What happened today: 10 Jan 26'
The daily market review
We continue the 2026 daily market review saga. Where I wrote out of curiosity to curious people. I try to give a combination of exercise thoughts with real time information that can make a direct impact on prices, industries and wealth!
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We don’t rest, Happy weekend to all.
Today the daily review is short. It is Saturday and there is not that much information to share. Trump yesterday enforced a 10% cap on credit card interest rates for one year. It will be interesting to see how Monday will play out for banks and “Buy Now, Pay Later” providers. It could kill their fast-growing business.
ETFs keep flowing badly; this week was a weird outlook for ETFs. After the very positive Monday, we all thought that the momentum would keep growing, but it faded. The market sold more than double what it bought on Monday in terms of Bitcoin ETFs. The BTC price is basically flat on the week.
We have early signs of whales, institutions, and long-term wallets buying BTC again. But retail follows price momentum, and as soon as they see the Bitcoin price collapsing while the US stock market and gold are ripping, they quickly withdraw and close their Bitcoin exposure. The ETF flows are widely reactive, and they will follow the price momentum as soon as it starts.
Market structure is still to be updated. Polymarket does not have favorable odds for the first H1 signing. But because crypto was clearly a political reason why Trump won the election, I bet he will force it. He will try to push it through as fast as possible; mid-term elections are key to him.
We all know that prediction markets have been used for insider trading. And now there are the first signs of trying to block it—the Public Integrity in Financial Prediction Markets Act of 2026, a bill that the Democratic Party has been trying to pass, prohibiting government insiders from profiting off their inside information on political bets.
Today is not a day where critical information went live, so it was a good day to read two incredible stories and market trends. First, stablecoin adoption is being used not only for sovereign transactions and oil purchases, like the Venezuela transaction, but now to buy European real estate. This marks a wealth shift led by crypto investors de-risking and taking control of hard assets. Second, the growing industry of men’s beauty; it is an industry growing in double digits. 68% of Gen Z men ages 18 to 27 used facial skin care products in 2024. Men are forming routines that usually start at skin care and then expand further. TikTok influencers and YouTubers are leading this trend, and beauty suppliers are using their marketing budgets to support these creators.
If you are not bullish enough on Bitcoin, I will give you another opinion, now from VanEck, that puts the Bitcoin base case reaching $2.9m by 2050. This is driven by its adoption as a settlement currency for 5-10% of global trade and as a reserve asset comprising 2.5% of central bank balance sheets. There is a clear risk of not allocating to Bitcoin in a world of a sovereign debt super-cycle. CZ agrees, mentioning the incoming super-cycle with institutions buying in.
Scaling Bitcoin utility is key; a Stanford professor raised $15m to build a Bitcoin Layer 2, Babylon’s BTC Vaults, enabling BTC collateralization and yield without intermediaries.
Bullish.