Weekly Market Update: Pirate of the Caribbean

Ahoy, mateys! Welcome aboard the good ship 2026, where the year barely cleared the harbor before Captain Trump unfurled the sails and launched a cannonade of democracy-by-force straight at Venezuela. In exchange? Their oil fields, naturally – because nothing says “spreading freedom” like commandeering the world’s largest reserves with a side of military flair. 

The DonRoe Doctrine is in full effect: America’s backyard is once again off-limits to China and Russia, or so the manifesto declares. The prize haul? Trump pocketed a shiny Nobel medal – handed over personally by Venezuela’s opposition darling María Corina Machado, in a gesture of “mutual respect” that had the committee clutching their pearls. 

Sour grapes from Big Oil execs, though as they showed up to the White House pitch meeting with all the enthusiasm of a cat at bath time, muttering that Venezuela remains “uninvestable.” Ah, the romance of empire-building – $100 billion promised, lukewarm handshakes received.

Meanwhile, the powder kegs are still smoking. Iran got the stern finger-wag, with whispers of Russian firepower keeping everyone playing chicken. Another oil raid on the cards? 

Over in the frozen north, Canada cozies up to China while Putin suddenly fancies “constructive discussions” with Europe. Trump’s bullying? It might just shove the old continent straight into Russia’s bear hug – because nothing unites like a common annoyance.

And Greenland? Trump eyes it like a shiny trinket, threatening tariffs on half of NATO to pry it loose. Win an island, lose a continent – the classic conundrum. NATO’s looking fragile; Europe can’t even defend its own borders without Uncle Sam’s umbrella, yet here we are testing how many holes you can poke before it shreds.

China, ever the cheeky rival, shrugs off the trade war tariffs with a cool “the world’s big enough without you” and clocks 5% GDP growth in 2025 anyway, riding a record trade surplus wave. Bold words, bolder numbers, while the U.S. dollar share of global reserves slips below 60%, nations quietly rowing away from the dollar muttering under their breath “sell America.”

History’s lesson is dry as old grog: empires don’t sink from debt alone (though $40 trillion looming this year doesn’t help buoyancy). It’s the overreach – thinking you still rule waves that long ago changed course. 

Remember Japan in the ’80s with 30%+ of global GDP before capital fled to fresher ports and left them at under 5%? Feels familiar, doesn’t it? Change hits faster now – one month’s headlines outpace decades of the old calm.

Through it all, Bitcoin lounges like a risk-on tech stock in a leveraged hammock – grinding sideways, sniffing bearish winds one day, breakout whispers the next. Altcoins? Robbed of the spotlight by precious metals who are running like a NATO break up is a sure thing.

As we warned at year’s end: 2025 was mad, but 2026 promises more! Three weeks in, and it hasn’t disappointed as Trump is furiously reshaping the post WW2 rules based order at breakneck speed. Steady hand on the wheel, but keep some powder dry – it’s shaping up to be one heck of a voyage. 

What port next, Captain? Your guess is as good as mine.

Market sentiment has plummeted back into: Extreme Fear

Crypto market moves: 

• Bitcoin broke out of its sideways grind to reach just below $98k before being smashed down just before the weekly close and then below $90k on renewed tariff war jitters and BOJ rate hike fears!
• Over $500 million of leverage was liquidated.
• Polymarket slashed odds of Bitcoin hitting $100k by end of January to just 8%.
• Bitcoin hashrate has dropped by 15% since the Oct high as miner capitulation drags on.
• The total crypto market cap has bounced around $3.2 trillion before dropping to just above $3 trillion – with mostly red across the top 100 coins on a 7 day timeframe.
• Total crypto ETFs drew over $2 billion of net inflows last week, the strongest weekly total since October 2025 – this week won’t look pretty.
• Broad retail is still largely disengaged as Google search volumes for “Bitcoin” have plummeted to multi-year low levels.
• The Fear & Greed index finally broke out of “Fear” territory at the end of last week but then dived back into “Extreme Fear” as the floor fell out of the market.
• Bitcoin weekly RSI key momentum indicator is back at 40 – we want to see this recover and keep climbing above 45 over the coming weeks.
• Bitcoin dominance is still stuck at 59% with just 28 of the top 100 Altcoins outperforming Bitcoin in the last 90 days.
• The big winner of the week is ICP (Internet Computer) +4.2% on plans to burn supply.
• The big loser of the week is PEPE (PePe) -23.5% after a strong run on bullish hopes these last couple of weeks.

View all top gainers: Visit the top gainers page to find out more.

Highlights from the crypto space:

Bitcoin is still stuck in a sideways range of ~$10k since early Dec, lacking the momentum and conviction for a convincing breakout. Consumer sentiment has improved, but broad market FOMO is tempered and distracted likely until a clearer direction is established. Today’s plunge below $90k is the likely ripple effect from Trump Greenland tariff jitters combined with fears of Bank of Japan rate hike later this week. 

CryptoQuant’s Bitcoin bull-bear market cycle indicator suggests we may be in an early bear market phase:

Coinbase withdrew its support for the U.S. crypto market structure bill (aka the “CLARITY Act”) in the Senate, saying that it would be “materially worse than the current status quo” for the industry, and citing issues such as a ban on tokenized equities and severe restrictions on decentralized finance (DeFi) and stablecoin rewards.

Charles Hoskinson, founder of Cardano, publicly criticized Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse for endorsing the CLARITY Act, warning against conceding control to regulators who, he said, had already demonstrated hostility toward the sector. Ouch!

The European Union’s DAC8 law took effect on 1 Jan, requiring crypto-asset service providers to collect and report user information and transactions to national tax authorities in detail. Big brother is always watching.

CME Group will launch futures contracts for Cardano, Chainlink and Stellar in early Feb, pending regulatory review. This move expands their existing suite of regulated cryptocurrency derivatives which includes Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP and Solana futures.

The New York Stock Exchange is developing a new platform to trade tokenized stocks and ETFs as part of a broader effort to modernize market infrastructure using blockchain-based settlement. Nice!

Iranians moved significant funds from domestic exchanges to personal Bitcoin wallets during late 2025 as a flight to safety before a nationwide internet blackout. Total crypto activity hit $7.8 billion in 2025 as citizens sought alternatives to a domestic currency that has lost over 90 percent of its value since 2018.

Bitmine Immersion Technologies, the largest corporate holder of Ethereum, has committed to invest $200 million into Beast Industries, the company of YouTube creator MrBeast, in an effort to target a younger demographic. 

Other crypto news:

• The SEC has ended its multi-year probe into the ZCash Foundation without recommending enforcement action.

• Trove Markets, which is building a decentralized perpetual exchange for collectibles, is under fire for pivoting from Hypterliquid to Solana after raising over $11.5 million tied to a token sale, prompting some backers to seek refunds.

• A new report claims that 80% of hacked crypto projects never “fully recover.”

• The Injective Protocol community approved a major tokenomics overhaul saying it will remove about 6.85 million INJ from circulation through token burns.

• Binance co-CEO Richard Teng said the U.S. is “a very important marketplace” but the company is taking a “wait-and-see” approach to returning.

Vitalik Buterin has outlined an ambitious 2026 roadmap to reverse a decade of centralization drift in Ethereum’s infrastructure

🌎 Macro news TLDR: It’s mid-term mania

It seems that 2025 was merely a warm-up for U.S domestic policy. In just three weeks of 2026, President Trump has erupted like a man against the clock, slamming through aggressive affordability fixes with raw interventionist force.

He’s capped credit card rates at 10% for a year, banned big institutional investors from snapping up single-family homes, ordered $200B in mortgage bond buys via Fannie and Freddie to crush rates, forced Big Tech to foot their own data center power bills, and suspended tariffs on lumber, furnishings, and key housing imports to slash building costs.

This is classic Trump: populist rage meets dictatorial muscle, all to ram through “affordability” via heavy government hand.

His clash with the Fed has raged on to a whole new level – Jerome Powell stands defiant as the last guardian of independence against a DOJ criminal probe that is pure pretext to bully lower rates and erode autonomy. Trump denies plans to fire him outright, but threats, subpoenas and pressure mount in this historic showdown.

Uncertainty permeates the markets as precious metals have exploded higher in a flight-to-safety frenzy, gold clocking its best yearly returns since 1979 as central banks now hold more gold than U.S. government debt. Stocks are seemingly suspended at their record levels, but stall and lag the metals, signaling early capital rotation as money flees risk.

Momentum still props up the markets, yet landmines loom week by week in this mid-term mania: a delayed Supreme Court ruling on Trump’s broad tariff legality, plus the escalating U.S.-E.U. trade war threats over Greenland.

Nothing is certain anymore. Trump’s fury is rewriting the rules at a breakneck pace.

Economic news from the Americas

Former Venezuelan President Maduro and his wife were captured by U.S. special forces 2 weeks ago and brought to New York to stand trial on narco-terrorism and weapons charges. President Trump said that the U.S. would “run” Venezuela temporarily during the transition and “get the oil flowing” (to anywhere but China).

Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Machado gave President Trump her Nobel Peace Prize medal in what the president called “a wonderful gesture of mutual respect.” Organizers quickly clarified that while a physical medal can change owners, the title of “Nobel Peace Prize Laureate” is non-transferrable.

US consumer prices rose 2.7% annually in Dec, as the annual pace of inflation was unchanged from November, closing out a year that saw slight progress on inflation but continued affordability concerns for many Americans.

Federal prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation into Fed Reserve chair Powell, threatening a criminal indictment over testimony he gave to a Senate committee about renovations to Federal Reserve buildings. Gentle persuasion?

Despite ongoing and increasing pressure from the Trump administration for the Fed Reserve to lower interest rates, CMEGroup FedWatch is giving just 5% probability of a rate cut from current 3.50-3.75% level at the next meeting on 28 Jan.

In an effort to drive housing affordability, President Trump has proposed banning large institutional investors from buying more single-family homes, and has ordered Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to purchase $200 billion in mortgage-backed securities to help lower mortgage rates and monthly payments for homeowners.

Treasury Secretary Bessent maintains that it’s unlikely the Supreme Court will overturn President Trump’s tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act in a decision that is expected this coming week – but Polymarket is showing just 32% chance of that!

Over in Europe & the Middle East…

Shortly after the invasion of Venezuela, President Trump started ratcheting up his threats about taking ownership of Greenland, announcing new tariffs on eight European allies, starting at 10% on 1 Feb and rising to 25% on 1 Jun, if a deal is not reached to buy Greenland. Europe is preparing its retaliation! Ready for trade war 3.0?

President Trump reportedly told his military command that he wants any action in Iran to be swift and decisive, but has not elaborated on what the U.S. is considering, saying “we’re looking at some very strong options.” Iran has warned it will retaliate if attacked. Smells like oil and any guesses as to who is the main buyer here again? Yes, China.

And in Asia Pacific…

China’s exports growth sharply beat expectations in Dec, pushing their annual trade surplus to a record high as exports surged 6.6% in U.S. dollar terms from a year earlier. GDP for 2025 came in at 5% showing remarkable resilience despite the ongoing trade war with the U.S.

China’s birthrate fell to a record low last year, underscoring a deepening demographic crisis as Beijing struggles to reverse a shrinking and aging population.

Canada’s Prime Minister announced a new approach to foreign policy signalling a preliminary landmark trade deal with China in a shift away from the U.S. and saying “we take the world as it is, not as we wish it to be.” This would have been inconceivable just one year ago!

The Bank of Japan is keeping markets on edge ahead of their rate decision on Friday, as Yen weakness and negative real rates risk further fuelling inflation. Keep an eye on this one.

After a booming year in 2025, the Australian housing market is tipped to continue rising despite the threat of higher borrowing costs in the months ahead and cost-of-living concerns continuing to squeeze household budgets. A potent cocktail of restricted supply and government policies are adding fuel to the fire with prices forecast to rise another 6 per cent in 2026.

NZ business confidence has rebounded strongly as lower interest rates filter through the economy. The latest NZIER Quarterly Survey of Business Opinion shows a net 39% of firms expect better general economic conditions over the coming months, up from 17% in the September quarter and the highest reading since early 2014.

Average residential property values rose 1.1% in the Dec quarter vs. prior year, with Christchurch leading the way among major cities, but a “glut” of stock on the market means buyers have maintained the upper hand into the beginning of 2026. Fingers crossed for some election year momentum! 

NZ CPI inflation data for the Dec 2025 quarter is scheduled for release on Fri – which will likely set the tone and direction for the OCR in the coming months.

That’s a wrap for this week!

Please note: as we commence our transition to Swyftx over the coming weeks, we’ll continue to publish this newsletter but on a two-weekly basis going forward, and as we work to bring you a fresh new format in the coming months. Stay tuned.

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