Stacy in Dataland (´⊙~⊙`)

Latest insights from January – let's see what's new on-chain and beyond ↓ General ➖ CoinShares: Digital asset bi-weekly digest - January 27th 2026 ➖ Coinbase: Charting Crypto Q1 2026: Fresh Footing ➖ The Defiant: Chinese Telegram-Based Networks Account for 20% of Crypto Laundering Activity: Chainalysis ➖ Galaxy: Weekly Top Stories - 01/23/26 Market ➖ CoinShares: Equities update | January 23th 2025 ➖ CoinShares: Market update - January 23rd, 2026 ➖ CoinShares: Digital asset fund flows | January 26th, 2026 ➖ Binance: Weekly: Markets Navigate TACO Dynamics and JGB Stress ➖ Glassnode: Failed Breakout ➖ Glassnode: BTC Market Pulse: Week 5 ➖ Galaxy: Bitcoin Volatility Meets Gold’s Steady Climb ➖ Galaxy: Impact Markets: Addressing the ‘How’ and ‘Why’ of a Prediction Market Spinoff ➖ Galaxy: Crypto Infiltrates Davos as Market Structure Plods On DeFi ➖ 4pillars: EigenCloud: In Search of What is Truly One's Own Blockchains & networks ➖ CoinMarketCap: Acurast: Decentralized Compute Powered by Smartphones ➖ The Defiant: Ethereum Ecosystem Grew in 2025 Even as ETH Price Lagged: Everstake Tokens & currencies ➖ CoinShares: Tail risks for 2026: where Bitcoin sells off, and where it reprices ➖ CoinShares: Bitcoin Valuation by Savings Adoption – Updated 2025

Perp DEX tokens still trade like pure beta — tightly tied to overall crypto attention. Execution across venues feels commoditized for retail, but transparency isn’t: buybacks, revenue splits, incentives. Over time, price dispersion will likely come from who actually opens the books.

Revenue cooled with volume, but Hyperliquid still leads the industry in free cash flow. Annualized FCF sits around $520–620M, with ~99% routed to $HYPE buybacks — and even after unlocks, valuation still screens cheap. Upside’s there, but it’s not risk-free.

We just saw the sharpest ERC-20 stablecoin drawdown of this cycle. Supply dropped ~$7B in a week as capital rotated back to fiat and excess stables got burned. Historically that’s a risk-off tell — it needs to reverse fast to stay cyclical, not structural.

Plasma, Arbitrum, and Polygon now hold the largest supply of native USDT0. Unified omnichain liquidity is quietly turning DeFi into a single capital surface, powered by the world’s most used stablecoin.

Lending keeps gaining share inside DeFi. Over the past year, it grew from ~16.6% to 21.3% of total TVL — slow, structural expansion rather than a narrative spike.

Volatility looks mispriced again. Historically, when IV trades well below fair value near BTC highs, drawdowns follow — last signal fired days before October’s liquidation cascade. Indicators now point to volatility skewing higher, not lower.

TRON keeps cementing itself as a payments rail. By the end of Q4, the network hosted $81.8B in stablecoins — $80.9B of that in USDT.

Options flow at Wintermute more than doubled in 2025. Counterparties stopped using options as punts and started using them as tools — yield structuring, hedging, and balance-sheet management. Directional trading gave way to systems.

Bitget’s on-chain Earn relaunch — now running through Morpho on Arbitrum — pushed vault deposits back above $200M. SteakhouseFi (52%) and Gauntlet (26%) dominate curation, which is where trust keeps clustering.

Tokenized RWAs just crossed $21B in TVL. Long-term forecasts vary — $2–4T by McKinsey, up to $16T per Boston Consulting Group, but directionally, the slope is clear.

Tokenized funds just printed a new ATH at ~$14.4B, with Maple Finance leading at ~14.8% market share. As capital consolidates around trusted issuers — alongside names like BlackRock and Circle — Maple isn’t just participating, it’s compounding with the flow. Tokenized funds are becoming onchain treasuries, and defaults matter.