Santiment says the pattern of large holders selling while retail scoops up Bitcoin is “what historically creates bear cycles.” Large Bitcoin holders are now controlling the smallest share of the cryptocurrency’s supply since late May, when it first reclaimed $100,000 after more than three months, according to crypto sentiment platform Santiment. Santiment posted to X on Thursday that “whale and shark wallets” holding between 10 and 10,000 Bitcoin (BTC) have fallen to a nine-month low, collectively accounting for about 68.04% of the entire Bitcoin supply. “This includes a dump of -81,068 BTC in just the past 8 days alone,” Santiment said, as Bitcoin fell from around $90,000 to $65,000 over the same period, a roughly 27% decline, according to CoinMarketCap. Bitcoin is trading at $64,792 at the time of publication, up from a 24-hour low of just over $60,000. Read more
Tether and Gold.com are exploring options to allow the use of Tether’s stablecoins to purchase physical gold. The investment arm of stablecoin issuer Tether has acquired a $150 million stake in the precious metals platform Gold.com to expand access to tokenized gold. Tether said on Thursday that it acquired an approximately 12% stake in the company, which will integrate Tether Gold (XAUt), its gold-backed cryptocurrency, into Gold.com’s platform. Gold.com is a publicly listed online marketplace that sells gold and other precious metals, such as silver and platinum, to several markets, including the US. Read more
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says banks and crypto may begin to offer similar products, and pledged to prevent deposit flight concerns that are stalling a key crypto bill. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has told Congress that traditional and crypto banking products and services may be more intertwined in the future. Appearing before the Senate Banking Committee on Thursday, Bessent was asked by Republican Senator Cynthia Lummis whether there could come a time when conventional banks and crypto are offering the same types of products. “I think that can happen over time,” Bessent said. “We’ve actually been working with small and community banks to discuss how they can be part of the digital asset revolution.” Read more
Crypto mining stocks have declined across the board the value of the entire crypto market fell almost 9% on Thursday. Shares in crypto mining companies IREN and CleanSpark sank on Thursday as their earnings came in below Wall Street expectations and Bitcoin’s slide saw traders turn risk-off. Bitcoin (BTC) has fallen 12% over the past 24 hours to briefly touch a low of $60,000 early on Friday. Meanwhile, the crypto market capitalization fell by almost 9%, according to CoinMarketCap. CleanSpark (CLSK) led the decline, closing trading on Thursday down 19.13% and falling another 8.6% after-hours to $7.55 after its results for the quarter ended Dec. 31 came in below analyst predictions. Read more
Kalshi has seen nearly $170 million in Super Bowl-related bets, and its move to boost oversight comes amid scrutiny of prediction markets by regulators and Congress. Kalshi says it’s expanding its surveillance on its prediction markets platform through an independent advisory committee and partnerships to detect insider trading and market manipulation, just days ahead of the Super Bowl. Kalshi said on Thursday that the committee would give a quarterly rundown to the company’s outside counsel and publish statistics on investigations into suspicious activity on the platform. It is also teaming up with crypto trading surveillance platform Solidus Labs and Daniel Taylor, director of the Wharton Forensic Analytics Lab, “to detect, investigate, and address market abuse.” Read more
Bitcoin plummeted to a low of around $60,000 after the Crypto Fear & Greed Index hit its lowest score since mid-2022, when the Terra blockchain collapsed. Crypto market sentiment has slumped to its lowest level in over three and a half years, with Bitcoin falling by double-digit percentage points to around $60,000. The Crypto Fear & Greed Index fell to a score of 9 out of 100 on Friday, indicating “extreme fear” in the market and hitting its lowest point since June 2022, when sentiment and the market fell in the wake of the collapse of the Terra blockchain a month earlier. The index has been at a low for the last fortnight as Bitcoin (BTC) has tanked 38% from its 2026 high of $97,000 in just three weeks, wiping out all gains for the past sixteen months. Read more