Market Review: First Week of the New Year in Cryptocurrencies

Bitcoin started the week at $93,700 and completed the week at $98,500 with an increase of over 5%. Ethereum is; The week it started at $3350, it closed at $3650 with an increase of nearly 9%. Thus, the ETH/BTC parity increased by more than 3% for two consecutive weeks.

We are currently at a critical threshold at the 100-day average for the ETH/BTC parity. It is important for the parity to hold above this level for Ethereum to continue its positive divergence from Bitcoin. (see Visual) This increase in value on the Ethereum side also positively affects altcoins.

On the spot ETF side; While Ethereum closed the week with an outflow of nearly $40 million, Bitcoin closed positively thanks to the inflows on Friday. In this process, the outbursts from the Blackrock front were on the agenda. Because; There was a record outflow this week in the Blackrock fund, which usually has no or fewer outflows. While there was an outflow of over 330 million dollars from Blackrock’s spot Bitcoin ETF in the markets opened after the New Year holiday (Thursday, January 2), the fact that other funds did not accompany this outflow created an unusual picture.

I think that two events that resulted in loss of life on the US side affected this outcome. First, the attack during New Year’s Eve celebrations in New Orleans, and then; Tesla cybertruck explosion in front of Trump Hotel in Las Vegas. Both events had an impact on the markets on Thursday, increasing fears of a terrorist attack. As a matter of fact, positive inflows of over $900 million into spot Bitcoin ETFs on Friday changed the negative outlook.

While evaluating analysts’ comments about the new year, I would like to touch upon expectations.

Musk’s support and Trump’s election win; It also meant that memecoins were winning for the cryptocurrency markets. Undoubtedly, this trend will continue, but bots, which have recently been called artificial intelligence agents (AI Agents) in the markets, are among the trends predicted for this year. We can think of these projects as memecoins with chatbot features. Because they have social media accounts and interact with people. Although they are still in the early stages, there are some whose tokens have a market value of hundreds of millions of dollars.

Apart from artificial intelligence projects, significant growth is also expected in the field of tokenization (RWA). Especially on the US side; If compliance processes are facilitated with the new crypto-friendly administration and the change in SEC chairmanship, RWA projects are likely to come to the fore. The foundations can be laid for moving many traditional financial instruments such as bonds, bills, debt securities or stocks to the crypto ecosystem. In this rapidly changing world, trends should not be ignored when making investment decisions.

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