Daily Crypto Signals: Bitcoin Struggles Under $90,000, Gold Surges Past $5,100
Bitcoin investors remain cautious as the cryptocurrency struggles near $88,000 while gold reaches unprecedented highs above $5,000 per troy
Quick overview
- Bitcoin investors are cautious as the cryptocurrency struggles near $88,000, while gold reaches record highs above $5,000 per troy ounce.
- The crypto market has lost nearly $100 billion recently, with significant outflows from investment products, marking the largest exodus since November 2025.
- Geopolitical tensions and a potential US government shutdown have contributed to increased volatility in the cryptocurrency market.
- Gold's rise, driven by institutional demand and a declining US dollar, highlights a shift towards safer assets amid economic uncertainty.
Bitcoin BTC/USD investors remain cautious as the cryptocurrency struggles near $88,000 while gold XAU/USD reaches unprecedented highs above $5,000 per troy ounce, driven by rising geopolitical tensions and declining confidence in the US dollar. The crypto market has shed nearly $100 billion in recent days as traditional safe-haven assets outperform digital currencies, with $1.73 billion flowing out of crypto investment products last week—the largest exodus since November 2025.
Crypto Market Developments
Over the previous week, the cryptocurrency market encountered a lot of problems that made investors less interested. Severe winter weather across the United States led lawmakers to put off important digital asset legislation. The markup of the Digital Commodity Intermediaries Act was moved from Tuesday to Thursday. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission also pushed back their joint event on making crypto oversight more consistent by two days because of the winter storm that shut down most of the country.
Late Sunday, the market got even more unstable as about $100 billion disappeared from the total market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies in just six and a half hours. The selloff was caused by rising geopolitical uncertainty, including as predictions of a US government shutdown, President Donald Trump’s warning that Canada would face 100% tariffs if it makes a deal with China, and rising tensions with Iran that led to the US sending troops to the Middle East. Prediction markets say that the chances of the government shutting down by January 31 went from less than 10% on Saturday to about 80% on Sunday.
Institutional investors pulled back from crypto assets even faster, with exchange-traded products losing $1.73 billion in value over the course of the week. Bitcoin had the most withdrawals, over $1.09 billion, followed by Ethereum with $630 million. James Butterfill, head of research at CoinShares, said that the outflows were due to “dwindling expectations for interest rate cuts, negative price momentum, and disappointment that digital assets have not yet participated in the debasement trade.” Over the course of ten days, the stablecoin market shrank by $2.24 billion. This shows that investors are cashing out to fiat currencies instead than being ready to buy declines.
Bitcoin Holds Above $88,000
Bitcoin’s quest to go back to the $93,000 mark has halted as professional traders take more and more defensive positions. The cryptocurrency was up only 1.5% after testing $86,000 again on Sunday. It is now trading at about $88,300 as traders think about the hazards of a possible government shutdown and wait for the Federal Reserve to make its decision on monetary policy this week. Bitcoin has dropped about 30% since the crash on October 10, when over $19 billion worth of leveraged positions were sold off in one day. Even though it has made a small comeback, it is still down.
Derivatives metrics show that traders are being careful. On Monday, the annualized Bitcoin futures premium was only 5%. This was barely enough to make up for lengthier settlement times and was significantly below the 10% level that is usually observed during bullish times. The options delta skew, which shows that traders are paying more for put options to protect themselves from losses, hit 12%. This is very worrying. The last time the skew was this high was on December 1, when Bitcoin dropped from $91,500 to $83,900 in just a few hours. Short-Bitcoin ETPs saw $500,000 in new money, which is more proof that people are feeling much worse since the price fall in October.
Gold Tests New High Above $5,100
The price of gold has risen to record highs above $5,100 per troy ounce. This shows that investors are moving away from riskier assets and toward safer ones. from Bitcoin’s meltdown in October, the precious metal has gone up more than 20%, and from the beginning of the year, it has gone up about 17%, which is a lot better than the struggling cryptocurrency. Central banks have been a big part of the demand, buying a net 220 metric tons in the third quarter of 2025 as they work to move away from dollar-denominated assets. This ongoing institutional buying shows that people are more worried about currency risk, geopolitical tensions, and the possibility of being hit by sanctions.
The market for tokenized gold has grown along with the demand for physical gold. Tether Gold (XAUt) now makes up more than half of the gold-backed stablecoin market, with a total value of more than $2.2 billion. Paolo Ardoino, the CEO of Tether, said that the company’s gold holdings are now big enough to compete with some government gold reserves. The rise in both physical and tokenized gold has been stronger now that the US Dollar Index has dropped below 97 for the first time in four months. It fell 9.4% in 2025, which was its worst year since 2017. Analysts say that the dollar may get much weaker now that it has broken below a long-term support trendline for the first time in more than ten years. This usually leads to more money moving into hard assets like gold and silver.
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