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The Crypto Minute
Your Weekly Guide to Surviving the Crypto Rollercoaster.
CoinBrain
January 14, 2025 • Reading Time: 9 minutes
Welcome to a new issue of Crypto Minute by CoinBrain! After every period of growth and innovation there must come one of sobering up 🫠
Markets took a hit (find the reason below) but that doesn’t mean the drama stops - sit back, relax and enjoy the show.
⤵️ Today’s Agenda:
📉 Bitcoin (among others) takes a breather below $93K as Federal Reserve signals they're in no rush to cut rates in 2025.
🏦 Mixed feelings and expectations linger in the air as Trump’s inauguration nears on Jan 20th.
🎭 NY Attorney General gets creative with justice, serving lawsuit papers to crypto scammers via NFT airdrop.
🎢 Usual Money pulls their $USD0++ token value from $1 to $0.87. Spoiler alert: Users aren't thrilled and DeFi takes a hit!
And more…
📊 Market Snapshot
| $93,300BTC-6.25% | $3,180ETH-12.6% | $3.24TCrypto Market Cap-11.1% | 47 (Neutral)Fear & Greed Index-13 from last week |
📅 Crypto Events You don’t want to Miss
Wednesday, Jan 15th (1:30 PM UTC) - Core CPI & CPI Reports (MoM, YoY)
What’s CPI? It’s how much prices are changing for everyday goods—basically, inflation!
Core CPI excludes food and energy for a cleaner inflation snapshot.
Why it matters? High inflation 📈 could mean interest rate hikes, which can bring crypto down. Lower CPI ⬇️ on contrary means better conditions for price growth 🚀
Thursday, January 16th: U.S. Retail Sales (MoM)
This metric tells us how much Americans are spending 💸.
Strong spending ➡️ strong economy ➡️ possible rate hikes 😬.
Crypto markets love low interest rates, so weak sales might actually be good news here! 📊
🐋Smart Money Tracker
Tuesday, Jan 7th: This trader got caught up in the excitement and jumped into $MPLX twice as the price was climbing.
Unfortunately, when the price took a nosedive, they panicked and sold, ending up with a $59K loss in just two hours.
Tuesday, Jan 7th: This trader performed a 89.07% win rate over the past 30 days. They bought 9.16M $ai16z for 18 $SOL ($3K) leaving them with $19M profit.
They also invested $12.2K in $Fartcoin, selling 6.71M for $5.41M and still holding $12.83M worth of $Fartcoin, with an $18M profit overall
Recently, they purchased low-cap tokens like $eef, $DEAL, and $GG, and made a large investment in $OPAIUM for 400 $SOL ($86K).
Wednesday, Jan 8th: This clever trader got in early on almost all major new AI tokens like $ai16z, $Fartcoin, $ZEREBRO or $GRIFFAIN and now they are betting big on $AVA (Ava AI)
Friday, Jan 10th: On this day a diamond hand trader has recovered from a -90% loss by holding on to $pippin (gained $2.5M in profit)
After a huge drop 2 months ago, $pippin now broke through a $180M market cap and is heading upwards.
Saturday, Jan 11th: On this day a $swarms whale soled 5M $swarms for 7,232 $SOL($1.35M) to take profits. Maybe the swarms hype is coming to an end 🤔
Monday, Jan 13th: Whales are selling $ETH at a loss as prices crash down! 🐳 On this day 3 wallets sold 10,070 $ETH for 33M $DAI at $3,280, losing $1M
Not a great look for $ETH 🫢
Source: Lookonchain
📰 News Recap (Jan 7 to 13)
🏦 Crypto Scammers Get Served... Through Their NFT Wallets!
New York Attorney General Letitia James is about to drop the most unwanted NFT ever into some scammers' wallets! 📜
The first-of-its-kind digital service will deliver lawsuit papers to a ring of criminals who allegedly stole $2.2 million through a sophisticated "pig-butchering" scheme targeting job seekers.
The scammers, who lured victims with fake remote work opportunities, probably didn't expect to find court documents in their crypto wallets alongside their ill-gotten gains.
💸 Usual Money users unusually unhappy as their stablecoin depegs.
The stablecoin project Usual Money is facing a wave of angry users after dropping a rather unusual surprise: they've manually slashed their USD0++ token's redemption price from $1 to $0.87 with barely a warning.
While some DeFi veterans are saying "I told you so," others are scratching their heads at how you can still mint these tokens for $1 when they're only worth 87 cents - talk about unusual math! 🎢
📈 Arthur Hayes Says It's Time to Go 'Full Degen' Until March.
After previously warning about a potential market crash around Trump's inauguration, Hayes has dramatically changed his tune, thanks to what he sees as a massive $612 billion liquidity injection coming from the Fed and Treasury.
Let's DEGEN, the $BIO launch will re-rate the #DeSci narrative. Due to their $BIO rewards, @MaelstromFund bot $VITA; $ATH; $GROW; $PSY; $CRYO; $NEURON bc they trade under book value, see below 👇
@lukas_rppt did the research
tickers: dexscreener.com/watchlist/V4u8…
long form report:… x.com/i/web/status/1…
— Arthur Hayes (@CryptoHayes)
9:07 AM • Jan 3, 2025
The seasoned trader is particularly bullish on decentralized science tokens, even putting his money where his mouth is by investing in projects with names like BIO, VITA, and NEURON.
🌍️ Story of the Week
🤯 Why major projects crashed this week? The crypto market is having a sobering week as Bitcoin retreated from its euphoric $102,000 high to below $93,000 💫➡️📉.
The culprit? The Federal Reserve's December minutes revealed they're not as eager to cut interest rates in 2025 as crypto investors had hoped, citing stubborn inflation concerns.
The Fed giveth and taketh away...
How'd you make out today?
— Stocktwits (@Stocktwits)
9:56 PM • Jan 10, 2025
This splash of cold water wasn't exclusive to Bitcoin - Ether took an even bigger hit, dropping 8.5% to $3,353, while Dogecoin and Avalanche tumbled more than 10% 🎢.
The market's mood is now caught between hope and caution 🤔. On one side, there's optimism about the incoming Trump administration's pro-crypto stance and key appointments like Elon Musk as an advisor 🚀
@boldleonidas
But on the other hand, Trump's proposed tariff policies have economists worried about inflation, and the Fed seems determined to keep interest rates higher for longer ⚖️
With critical CPI data coming on January 15 and the presidential inauguration on January 20, crypto traders are buckling up for what could be a very interesting ride ahead! 🎪
🔒 Major Token Unlocks of the Week
$ALICE - 0.98% of the total supply will enter circulation on Jan 15, 2025.
$IGU - 3.43% of the total supply will enter circulation on Jan 16, 2025.
$ONDO - 10.42% of the total supply will enter circulation on Jan 17, 2025.
$APE - 1.48% of the total supply will enter circulation on Jan 17, 2025.
$PPT - 2.16% of the total supply will enter circulation on Jan 19, 2025.
$ONDO will be releasing more than 10% this week. Unlock this big is not worth ignoring if you hold significant amount of this project or if you are seeking short opportunities. However stay vigilant because the unlock may be included in the price already!
More details here.
🗞️ From our Blog
💡 1 Minute Learning: Golden Cross
Imagine borrowing a huge amount of crypto with zero collateral! Sounds like magic, right? Well, there’s a catch—it all happens in a single (atomic) transaction.
If you don’t pay it back instantly, the loan never existed 🤯
How Are They Used?
Arbitrage: Spot price differences across exchanges for quick profits.
Refinancing: Pay off a loan by instantly taking a better one.
Exploits: Sadly, hackers have used them for attacks, too. 😬
Everything is driven algorithmically, otherwise human would never be able to do all the steps on time ⏱️
There, now you are 1% smarter, go and share your knowledge with your loved ones ❤️
And that’s a wrap! 🎉 Enjoyed this newsletter? Forward it to a friend, and let them know they can subscribe here.
Got any ideas or feedback? We’d love to hear from you! Drop us an email at [email protected].
DISCLAIMER: None of this is financial advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or make financial decisions. Always do your own research and stay safe out there.