 Daily Wrap-Up
Crypto took a step back even as equities held up and the dollar weakened, which kept gold in the driver’s seat. With stablecoin supply shrinking and flows still mixed, upside likely needs a clearer liquidity tailwind.
Today's Watch List: Watch whether DXY weakness finally translates into BTC strength, and whether stablecoin contraction continues or stabilizes.
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