OVERVIEW

Brief Moment Of Joy Successfully Converted Into Extended Suffering 🩹

Before we dive in, here’s today’s crypto market heatmap:

Source: finviz

And here’s a look at crypto’s total market and altcoin market cap charts:

Source: TradingView

NEWS
BitGo Goes Public: First Major Crypto IPO of 2026 🥳

$BTGO ( ▲ 2.72% ) is officially the first major crypto company to debut on a US exchange in 2026 – and institutional appetite is clearly alive and well. 🎂 

The digital asset custodian priced its IPO at $18 per share, a dollar above the initial $15-$17 marketed range, valuing the company at approximately $2 billion. Through the offering, BitGo raised over $212 million by selling 11.8 million Class A shares – most issued directly by the company rather than early insiders, signaling a focus on growth capital over cashing out.

What I find interesting about the valuation isn’t the number – but because BitGo isn’t like a $COIN ( ▼ 1.67% ) or a Kraken or a DAT (digital asset treasury). BitGo’s a custodian. Compared to much of crypto, BitGo is considered ‘boring. Which is good for BitGo and its investors.

And there is a lot to like about BitGo to like BitGo

• BitGo secures over $104 billion in assets and serves more than 9.3 million wallets, making it one of the single most important pieces of the institutional crypto space.

• They nearly 5,000 institutional clients who need regulated custody solutions to satisfy compliance requirements.

• In December 2025, BitGo secured OCC approval to convert to a Federally Chartered National Trust Bank. That puts them on the same regulatory tier as $BNY ( ▼ 0.46% ) and $STT ( ▲ 1.22% ).

For the broader market, this IPO serves as a litmus test. Kraken and Grayscale are reportedly watching the reception closely as they consider their own public listings. If BitGo’s above-range pricing is any indication, 2026 might see crypto infrastructure finally get the public market validation it’s been seeking. 🤩

DEFI
Avalanche Is Becoming TradFi’s Favorite Chain 🏔️

$GLXY ( ▼ 4.72% ) – yes, Mike Novogratz’s Galaxy – just issued their first-ever CLO. Tokenized. On Avalanche. Grove anchored it with $50 million out of a $75 million total raise. 😱

If you don’t know what a CLO is, it’s a structured credit product that bundles loans together and slices them into tranches for investors. It’s Wall Street plumbing. Boring, essential, and absolutely massive. Ooo, it’s also that thing people hate a lot because of the movie The Big Short.

It’s A Yuge Market

Asset-backed finance is a $6.1 trillion market today. Projected TAM (total addressable market) north of $20 trillion. The infrastructure running it? Held together with Excel spreadsheets, phone calls, and processes that haven’t fundamentally changed since the ’90s.

That’s not hyperbole. Ask anyone who’s worked in structured credit operations (I know one guy). It’s a mess.

Grove-y Baby

Grove is a long time BFF of $AVAX ( ▼ 2.52% ). They’ve already deployed $250 million into tokenized RWAs on the network. Now they’re adding $50M more into Galaxy’s CLO.

And in case you forgot, Avalanche has a lot of big name partners:

• Apollo is running their Diversified Credit Fund tokenized exposure, $ACRED ( ▲ 0.01% ), with daily NAV calculations, subscriptions, and redemptions happening on Avalanche. Daily. On-chain.

• $KKR ( ▼ 0.68% ) tokenized exposure to their Health Care Strategic Growth Fund II lives on Avalanche. One of the biggest names in private equity, on a public blockchain.

• Janus Henderson has their Anemoy funds running natively through $CFG ( ▼ 1.24% ) on Avalanche.

Not Just TradFi Money

Here’s what makes the Avalanche story more interesting than “institutions like it”: they’re not just courting suits. The Avalanche Foundation just launched Build Games – a $1 million builder competition with a $100K grand prize. No predefined tracks, no theme restrictions. Just build something that matters and prove it works in six weeks.

And that’s on top of Retro9000, their $40 million retroactive grant program that just rolled out a new C-Chain round. Rewards are based on actual on-chain usage – specifically, AVAX burned through gas fees.

No popularity contests, no VC backroom deals. Make something people use, climb the leaderboard, get paid. They’ve already distributed over $1.25 million to builders. It’s a simple alignment mechanism: build things that generate real activity, get rewarded proportionally.

And that’s how you grow something that isn’t just institutional window dressing. 👍️

Stocktwits Sentiment & Message Volume Scores For Avalanche – Click to enlarge.

STOCKTWITS
Stonktwits & Cryptotwits Want To Tickle Your Ears And Make You Watch 📺️

We’re coming out with a boat load of video and podcast content. Here’s some of the latest releases:

True Odds

Retail Edge

StocktwitsTV

DEFI
Injective Just Made INJ Twice as Deflationary – And 99.96% of Stakers Said Yes

The Injective community just passed IIP-617, dubbed the $INJ ( ▼ 0.21% ) Supply Squeeze. Quite literally what their official blog calls it. 👈️

• What it does: Permanently doubles INJ’s deflation rate by reducing the rate at which new tokens enter circulation. This isn’t a temporary measure or some governance theater – it’s a structural change to the protocol’s monetary policy.

• The vote: 22 million INJ mobilized, 99.96% approval. That’s not consensus. That’s a mandate.

• Why this matters mechanically: The Supply Squeeze stacks on top of Injective’s Community BuyBack system, which uses ecosystem revenue to execute monthly market buybacks that get permanently burned. To date, that mechanism has torched 6.87 million INJ.

So you’ve got two deflationary forces now working in tandem:

1. Reduced issuance (fewer new tokens minting)

2. Systematic burns (existing tokens getting removed)

That’s compounding deflation – the kind of tokenomics design that actually creates structural scarcity over time rather than just promising it in a whitepaper.

What you might find interesting (and something I totally forgot about) is Injective has been methodically building toward this since December 2021 when they burned their first 40,000 INJ. INJ 2.0 expanded burns across all dApps. INJ 3.0 tied supply dynamics to staking activity.

As Injective scales its derivatives, RWA tokenization, and institutional infrastructure, network usage drives revenue, revenue drives buybacks, buybacks drive burns – all while new supply is being choked at the source.

Growth becomes directly tied to scarcity. 🤘

Stocktwits Sentiment & Message Volume Scores For Injective Protocol – Click to enlarge.

NEWS
Sei: The Fed Bad, But Kingdoms Good? 🤔 

$SEI ( ▼ 1.25% ) dropped two blog posts on January 20th that, read back-to-back, create the kind of ideological whiplash that makes you wonder if anyone’s actually editing these things. 🤔

Post one: a dense, academic treatise titled Using Stablecoins Makes the Fed Your Bank. TL;DR version: Dollar-pegged stables are a Trojan horse for Federal Reserve monetary policy. Every USDC transaction quietly plugs you into Jerome Powell’s balance sheet.

The paper even coins an “Impossible Quartet” – arguing countries can’t maintain monetary sovereignty, digital openness, dollar trust, and price stability simultaneously once stablecoins hit scale.

Centralization bad. Got it.

Post two, the same damn day: Sei announces the Kingdom of Bhutan’s sovereign wealth fund will run a validator. DHI, the “commercial arm and trusted steward of the Royal Government,” is setting up shop on the network.

The Federal Reserve indirectly influencing your transactions through dollar denomination is an existential threat to monetary sovereignty, but an actual kingdom running network infrastructure is cause for celebration?

To be clear: this isn’t a dig at Sei. The stablecoin piece is genuinely excellent – like, really really good. Go read it. This is more of an observation about what happens when different people at the same organization publish on the same day.

It’s like if I dropped a piece about how Wall Street colonizing crypto is a long-term disaster, and then our Daily Rip writer, Kevin I-Flaunt-My-Gorgeous-Head-Of-Hair-In-Front-Of-Bald-People Travers, published something about how bullish institutional adoption is. Just two different writers with two different angles, and sometimes those angles collide in funny ways. 😆

Stocktwits Sentiment & Message Volume Scores For Sei – Click to enlarge.

LINKS
Links That Don’t Suck 🔗

👮 Trump sues Jamie Dimon, revives ‘Operation Chokepoint 2.0’

🤣 Solana’s DFDV Issues First Meme Coin by Public Company

🦸 Institutional crypto adoption has passed the ‘point of reversibility,’ PwC says

🫢 US Natural Gas Futures Soar 81% In Three Days Amid Freezing Weather Conditions

Get In Touch 📬

Email me, Jonathan Morgan, feedback; I’d love to hear from you. 📧
Follow me on Stocktwits 🫂 And Sponsor this newsletter 😎 

Terms & Conditions 📝

Securities Disclaimer: STOCKTWITS IS NOT A TAX ADVISOR, BROKER, FINANCIAL ADVISOR OR INVESTMENT ADVISOR. THE SERVICE IS NOT INTENDED TO PROVIDE TAX, LEGAL, FINANCIAL OR INVESTMENT ADVICE, AND NOTHING ON THE SERVICE SHOULD BE CONSTRUED AS AN OFFER TO SELL, A SOLICITATION OF AN OFFER TO BUY, OR A RECOMMENDATION FOR ANY SECURITY. Trading in such securities can result in immediate and substantial losses of the capital invested. You should only invest risk capital, and not capital required for other purposes. You alone are solely responsible for determining whether any investment, security or strategy, or any other product or service, is appropriate or suitable for you based on your investment objectives and personal and financial situation. You should also consult an attorney or tax professional regarding your specific legal or tax situation. The Content is to be used for informational and entertainment purposes only and the Service does not provide investment advice for any individual. Stocktwits, its affiliates and partners specifically disclaim any and all liability or loss arising out of any action taken in reliance on Content, including but not limited to market value or other loss on the sale or purchase of any company, property, product, service, security, instrument, or any other matter. You understand that an investment in any security is subject to a number of risks, and that discussions of any security published on the Service will not contain a list or description of relevant risk factors. In addition, please note that some of the stocks about which Content is published on the Service have a low market capitalization and/or insufficient public float. Such stocks are subject to more risk than stocks of larger companies, including greater volatility, lower liquidity and less publicly available information. Read the full terms & conditions here. 🔍

Author Disclosure: The author of this newsletter holds positions in AVAX, ADA, PUDGY, WLC, IMX, XTZ, NEAR, HBAR, ALGO, INJ, LTC, LINK, ZEC, XLM, and FET. 📋