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Bitcoin supply in loss signals early bear market conditions: CryptoQuant

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Bitcoin supply in loss signals early bear market conditions: CryptoQuant

Current on-chain data weakens the case for a healthy market pullback, according to CryptoQuant analyst Woo Minkyu, who noted rising supply in loss as a key warning indicator.

“Losses are spreading across the supply, even without clear panic yet. This suggests the market is weakening structurally, rather than resetting for another expansion,” Minkyu wrote in a recent analysis.

Supply in loss has risen to approximately 44% and continues to expand, even with Bitcoin trading above its realized price. According to Minkyu, similar conditions in previous cycles marked the onset of bear markets, not routine bull-market corrections.

The supply-in-loss metric represents the percentage of Bitcoin’s circulating supply whose last on-chain movement occurred at prices above the current market value, placing those coins in unrealized losses.

Historically, elevated supply in loss has signaled growing downside pressure, with extreme levels frequently appearing near bear market lows following capitulation.

“This no longer looks like a mid-cycle dip,” Minkyu stated. “On-chain data suggests Bitcoin is transitioning into a bear market phase, with downside risk still unresolved.”

The analyst added that true bottoms in past cycles only formed after supply in loss expanded further, following deeper price compression.

Experts Debate Vitalik Buterin’s Creator Coin Vision

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Experts Debate Vitalik Buterin’s Creator Coin Vision

Crypto experts agree creator coins haven’t worked so far, but some disagree on whether Buterin’s proposed fix solves the problem.

A recent post by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin on creator coins has sparked fresh debate, with experts agreeing on the problem but split on how to fix it.

In his post, shared on Feb. 1, Buterin argued that the biggest problem in today’s creator economy is no longer motivating people to create content. Instead, he said the challenge is finding quality in a world flooded with posts, videos, and AI-generated material.

“In the 20s, there’s plenty of content, AI can generate an entire metaverse full of it for like $10. The problem is quality. And so your goal is not *incentivizing content*, it’s *surfacing good content*,” he wrote.

To fix that, Buterin proposes a different approach: Curated DAOs that decide which creators matter. Buterin said tokens would still exist, but mainly as prediction tools, allowing people to bet on which creators these groups will choose.

“So the ultimate decider of who rises and falls is not speculators, but high-value content creators (we make the assumption that good creators are also good judges of quality, which seems often true),” Buterin said.

Experts are Divided

Some builders said the idea is a step forward, but still falls short. Oxytocin, head of ecosystem at Umia, explained that while Vitalik’s solution “introduces a level of welfare creation through prediction markets,” it still lacks “a proper offchain enforcement mechanism,” leaving token holders with little assurance that creators will remain aligned over the long term.

He added that creators could even potentially ignore prediction markets after being admitted to the creator DAO.

Others were more supportive of Buterin’s focus on curation. Marcin Kazmierczak, co-founder of RedStone, said the proposal improves how incentives work.

“The prediction market doesn’t just create speculation; it creates informed discovery,” he said. “Token holders win by accurately predicting which creators DAOs will value, which means they have incentives to actually discover quality rather than chase attention metrics.”

However, Neil Staunton, CEO and co-founder of Superset, took a more skeptical view. “The diagnosis is correct, but the cure may be worse than the disease,” he said. “DAOs have consistently struggled with governance capture, voter apathy, and insider dynamics; now we’re asking them to be arbiters of creative quality?”

He added that prediction markets only work when outcomes are objectively verifiable. “You’re building a prediction market on subjective taste filtered through DAO politics,” he said. “The real question is whether creative work should be tokenized at all, or whether we’re forcing a financial primitive onto something that doesn’t need one.”

What is Moltbook? Memecoin tied to AI bot forum crashes 75% after X hype – DL News

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What is Moltbook? Memecoin tied to AI bot forum crashes 75% after X hype – DL News

  • Moltbook took X by storm on weekend.
  • Token riffing on the AI agent forum saw meteoric rise and fall.

A memecoin riffing on the popularity of Moltbook, a Reddit-style social media platform exclusively for artificial intelligence bots, crashed 75% after the website took X by storm over the weekend.

MOLT launched alongside the Moltbook site and saw massive volatility, reaching a market value of $93 million before a sharp decline on Monday.

It has since clawed back some losses.

The official X account for Base, Coinbase’s layer 2 network on which MOLT was launched, posted about the memecoin’s debut.

Billionaire Justin Sun also appeared to support MOLT on X, saying “AI on Huobi” after the exchange announced the memecoin’s listing.

DL News could not confirm if MOLT was launched by the Moltbook team or whether it has any legitimate connection to the AI project beyond its name.

It is not uncommon for unaffiliated developers to quickly launch memecoins related to specific cultural events or celebrities.

In late 2021, for example, a highly controversial token called SQUID was launched as the Netflix program Squid Game was gaining popularity. Netflix had no involvement with the token.

After the American actor Will Smith slapped Chris Rock at the Academy Awards in 2022, a token called Will Smith Inu appeared.

What is Moltbook?

Moltbook brands itself as a social network exclusively for AI bots, often called moltys. It uses a thread interface similar to Reddit’s and has topic-specific submolts — a play on Reddit’s subreddits.

According to Moltbook‘s creator, Octane AI CEO Matt Schlicht, “millions” of people have visited the website. Humans can only observe the AI bot interactions.

“Turns out AIs are hilarious and dramatic and it’s absolutely fascinating,” he said on X. “This is a first.”

DL News cannot independently verify the accuracy of Schlicht’s statements about website traffic. The Moltbook X account has 217,000 followers. Schlicht did not immediately respond for comment.

Some of the most popular posts on Moltbook range from speculative debates on AI platforms to geopolitics to religion.

Fake?

Many have openly questioned whether the underlying posts on Moltbook are actually written by AI. They also dispute the website’s usage numbers.

According to the cybersecurity firm Codekeeper, a single bot named OpenClaw was responsible for creating over 500,000 fraudulent accounts due to a lack of registration rate limiting.

Speaking to the BBC, British tech journalist Mary-Ann Russon described the posts as “fake.”

“The bots are simply replicating real Reddit posts they have been trained on,” Russon wrote on LinkedIn.

Russon is one of many voices intrigued yet cautious about the authenticity of Moltbook’s claims that the bots are operating autonomously.

“The controversy over what is human-generated vs AI-generated, and the spam and scams, makes the whole thing chaotic and messy, just like a real social network,” Y Combinator partner Jared Friedman said on X.

Lance Datskoluo is DL News’ Europe-based markets correspondent. Got a tip? Email him at lance@dlnews.com.

Here is why ETH’s ‘brutal stumble’ looks exactly like the start of the last bull run: Asia Morning Briefing

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Here is why ETH’s ‘brutal stumble’ looks exactly like the start of the last bull run: Asia Morning Briefing

Good Morning, Asia. Here’s what’s making news in the markets:

Welcome to Asia Morning Briefing, a daily summary of top stories during U.S. hours and an overview of market moves and analysis. For a detailed overview of U.S. markets, see CoinDesk’s Crypto Daybook Americas.

Crypto markets enter the “Year of the Horse” looking less like a victory parade and more like a racehorse at the starting gate: muscles are tense after a long stumble.

The ETH versus BTC chart, in particular, is drawing attention because it is beginning to resemble the same stride pattern seen before the last major crypto bull run.

The Year of the Horse metaphor is less about destiny and more about tempo. Horse years in market folklore are associated with speed, abrupt directional changes, and momentum that builds quickly once it starts. Applied to crypto, that translates into an expectation of sharper swings, faster capital rotation, and the possibility that leadership shifts away from pure bitcoin dominance toward higher beta assets if liquidity conditions stabilize.

The reason the ETH versus BTC chart is getting noticed is because of a sequence that occurred once before and now appears to be repeating.

In the last major cycle, ETH bottomed against bitcoin roughly 9 months before gold reached its peak, then suffered another brutal 30%-40% relative decline that convinced many the trade was broken.

Instead, that final stumble marked the bottom. As gold cooled and defensive positioning unwound, capital rotated back into higher beta crypto, sending Ethereum more than 300% higher against bitcoin and helping ignite the broader bull market.

Today, the structure looks familiar rather than identical. The ETH-to-BTC chart hit a relative low about 9 months before gold’s recent high and is already down around 31%, putting it in the same historical drawdown range that preceded a violent reversal up.

QCP said traders are still buying protection against further downside, but not with the same urgency seen during last year’s sharp selloff, suggesting caution rather than outright panic.

At the same time, J.P. Morgan Private Bank’s Yuxuan Tang wrote in an email note that gold’s longer-term fundamentals remain intact despite recent pullbacks, arguing that central bank and institutional demand continue to provide a structural floor.

That push-and-pull between resilient safe-haven demand and washed-out crypto positioning is what gives the ETH-BTC ratio its intrigue. In Horse-year terms, the market is not yet sprinting, but it may no longer be limping.

However, the ratio is more a gauge of temperament than a prediction, suggesting that if liquidity steadies and bitcoin’s dominance loosens, capital rotation could accelerate quickly. Horses do not usually walk when they finally move. They gallop.

And that gallop, at least according to prediction markets, looks more like a run-up from current levels, not to a new record high. Kalshi bettors say bitcoin will get to 105K in 2026, while on Polymarket, punters assign only a 29% chance it breaks the magic number of $126,000.

Hopefully, this horse can finish the race.

Market Movement

BTC: Bitcoin is trading near $78,800 as a brief liquidation-driven rebound runs into thin support above $70,000, leaving markets focused on the $60,000 to $65,000 long-term holder and 200-week average zone as the next major floor unless U.S. equities roll over.

ETH: Ethereum is trading near $2,345 after a short rebound from weekend selling, but with steeper weekly losses than bitcoin and weaker structural support, markets remain cautious that price could continue drifting lower unless broader risk appetite improves.

Gold: Gold is trading near $4,830 as prices attempt to stabilize after a margin-driven selloff, but elevated volatility and a firmer dollar are keeping the rebound fragile rather than signaling a clean return to the prior uptrend.

Nikkei 225: The Nikkei 225 rose about 2.4% to lead gains across Asia as optimism over a new U.S.–India trade deal lifted regional risk sentiment, with South Korea’s Kospi surging over 5% and broader markets tracking a rebound in U.S. equities despite ongoing volatility in gold, silver and crypto.

Elsewhere in Crypto

  • CZ pushes back against Binance ‘FUD’ as blame game for crypto crash persists (CoinDesk)
  • Jeffrey Epstein Was an Early Investor in Coinbase, Emails Reveal (Decrypt)

Lack Of Leverage And Metals Rally Drag Down Ether Tom Lee

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Lack Of Leverage And Metals Rally Drag Down Ether Tom Lee

Fundstrat head of research Tom Lee argues Ether’s recent slump should be seen as “attractive” as its fundamentals remain strong, and that it has only fallen due to a lack of leverage and a flight to precious metals. 

The first quarter of 2026 is shaping up to be Ether’s (ETH) third-worst Q1 in history, with the asset down 21% so far this year, according to CoinGlass. 

However, Lee said the price drop has come at a time when network on-chain activity and fundamentals have continued to grow.

Ethereum daily transactions hit an all-time high of 2.8 million on Jan. 15, and active addresses in 2026 soared to a peak of 1 million per day, he said.

During the crypto winters of 2018 and 2022, Ethereum transaction activity and active wallets declined, “which is counter to what we have seen in the past 12 months,” said Lee. 

“Thus, non-fundamental factors are arguably more the factors explaining the weakness in ETH prices.”

Lee said two factors are keeping Ether prices suppressed. Leverage has not returned to crypto since the Oct. 10 crash, while the surge in precious metal prices has “acted as a ‘vortex’ sucking away risk appetite from crypto.”

BitMine buys dip after ETH drops 25% in a week

Lee’s Ethereum treasury firm appears to be betting on a recovery. In the past week, BitMine acquired a further 41,788 ETH. 

“BitMine has been steadily buying Ethereum, as we view this pullback as attractive, given the strengthening fundamentals,” he said.  

“In our view, the price of ETH is not reflective of the high utility of ETH and its role as the future of finance.”

Related: Crypto selloff is likely due to US liquidity drought: Analyst

BitMine now holds 4.28 million ETH tokens, or 3.55% of the total supply, and is 70% of the way toward its target of 5%. Around 2.87 million ETH has been staked. 

However, the digital asset treasury neared $7 billion in unrealized losses as Ether prices melted down. 

Most of the price slump has come over the past week alone, with ETH tanking more than 25% from around $3,000 to a bear market low of $2,200 on Monday, before a minor recovery.

ETH is seeing its third-worst Q1 in history. Source: CoinGlass

Magazine: DAT panic dumps 73,000 ETH, India’s crypto tax stays: Asia Express