Криптокровавые события недели: падение биткоина и перезапуск TheDAO Translation: Crypto Turmoil of the Week: Bitcoin Plummets and TheDAO Relaunches

The cryptocurrency market has undergone a significant correction, Ethereum has announced a relaunch of TheDAO, Trump has proposed a replacement for the chair of the Federal Reserve, along with other events from the past week.

The first half of the week was relatively calm, with Bitcoin encouraging investors as it rose to $90,000. However, the second half brought some severe corrections.

On Thursday, shortly after the opening of the trading session in the US, Bitcoin plummeted from $88,000 to $83,000.

Just before this drop, gold had reached a historic high of $5,600 per ounce, before dipping back to $5,100. This trend of following corrections in precious metals is expected to continue through the end of the week.

Late on January 30th, Bitcoin continued its descent, falling down to $81,000. This triggered a wave of liquidations amounting to $1.7 billion.

The following day saw a brief recovery to $85,000, only to face another crash, this time more serious, dropping below $80,000. The cryptocurrency briefly tested the $75,000 level, the first time since April 2025.

Over the 24-hour period, the volume of forced liquidations exceeded $2.5 billion.

At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading around $78,000, having lost 12% over the week.

Market participants hold differing opinions regarding the future price movements. Trader Kit Alan speculated about the possibility of a double bottom forming around the $74,000 mark, aligning with last April’s support line.

Michael van de Poppe, founder of MN Trading, noted that the RSI on Bitcoin’s weekly chart in relation to gold has dipped below 30.

“[…] this is a signal that has triggered during previous bear market bottoms in 2015, 2018, and 2022. And it is triggering again,” he added.

The rest of the cryptocurrency market «turned red» following Bitcoin’s lead, with some altcoins experiencing even larger declines than the leading cryptocurrency.

Ethereum dropped to $2,300 (-19% over the week), BNB fell to $750 (-13%), while Solana slid to $100 (-17%).

The total market capitalization of cryptocurrencies decreased to $2.7 trillion, with Bitcoin’s dominance sitting at 57.5% and Ethereum’s at 10.6%.

The Cryptocurrency Fear and Greed Index fell to 14 points, the lowest level since mid-December 2025.

On December 29, the Ethereum team announced their decision to relaunch TheDAO, which was hacked in 2016. This initiative came into effect the same day.

Under this program, the organization will function as a fund dedicated to blockchain security. It will be financed using a portion of the approximately 75,000 ETH that has remained unclaimed since the attack.

The curators of TheDAO, including Vitalik Buterin, have already reported plans to allocate $13.5 million in grants for external developers. Distribution will take place through DAO mechanisms.

Other coins totaling around $200 million will be allocated for staking.

“The goal of TheDAO fund is to make Ethereum so secure that your savings would be better kept in a DeFi protocol than in a bank,” representatives of the organization summarized.

The attack on TheDAO was one of the most notorious hacks in the history of the crypto industry, with the hacker siphoning off approximately 3.6 million ETH, equating to about 3.5% of the coin’s total supply at that time. This incident eventually led to a controversial hard fork of the Ethereum mainnet.

Another significant, but largely non-impactful event during the week was the Federal Reserve’s decision regarding the key interest rate. On January 28, the regulator maintained the rate in the range of 3.5% to 3.75%.

This outcome was not unexpected, as analysts had nearly 100% predicted it. The Federal Reserve had previously hinted at this decision, pointing towards a slowdown in easing policies.

“Current indicators suggest that economic activity is growing at a steady pace. Job growth remains low, and unemployment levels show signs of stabilization. Inflation remains somewhat elevated,” the Federal Reserve’s press release stated.

Chairman Jerome Powell indicated that the current state of monetary policy remains stable; however, inflation is still too high, and labor market indicators are not particularly positive.

The Federal Reserve’s pause likely prompted President Donald Trump to take action. On January 30, he announced Kevin Warsh’s nomination for the next head of the Federal Reserve. Powell’s term is set to expire in May.

Trump stated that he has known his candidate for a long time and has “no doubt” that he will go down in history as “one of the greatest Fed chairmen.”

Warsh, an American financier and banking executive, previously served on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors from 2006 to 2011. More on the politician’s accomplishments was shared in our article.

“Markets generally see Warsh’s possible return as a bearish signal for Bitcoin. His focus on monetary discipline, high real rates, and reducing liquidity paints a picture of cryptocurrency not as a hedge against fiat devaluation, but as a speculative excess that disappears with the end of the cheap money era,” said Markus Tilen, founder of 10x Research.

During the week, Tether announced the full launch of USAT—a federally regulated stablecoin for the US market.

The asset was created in line with the Genius Act. Issuance is handled by Anchorage Digital Bank, N.A., which was the first in the country to obtain the relevant license. The reserves for the token will be held by Cantor Fitzgerald as the designated custodian and primary dealer.

The “stable coin” is available on exchanges Bybit, Crypto.com, Kraken, OKX, and through the payment service Moonpay.

“USAT offers institutions an additional option: a stablecoin made in America. USDT has proven for over a decade that digital dollars can deliver trust, transparency, and utility on a global scale,” commented Tether’s CEO Paolo Ardoino.

The company also reported its results for 2025, revealing that Tether International posted a net profit exceeding $10 billion, while excess reserves reached $6.3 billion.

During the reporting period, nearly 50 billion USDT were issued, marking the second-largest issuance volume in the company’s history.

Tether’s direct investments in US Treasury bonds exceeded $122 billion.

At the end of the year, the stablecoin issuer held precious metals valued at approximately $17.5 billion and Bitcoin worth $8.4 billion. By the end of January, the value of the company’s reserves in 140 tons of gold reached $23 billion, and Tether used a former nuclear bunker in Switzerland for storage.

Simultaneously, Tether announced that XAUT accounted for over half of the entire market for stablecoins backed by physical gold. The total value of this segment is estimated at $5 billion, with over $2 billion attributed to the asset from the USDT issuer.

As of the end of January, Bitcoin’s hashrate had fallen to 970 EH/s, the lowest level since September 2025. This was primarily due to winter storms in the US, which caused disruptions for miners.

On January 24, the hashrate hit a low of 690 EH/s after a shutdown of most of the equipment at Foundry USA.

At that time, the largest American mining pool cut its power by 60% due to the “Fern” storm. This extreme weather event affected the Southeast, Northeast, and parts of the Midwest of the US.

The storm stretched nearly 3,000 km. Due to ice and snowfall, over 1 million residents were left without power. Miners had to reduce consumption to alleviate the strain on local electrical grids. This issue also affected other pools.

Although this event drew attention to the problem, analysts from Glassnode noted that Bitcoin’s hashrate has been declining for the past four months.

According to experts, mining revenues have sharply decreased in the wake of falling prices and operational disruptions. Daily revenues from mining cryptocurrency dropped from $45 million down to a yearly low of $28 million in a short period, after which it only partially recovered to around $34 million.

“The situation indicates extremely low profitability for mining companies under the current conditions of prices and mining difficulty, even after numerous adjustments in the indicator downwards,” Glassnode added.

In the January digest, we attempted to understand whether Bitcoin has retained its status as a safe-haven asset, analyzed market movements, and gathered the most interesting longs of the month.

We are trying to find out the purpose behind the Hanoi UN Convention on Cybercrime: whether it is meant for real action against online miscreants or just for tightening regulation in the digital space.

We also discuss the inevitable merger of two financial worlds, the tokenization of commodities, royalties from oil production, and futures on GPU computations.