Feb. 5, 2025

We're excited to announce our new format "Crypto Daybook Americas" will replace "First Mover" on Feb. 24. "Crypto Daybook Americas" is your new morning briefing on what happened in crypto markets overnight to equip you with what you'll need to know about during the coming day. It will arrive in your inbox at 7 a.m. ET to kickstart your morning with comprehensive insights and analysis. If you want a preview, "Crypto Daybook Americas" is already being published on the CoinDesk website, so hop over and take a look. You don't need to do anything to sign up, you'll start receiving "Crypto Daybook Americas" automatically when it starts coming out.

CoinDesk 20 Index: 3,314.93  -1.09%
Bitcoin (BTC): $98,593.98  +5.04%
Ether (ETH): $98,593.98. -0.18%
S&P 500: 6,037.88  +0.72%
Gold: $2,868.56  +0.05%
Nikkei 225: 38,831.48  +0.09%

Bitcoin traded below $98,000 following a dip to $96,250 on Tuesday. The crypto market had been rallying following its tariff-induced dump at the start of the week, but this appeared to have been snuffed out by the lack of positive clues about a strategic BTC reserve by White House crypto and AI czar David Sacks at Tuesday's press conference. Bitcoin is trading over 1.1% lower in the last 24 hours, showing signs of retesting its Sunday lows of under $92,000. The broader crypto market, as measured by the CoinDesk 20 Index, is down by just over 0.6%. XRP and SOL are leading the losses.

The relationship between stocks and crypto markets is likely to weaken, Citi said in a research report. While equities have been and remain the most important macro driver of crypto markets, the "equity-crypto correlation is likely to fall over time as the nascent asset class matures, the investor base grows, technology advances and adoption progresses," the report said. Still, the speculative nature of cryptocurrency markets means risk asset correlations may be inflated, especially during risk-off events, the bank said. Citi also noted that crypto was the only asset class whose market cap, as a percentage of U.S. equities, grew during last year.

Ondo Finance unveiled an offering to accelerate the onboarding of traditional assets to blockchain technology. Ondo Global Markets (Ondo GM) will be a platform dedicated to providing onchain access to stocks, bonds, and ETFs. The new offering will help bypass what Ondo calls a broken investment ecosystem characterized by high fees, restricted access, platform fragmentation that locks millions out of capital markets and stifles innovation. Drawing inspiration from stablecoin liquidity, Ondo GM will allow the creation of freely transferable tokens linked to stocks, bonds and ETFs with controls in place that determine who can access, buy or sell the tokens.

Bitcoin's ongoing price consolidation between $90,000 and $100,000 is the third phase of the broader bull run from $20,000. The consensus is that it will end in a bull breakout, just as those in mid-2024 and 2023 did.

However, there are some worrying signs for bitcoin bulls that suggest otherwise, such as tightening U.S. dollar liquidity and cooler rhetoric from the Trump administration around building a strategic BTC reserve.

From a technical point of view, bitcoin's relative strength index (RSI) has recently diverged bearishly echoing a move that marked the 2021 top. A bearish RSI divergence contradicts the higher high in prices, signaling a slowdown in the bullish momentum.

The RSI has produced a lower high relative to its December high, diverging bearishly from the continued price uptrend. That's similar to the 2021 pattern.

The negative setup would be invalidated should the RSI cross above the falling trendline, representing the divergence, indicating a renewed bullish momentum.

- Omkar Godbole