Alpha Navigator: Quest for Alpha [January 2025]
Most assets saw an increase, except ETH. BTC and Gold led the rise. Canada, Eurozone, and UK reduced interest rates; China and US kept rates unchanged; Japan increased rates.
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Executive Summary
- Most assets saw an increase, except ETH. BTC and Gold led the rise.
- Donald Trump was inaugurated as the 47th US president on 20 January. The US Fed left interest rates unchanged in the January meeting, while citing that inflation “remains somewhat elevated” and the labour market remains solid. The International Monetary Fund projected a global economic growth of 3.3% in both 2025 and 2026, while raised its real GDP growth forecast for the US to 2.7% in 2025, up from 2.2%.
- Key macro events in February include US FOMC minutes, interest rate decisions from Australia, China, and New Zealand
- BTC’s 1-month performance correlation with Equities increased and turned positive with Gold.
- US spot BTC ETFs saw $5.3 billion in net inflows, marking the fifth consecutive month of net inflows as bitcoin hit an all-time high above $109,000 on 20 January.
- Market-Neutral Pair Trader hunts for strongly correlated tokens and potential market-neutral pair trades. ARB/OP (0.86) showed the strongest price correlation, followed by ATOM/DOT (0.85), DOT/POL (0.83), and ARB/ETH (0.83).
- For the BTC vs. ETH pair, the price ratio (BTC price divided by ETH price) increased above the 2-standard deviation (SD) in late-January.
- Our style-factor screens track momentum, value, growth, and risk for the Layer-1 and Layer-2, DeFi, Gaming, and NFT categories. Below is the screen for selected top crypto tokens by market cap in the Layer-1 and Layer-2 category. L1 and L2 tokens saw mixed price movements; SOL gained the most (+26.2%) while ZK recorded the biggest losses (-20.7%).
- Our events section shows recent and upcoming events for selected tokens, as well as important macroeconomic events.
| Token | 7D Price Change | 1M Price Change | Events |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bitcoin (BTC) | -0.8% | +3.0% | US spot bitcoin ETFs saw a monthly net inflow of $5.3 billion in January. Bitcoin reached a new all-time high above $109,000 on 20 January. |
| Ether (ETH) | +0.3% | -18.6% | US spot ether ETFs recorded a monthly net inflow of $102 million in January. Ethereum developers set the Pectra upgrade’s target release date in March. In addition, Vitalik Buterin published a blog post about his thoughts on Ethereum scaling, including Layer-2 growth and advancing blob scaling. |
| Cronos (CRO) | -9.5% | -32.8% | Cronos Labs announced that LayerZero is live on the Cronos EVM and Cronos zkEVM mainnet networks. This integration connects Cronos to over 115 blockchain networks, including Ethereum, Solana, and other EVM-compatible chains. |
| Uniswap (UNI) | +8.7% | -30.2% | Uniswap Labs announced that Uniswap v4 is available across 12 chains. The team also plans to fund open-source hooks to support DeFi growth in each chain’s ecosystem (e.g., dynamic fee hook, custom price curve hook) |
| VeChain (VET) | -1.0% | -24.7% | The VeChain team released details on its implementation of VeChain Renaissance, which aims to improve tokenomics and interoperability. In addition, VeChainThor is expected to undergo the Galactica mainnet upgrade in Q2 and the Hayabusa mainnet upgrade in Q4 2025. |
| Jupiter (JUP) | -8.3% | +4.2% | Meow, the founder of Jupiter Exchange, introduced JupNet, an omnichain network aggregating all of crypto into one decentralised ledger. In addition, Meow announced that 50% of Jupiter Exchange’s fees will be allocated towards JUP buybacks. |
Read the full Alpha Navigator report: Alpha Navigator: Quest for Alpha [January 2025]
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