👋 Welcome to the CoinStats Scoop, your weekly newsletter with the most groundbreaking Web3 innovations and market-moving headlines in the crypto space.
Stay in the loop with all the key market moves, emerging trends, and exciting developments in the crypto space from the past week.
Cryptocurrency markets saw another week of crabwalk in the absence of significant positive market catalysts.
In a major blow to digital asset demand, federal agencies announced another delay to the long-awaited crypto market structure bill, or CLARITY Act, as extreme winter storms swept across 🇺🇸 US states, shutting down key government operations.
Bitcoin mining hashrate also saw a significant decline, as the conditions forced small mining operations offline due to energy limitations.
Yet, as a silver lining for investors, BitMine’s Tom Lee predicted a looming crypto market recovery that will materialise as soon as gold and silver prices start cooling from their rally 💰.
Lastly, the crypto industry welcomed another unicorn company, as Mesh surpassed the $1 billion valuation after its latest funding round, signalling that venture capitalist appetite is still there for digital assets, awaiting more promising protocols and blockchain super apps.

In this week’s CoinStats Scoop, you’ll find:

📊 Crypto Market Analysis And The Most Important News In Web3
🇺🇸 Crypto Market Structure Bill Faces Delays As Winter Storm Hits The US.
📈 BitMine’s Tom Lee Predicts Crypto Recovery After Gold Rally Cools.
⚡ Bitcoin Mining Hashrate Records 40% Drop, As Extreme Weather Forces Miners Offline.
🦄 Mesh Becomes $1 Billion Crypto Unicorn After $75 Million Raise.
🔮 Analysis And Key Events That Will Shape The Crypto Market Next Week.

Crypto Market Structure Bill Faces Delays As Winter Storm Hits The US 🇺🇸

Progress continues to stall on the long-awaited crypto market structure bill, as the United States was hit by unexpected weather conditions ❄️.
The US was hit by a severe winter storm during the first part of the week, leading the Senate Agriculture Committee and other key lawmakers to delay the markup for their draft of the crypto market structure bill to Thursday, two days from the initial date.
Regulators are now set to reconvene on Thursday, Jan. 29, to discuss the Digital Commodity Intermediaries Act (DCIA), which is the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s (CFTC) effort to bring clear crypto market regulations.
Additionally, the CFTC also announced a 2-day delay to its joint event with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which is aimed at “harmonising” the regulatory jurisdictions between the two agencies, in relation to digital assets 🤝.
The delays occurred shortly after the Washington D.C. area was hit by a severe winter storm, with locals reporting major power outages and cancelled flights.
More progress on the US crypto market structure is key to attracting more institutional investors and establishing more regulated investment products for digital asset exposure 💰.

BitMine’s Tom Lee Predicts Crypto Recovery After Gold Rally Cools 📈

Some of the most popular crypto investment strategists are expecting a looming market recovery, including Tom Lee, the chairman of BitMine Immersion Technologies and the managing partner at FundStrat Global Advisors.
Speaking at CNBC’s Power Lunch on Monday, Lee said that he expects a robust crypto market recovery driven by a weakening US dollar and monetary easing by the Federal Reserve 💵.
However, the chairman pointed out that the rally in precious metals is driving investor “FOMO” into gold and silver, which will limit the market’s recovery until they continue rising to new highs.
“Because when gold and silver take a break, then and in the past, that would lead to a Bitcoin and Ethereum surge afterwards 🚀.”
Meanwhile, the precious metals rally shows no signs of cooling down, leaving little room for crypto asset demand.
Gold surged over 17% since the start of the year, reaching a new all-time high of $5,100 on Monday, while silver gained 57% this year, surpassing $110 for the first time in history.
Analysts attribute the safe-haven rally to rising geopolitical concerns renewed by Trump’s threats to make a move on Greenland 🇬🇱, which simultaneously limited the demand for more speculative investments, like Bitcoin and alts.

Bitcoin Mining Hashrate Records 40% Drop, As Extreme Weather Forces Miners Offline ⚡

The severe winter storms in the US have forced a significant part of the country’s Bitcoin miners offline, leading to a significant drop in the Bitcoin network’s hashrate.
Bitcoin’s hashrate dropped to 663 exahashes per second (EH/s) on Jan. 25, marking a 40% hashrate drop over the weekend, after most 🇺🇸 US states were hit by unexpected winter storms.
The unusually-shaped drop signals that the weather has forced multiple mining companies offline, as the US remains the world’s largest Bitcoin mining country by hashrate.
Many Bitcoin mining firms opted to reduce their BTC production to assist with the power grid’s needs, explained Julio Moreno, the head of research at CryptoQuant 📝:
“As the winter storm hits the US, Bitcoin mining companies curtail operations to support the power grid. Their daily Bitcoin production was hit significantly in the last few days.”
Bitcoin miners are becoming increasingly important for stabilising the energy grid. Their operations can quickly adapt to absorb surplus energy from renewable sources or briefly wind down during power shortages.

Mesh Becomes $1 Billion Crypto Unicorn After $75 Million Raise 🦄

Venture capitalists continue pouring millions of dollars into crypto companies, despite the 2-month downturn in the cryptocurrency market 💸.
Crypto payment infrastructure company Mesh reached the $1 billion valuation mark, as the newest company to join the crypto unicorn club, along with around 59 other firms, including Binance, Revolut, Ripple, OpenSea, Bitmain, and the Digital Currency Group.
Mesh reached the $1 billion milestone after raising $75 million in a Series C funding round led by Dragonfly Capital, bringing its total raised to $200 million 📈.
Other notable investors included Paradigm, Moderne Ventures, SBI Investment, Coinbase Ventures and Liberty City Ventures.
The company said it will use the $75 million to expand its crypto payments network across Latin America, Asia and Europe 🇪🇺, while further advancing its payment infrastructure.
The investment round shows that large investment firms, such as Dragonfly Capital with over $4 billion, are still pouring funds into promising cryptocurrency projects, particularly infrastructure firms building towards real-world use cases.
“Payments are entering a new era where value moves as software,” wrote Rob Hadick, General Partner at Dragonfly:
🗣️ “Mesh is building the interoperability layer that makes crypto practical at scale: consumers can spend any asset, merchants can settle instantly in the stablecoin or fiat they want, and the complexity stays under the hood. That ‘any-to-any’ experience is exactly what mainstream adoption demands, and we’re excited to lead this round as Mesh becomes the universal network for global, compliant crypto payments.”

Market Overview: Bitcoin Grapples With $90,000 As Analysts Weigh Early Bear Market Signal ⚖️

Cryptocurrency markets experienced another week of sideways action, driven by lagging institutional investments, geopolitical concerns and delays with key US crypto regulations.
Bitcoin’s price briefly rose to a weekly high of $90,900 on Jan. 23, before bottoming just above $86,296 on Jan. 26, leading to a 1.1% increase during the past week, according to CoinStats data 📈.
Investor sentiment was hit by the latest delays with the markup of the US CLARITY Act, which seeks to establish the first crypto market structure regulation in the world’s largest economy 🏛️.

Looking at key price levels, Bitcoin’s price holds strong support around $86,000, with over $1.5 billion of cumulative leveraged long liquidations, which could open more cascading liquidations if broken ⚡.
Conversely, Bitcoin’s price faces a solid resistance around $91,375, where bulls need to push through $742 million worth of cumulative leveraged short liquidations to confirm more upside action, data from Coinglass shows.

However, the percentage of Bitcoin supply in loss has sunk to levels last seen during the 2022 market drawdown, flashing an early technical signal for bear market conditions ahead, wrote CryptoQuant analyst Woo Minkyu:
🗣️ “Historically, this shift has marked the early phase of bear markets, when losses begin to spread beyond short-term holders and gradually reach longer-term participants.”

Despite the bearish signal, some cryptocurrencies are still outperforming the market with significant gains.
Decentralised exchange Hyperliquid’s (HYPE) token proved to be an outlier in the market, rising over 60% during the past week, but still over 44% away from its old all-time high of $59.3 touched in September 🚀.
The token’s rally was catalysed by a surge in demand for derivatives trading on the protocol, after open interest also surged about 50% on Hyperliquid, leading to growing investor demand for the coin.

Tweets & Memes

Probably nothing…

A new milestone for crypto, as VanEck introduces the AVAX ETF 🚀.

The Trump family keeps stacking Bitcoin… are you paying attention🤴?

Bitcoin is the purest form of energy storage invented by humanity ⚡.

Who’s the central bank now 🏦?

Thank you for reading the weekly CoinStats Scoop Newsletter.
CoinStats will continue to guide you through the world of crypto and DeFi. We’ll see you next week for another edition of CoinStats Scoop! 😎