In December 2025, the Producer Price Index rose 0.5% month-over-month and 3.0% year-over-year, with core PPI climbing to 3.3%, the highest since July 2025. Bitcoin slid under $82,400 as Fed funds futures shifted to just 52 basis points of expected cuts across 2026, with the first move seen in June. Persistent services inflation and elevated real yields around 1.90% now frame key scenarios for rates and Bitcoin ahead of the Feb. 20 PCE release.

Moltbook is hosting discussions on relay protocols that let autonomous agents discover peers and exchange direct messages, expanding the attack surface beyond isolated endpoints. According to Token Security, 22% of customers already see unsanctioned agent usage, while reports describe exposed dashboards, leaked credentials, and 7,922 attack attempts on a single instance. Some agents are offering Bitcoin bounties and calling it "sound money."

Coin Metrics data show top-10 altcoins now control roughly 82% of non-Bitcoin market cap, narrowing breadth since 2021. Wintermute reported average altcoin rallies lasted about 19 days in 2025 versus 61 in 2024, while CCData said December 2025 volumes fell 26.4% to $5.79 trillion. In this setup, recoveries tend to favor majors over small caps.

In 2025, DTCC began building infrastructure for extended US trading hours toward a 24×5 model, while Nasdaq proposed 23‑hour sessions and ICE developed a tokenized securities platform designed for continuous operation. At the same time, Binance and Hyperliquid listed 24/7 silver and equity‑linked perpetual contracts, with Hyperliquid's silver market recording over $4.5 billion in January volume and open interest near $152.4 million. These instruments provide round‑the‑clock, leveraged synthetic exposure to real‑world assets, highlighting that crypto derivatives already deliver the continuous price access traditional venues are still engineering.

On Jan. 26, CoinGlass data showed its Coinbase Bitcoin Premium Index turning sharply negative, signaling that BTC began trading at a growing discount on Coinbase versus Binance. The divergence has emerged alongside more than $1.3 billion in recent US spot Bitcoin ETF outflows, shifting USDT/USD mechanics and tighter derivatives and arbitrage conditions.

Tokenized US Treasuries exceeded $10 billion in value this week, highlighting their shift from pilot projects to core on-chain infrastructure. As of Jan. 22, Circle's USYC slightly surpassed BlackRock's BUIDL in assets under management, helped by earlier exchange collateral integration, accumulating yield mechanics, and lower minimum investment thresholds. These structural features are driving net inflows toward USYC as institutions seek scalable, yield-bearing collateral within existing crypto workflows.

On Jan. 21, Bitcoin bounced back above $90,000 after briefly touching $87,304 earlier in the session, following Donald Trump's announcement that tariffs planned for Feb. 1 would not go ahead. The move coincided with a sharp rotation out of gold and silver and triggered over $1 billion in liquidations across crypto derivatives, highlighting Bitcoin's sensitivity to macro headlines and heavy leveraged positioning.

According to local media, a tax employee in Bobigny misused internal government software to compile files on crypto specialists, billionaire Vincent Bolloré, and public officials, then sold one dossier for €800 that led to a violent home attack on a prison officer in Montreuil. Her appeal was rejected on Jan. 6, highlighting how insider abuse of French state databases and new crypto wealth registries is turning self-custody into a physical coercion and identity-security problem.

On Jan. 5, Ledger informed customers that a breach at its third‑party payment processor Global‑e exposed names, contact details, and order information, while leaving hardware wallets, passwords, and 24‑word recovery phrases untouched. Although no crypto assets were directly compromised, past incidents show that such personal data dumps can fuel long‑running phishing, extortion, and even physical robbery attempts that target confirmed hardware wallet owners. The latest leak renews scrutiny of the broader commerce infrastructure around self‑custody and highlights the offline risks created when shipping and billing data is linked to crypto holdings.