Market Overview
Jan 23, 2026. Another day, another disconnect between headlines and candles. You'd think Grayscale filing for a BNB ETF or US states (Oklahoma and Kansas) drafting Bitcoin reserve bills would send us vertically green. Nope. The total crypto market cap dipped 0.56% to sit at $3.04T.
We are stuck in the mud. Bitcoin dominance is creeping up (+0.14% this week) not because BTC is surging, but because alts are bleeding out faster. The volume is thin, the mood is cautious, and everyone is waiting for the monthly close to confirm if this "super cycle" CZ is talking about is real or just cope.
Bitcoin & Majors
Bitcoin ($BTC) is flat. Down 0.02%. It's hovering near $90k ($89k-$90k range) and refuses to pick a lane. The fundamental news is massive — Oklahoma wants to let state employees get paid in BTC, and Kansas is eyeing a strategic reserve. But the market is fixated on the expiry of options contracts and low volume. We need to clear the $92k resistance to wake the retail crowd up.
BNB was the main character in the news cycle today. Grayscale filed for a Spot BNB ETF. Usually, an ETF filing is an instant +10% candle. Today? BNB crawled up 0.12%. Why? Regulatory PTSD. The SEC hates exchange tokens. Investors know this filing is a long shot. Plus, rumors of Binance restarting stock trading are swirling, which is cool, but apparently not cool enough to move the needle.
Ethereum ($ETH) is in a weird spot. Fees are at record lows — great for users, bad for deflation narratives. Then Citibank dropped a report claiming a huge chunk of recent ETH volume is bot-driven "scam" activity. Not the PR win Vitalik needs right now.
Outliers
While the majors slept, the degens were busy on the fringes.
- $SPACE (+857%): KuCoin listed it, shilled it, and it went parabolic. Classic exchange pump. But be careful — news reports a single wallet is dumping heavily. Don't be exit liquidity.
- $FIGHT (+300%): Another KuCoin darling today. No fundamentals, just pure speculative rotation.
- $XMR (+0.46%): India just banned privacy coins on exchanges. Usually, this nukes the price. Instead, Monero is one of the few green majors. Why? Because you can't kill a cockroach with a piece of paper. The ban just proves the use case.
Sentiment: The "Wait and See" Trap
Here's the thing. The plumbing is being built. UBS is looking at crypto trading for rich clients. Ledger is planning an IPO. US States are legislating Bitcoin into their treasuries.
But the retail liquidity isn't here yet.
Also, can we talk about South Korean prosecutors losing $52M in seized Bitcoin to a phishing attack? Embarrassing. If the government can't secure their keys, it doesn't inspire confidence in the "institutional grade" narrative.
My take? Ignore the daily noise. The Grayscale BNB filing is a signal that asset managers are hungry for more than just BTC and ETH. They will force the SEC's hand eventually. We might chop sideways for another week, but the floor is rising.
