The crypto market was weak in positive performance in the past week. The CPI came out on January 13th and was up 0.3% month over month and 2.8% over the past year. This means that the Fed will probably not cut interest rates as anticipated. The labor market also softened, with December 2025 stats revealing slowing job growth and that real take-home earnings were flat.
The U.S. has also threatened the European Union with a new 10% tariff if it doesn’t fall in line backing the U.S. takeover of Greenland. The U.S. statement caused the memecoins, DeFi, and AI sectors to drop an average of 7% on low volumes. The crypto market reflected its sensitivity to geopolitics and U.S. policy ,which could see more consolidation before a bull run emerges. Investors are quietly awaiting to see what the Fed policies will be moving forward.
BTC ETFs Have a Great Week
While the overall market (and BTC price) dropped due to macroeconomic and geopolitical news, BTC ETFs attracted 1.43b USD in net inflows over a 4-day period earlier in the week. Institutional investors parted with their positive year-end capital to pump up the ‘digital gold’ ETFs, with BlackRock taking in a one-day record of 648m USD. The influx of capital shows increasing confidence in BTC ETFs after a dismal December. The increase in capital coincided with BTC hitting 97k on January 15th before retracing to its current level of 90.9 USD. If risks continue, this trend could easily reverse in the coming week.
The U.S. government is set to establish a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve after Trump signed an executive order early last year in hopes of becoming the crypto capital of the world. The reserve will be created from asset seizures from illegal activities, which now total approximately 18b USD. There have been some setbacks, as the administration has faced obscure legal hurdles. There is some back-and-forth with other government agencies that might be best suited to launch the reserve.
Growing ETH L2 Adoption by Institutions
Ethereum adoption is growing across all sectors, but particularly by institutions. Its Layer-2 network has been adopted recently by JP Morgan as a deposit product, by Fidelity for transaction security, speed, and cost, and by American Express, which launched Amex Passport to allow travellers to create blockchain records. An ETH spokesperson said acceptance of global institutions building tokenization infrastructures on ETH is a natural evolution of the network, and the upcoming upgrades will handle the surge in traffic and use without incident.
The large players in the crypto market have put recent selling pressure on ETH. In the past week, over 111m USD moved to major exchanges by whales. Institutions transferred around 83m USD in the 7 days. These sales could be for hedging, OTC settlements, collateral and not necessarily straightforward sales.
Ethereum hit 3.3k USD on January 19th, but has pulled back and is currently trading around 3k USD as selling pressure continues to weigh it down.
TRX Under Scrutiny
Tron had reasonable gains earlier this week but has pulled back substantially from the 0.3204 USD high. The altcoin is still up 1.74% for the week, but some House Democrats have accused the SEC of failing to enforce its policies related to TRX. Several crypto companies have had their case delayed or dropped in the past year. The SEC has been accused of failing to fulfill its mandate to enforce securities laws protecting investors, thereby questioning its effectiveness. Some of the accusations have pointed out that the increased political spending of crypto companies and possible ‘pay-to-play’ have weakened the SEC’s stance on illegal activities by some firms.
The case against Justin Sun has been paused indefinitely (for market manipulation, unlawful celebrity promotion, and unregistered crypto sales), suggesting preferential treatment. The founder of Tron apparently invested 75m USD in World Liberty Finance (WLFI) in late 2024. There are other concerns, such as Tron’s connection to the Chinese Central Party School and connections to Chinese government officials.
TRX has fallen 6% from its weekly high and is trading at 0.3034 USD. It would appear the price decrease is because of increased TRX scrutiny, and that it may reveal that the SEC is not following policy and may be under political pressure or control from the government.
Cardano Ready for a Rebound
This past week, there has been considerable good news surrounding Cardano. The ADA derivatives market has experienced over 10k% increase on the Bitmex Exchange alone, amounting to 625m USD in the last day. Another major exchange, CME Group, has stated that it will list ADA futures on its platform as well. The increased market exposure/stats have rebounded Cardano’s open interest to almost 800m USD, with positive sentiment at 86%.
The market as a whole experienced a significant selloff, and so did ADA. The coin is down 8% in the past 7 days after a strong start to the year, with a high of 0.437 USD. Investors bought up over 210m ADA in January, taking advantage of the price weakness, which could be a bullish signal.
Cardano is currently trading at 0.359 USD with whales accumulating, positive market sentiment and institutional momentum. ADA could hit higher highs in the coming week.
The crypto market suffered a large selloff this week, but sentiment remains quite positive. ETFs had large inflows, whales were taking advantage of the lower price level,s and institutional investors started to come back, signaling a possible bull run in the next week. The consolidation period may be over, and an upside may be around the corner.
