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Forget drones and spy balloons. Content algorithms are the real secret weapons.

Take what David’s Instagram feed is doing to him: It’s ripping him from a micropig cafe in Tokyo, to a paparazzi encounter with Pedro Pascal, to a demo of what seems to be a hoverboard crossed with a surfboard.

It’s a miracle we get anything done — no doubt you’re the same.

Meanwhile:

• Ethereum staking yield is up slightly from new lows of 3.17% set last week. Current 30-day moving average: 3.19%.

• Ordinals’ share of weekly Bitcoin transaction counts rose to 30% in early January, up from under 10% in November.

• Polymarket puts the odds of bitcoin reaching $110,000 in January at 34%.

🗳️ Predictably unpredictable

Yesterday I touched on the markets, but today I want to take a deeper dive ahead of the inauguration. 

Good news is that there’s some positive data supporting the thesis that bitcoin could be in for positive momentum after Jan. 20.

K33 analysts noted that trading volumes are up 51% this past week, with average daily volumes coming in at $4.3 billion. 

“Activity levels were exceptionally high amidst [Monday’s] massive flush and recovery, with spot market volumes reaching $6.5 billion, the highest daily spot volume since Dec. 20. The high volume and sharp recovery suggest many willing buyers amidst BTC’s push below $90,000, a promising observation for the road ahead,” they said.

Now I’m going to offer up the next bit of data without much explanation because I’m not sure we can really explain it outside of theorizing. K33 noted that Jan. 13 was the most volatile day since early December, where the gap between daily returns and intraday volatility was the “highest ever recorded in BTC.”

The easiest explanation is potential profit taking, perhaps to prepare for tax season. 

This leads me to this interesting nugget: “prices saw another peculiar pattern over the last week, with 14 consistent green hourly candles in a row for the first time in BTC history, making the past week unique through several lenses.”

All of this could mean that Jan. 20 isn’t a sell-the-news event after all, which was a previous possibility. 

Back in early December, K33 analyst Vetle Lunde thought we could see bitcoin peak on Jan. 17, ahead of the inauguration, which would set it up for selling pressure as President-elect Donald Trump once again takes the oath of office.

But, to no one’s surprise, bitcoin marches to the beat of its own drum and a lot of what I’ve written and talked about for the past month no longer matters. Don’t worry, I won’t take it personally. 

The current setup, K33 noted, is “rigged for unpredictability” which means we all might be in for a bumpy ride over the next few days. 

“The overall sensitivity to interest rates over the past month suggests increased importance of Wednesday's CPI print. Additionally, notable Trump momentum may still form in the days leading into the inauguration. At current levels, we've rescinded our plan to sell the inauguration. However, given the plan's price-dependent nature, a tactical de-risking could regain appeal if prices push meaningfully higher running into the inauguration,” analysts wrote.

We’re not out of the woods yet, and we should all be wary. But, hey, at least it doesn’t seem like we’re peaking yet…right?

— Katherine

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Unichain is launching soon!

Designed to be the home for DeFi and liquidity across chains, Unichain is an L2 that will launch with up to 95% lower transaction fees than Ethereum L1. Shortly after mainnet launch, the chain will introduce 250 millisecond block times for near instant transactions. Plus, as part of the Superchain, Unichain is optimized for seamless cross-chain transactions.

Stay in the loop — visit Unichain.org and follow @Unichain on X for updates!

• Not everyone is happy with the rise of Polymarket, as both Thailand and Singapore have moved to block the prediction market. 

• Put away the price tags, the CEO of Deribit told CoinDesk. Despite interest in the options trading exchange, Deribit has no plans to sell itself.

• The next big thing? Franklin Templeton said that AI agents are “very exciting” in a note shared on X.

💣 Culture war

There are three certainties in crypto life.

Hacks, taxes and memecoins tied to every mildly interesting aspect of pop culture.

So, with social media enjoooyers in the US preparing for a potential life without TikTok, it’s no surprise that there’s already a memecoin.

The Supreme Court is currently mulling a bipartisan bill passed last year that would force TikTok’s owner — the Chinese tech giant ByteDance — to sell the app to a US company by Jan. 19, citing national security concerns around influence and spying.

It was initially thought that a ban would mostly benefit Meta and Google. In the meantime though, so-called “TikTok refugees” have flooded Xiaohongshu, or RedNote, a Chinese app similar to Instagram and backed by Tencent and Alibaba. 

On RedNote (and a number of other local apps), where there’s strict content moderation and censorship, the default username has been “momo.” 

Younger Chinese netizens eventually adopted the moniker, along with a cute pink dinosaur mascot, after finding they could post more freely without using their real names online.

No surprise then that Solana memecoin MOMO — initially launched via pump.fun way back in October — has gone 160x in the past three days.

MOMO is still tiny, with a market cap under $5 million, and it took less than $40 million in volume to drive it to its new valuation.

Still, it’s enough for MOMO to have now returned about half that of leading AI agent coin AI16Z. AI16Z has done about 295x since its October launch, about two weeks after MOMO.

For what it’s worth, I poked around RedNote and didn’t find much crypto content beyond bitcoin and major memecoins like shiba inu (and lots of pepe).

That clearly makes the app fertile ground for the US’s fastest-growing digital export: onchain degeneracy. They simply won’t know what hit ‘em.

— David

This March, hear from Michael Saylor, Brad Garlinghouse and other top leaders driving the evolution of global finance. From navigating macroeconomic dynamics to exploring the rise of onchain economies, DAS NYC brings together institutional investors, allocators, and fund managers for meaningful insights and actionable ideas.

📅 March 18-20, 2025
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On our minds: Trump’s inauguration