Crypto Daybook Americas: Bitcoin Bargain Hunting Faces Crucial Jobs Report Test

What to know:

By Omkar Godbole (All times ET unless indicated otherwise)

The cryptocurrency market is showing signs of recovery, as Bitcoin’s price approaches nearly $95,000 due to an increase in bargain hunters. On Wednesday, the price touched the well-established support range of around $90,000 – $93,000, a barrier that has stopped market declines at least six times since mid-November.

The upcoming U.S. nonfarm payrolls report for December, due out on Friday, will be a key factor in determining the recent market bounce. According to FXStreet’s forecasts, this report could indicate an increase of 164,000 jobs, following November’s strong growth of 227,000 jobs. The unemployment rate is expected to remain steady at 4.2%, while average hourly earnings may slow down slightly, decreasing from a monthly growth of 0.4% to 0.3%.

As a crypto investor, I’ve noticed that a robust jobs report might amplify existing concerns about a hawkish Fed, potentially boosting inflation-adjusted bond yields even more. These yields have been escalating due to inflation apprehensions, creating complications for risk assets like Bitcoin. The recent fear of inflation and rate volatility seems to have played a significant role in Bitcoin’s swift drop from $102K to $93K over the past four days.

To show the pessimistic attitude prevalent earlier today, the fee charged for holding positions in continuous markets dipped below zero, signifying a predominance of traders betting against Bitcoin, which was only 15% shy of its all-time high price.

If the payroll data falls short significantly, it might prompt a strong response in financial markets, increasing the argument for interest rate reductions by the Federal Reserve and favoring riskier assets like Bitcoin. If the U.S. government doesn’t dump its $18.50 billion worth of Bitcoin into the market, Bitcoin could once again aim for $100K. Stay vigilant.

What to Watch

Crypto
- No major crypto events scheduled today.
- Jan. 12, 10:30 p.m.: Binance will halt Fantom token (FTM) deposits and withdrawals and delist all FTM trading pairs. FTM tokens will be swapped for S tokens at a 1:1 ratio.
- Jan. 13: Solayer (LAYER) “Season 1” airdrop snapshot for staking participants, liquidity providers, and partner ecosystem users. Eligibility details and terms will be available on the Solayer dashboard.
- Jan. 15: Derive (DRV) to create and distribute new tokens in token generation event.
- Jan. 15: Mintlayer version 1.0.0 release. The mainnet upgrade introduces atomic swaps, enabling native BTC cross-chain swaps.
- Jan. 16, 3:00 a.m.: Trading for the Sonic token (S) is set to start on Binance, featuring pairs like S/USDT, S/BTC, and S/BNB.
Macro
- Jan. 10, 8:30 a.m.: The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) releases December 2024’s Employment Situation Summary report.
  - Nonfarm payrolls Est. 160K vs. Prev. 227K.
  - Unemployment rate Est. 4.2% vs Prev. 4.2%.
- Jan. 10, 10:00 a.m.: The University of Michigan releases January’s Michigan Consumer Sentiment (Preliminary). Est. 73.8 vs. Prev. 74.0.
- Jan. 14, 8:30 a.m.: The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) releases December 2024’s PPI data.
  - PPI MoM Prev. 0.4%.
  - Core PPI MoM Prev. 0.2%.
  - Core PPI YoY Prev. 3.4%.
  - PPI YoY Prev. 3%.
- Jan. 14, 8:55 a.m.: U.S. Redbook YoY for the week ending on Jan. 11. Prev. 6.8%.
- Jan. 15, 8:30 a.m.: The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) releases December 2024’s Consumer Price Index Summary.
  - Core Inflation Rate MoM Prev. 0.3%.
  - Core Inflation Rate YoY Prev. 3.3%.
  - Inflation Rate MoM Prev. 0.3%.
  - Inflation Rate YoY Prev. 2.7%.
- Jan. 16, 2:00 a.m.: The U.K.’s Office for National Statistics November 2024’s GDP estimate.
  - GDP MoM Prev. -0.1%
  - GDP YoY Prev. 1.3%.
- Jan. 16, 8:30 a.m.: The U.S. Department of Labor releases the Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report for the week ending on Jan. 11. Initial Jobless Claims Prev. 201K.

Token Events

Governance votes & calls
- No major events scheduled today.
- Jan. 14: Mantra community call with its co-founder
Unlocks
- No major unlocks scheduled today.
- Jan. 11: Aptos to unlock 1.13% of its APT circulating supply, worth $98.85 million.
- Jan. 12: Axie Infinity to unlock 1.45% of its circulating supply, worth $14.08 million.
- Jan. 14: Arbitrum to unlock 0.93% of its circulating supply, worth $70.65 million.
Token Launches
- No major token launches scheduled today.
- Jan. 15: Derive (DRV) will launch, with 5% of supply going to sENA stakers.
- Jan. 17: Solv Protocol (SOLV) to be listed on Binance.

Token Talk

By Shaurya Malwa

Usual protocol’s USD0++, which is a special version of USD0 where users can earn interest by “staking” it, has dropped from being worth $1 to about 93 cents after the team made changes to how users can get their money back early.
Traders showed a preference for AI Agent tokens aiXBT, Cookie DAO’s COOKIE, and ChainGPT as they rose as much as 50% on Binance spot listings. Viral token ai16z was up 11% and the agents category up was 8% on average, leading growth among all other crypto sectors.
A deposit vault on the upcoming network Berachain hit $1.1 billion in holdings, led by StakeStone at $370 million.
The Arbitrum DAO is voting on an improvement proposal (AIP) to implement the Bounded Liquidity Delay (BoLD) on Arbitrum One and Nova. If approved, it will replace the current validator system with a permissionless one, allowing broader participation in securing the network.
Ronin and Virtuals have collaborated to introduce an AI agent named
$JAIHOZ, fashioned after Ronin’s cofounder @Jihoz_Axie. The token was launched with a supply split between Base and Ronin blockchains, with some tokens airdropped to community members.

Derivatives Positioning

HYPE, LTC, SHIB, SUI and TON have experienced an uptick in perpetual futures open interest in the past 24 hours, with XLM leading the drop in open positions in other major tokens.
The front-end BTC and ETH risk reversals show put bias while longer duration calls continue to draw premium relative to puts.
Block trades in BTC options painted a mixed picture. In ETH’s case, the largest block trade involved a short position in the $3,700 call expiring on Feb. 28 to fund a long position in the $3,200 put with the same expiry.

Market Movements:

BTC is up 3.06% from 4 p.m. ET Thursday to $94,967.46 (24hrs: +1.52%)
ETH is up 3.46% at $3,306.56 (24hrs: +0.11%)
CoinDesk 20 is unchanged at 3,375.16(24hrs: -0.74%)
Ether staking yield is down 1 bp to 3.14%
BTC funding rate is at 0.0013% (1.38% annualized) on Binance

DXY is unchanged at 109.18
Gold is up 0.91% at $2,708.1/oz
Silver is up 1.3% to $31.19/oz
Nikkei 225 closed -1.05% at 39,190.4
Hang Seng closed -0.92% at 19,064.29
FTSE is down 0.18% at 8,304.75
Euro Stoxx 50 is up 0.19% at 5,027.38
DJIA closed on Thursday +0.25% at 42,635.20
S&P 500 closed +0.16% at 5,918.25
Nasdaq closed +0.83% at 19,480.91
S&P/TSX Composite Index closed unchanged at 19,478.88
S&P 40 Latin America closed +0.27% at 2,210.99
U.S. 10-year Treasury is up 2 bps at 4.71%
E-mini S&P 500 futures are unchanged at 5,948.00
E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures are unchanged at 21,313.75
E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average Index futures are unchanged at 42,846.0

Bitcoin Stats:

BTC Dominance: 58.02
Ethereum to bitcoin ratio: 0.034
Hashrate (seven-day moving average): 772 EH/s
Hashprice (spot): $54.3
Total Fees: 6.6 BTC/ $653,353
CME Futures Open Interest: 497,207 BTC
BTC priced in gold: 35.2 oz
BTC vs gold market cap: 10.09%

Technical Analysis

BTC has bounced to $95K, having held the head-and-shoulders (H&S) neckline support Thursday.
Prices need to move above $102,750, the lower high or the right shoulder created Monday to signal a renewed bullish outlook.
A UTC close under the horizontal support line would confirm the H&S top and shift focus to deeper support at $75,000.

Crypto Equities

MicroStrategy (MSTR): closed on Thursday at $331.7 (-2.85%), up 2.03% at $338.44 in pre-market.
Coinbase Global (COIN): closed at $260.01(-1.63%), up 0.73% at $261.91 in pre-market.
Galaxy Digital Holdings (GLXY): closed at C$26.85 (-2.79%)
MARA Holdings (MARA): closed at $18.34 (-3.83%), up 0.93% at $18.51 in pre-market.
Riot Platforms (RIOT): closed at $12.02 (-3.14%), up 0.83% at $12.12 in pre-market.
Core Scientific (CORZ): closed at $14.05 (-0.5%), up 1% at $14.19 in pre-market.
CleanSpark (CLSK): closed at $10.09 (-5.79%), up 1.09% at $10.20 in pre-market.
CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI): closed at $23.15(-4.93%).
Semler Scientific (SMLR): closed at $50.19 (-9.14%), unchanged in pre-market.

ETF Flows

On January 9th, all U.S. stock markets were closed as a nationwide tribute to late former President Jimmy Carter, who sadly passed away on December 29, 2024.

The ETF data below is from Jan.8 and remains unchanged.

Spot BTC ETFs:

Daily net flow: $676 million
Cumulative net flows: $31.70 billion
Total BTC holdings ~ 1.080 million.

Spot ETH ETFs

Daily net flow: $132.6 million
Cumulative net flows: $733.6 million
Total ETH holdings ~ 3.077 million.

Overnight Flows

Chart of the Day

The chart shows the top 10 chains of the month in terms of the net volume of assets received using a crypto bridge.
Coinbase’s layer 2 scaling solution leads the pack with net inflows of $208 million followed by Solana’s distant second $92 million.