Gate Research: Bitcoin Mining Difficulty Eases | Ethereum Sees Nearly $50 Billion in Annual Inflows

Crypto Market Overview

• BTC (+0.21% | Price: 91,589 USDT): Over the past day, BTC has shown a range-bound but slightly bullish move. After a brief pullback, price reclaimed its short-term moving averages and is currently trading above MA5, MA10, and MA30, indicating a partial repair in short-term structure. The moving-average setup is gradually turning bullish, suggesting buyers are regaining initiative, though upside remains capped by the prior high area. The MACD is above the zero line and continues to expand upward, with growing histogram bars pointing to improving short-term momentum. Overall, BTC remains in a rebound phase within a broader range. A sustained hold above $92,000 could open the way for a test of the $93,000–94,000 resistance zone; conversely, a pullback below the $90,800–91,000 range would raise the risk of another consolidation or retest lower.
• ETH (+0.23% | Price: 3,131 USDT): ETH has remained relatively stable, with price edging higher along its short-term moving averages. MA5 and MA10 have turned upward and are gradually converging toward MA30, signaling a mild improvement in short-term trend conditions. Volatility remains lower than BTC, and capital flows appear more defensive in nature. The MACD is hovering slightly above the zero line, with the signal lines maintaining a bullish configuration, though momentum expansion remains restrained. Overall, ETH is in a low-volatility recovery phase. A firm break above $3,150 could allow a move toward the$3,200–3,250 zone, while key support lies at $3,080–3,100; a break below this area may see price revert to sideways consolidation.
• Altcoins: The Fear & Greed Index has slipped to 27, remaining in the “Fear” zone. While slightly lower than yesterday, it stands well above the troughs seen during last month’s “Extreme Fear” phase, indicating a gradual but uneven improvement in overall market sentiment.
• Macro: On January 9, the S&P 500 rose 0.65% to 6,966.28, the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.48% to 49,504.07, and the Nasdaq Composite advanced 0.81% to 23,671.35. As of January 12 at 02:45 AM (UTC), spot gold was trading at $4,579 per ounce, up 1.52% over the past 24 hours.

Trending Tokens

XCN Onyxcoin (+16.84%, Circulating Market Cap: $397M)

According to Gate market data, XCN is currently priced at $0.009482, up approximately 16.84% over the past 24 hours. Onyxcoin is the core token of the Onyx Protocol ecosystem, which is positioned as a decentralized finance infrastructure and on-chain governance framework, building an open DeFi network centered on lending, governance voting, and protocol incentive mechanisms. Operating under a DAO governance model, Onyx advances protocol upgrades and ecosystem expansion, with XCN serving as the primary vehicle for governance participation, proposal voting, and potential ecosystem incentives.

The recent surge in XCN has been largely driven by a wave of community and ecosystem updates that boosted market sentiment and expectations. The project announced official Korean-language support on onyx.org, signaling clear intentions for regional expansion. In parallel, discussions around incentives for the Goliath testnet have continued to progress, with the community approving a governance proposal to explore testnet reward mechanisms and indicating that more detailed XCN testnet incentive structures will be announced going forward.

ARC AI Rig Complex (+16.52%, Circulating Market Cap: $50.48M)

According to Gate market data, ARC is currently trading at $0.05111, up 16.52% over the past 24 hours. AI Rig Complex is an application-focused project built around an AI agent development framework and a modular runtime environment, with the core objective of providing developers with a more efficient toolchain for building, debugging, and deploying AI agents.

ARC’s latest rally has been driven by improving expectations tied to sustained progress across its developer ecosystem and product roadmap. Project teams and core developers have been actively releasing updates, advancing documentation and practical implementations of Rig-based AI agent architectures, and signaling a strong “shipping” cadence that reinforces market confidence in execution. Meanwhile, ongoing feature rollouts across related products such as Ryzone—including webpage drop-in functionality, multi-task collaboration, and productivity optimizations—have further increased ARC’s visibility within the AI agent tooling narrative.

VVV Venice Token (+23.53%, Circulating Market Cap: $146M)

According to Gate market data, VVV is currently priced at $3.4134, up approximately 23.53% over the past 24 hours. Venice is an AI application and API platform focused on privacy-friendly access and open model integration, positioned to offer anonymous, multi-model inference services without the need for local GPUs. The platform supports a range of leading and open-source models, including GLM-4.7, and adopts a pay-per-use pricing model to lower barriers for developers and individual users.

The sharp rise in VVV has been driven by a convergence of product-side progress and token economic actions. The project recently announced the official launch of GLM-4.7 as its default model, alongside clearly differentiated pricing and use cases for inference and non-inference versions, strengthening Venice’s competitive positioning in the “high-performance inference + pay-per-use” segment. At the same time, the platform completed its latest round of VVV token burns, with cumulative burns now exceeding 43%, reinforcing expectations around ongoing supply contraction.

Alpha Insights

Vitalik Buterin Highlights Structural Weaknesses in Ethereum’s Stablecoin System, De-Dollarization Demand Gradually Emerging

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin recently noted that the current decentralized stablecoin system within the Ethereum ecosystem remains at a relatively early stage. To support more durable and resilient financial applications over the long term, he argued that systematic upgrades are needed at both the institutional design and economic model levels. In his view, the primary issue lies in the excessive reliance on the U.S. dollar as the sole value anchor. While dollar pegs may be practical in the short term, over a longer horizon such designs can weaken system resilience amid macro policy shifts, geopolitical risks, and fluctuations in fiat currency credibility. By contrast, anchoring stablecoins to a more neutral and diversified value index could better enhance the long-term robustness of Ethereum’s financial architecture.

Vitalik further emphasized that a truly sustainable decentralized stablecoin system must be supported by oracle mechanisms that are resistant to capture by large capital or single interest groups; otherwise, the stability framework itself remains vulnerable to structural capture. He also pointed out the latent competition between Ethereum’s staking mechanism and stablecoins or CDP-based systems. When staking yields are compressed to around 0.2%, such returns become significantly less attractive to professional capital, leaving staking primarily suited to retail participants with low risk tolerance. This dynamic suggests that Ethereum will need to rebalance incentives across staking, stablecoin demand, and DeFi structures to prevent internal frictions that could undermine ecosystem security and efficiency.

Bitcoin Mining Difficulty Declines for the First Time in 2026, Offering Miners a Brief Respite

As 2026 begins, Bitcoin mining difficulty has finally registered a phase of downward adjustment, marking a rare shift after a prolonged period of intense hashrate competition and mounting cost pressures. A lower difficulty increases the probability of earning block rewards per unit of hashrate, providing miners with a short-term improvement in output stability and easing profitability pressures, particularly for operations with higher energy efficiency and newer equipment. This adjustment likely reflects the exit of marginal hashrate from the network, potentially driven by rising energy costs, near-term price pressure on Bitcoin, or the retirement of outdated mining hardware.

At a deeper level, the difficulty pullback does not necessarily signal a structural reversal in mining fundamentals, but rather a cyclical self-correction within the hashrate cycle. Bitcoin’s mining network is designed with an adaptive adjustment mechanism: as profit margins are compressed, inefficient participants are naturally forced out, leading to a reduction in difficulty and a partial recovery in marginal returns for remaining miners. Over the medium to long term, if Bitcoin prices fail to recover meaningfully, hashrate and difficulty may continue to fluctuate within a range; however, a price rebound would likely attract new hashrate, quickly pushing difficulty higher again. As such, this “breathing room” should be viewed as a temporary window within the mining cycle rather than a structural inflection point.

Sustained Net Inflows into Ethereum Over the Past Year Signal Strengthening Long-Term Allocation Demand

Over the past year, Ethereum has recorded nearly $50 billion in net capital inflows, underscoring sustained market confidence in its long-term value proposition and ecosystem outlook. Inflows of this magnitude are unlikely to be driven by short-term trading sentiment alone; instead, they more plausibly reflect systematic capital accumulation from institutional investors, long-term allocators, and internal ecosystem demand, including staking, DeFi protocol lockups, and structural growth from layer-two expansion. Even amid heightened market volatility, Ethereum’s ability to consistently attract capital highlights the continued consolidation of its position as a core asset within the broader crypto market.

From a structural perspective, large-scale net inflows also indicate Ethereum’s gradual transition from a purely high-volatility risk asset toward a hybrid asset combining yield characteristics with foundational infrastructure value. On one hand, staking mechanisms continue to lock up circulating supply, reinforcing medium- to long-term supply–demand dynamics; on the other, the expansion of stablecoins, real-world assets (RWA), and application layers further amplifies ETH’s role as a settlement and security layer. This dual engine of capital inflows and usage demand reduces reliance on sentiment-driven price cycles and ties Ethereum’s valuation more closely to ecosystem activity and capital allocation logic, providing a firmer fundamental basis for long-term valuation.


References

• Gate, https://www.gate.com/trade/BTC_USDT
• Farside Investors, https://farside.co.uk/btc/
• Gate, https://www.gate.com/trade/ETH_USDT
• Farside Investors, https://farside.co.uk/eth/
• Gate, https://www.gate.com/crypto-market-data
• Investing, https://investing.com/indices/usa-indices
• Investing, https://investing.com/currencies/xau-usd
• X, https://x.com/VitalikButerin/status/2010253778365055363
• X, https://x.com/Cointelegraph/status/2010253091757543481?s=20
• X, https://x.com/Cointelegraph/status/2010162495688781856?s=20

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Disclaimer
Investing in cryptocurrency markets involves high risk. Users are advised to conduct their own research and fully understand the nature of the assets and products before making any investment decisions. Gate is not responsible for any losses or damages arising from such decisions.