Crypto Market News Today, January 7: Altcoin Season Priming as Bitcoin Price Rallying and Dominance Dropping

After a positive trend in this first week of 2026, Bitcoin BTC $63,768.02 0.21% Bitcoin BTC Price $63,768.02 0.21% /24h Volume in 24h $24.65B Price 7d Learn more dropped to $92,000, triggering Bitcoin liquidations across major exchanges. The pullback wiped out more than $460 million in leveraged positions in hours. This move landed as crypto entered 2026 on optimism around easing liquidity and expected U.S. rate cuts.

(Source: Coinglass)

Price-wise, Bitcoin fell about 3% from its local top near $94,400 before stabilizing just below $92K. That kind of fast move matters because it exposes where traders took on too much borrowed risk. And when leverage snaps, it snaps fast.

Recent data shows the drop involved a sharp liquidity sweep, liquidating mostly long positions amid profit-taking after early January gains. Spot Bitcoin ETFs saw mixed flows, with initial inflows reversing slightly, while analysts note consolidation above $90K support.

As of January 7, BTC trades around $91,941, holding key levels with potential for rebound toward $95K–$100K if momentum rebuilds, though volatility persists due to macro risks and leverage resets.

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American Finance giant MSCI (formerly Morgan Stanley Capital International) has announced it will keep crypto-heavy treasury companies in its major stock indexes for 2026. Michael Saylor’s Strategy (MSTR) jumped about +5% after-hours on the news, snapping a rough stretch after its shares slid nearly -48% in 2025. This decision falls between two broader debates about how Wall Street treats companies that hold Bitcoin as a reserve asset.

MSCI is a New York City-based financial powerhouse, acting as the global provider of equity, fixed income, real estate indices, multi-asset portfolio analysis tools, ESG, and climate finance products. The announcement that it will maintain DATs (Digital Asset Treasuries) as part of its stock indexes is significant for crypto and another catalyst for sustaining early market strength in 2026.

is holding steady above $92,000 amid a small pullback after six consecutive green days since 2026 began. The combined crypto market cap is down -1.5%, with BTC and other major caps down between -1% and -6% on the day.

BREAKING: 🇺🇸 MSCI just announced that it will keep Bitcoin and crypto treasury companies in its indexes.

This was the biggest reason behind the October 10th crash, which wiped out $19 billion in a single day.

This announcement will also end the $MSTR FUD about being forced to… pic.twitter.com/xB7PPoEKVF

— Bull Theory (@BullTheoryio) January 6, 2026

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BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes is making bold calls again. In his recent essay “Suavemente,” he declared privacy crypto, not memes or faster blockchains, as the dominant story for 2026. His fund, Maelstrom, has made Zcash its second-largest holding after Bitcoin, funded by rotating out of Bitcoin BTC $63,768.02 0.21% Bitcoin BTC Price $63,768.02 0.21% /24h Volume in 24h $24.65B Price 7d Learn more and Ethereum ETH $1,868.77 0.19% Ethereum ETH Price $1,868.77 0.19% /24h Volume in 24h $9.98B Price 7d Learn more  to chase outperformance.

Hayes isn’t alone. Naval Ravikant has also publicly backed Zcash ZEC $527.52 1.99% Zcash ZEC Price $527.52 1.99% /24h Volume in 24h $369.21M Price 7d Learn more , framing privacy as the next major trade. Their timing aligns with growing concerns: governments are intensifying on-chain surveillance, AI tools are eroding pseudonymity through behavioral tracking, and users are increasingly uneasy about public financial histories.

That shift already shows in the numbers. Zcash surged to an eight-year high in late 2025, briefly flipping Monero to become the largest privacy coin by market value.

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In the opening week of 2026, U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded robust net inflows totaling approximately $1.2 billion over the first two trading days, marking a strong reversal from late-2025 outflows and signaling renewed institutional demand. This surge, led by funds like BlackRock’s IBIT, coincided with Bitcoin’s resilient price action: Bitcoin BTC $63,768.02 0.21% Bitcoin BTC Price $63,768.02 0.21% /24h Volume in 24h $24.65B Price 7d Learn more climbed nearly 7% from around $87,000 at year-start to above $93,000 by mid-week, now trading around $91,750.

This continues a trend from 2025, when Wall Street money turned Bitcoin exposure into a familiar, regulated product.

(Source: Sosovalue)

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For years, Ethereum ran a proof-of-work system, similar to Bitcoin. Then, everything changed. From mid-September 2022, developers switched to a proof-of-stake method where miners were replaced with validators. Nothing much changed, only that Ethereum became more energy-efficient, and validators had to lock up ETH for a chance to win block rewards.

There are now over 900,000 unique validators spread across different geographies. What this means is that Ethereum is not only decentralized but there is no way of censoring the network. And it gets better.

Recent data shows that the Ethereum validator staking entry queue just surged to roughly 1.4M ETH. The signal is clear: There is  rush of new investors locking up coins to earn yield.

(Source: Validator Queue)

The demand has spilled over to ETH USDT, positively impacting some of the next cryptos to explode. When writing, the Ethereum price is steady, and selling pressure is easing.

As more coins move out of circulation, it fits a broader trend: Investors now treat Ethereum less like a trading chip and more like a long‑term income asset.

That shift matters if you hold ETH or plan to buy. When more ETH gets staked, fewer coins stay liquid on exchanges. Less supply often supports price stability during shaky markets.

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Visa-linked crypto card spending jumped 525% in 2025, rising from $14.6M to $91.3M in net spend, according to a Dune dashboard from @obchakevich research. This shift fits a broader pattern. Stablecoins and payment rails now carry trillions of dollars in monthly volume, turning crypto from speculation into something closer to digital cash.

That growth from Visa crypto spending occurred even as prices fluctuated widely throughout 2025, with Bitcoin Bitcoin BTC $63,768.02 0.21% Bitcoin BTC Price $63,768.02 0.21% /24h Volume in 24h $24.65B Price 7d Learn more and Ethereum both seeing sharp pullbacks and rallies throughout the year. The bigger story sits above daily price charts: people are using crypto less like a lottery ticket and more like a TradFi wallet.

The crypto market has suffered a minor setback today (January 7), following a strong start to 2026. The combined market cap is down 1.6% to $3.24 trillion, with Bitcoin down -1.9% to $91,700. If BTC USD can hold above $90,000, the bullish market structure remains intact, making further upside in 2026 a strong possibility.

(SOURCE: @obchakevich research)

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SUI and XRP price have surged over the past seven days, with double-digit gains since the beginning of January, as fresh capital continues to flow into altcoins while Bitcoin remains above $92,500. The total crypto market cap added just over $250Bn in less than a week, since 2026 began.

According to CoinGecko, over the week, SUI is up about +31%, and XRP XRP $1.10 0.66% XRP XRP Price $1.10 0.66% /24h Volume in 24h $940.09M Price 7d Learn more is up about +21%, surpassing Bitcoin’s +5% gain in the same period. This move comes as traders shift from a Bitcoin-only mindset toward higher-risk altcoins, trying to front-run what many analysts believe is an upcoming ‘altcoin season’.

XRP, in particular, is gearing up for an explosive 2026, after CNBC called it the “hottest crypto trade of the year” and the “breakout investment of 2026” yesterday (January 6).

CNBC says the hottest crypto trade of 2026 is $XRP

"There is big money behind this trade" pic.twitter.com/M1H67WttR9

— Altcoin Daily (@AltcoinDaily) January 6, 2026

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In H2 2025, COIN, the stock behind Coinbase, one of the world’s largest crypto exchanges, tanked by nearly -50%. Starting off 2026 decently, is Coinbase ready to defy gravity? Looks like so.

After days of sideways chop, there are hints of strength. On Monday, COIN jumped by about +8% after Goldman Sachs upgraded COIN from “neutral” to “buy” and raised its 12‑month target from $294 to $303.

The stock traded around $255 after the move, which implies roughly +18% upside if Goldman’s new target plays out.

The reassessment is bullish, and specifically comes as big banks quietly warm back up to crypto and start treating exchanges less like casinos and more like future financial infrastructure.

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Vitalik Buterin and Ethereum developers care, above everything else, how the mainnet scales. This mission is super important, and matters. Ethereum, if anything, could have been the home of meme coins was it not for scaling troubles. Solana came over, solved the problem, and now hosts some of the top meme coins with 1000X potential.

Considering what’s lost, Ethereum ETH $1,868.77 0.19% Ethereum ETH Price $1,868.77 0.19% /24h Volume in 24h $9.98B Price 7d Learn more developers are hard at work. This time round, the idea is to reduce the cost of layer-2 transactions though it is near zero after the March 2024 Dencun upgrade.

Roughly a month after Fusaka, a key scaling hard fork on Ethereum, developers raised the network’s blob limit from 15 to 21, a technical change aimed at making layer‑2 transactions cheaper, via the Blob Parameter Only (BPO) fork.

First block at the new 21-blob limit:https://t.co/KqYOdTYRHu pic.twitter.com/TJUYv27TB2

— etherscan.eth (@etherscan) January 7, 2026

For beginners, “blobs” are more like temporary data containers, preventing the need for all data to be permanently etched on the mainnet. The result: Cheap layer-2 transactions.

Following this update, ETH USDT traded near $3,300, holding steady as traders focused on usability rather than price spikes.

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