The Weekly Wrap: Tokenization Hype, Gold & Silver ATHs & A Large Strategy BTC Buy

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This Week’s Top Stories

“NYSE to Launch 24/7 Trading Platform for Tokenized Securities.” – Monday, 19 January 2026 

• The NYSE announced the development of a platform for trading and onchain settlement of tokenized securities, pending regulatory approval.
• The new platform will enable tokenized trading, 24/7 operations, instant settlement, orders sized in dollar amounts, and stablecoin-based account funding.

“CLARITY Act expected to be delayed by several weeks.” – Thursday, 22 January 2026 

• According to Bloomberg, the Senate Banking Committee shifted its focus to housing policy, which could push consideration of the crypto market structure bill to late February or March.

“U.S. fast-food chain Steak n’ Shake announced a Bitcoin bonus program for hourly employees.” – Tuesday, 20 January 2026 

• Steak n’ Shake announced this week that starting in March, all hourly employees at its restaurants will receive Bitcoin bonuses of $0.21 for every hour worked. Employees are required to complete a two-year vesting period before they can collect the BTC. For an employee working 40 hours a week, this will amount to more than $400 in BTC per year, a cool first step to introduce people to Bitcoin.

“President Trump on Greenland, Tariffs and Crypto.” – This week 

• The discussions surrounding the situation between the U.S. and Greenland continued this week as the World Economic Forum in Davos started. This week, Trump announced that starting February 1, the U.S. would impose a 10 percent tariff on goods imported from Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the UK, the Netherlands, and Finland, with the tariff set to increase to 25 percent on June 1. Trump said the measures will remain in place until a deal is reached for the “complete and total purchase of Greenland.”
• Shortly after, Trump posted on Truth Social that he will be suspending the tariffs after his talks with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte on Greenland and the broader Arctic region, resulting in a preliminary framework for a future agreement.
• Additionally, Trump said during his visit to Davos that he aims to sign the major crypto market structure bill (presumably the CLARITY Act) very soon.

A Quick Crypto Overview: The Sunday Night 1:00 AM Dump

At 1:00 AM early Monday morning, the Bitcoin price started to take a sharp turn to the downside as the Asian markets opening led to an increase in volume and selling pressure, pushing Bitcoin down almost 4 percent in a matter of two hours. The downward movement continued until Wednesday evening, roughly around the time when President Trump announced that the newly imposed tariffs on the European countries would be suspended again. The sharp drop led to over $700 million in liquidations on Monday and over $1 billion on Tuesday, wiping out many market participants. 

Most crypto assets are down double-digit percentage points this week. Solana is down 10 percent since Sunday night, Ethereum dropped 13 percent, and Bitcoin is trading 6 percent below Sunday night’s price. 

The total market cap of all cryptocurrencies is down 19 percent from last week’s high, erasing almost all gains since the beginning of the month. YTD, the total crypto market is currently up 1.7 percent. 

The S&P 500, in comparison, is currently up 0.8 percent since the beginning of the year. The Russell 2000 is up almost 10 percent, gold is up 14 percent YTD, while silver is sitting on a gain of almost 30 percent this month alone. The U.S. Dollar Index, meanwhile, is down a little more than 1 percent this week. 

Last week we highlighted the ETHBTC ratio. The sharp drop on Sunday night led to a reversal of ETHBTC, as Ethereum is currently down more than 5 percent against Bitcoin this week, erasing the whole yearly gain in a matter of a couple of days. 

Chart of the Week: Bitcoin vs Gold

With gold and silver continuing their absolute tears so far this year, the Bitcoin to gold ratio has taken another deep hit and is currently trading at 18, a ratio last seen at the end of 2023, with Bitcoin erasing its complete two-year gain against gold. Bitcoin has lost its important 20 level against gold and currently looks like it's headed for even lower. It will be interesting to see whether BTC manages to regain the 20 level, which would be a positive sign in terms of price action.

What’s Happening Onchain? $282 Million Scam, Hype DEX Back on Nr. 1 Spot & Chainlink 24/5 U.S. Equities and ETF Data Feeds 

ZachXBT revealed that this month another major social engineering scam took place, with a victim losing more than $280 million worth of Litecoin and Bitcoin in a hardware wallet attack. The attacker instantly converted the stolen LTC and BTC into Monero via multiple exchanges, sharply increasing the price of XMR during that time. In total, the attacker stole over 2 million LTC and 1’459 BTC from the victim. 

In the world of perpetual futures DEXs, the trading volume on Lighter has sharply decreased over the past few weeks since the project airdropped users a bunch of tokens and launched its LIT token. Hyperliquid has since reclaimed the leading position among perp DEXs. Last week, Hyperliquid had a notional trading volume of over $41 billion and collected over $12 million in fees. 

This week, Chainlink announced the launch of 24/5 U.S. equities streams, expanding their existing data streams to deliver secure market data for U.S. equities and ETFs across all trading sessions. Chainlink will provide DeFi with continuous U.S. stock market data covering pre-market, regular hours, after-hours, and overnight trading. 

Digital Asset Fund Flows: Largest Inflows Since October 2025 & Huge Strategy BTC Buy 

Last week, digital asset investment products saw their largest weekly inflows since October 2025. In total, the products attracted almost $2.2 billion, with Bitcoin dominating, attracting $1.5 billion, followed by Ethereum with almost $500 million. XRP took third place with $70 million, ahead of Solana with $45 million. 

This week is looking grim, as the BTC spot ETFs are currently sitting on $1.2 billion in net outflows so far, and Ethereum spot ETFs are on track to cancel out last week’s inflows, with $500 million in net outflows this week. The digital asset outflows are symbolic of the current uncertainty in the market, as crypto has been chopping downwards for quite some time now, while other asset classes such as U.S. stocks or commodities are trading at record highs. 

Michael Saylor does not mind the current price action. Strategy announced the purchase of 22’305 BTC for more than $2 billion last week, one of their largest buys in history. Only the buys at the end of November 2024 were significantly larger than last week’s, a significant development. Interestingly, Strategy’s buys were at an average price of $95’284 and likely contributed to the price increase to $98’000 last week. 

That’s a first: The Delaware Life Insurance Company announced a partnership with BlackRock to offer Bitcoin exposure through a fixed index annuity. Through the BlackRock U.S. Equity Bitcoin Balanced Risk 12 Percent Index, investors get exposure to U.S. equities and Bitcoin in one index. 

Market Sentiment: Extreme Fear in Crypto 

The crypto market is back in extreme fear territory (24), slightly up from yesterday’s 20 level. It remains to be seen whether last week’s spike into neutral and even greedy territory was just an outlier, or a first sign of a recovery to the upside. The stock market remains in neutral territory (53), while the number of bullish AAII members dropped to 43.2 percent from last week’s 49.5 percent.

Other Relevant News 

• Coinbase has begun offering stock trading to a limited group of users, expanding beyond crypto as it explores a broader “all-in-one” investment platform. – Link
• Galaxy Digital plans to launch a $100 million hedge fund in Q1 2026. The fund will allocate 30 percent to crypto tokens and 70 percent to fintech and financial services stocks. – Link
• BitGo Holdings priced its IPO at $18 per share. The company sold 11.8 million shares to raise $212.8 million, giving it a valuation of approximately $2.08 billion and making it the first digital asset company to go public in 2026. – Link
• Ledger seems to be working with Goldman Sachs, Jefferies and Barclays on a potential U.S. IPO that could value the company at over $4 billion, possibly as soon as this year. – Link 

Looking Ahead: Fed Interest Rate Decision on Wednesday 

Bitcoin is trading below the $90’000 level at the time of writing and has wiped out most of its gains YTD. Many market participants are currently taking a more cautious positioning, as chances for a move lower seem to be increasing. Altcoins especially have taken a hard hit this week, with quite a few trading at multi-week lows. If Bitcoin manages to reclaim the $90’000 level, this could also be a final shakeout before testing higher levels. 

Next week’s interest rate decision by the Federal Reserve is a key event to watch out for, even though the market is only giving it a five percent chance that the Fed will cut interest rates in January, with a 95 percent chance for an unchanged rate. 

Below, you can find some of the key data releases and events to watch out for next week. 

Wednesday, 28 January 2026 

USA – President Trump speaks 

USA – Fed Interest Rate Decision, FOMC Statement and Press Conference 

Canada – BoC Interest Rate Decision 

Thursday, 29 January 2026 

USA – Initial Jobless Claims