Daily Market Update: January 8, 2024

January 8, 2024

BTC is currently trading around $44,900 and ETH around $2,250. Notable gainers in the last 24 hours are STX, INJ, and ICP. The global crypto market cap is ~$1.74T, up 0.2% over the last day. DeFi Total Value Locked is ~$53b and BTC dominance is around 54%.

All eyes are on the SEC’s spot Bitcoin ETF decision deadline this Wednesday. It’s widely expected that the SEC will simultaneously approve several asset managers to launch a Bitcoin ETF sometime in the next three days, most likely on Wednesday the 10th, and then the ETFs could subsequently launch in the days shortly thereafter. Competition is heating up as BlackRock announced a lower-than-expected management fee of 0.3%, and several asset managers have already amended their filings to undercut them, with Bitwise currently the lowest at 24 bps. Additionally, many asset managers are employing temporary fee waivers aiming to kickstart an early AUM/volume lead. Elsewhere in economic news, US CPI and PPI releases will round out the week on Thursday and Friday, respectively.

Notable news includes: Coinbase is prepping for a global derivatives push with a MiFID license; DCG announced a settlement of approximately $700m in short-term loans to Genesis; Ethereum’s validator exit queue reached a record high as Celsius began unstaking ETH; Japanese e-commerce giant Mercari will begin accepting bitcoin payments in June; dYdX announced it has engaged law enforcement after identifying the perpetrator of a market manipulation attack that transpired in Q4; Binance’s BUSD is no longer a top five stablecoin by market cap; and, an unidentified Bitcoin user sent 26.9 BTC ($1.17m) to Satoshi Nakamoto’s genesis address.

All eyes are on the SEC’s spot Bitcoin ETF decision deadline this Wednesday. It’s widely expected that the SEC will simultaneously approve several asset managers to launch a Bitcoin ETF sometime in the next three days

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