Gate Research Institute: BTC trapped in a descending triangle pattern, Stable CoinMarket Cap breaks through $220 billion

Summary

• This week, the price trend of BTC entered a descending triangle, and ETH briefly fell below $2,100, then entered a range consolidation.
• The U.S. Senate Committee approved Howard Lutnick’s nomination as U.S. Secretary of Commerce.
• FDIC issues document on supervision of crypto-related activities.
• The increase in BTC mining difficulty has led to a decrease in production for most mining enterprises in January.
• The stablecoin market cap exceeds $220 billion.
• Storm Trade TVL increased by 26.77% in the past 7 days, reaching $33.96 million.
• The Ionic platform has been hacked, resulting in the theft of $8.6 million and concerns about security audits.

Market Analysis

Market Review

• BTC Market —— This week, the price of Bitcoin once dropped to a low point of $91,231 after Trump signed the tariff policy, and quickly rebounded after announcing the postponement of the tariff policy, being blocked near $102,500. Currently, the overall trading volume has decreased compared to last week, and the price trend shows a descending triangle. The moving average is bearish, with support around $94,000.【1】

• ETH Market —— This week, ETH briefly fell below $2,100 and quickly rebounded, reaching around $2,922.28 and then encountering significant resistance, followed by entering a range-bound state with no clear direction. ETH’s performance this week is relatively weak compared to BTC. In the short term, the main resistance for ETH is concentrated around $2,900. If the bulls can effectively break through and stabilize this resistance, market enthusiasm is expected to further increase.

• Altcoins - In the past 7 days, altcoins have experienced a relatively large decline around February 3rd, with the overall market performing weakly. The gains of strong altcoins are lower compared to last week. Dex Aggregator, Tokenized Assets, Tokenized Gold, and other sectors have relatively higher gains, with many related concept tokens experiencing significant increases. [3]
• Futures Market —— In the options market, the current options open interest is $39.84 billion, down about 14.3% from last week ($46.53 billion). Among them, the nominal amount of options on February 7 increased to $2.463 billion.【4】
• Macro Data - On the evening of February 3, the United States announced that the previous value of the January ISM Manufacturing PMI was 49.2, and the published value was 50.9. Against the background of PMI exceeding expectations, investors are more optimistic. 【5】
• Stablecoin —— The overall market value of stablecoins has risen by 2.6% to 222.1 billion US dollars, and incremental funds have further flowed into the off-exchange market.【6】
• **Gas Fee —— **The average Gas Fee of Ethereum in the past 7 days has risen to 7.14 Gwei, with the lowest average Gas Fee being 1 Gwei, indicating reduced network activity.【7】

Hot Concepts

This week, the price of Bitcoin fluctuated between $91,200 and $106,500, with different performances in the altcoin market. According to Coingecko data, the top three performing sectors this week are Dex Aggregator, Tokenized Assets, and Stablecoins, with market capitalizations increasing by approximately 15.3%, 5.6%, and 3.1% respectively in the past seven days. [8]

Dex Aggregator - Dex Aggregator is an ecosystem module dedicated to decentralized aggregators, aiming to improve the efficiency and convenience of cryptocurrency transactions. It searches across multiple decentralized exchanges (DEX) and combines their liquidity to help users avoid slippage on large orders, reduce transaction costs, and ensure the best price for tokens.

The sector has seen a significant increase in the past seven days, with the Dex Aggregator sector’s weekly gain reaching 15.3% as of 00:00 on February 6th (UTC+0), and its market value reaching $3.013 billion, with a 24-hour trading volume exceeding $314 million. Among them, the currency PNDR in the sector rose by 9.2% in 7 days, and XCHNG rose by 1.3% in 7 days. [9]

**Tokenized Assets **—— Tokenized Assets refer to the digital representation of assets on a blockchain platform. The recent popularity of real-world assets and regulatory relaxation has attracted the attention of many investors to this category. At the same time, the open attitude of the U.S. government towards cryptocurrencies has also driven an increase in this sector.

The sector has risen by 5.6% in the past 7 days, with a market value of $2.838 billion and a 24-hour trading volume of $118 million. The growth of this sector is due to the continued activity of leading tokens and the deep layout of investment institutions in the field of blockchain technology. Among them, the currency XAUT in this sector has risen by 5.1% in the past 7 days.【10】

Stablecoins – A stablecoin is a cryptocurrency designed to keep the value of a coin stable by being pegged to an external reference such as fiat currency. The portfolio provides technical and financial support for the blockchain industry, and has also attracted a large number of developers and investors due to the liberalization of cryptocurrencies in many countries around the world, becoming one of the bellwethers of the market. The increase in stablecoins means that the demand for safe-haven assets has increased. In times of heightened market volatility or heightened macroeconomic uncertainty, investors are more inclined to turn their money to stablecoins to hedge risk and maintain liquidity. This trend shows that the role of stablecoins as a “safe haven” in the crypto market is becoming more apparent, and may also further attract institutional funds into the space.

The market value of the Stablecoin sector has increased by 3% this week, with a market value of approximately $229.414 billion and a 24-hour trading volume of $94.174 billion. [11]

Hot Coins

According to CoinGecko data, the following are the popular currencies in the past 7 days: [12]

DEXE (DeXe) - The 7-day increase is about 28.5%, with a market capitalization of 1.188 billion US dollars.

DeXe Protocol is an innovative decentralized social trading platform that provides users with an all-in-one DeFi trading environment, allowing users to easily participate in social and trading activities. The platform was founded by financial technology and blockchain technology experts, aiming to solve pain points in the traditional financial market and provide an open and permissionless system.

DeXe recently released its January report. The report shows that its TVL amount has exceeded 3 billion US dollars, ranking among the top 7 DAOs globally. This news further strengthens market confidence in DeXe in the financial sector and drives its token price continuously upwards. In addition, DeXe has reached a cooperation with Kraken, further enriching its ecosystem functionality. [13]

OM (MONTRA) - The 7-day increase is about 24.4%, with a circulating market value of $5.633 billion.

MANTRA is a secure RWA Layer 1 blockchain that can comply with and enforce real-world regulatory requirements. Designed for institutions and developers, MANTRA provides a permissionless blockchain for permissioned applications.

At the beginning of January, MANTRA signed a $1 billion agreement with investment group Damac Group to promote tokenization financing in the Middle East. The successful signing of this agreement not only strengthened market confidence in the MANTRA ecosystem but also directly stimulated the upward trend in the price of the OM token. With the price rising, market attention further increased, attracting more investors to participate, forming a virtuous cycle, further driving the market value growth of MANTRA.

MNT (Mantle) - The 7-day increase is about 6.2%, with a circulating market value of $38.53 billion.

Mantle Network is the first Ethereum Layer 2 (L2) that collaborates with EigenLayer to develop the Data Availability (DA) module. EigenLayer is the Restaking protocol of Ethereum, which allows users to redelegate the staked ETH to other services to enhance the security and resource utilization of the blockchain. Mantle Token ($MNT) serves as the native token and ecological growth token of Mantle Network, as well as the governance token of Mantle Governance, providing power to Mantle Network.

Recently, Mantle Network has successfully integrated Succinct’s SP1 technology and plans to gradually transition to the ZK Rollup solution for validity. This is aimed at shortening transaction confirmation times and providing higher efficiency and security for institutional asset settlement. This technology update has been widely recognized by the market, attracting more project parties and investors’ attention, thereby boosting the price of $MNT. [15]

Focus of the week

Hotspot Review

The U.S. Senate Committee approves the nomination of Howard Lutnick as U.S. Secretary of Commerce

According to Jinshi data, Howard Lutnick, the nominee for US Secretary of Commerce, was voted in favor by 16 votes to 12 votes against in the US Senate Committee. Howard Lutnick is a public supporter of Bitcoin and the CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, a New York brokerage firm. The company manages billions of US Treasury bonds for stablecoin issuer Tether and charges management fees. He said at the Bitcoin 2024 conference in July this year, ‘Do I own Bitcoin? Of course I do. Does Cantor Fitzgerald own Bitcoin? A lot.’

Howard Lutnick’s appointment may boost confidence in the cryptocurrency market in the short term and drive expectations for more inclusive regulation and institutional participation, such as accelerating the approval of Bitcoin ETFs and enhancing the transparency of stablecoins. In the medium to long term, the injection of traditional financial resources may help improve market liquidity and reduce volatility. However, the market still needs to be vigilant about policy divergences, concentration risks in custody, and the pressure for a correction after excessive speculation, and the overall process will still be influenced by macro policies and market dynamics.【16】

BTC mining difficulty increase leads to a decrease in production for most mining companies in January

Due to the continuous increase in network mining difficulty, the January output of most Bitcoin mining companies has decreased, including Hut 8, Mara, and Bitrfarms. Compared with the last month of 2024, the January production of miners decreased. Hut 8’s monthly Bitcoin production decreased by 27%, Mara and Bitfarms’ monthly Bitcoin production decreased by 12.5% and 4.7% respectively, but Riot Platforms’ Bitcoin mining output increased by 2.1% against the trend.

The overall production of Bitcoin mining companies has decreased (Hut 8, Mara, etc. have decreased by 4.7% to 27%), which may affect the market’s expectations for future BTC circulation supply. The rising mining difficulty has put pressure on small and medium-sized mining companies, which may trigger industry reshuffling and the risk of concentration of computing power. At the same time, some mining companies are selling off inventory or suppressing price increases to maintain cash flow. In addition, the counter-cyclical increase in production by leading mining companies such as Riot also highlights the long-term trend of technological differentiation in the industry. [17]

FDIC Releases Document on Cryptocurrency Activity Supervision

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) has issued 175 documents on the supervision of crypto-related activities. Travis Hill, the acting chairman of FDIC, said, ‘Previously, banks’ service requests from institutions intending to engage in crypto or blockchain-related activities were almost universally met with resistance. Actions ranged from repeatedly requesting more information, months of silence while waiting for a response, to regulatory agencies instructing to pause, terminate, or not expand any crypto or blockchain-related activities. Whether as individuals or as a collective, these actions and others sent a clear message to banks: moving forward will be extremely difficult - if not impossible. As a result, the majority of banks simply stopped trying. Looking ahead, we are actively reassessing our supervisory approach to crypto-related activities and look forward to collaborating with the Digital Asset Market Working Group established by the executive order on January 23, 2025.’

The clear compliance path of bank encryption business is conducive to the mainstreaming of the industry, but small and medium-sized institutions may face stricter access costs, leading to increased market concentration. Generally speaking, this event marks the transition of U.S. encryption regulation from “vague suppression” to “structured exploration”, but the actual effect still depends on the coordination of policies and the market’s ability to digest the regulatory pace. [18]

Security Incident

Ionic platform was hacked, 8.6 million dollars stolen and security audit reveals hidden dangers

On-chain data shows that the Ionic platform on Mode has been hacked, resulting in a loss of $8.6 million. The predecessor of Ionic, the Midas protocol, had experienced two security incidents as early as 2023, but the platform still used the old audit report from 2022 when it went online, causing security concerns. In response to the security of the contract, the team pointed out that the code of Ionic is based on a fork of Compound, and the previous vulnerabilities of Midas are related to the existing security flaws of Compound. They stated that these issues have been fixed through a whitelist mechanism and a reentry attack circuit breaker, and emphasized that Ionic has sufficient security protection. [19] [20]

Project focus

Layer1 IP Blockchain Story officially released whitepaper

On February 5th, Layer1 IP blockchain Story officially released a white paper. Story is committed to building a programmable market for knowledge and creativity, allowing all intellectual property assets to be registered on a universal ledger with customizable parameters. These assets are equipped with composable interfaces and can be called by any software application or artificial intelligence model, enabling the use and realization of intellectual property on the Internet.

Story Protocol launched the Agent TCP/IP framework in December 2024 to facilitate intellectual property transactions between smart agents, including training data, artistic styles, and investment strategies. The framework is integrated into multiple platforms to ensure smooth IP transactions, supporting intellectual property management, enforcement, and tokenization, and enhancing creators’ monetization capabilities. [21] [22]

Highlight Data

Stablecoin market cap exceeds $220 billion

As of February 6, 2025, the market value of stablecoins has exceeded $220 billion. The increase over the past 7 days has exceeded 2.1%, with a year-on-year growth of over 63.4% compared to February 6 last year. USDT accounts for 63.95% of the current market value of stablecoins.

These data reflect the strong growth of the stablecoin market after experiencing fluctuations, especially USDT as the most dominant stablecoin, which shows that the market’s acceptance and demand for stablecoins continue to rise.[23]

Storm Trade TVL increased by 26.77% in the past 7 days, reaching 33.96 million US dollars

According to Defillama data, Storm Trade TVL has increased by 26.77% in the past 7 days, reaching $33.96 million. Storm Trade is the first trading platform on the TON blockchain, where users can engage in leveraged trading of cryptocurrencies, stocks, forex, and commodities through web applications and Telegram. This significant growth indicates the current activity and user participation on the Ton public chain. The increase in TVL reflects the growing demand for such services in the market and demonstrates its potential in providing trading channels and facilitating asset liquidity.【24】

Galxe ecosystem is expanding rapidly with a 287% increase in users

The Galxe ecosystem is experiencing explosive growth. As of the third quarter of 2024, Galxe has issued 362,000 certificates. The number of Galxe users has grown from 2.6 million in the fourth quarter of 2023 to 10 million in the third quarter of 2024, an increase of 287%, with a cumulative total of 31.4 million independent active users. Over 6,500 projects have created tasks through Galxe, and there are 977,000 Galxe Passport holders.

After the high-performance Layer-1 blockchain Gravity Alpha mainnet went live, there are already 25.2 million wallet addresses and an average of 2.6 million transactions per day. Gravity is expected to officially launch its mainnet in Q4 2025. [25]

Market Opportunities

Airdrop Project

The airdrop project to focus on this week is: Credible

Credible is an AI-based consumer credit infrastructure designed to create on-chain credit ratings and use these ratings to provide cash loans, credit cards, and installment payment products. The Credible Spaceship rewards program has been launched. By completing free tasks and choosing to lend USDC to earn Moons (points), you are eligible for airdrops.【26】

Participation Method:

• Visit the link: https://credible.finance/login?returnUrl=%2Fairdrop
• Registration: Register using your email address
• Navigation: Go to the Airdrop tab
• Connect Wallet: Connect your wallet to earn 200 Moons
• Complete tasks: perform other social-related tasks to earn more Moons

Tip: Airdrop plans and participation methods may be updated at any time. Users are advised to follow Credible’s official channels for the latest information. At the same time, users should participate cautiously, be aware of the risks, and conduct sufficient research before participating. Gate.io does not guarantee subsequent airdrop rewards.

Financing Weekly Report

Several projects successfully completed financing this week, involving a wide range of applications in fields such as cryptography, infrastructure, and AI. According to RootData, between February 1 and February 7, a total of 11 projects announced financing, totaling over $88.6 million. Here are the top three in terms of financing scale: 【27】

Taproot Wizards completed a $30 million Series A financing on February 3, led by Standard Crypto and Cyber Fund. The financing aims to promote the development of the OP_CAT ecosystem and enhance Bitcoin’s smart contract capabilities. OP_CAT is a script feature that allows for automated and customizable transactions on Bitcoin. Taproot Wizards plans to use this funding to support internal development and drive external ecosystem construction.

Reservoir completed a $14 million Series A financing on February 3, led by Union Square Ventures, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Variant, and others. Reservoir is a token and NFT trading infrastructure, with a product suite that includes Relay, a bridging and trading platform for Solana, Bitcoin, Tron, Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) chains, and rollup networks. The financing of Reservoir will focus on technology research and development, team building, and ecosystem expansion, with the goal of becoming a core infrastructure service provider for multi-chain token trading.

Autonolas completed a $13.8 million financing on February 3, led by 1kx, with Zee Prime Capital, Tioga Capital, and others participating. The funds will be used to support the launch of its agent application store, Pearl, designed to allow users to directly own and control their AI agents on the chain, with applications including autonomous social media accounts or DeFi transactions. The Autonolas protocol is a DAO tool based on smart contracts, which implements a mechanism for coordinating, protecting, and managing software code on public blockchains, and provides incentives based on developers’ relative contributions to the growth of the Autonolas ecosystem.

Next week attention

Token Unlock

According to Token Unlocks data, several important token unlocking events worth a total of over 215 million US dollars will occur in the market next week (2.7-2.13 2025). [28]

The situation before the unlocking next week is as follows:

SAND token is planned to unlock approximately 205 million tokens at 8:00 am UTC+0 on February 14, 2025, accounting for 8.41% of its circulating supply, with a value of approximately $80,660,000. The recent average daily trading volume of SAND is around $136,000,000, so this unlocking may have a certain impact on the market price of SAND. Investors should exercise caution.

APT tokens are scheduled to be unlocked at 12:00 PM UTC+0 on February 10, 2025, releasing approximately 11.31 million tokens, accounting for 1.97% of its circulating supply, worth about $66.95 million. The recent daily trading volume of APT is around $252 million, and this unlocking may have a certain impact on APT’s market price, so investors need to be cautious.

MOVE token is scheduled to unlock approximately 50 million tokens at 12:00 PM UTC+0 on February 9, 2025, accounting for about 2.13% of its circulating supply, worth approximately $30.19 million. The recent average daily trading volume of MOVE is around $102 million, with a relatively small impact on token prices.

Cryptocurrency Calendar

Next week (2025.2.7-2.13) will witness a series of important events that will have a profound impact on the cryptocurrency market, global economy, and energy market. ETH Oxford will open on February 7, 2025, in the UK, which is an event for in-depth discussions between Ethereum ecosystem developers and academia, potentially involving progress in Layer 2 scalability, ZK technology, and indirectly impacting the market sentiment of ETH and related ecosystem tokens. On February 12, 2025, the US will release the January seasonally adjusted CPI annual rate. On February 13, 2025, the US will release the initial jobless claims for the week ending February 8th. This data, published weekly by the US Department of Labor, is an indicator of the number of first-time applications for unemployment benefits and reflects short-term changes in the labor market.

1. Gate.io,https://www.gate.io/trade/BTC_USDT
2. Gate.io,https://www.gate.io/trade/ETH_USDT
3. CoinGecko,https://www.coingecko.com/en/categories
4. Coinglass,https://www.coinglass.com/zh/pro/options/OIExpiry
5. Cryptocraft,https://www.cryptocraft.com/calendar?day=jan15.2025
6. Defillama,https://defillama.com/stablecoins
7. Etherscan, https://etherscan.io/gastracker
8. CoinGecko,https://www.coingecko.com/en/categories
9. CoinGecko,https://www.coingecko.com/en/categories/politifi
10. CoinGecko,https://www.coingecko.com/en/categories/real-world-assets-rwa
11. CoinGecko,https://www.coingecko.com/en/categories/solana-meme-coins
12. CoinGecko,https://www.coingecko.com
13. Gate.io,https://www.gate.io/trade/BTC_USDT
14. Gate.io,https://www.gate.io/trade/ETH_USDT
15. Gate.io, https://www.gate.io/bigdata/estimate
16. Coinglass,https://www.coinglass.com/zh/pro/options/OIExpiry
17. Cryptocraft,https://www.cryptocraft.com/calendar?day=jan15.2025
18. Defillama, https://defillama.com/stablecoins
19. Sosovalue,https://sosovalue.com/zh
20. Coingecko,https://www.coingecko.com/en/categories
21. Coingecko,https://www.coingecko.com/en/categories/dex-aggregator
22. Coingecko,https://www.coingecko.com/en/categories/tokenized-products
23. Coingecko,https://www.coingecko.com/en/categories/stablecoins
24. Coingedcko,https://www.coingecko.com
25. Gate.io, https://www.gate.io/zh/trade/DEXE_USDT
26. Gate.io, https://www.gate.io/zh/trade/OM_USDT
27. Gate.io,https://www.gate.io/zh/trade/MNT_USDT
28. JIN10, https://flash.jin10.com/detail/20250205232311769800
29. Cointelegraph, https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-mining-difficulty-production-dip
30. FDIC,https://fdic.gov/news/press-releases/2025/fdic-releases-documents-related-supervision-crypto-related-activities
31. X,https://x.com/quillaudits_ai/status/1886856127499132961
32. X,https://x.com/zachxbt/status/1886792512917864953?s=46&t=qH9PZ5ujMMfNG1XOUpwcFA
33. X,https://x.com/StoryProtocol
34. Story,https://www.story.foundation/whitepaper.pdf
35. Defillama,https://defillama.com/?tvl=false&stables=true
36. Defillama,https://defillama.com/protocol/storm-trade
37. X,https://x.com/Galxe
38. Credible,https://credible.finance/
39. Rootdata, https://www.rootdata.com/Fundraising
40. Token Unlocks,https://token.unlocks.app/
41. ethoxford,https://ethoxford.io/
42. Gate.io, https://www.gate.io/calendar
43. Jin10,https://rili.jin10.com/
44. Jin10,https://rili.jin10.com/

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