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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Buybacks sound good on paper, but markets don’t reward them in a drawdown.

When macro turns risk-off, tokens with buybacks and low P/E get hit just like everything else — sometimes worse. Cash flow doesn’t immunize price from sentiment.

Bitcoin just printed $4.5B in realized losses — the largest in three years.

That kind of flush usually marks stress, not complacency.

30-day earnings look busy — Avalanche, Jito, Bungee, Derive, MetaDAO all printing six figures.

But Arbitrum DAO quietly pulls ~$200K a month from treasury interest alone — no fees, no MEV, no risk trades. Sometimes capital just works.

HIP-3 is becoming core to Hyperliquid.

Those markets now make up 8.1% of total OI (~$625M), spanning metals, mega-cap tech, and broad indices. TradFi exposure is finding a clean onchain wrapper.

ETFs now account for ~6.5% of combined BTC + ETH market cap.

And despite all the “self-sovereign” talk, flows already lean heavily on them.

MegaETH stress tests are pushing past 20K TPS as an L2 using EigenDA.

Early signs suggest throughput isn’t the bottleneck anymore — coordination is.

Ethereum network fees just fell to their lowest level since May 2017.

Cheap blockspace is back — quietly changing what’s viable onchain.

Institutions follow revenue.

On Arbitrum, Timeboost already pushed $6.29M back into the DAO, reinforcing a multi-revenue flywheel.

Tether rolled out USAT to compete head-on for institutional adoption.

With Anchorage-backed compliance and early listings across major venues, USAT gives Tether a cleaner lane into regulated flows — especially for firms spanning the US and emerging markets.

L2s are doing the heavy lifting for Ethereum’s network effect.

Monthly transactions on L2s now outpace L1 by nearly 9×, quietly redefining where activity actually lives.

Tokenized equities crossed 150K holders.

Most of that demand clusters around Tesla and Nvidia — familiar names pull liquidity first.

Base lending yields finally normalized.

As capital flowed in, the old 2–3% USDC premium compressed to ~50bps, pulling rates back in line with Ethereum. Liquidity does what liquidity always does.

Alts had a brutal year.

Only ~6% are up YoY, while the average token is down ~70%. That’s not rotation — that’s capitulation.

Liquid staking is no longer a one-horse race.

Competing LSTs absorbed ~4.5M ETH — nearly 30% of new stake — while Lido’s share slid from ~90% to ~65%. Distribution is finally happening.

Prediction markets are already an oligopoly.

Kalshi, Opinion, and Polymarket control ~96% of volume, while everyone else fights over scraps, and users concentrate even harder than volume. Polymarket stands out with ~2M all-time users, which explains a lot.