Summary
- BTC and ETH surged then retraced, followed by oscillating recovery; funds favored defensive assets, flowing into tokenized commodities/gold, payments, privacy, and DID among stable altcoins.
- Ethereum leads tokenized commodity issuance, accounting for 85% of the share.
- Long-term holders accelerate de-risking, with Bitcoin facing the strongest selling pressure since August.
- Market trading volume hits record highs, becoming the on-chain “expectation pricing layer.”
- Polymarket drives a surge in USDC usage; Mizuho upgrades Circle rating and is optimistic about growth resilience.
- SUI will unlock approximately $60.94 million worth of tokens in the next 7 days, representing 11% of circulating supply.
Market Analysis
Market Commentary
- BTC — Over the past week, BTC quickly dipped near $86,100, then rebounded to around $91,200, but faced resistance at high levels and pulled back, currently around $88,600, entering a weak correction phase. Short-term MA5/MA10 have turned downward and tangled with MA30, weakening after price fell below moving averages, indicating a short-term trend shift from rebound to retracement; MACD near zero axis has fallen from high levels, with green bars widening, showing increasing bearish momentum. Expect continued testing of key supports at $88,000 and $86,100; if supports hold, consolidation may absorb selling pressure.
- ETH — Over the past week, ETH rebounded from $2,787 to around $3,045, then traded sideways above $3,000 with some pullback, currently about $2,993, showing a “rise then pullback” pattern. MA5/MA10 and MA30 have merged and started downward, with price falling below moving averages, indicating short-term weakness; MACD also retreated from positive territory, with green bars, signaling waning bullish momentum and entering a correction phase. Watch the short-term support at $2,950–$2,900 and resistance near $3,045; if volume cannot expand, upward movement is more likely to be oscillatory rather than a breakout.
- Altcoins — Funds over the past week have shifted away from trading-focused sectors, favoring stable and resilient sectors such as tokenized commodities/gold, payments, privacy infrastructure, and DID. Amid mainstream asset volatility, market style leans toward assets with real-world mapping, clearer compliance narratives, and long-term application potential, reducing volatility from sentiment and high leverage trading narratives.
- Stablecoins — Total market cap is currently $308 billion, down $7.04 million (~0.23%) over the past week.
- Gas Fees — Ethereum network gas fees have generally stayed below 1 Gwei over the past week, with a peak of 1.97 Gwei in the past hour; as of Jan 29, the average gas fee was 0.051 Gwei.
Popular Tokens
In the past 24 hours, the overall crypto market was weak, with most mainstream assets declining. BTC down about 0.67%, ETH down about 0.51%, mainly dragging the index; XRP slightly down about 0.20%, SOL declined more sharply by about 2.12%. Stablecoins remained flat, indicating funds are still defensive, risk appetite has not significantly rebounded, and the market appears to be consolidating in a short-term downtrend rather than a trend reversal.
Q Quack AI (+79.02%, Market Cap $51.71M)
According to Gate data, Q token is currently priced at $0.032196, up over 79.02% in 24 hours. Quack AI builds a “trust-minimized AI/Agent execution environment” centered around Q402, using cryptographic proofs and verifiable workflows to validate the reasoning and computation integrity of agents, deploying on-chain scenarios: expressing intent via verifiable signatures, performing strategy/risk checks during execution, with sponsors covering gas and submitting transactions, reducing interaction friction and increasing automation efficiency.
The recent rally is driven by ecosystem expansion, with official narratives focusing on collaborations with Zypher, Kaia, and others—embedding Q402’s trust-minimized execution into verifiable AI workflows and extending applications into native stablecoin and capital efficiency on-chain environments, reinforcing “usable, integrable, implementable” expectations. As cooperation signals continue, the market interprets this as resource inflow and growth potential, prompting phased capital inflows and amplifying price elasticity.
WMTX World Mobile Token (+21.76%, Market Cap $44.08M)
According to Gate data, WMTX is priced at $0.07095, up over 21.76% in 24 hours. WMTX is a DePIN project targeting communication infrastructure, with core narrative of “shared network building” to expand coverage, attracting community/local operators via Network Builder mechanisms.
The rally is likely catalyzed by ecosystem and fundamentals: on one hand, the release of 3 million daily active users and demand validation reduces doubts about DePIN being just conceptual; on the other hand, ongoing auction/participation in Network Builder enhances expectations of network expansion and supply-side growth, re-pricing the “telecom + DePIN” theme.
SOMI Somnia (+20.38%, Market Cap $50.68M)
According to Gate data, SOMI is priced at $0.3058, up over 20.38% in 24 hours. Somnia is an on-chain infrastructure project aimed at applications and developers, with recent focus on “Reactivity + decentralized AI”: enabling lower-latency data and state distribution for prediction markets, DeFi, and event-driven applications through mechanisms like “subscribe once, receive real-time events and bundled states.”
The rally is driven by ecosystem progress and narrative resonance: roadmap and “new primitives” boost expectations of technical differentiation and developer growth, pre-pricing funds; continuous ecosystem exposure and application releases/announcements reinforce signals of network expansion and application deployment, attracting short-term capital.
Key Data Highlights
Validator Decline but Active Trading, Solana Shows “High Usage, Low Participation” Structural Divergence
On-chain data shows Solana’s daily active validators have fallen below 800, a decline of over 65% from early 2023 highs; meanwhile, user-side non-voting transaction volume remains roughly at “nearly 100 million per day,” indicating a divergence between network usage and node participation. This suggests: application demand remains steady, but the marginal reward/cost structure for consensus participants is worsening, leading some small and medium nodes to exit, with the network’s “service output” remaining high while the “security and ordering supply” contracts.
More concerning is how this divergence impacts security and resilience: fewer validators could increase centralization and collusion risks, reduce censorship resistance and fault tolerance; but risk depends not only on quantity, also on stake distribution, node diversity, and key security metrics. Common explanations include incentive shifts, voting costs, hardware barriers disadvantaging small nodes, or “cleaning out” low-quality/suspect nodes, reducing nominal validator count without necessarily weakening security. Future focus should be on whether staking concentration rises, top node share changes, and whether declining voting transactions alongside stable non-voting transactions create new performance-security trade-offs.
Ethereum Leads Tokenized Commodity Issuance, 85% Market Share
Tokenized commodities show clear on-chain concentration: about 85% of related assets are issued on Ethereum, reflecting its status as the “default infrastructure” for asset tokenization. This is driven by factors like mature smart contracts and audits, stable DeFi liquidity and collateralization, higher integration with institutions and custody/compliance services, and better composability (facilitating structured combinations with stablecoins, RWA, yield products). For assessing market depth, secondary liquidity, and financial use cases, Ethereum is often the first to generate network effects.
However, high concentration also signals structural risks and trends: ecosystem advantages reinforce the scale effect of leading chains, encouraging new projects to continue issuing on Ethereum; but over-concentration amplifies costs, congestion, compliance, and technical risks, with spillover effects on the entire industry, and increases cross-chain expansion demand. Future variables to watch include whether L2s absorb more new issuance and trading, whether other high-performance chains can divert share via lower costs and better distribution, and whether issuers shift between “security/compliance” and “cost efficiency/user coverage” trade-offs.
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Long-term Holders Accelerate De-risking, Bitcoin Faces Strongest Sell-off Since August
Glassnode data shows that in the past 30 days, long-term Bitcoin holders (typically those holding for at least 155 days) sold approximately 143,000 BTC, marking the fastest de-risking pace since August. This is reflected in on-chain metrics like net long-term holder positions: after a brief replenishment in late December to early January, long-term funds have shifted back to net distribution, indicating “higher-cost, stronger conviction” coins are being released into the market.
Price implications suggest that concentrated selling by long-term holders often creates short-term resistance: it directly increases supply needing absorption in spot markets; it also suppresses market sentiment, making the trend more prone to oscillation or retracement, especially when Bitcoin underperforms traditional assets. However, this distribution does not necessarily mean bearish outlook; it could be profit-taking or rebalancing; key is whether new demand can sustain (e.g., spot buying and institutional allocations). If demand remains strong, it may facilitate chip turnover and set the stage for trend re-ignition.
Focus for Next Week
Meta and Microsoft Boost AI Infrastructure: Bitcoin Miners’ “Hash Power Transition” Becomes New Growth Engine
Meta and Microsoft reaffirm AI as a core strategic focus in their latest earnings reports. Microsoft CEO Nadella states AI has grown to a scale comparable to the largest business units, still in early rapid adoption; meanwhile, Meta projects capital expenditure of $115–$135 billion in 2026, significantly above market expectations, mainly for building “superintelligent labs” and AI infrastructure. This indicates major tech firms’ investments in compute and data centers are not slowing but accelerating.
Against this backdrop, Bitcoin mining companies are rapidly transforming into providers of AI and HPC infrastructure. Due to halving, rising costs, and increased competition, traditional mining profitability is compressed; miners leverage their advantages in power and data centers to offer compute services to cloud providers. Iren has a multi-year partnership with Microsoft; Cipher Mining commits to 300 MW for AWS; Hut 8 and others are pursuing similar shifts. Markets are gradually re-pricing these firms as “compute infrastructure providers,” beyond just Bitcoin miners.
Prediction Market Volume Hits Record High: Becoming the Chain’s “Expectation Pricing Layer”
Dune data shows that over the past year, weekly nominal trading volume in prediction markets has experienced a significant structural leap, especially since late 2025, reaching nearly $6 billion weekly, from early levels of a few hundred million dollars. Platforms like Polymarket, Kalshi, Myriad are main contributors, with new entrants like ForecastEx and predict.fun adding to the growth, creating multi-platform resonance.
This shift indicates prediction markets are evolving from niche crypto experiments into a “chain-based expectation pricing layer” covering politics, macroeconomics, tech, and social events. Rising macro uncertainty, combined with AI and geopolitical cycles, has increased demand for “expressing opinions with funds.” Prediction markets are beginning to serve price discovery and expectation aggregation functions, potentially becoming another major crypto application after stablecoins and DeFi, with real-world narratives and scale effects.
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Polymarket Spurs USDC Usage Surge, Mizuho Upgrades Circle Rating and Sees Growth Resilience
Mizuho Securities upgrades Circle from “underperform” to “neutral,” boosting its stock price by about 4%. The key reason is the rapid growth in USDC usage driven by prediction market platform Polymarket. Analyst Dan Dolev estimates that Polymarket’s annualized trading volume could reach around $50 billion by 2026, triple 2025, potentially increasing USDC market cap by roughly 25% or more. Based on this, he raises forecasts for USDC circulation and Circle revenue in 2026 and 2027.
Structurally, Polymarket’s event trading introduces many non-native crypto users into the on-chain ecosystem, opening new application scenarios and demand channels for USDC. However, Mizuho remains cautious about Circle’s mid-term prospects, noting that rate cuts, rising distribution costs, and fierce competition from Tether and others may offset Polymarket’s positive impact. The $77 target price implies limited upside. While USDC growth narratives have new variables, they are not yet enough to fundamentally alter the competitive landscape of stablecoins.
Funding Weekly Summary
According to RootData, from Jan 22 to Jan 29, multiple crypto and related projects announced funding rounds or M&A, covering blockchain infrastructure, payments, and asset management. Highlights include:
BitGo
Announced a $213 million IPO on Jan 22, with a valuation of about $2.08 billion, backed by YZi Labs and others. BitGo is a US-based digital asset infrastructure provider offering custody, security, trading, and lending services for institutional clients, supporting multiple digital assets including Bitcoin.
Superstate
Completed approximately $82.5 million Series B funding on Jan 22, led by Bain Capital Crypto and Distributed Global, with multiple institutions participating. Superstate is a blockchain-based government bond fund using Ethereum as a record-keeping tool, aiming to build compliant on-chain securities issuance and trading infrastructure.
Mesh
Closed about $75 million Series C on Jan 27, valued at around $1 billion, led by Dragonfly Capital, with Paradigm, Coinbase Ventures, and others involved. Mesh is a global crypto payment network aiming to enable seamless cross-chain, cross-wallet asset payments and conversions, advancing interoperability in digital asset payments.
Next Week’s Focus
Token Unlocks
According to Tokenomist, in the next 7 days (2026.01.29 - 2026.02.05), several major tokens will unlock significant amounts. Top three are:
- SUI — Unlocks about $60.94 million worth of tokens, representing 11% of circulating supply.
- XDC — Unlocks about $32.45 million, representing 4.4% of circulating supply.
- EIGEN — Unlocks about $12.25 million, representing 6.7% of circulating supply.
**Sources**
- Gate, [https://www.gate.com/trade/BTC_USDT](https://www.gate.com/trade/BTC_USDT)
- Farside Investors, [https://farside.co.uk/btc/](https://farside.co.uk/btc/)
- Gate, [https://www.gate.com/trade/ETH_USDT](https://www.gate.com/trade/ETH_USDT)
- Gate, [https://www.gate.com/crypto-market-data](https://www.gate.com/crypto-market-data)
- CoinGecko, [https://www.coingecko.com/en/cryptocurrency-heatmap](https://www.coingecko.com/en/cryptocurrency-heatmap)
- CoinGecko, [https://www.coingecko.com/en/categories](https://www.coingecko.com/en/categories)
- DefiLlama, [https://defillama.com/stablecoins](https://defillama.com/stablecoins)
- Etherscan, [https://etherscan.io/gastracker](https://etherscan.io/gastracker)
- Rootdata, [https://www.rootdata.com/Fundraising](https://www.rootdata.com/Fundraising)
- Tokenomist, [https://tokenomist.ai/](https://tokenomist.ai/)
- Coindesk, [https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2026/01/28/meta-and-microsoft-continue-going-big-on-ai-spending-here-s-how-bitcoin-miners-could-benefit](https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2026/01/28/meta-and-microsoft-continue-going-big-on-ai-spending-here-s-how-bitcoin-miners-could-benefit)
- Dune, [https://dune.com/datadashboards/prediction-markets](https://dune.com/datadashboards/prediction-markets)
- Coindesk, [https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2026/01/28/circle-shares-rise-after-mizuho-upgrades-stock-on-polymarket-driven-usdc-growth](https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2026/01/28/circle-shares-rise-after-mizuho-upgrades-stock-on-polymarket-driven-usdc-growth)
- X, [https://x.com/Cointelegraph/status/2016640620803096936?s=20](https://x.com/Cointelegraph/status/2016640620803096936?s=20)
- RWA.xyz, [https://app.rwa.xyz/commodities](https://app.rwa.xyz/commodities)
- X, [https://x.com/Cointelegraph/status/2016625054092517531?s=20](https://x.com/Cointelegraph/status/2016625054092517531?s=20)
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