We're excited to announce our new format "Crypto Daybook Americas" will replace "First Mover" on Feb. 24. "Crypto Daybook Americas" is your new morning briefing on what happened in crypto markets overnight to equip you with what you'll need to know about during the coming day. It will arrive in your inbox at 7 a.m. ET to kickstart your morning with comprehensive insights and analysis. If you want a preview, "Crypto Daybook Americas" is already being published on the CoinDesk website, so hop over and take a look. You don't need to do anything to sign up, you'll start receiving "Crypto Daybook Americas" automatically when it starts coming out.

CoinDesk 20 Index: 3,161.95 -3.03%
Bitcoin (BTC): $95,802.76 -0.57%
Ether (ETH): $2,698.31 -1.89%
S&P 500: 6,114.63 -0.01%
Gold: $2,922.9 +0.97%
Nikkei 225: 39,270.4 +0.25%

A message from Hex Trust

Solana's SOL slid to its lowest price since early November, wiping out almost all Trump rally gains as drama in the memecoin market sours investor sentiment. SOL is down nearly 9% over the past 24 hours, while tokens tied to the Solana trading environment like Raydium (RAY), Jupiter (JUP) and Jito (JTO) lost as much as 12%. The CoinDesk 20 Index (CD20), a measure of the broader crypto market, fell 3% while bitcoin (BTC) was little changed. The Solana ecosystem, a hub for memecoin trading, is grappling with the fallout from LIBRA, the scandalous pump-and-dump token launch that put Argentina's President Javier Milei in the hot seat at home. Sentiment towards memecoins began to erode since the TRUMP token, the official memecoin of U.S. president, launched in January, Galaxy noted in a Tuesday report. Since then, SOL has spiralled down 43% from its record high.

Ether-based exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have gathered $393 million of inflows this month, far outpacing their BTC counterparts. The bitcoin ETFs have endured $376 million in outflows, according to Farside Investors data. That's a significant trend change given ETH ETFs have struggled to gain traction since their debut in July. The investor pivot to ETH is driven by the cash and carry trade, which harvests the difference between spot and futures prices. Meanwhile, some of the inflows could be bullish directional bets capitalizing on the early February capitulation event. "ETH has a solid foundation for a resurgence," Nick Forster of Derive.xyz said.

Donald Trump supporters are getting rewarded with TRUMP tokens if they bought merchandise associated with the U.S. president. Three TRUMP coins, worth a total of just over $50 at current prices, will be given to past buyers of Trump’s perfumes, sneakers, cards or watches per email address they used to conduct these purchases. TRUMP is down 7% in the past 24 hours alongside a slide in the broader crypto market.

Bitcoin (BTC) is known to be a volatile asset, but recently that's not been the case: Bitcoin has been trading in a very tight range since the end of November, between $91,000 and $109,000.

In other words, bitcoin’s volatility has compressed enormously. According to Glassnode data, the 2-week realized volatility, which shows how turbulent the asset was in the past two weeks, has dropped to an annualized 32%, one of the lowest readings in years. In addition, the options implied one-month volatility, which gauges the market’s expectation for volatility over four weeks, has slipped below an annualized 50%, again one of the lowest levels in years.

To put into context how much bitcoin has been in this sideways consolidation, consider what analyst Checkmate calls the “Choppiness Index”. The data shows that bitcoin, on a weekly time frame, based on its choppiness, is at its highest level since 2015, which shows how tight this trading range has been.

Volatility tends to mean-reverting, meaning an unusually stable market often paves the way for a big move in either direction and vice versa. The longer and tighter the consolidation, the more violent the eventual explosion.

- Omkar Godbole