Crypto markets consolidated on Thursday morning, Jan. 15, following two strong sessions that lifted prices to multi-month highs after a relatively subdued holiday period.
As of press time, Bitcoin (BTC) was trading around $96,035, down about half a percent over the past 24 hours. Total crypto market capitalization stood at roughly $3.34 trillion, down 0.8% today.
Most of the top-10 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization are trading flat or slightly down today, with the exception of TRON (TRX), up 1.5%, and Dogecoin (DOGE), down 3.7%.
Transitional Phase
In an analysis yesterday, Jan. 14, analysts at glassnode suggested that Bitcoin has entered a “transitional phase,” marked by stabilizing structural flows and improving spot-market behavior.
Glassnode also cautioned that the recent move into the $96,000 territory was driven more by mechanical positioning dynamics than organic demand. The analysts pointed out that futures liquidity “remains thin,” and spot participation has “yet to show the persistent accumulation typically seen during full trend expansion.”
Big Movers and Liquidations
Looking at the top-100 assets by market cap, Rain (RAIN) led gains, rising about 10%, per data from CoinGecko.
On the downside, Midnight (NIGHT) fell roughly 11%, while the PEPE memecoin slid nearly 8.4%.
Crypto derivatives activity cooled compared with the prior session as total liquidations over the past 24 hours reached about $350.8 million, according to Coinglass data. Short positions accounted for $142 million of the total, compared with $208 million in long liquidations.
Bitcoin liquidations totaled approximately $103 million, followed by Ethereum at $80 million in the past 24 hours.
ETFs and Macro Conditions
As for exchange-traded funds, spot Bitcoin ETFs continued to see strong demand on Wednesday, recording net inflows of $843.6 million, even higher than Tuesday’s, according to data from SoSoValue.
Spot Ethereum ETFs also saw an even stronger influx, posting $175 million in net inflows yesterday.
On the macro front, attention shifted to comments from Chicago Federal Reserve President Austan Goolsbee, who warned today that attacks on the central bank and Chair Jerome Powell could undermine inflation control efforts, CNBC reports.
“Anything that’s infringing or attacking the independence of the central bank is a mess,” Goolsbee said.
His remarks followed confirmation earlier this week that Powell had been subpoenaed by the Justice Department in connection with the Federal Reserve’s headquarters renovation project.
In crypto policy circles, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said on Wednesday that the largest U.S. centralized exchange doesn’t support the Senate Banking Committee’s draft crypto market structure bill “as written,” arguing it would be worse than having no legislation at all.
As The Defiant previously reported, Armstrong warned that the proposal could amount to a de facto ban on tokenized equities, impose sweeping restrictions on DeFi, potentially giving the government broad access to users’ financial records.
The Senate Agriculture Committee delayed its own bill until Jan. 21, while the Banking Committee is still expected to move ahead with a markup as soon as Friday, Jan. 16.
