For the first two weeks of January, Bitcoin’s price barely moved. It stayed in a tight range, more stable than it had been in six months. Trading slowed down, fewer people were talking about it online, and things felt unusually quiet.
A tool traders use called Bollinger Bands showed that Bitcoin was unusually calm. This matters because every time Bitcoin has been this calm in the last seven years, a big price move happened not long after.
Even though the price stayed between $88,000 and $94,000, a lot was happening behind the scenes. Money flowed in and out of Bitcoin ETFs, swinging from $1.2 billion going in to $1.1 billion going out. A major company bought $1.25 billion more Bitcoin. At the same time, the U.S. government released a huge crypto bill that could change the industry.
Then, on January 14th, Bitcoin jumped past $97,000 for the first time since November.
The quiet period didn’t mean people were unsure. It meant big investors were slowly buying while everyone else waited. The real action was happening before the breakout.
The Technical Squeeze
On January 2nd, CoinDesk reported that Bitcoin’s price was unusually calm. A tool called Bollinger Bands, which shows how much a price is moving, tightened to the smallest range seen in six months. The distance between the top and bottom bands was less than $3,500, compared to normal active trading ranges of $10,000 or more.
In simple terms, this kind of calm usually means the market is building pressure, like stretching a rubber band before it snaps.
This has happened before, and the results were big moves. In July 2025, Bitcoin traded quietly for about two weeks before making huge swings for three months, moving between $100,000 and $126,000. Earlier in February, a similar calm period ended with Bitcoin dropping sharply to $80,000.
The key point is that this signal doesn’t tell you which direction Bitcoin will move, only that the move is likely to be large and sudden. When the market gets this quiet, it rarely stays that way for long. Traders who recognized this pattern knew January’s calm wouldn’t last, even if they didn’t know whether prices would go up or down.
ETF Money Played Both Sides
Bitcoin ETFs started 2026 very strongly. On January 2nd and 3rd, people put about $1.2 billion into them. One ETF run by BlackRock alone got $287 million in one day. An analyst from Bloomberg said that if this kept going, Bitcoin ETFs could get $150 billion in a year, which would be way more than in 2025. Big investors who had been waiting on the sidelines finally started putting their money in.
But a few days later, things flipped. From January 6th to 8th, investors pulled out about $1.1 billion from Bitcoin ETFs. This almost wiped out the earlier gains. News headlines turned negative, and many people online said the Bitcoin bull market was over. The biggest withdrawals came from Fidelity and Grayscale.
However, this wasn’t as bad as it looked. Most of the selling happened because investors were adjusting their taxes at the start of the new year, not because they stopped believing in Bitcoin. Long-term investors mostly stayed put. After things calmed down, Bitcoin ETFs still held about $118 billion, and total money added since they launched was still over $56 billion.
By the middle of January, the market settled again. The three-day drop looked scary, but compared to the whole year, it was just normal ups and downs. BlackRock now controls more than 4% of all Bitcoin through its ETF. When a company that big owns that much Bitcoin, short-term price swings matter less than the long-term trend.
Strategy Bought the Dip Twice
Strategy, the company led by Michael Saylor, bought Bitcoin twice in early January.
First, it bought 1,287 Bitcoin for $116 million, paying about $90,391 per coin. This raised its total Bitcoin holdings to 673,783 BTC.
A few days later, between January 5 and January 11, the company made a much bigger purchase. It bought 13,627 Bitcoin for $1.25 billion, at an average price of $91,519 per coin. This was Strategy’s largest Bitcoin purchase since July 2025.
To pay for these buys, Strategy sold company stock. It raised about $1.13 billion by selling MSTR shares, and another $119 million by selling preferred STRC shares.
After these purchases, Strategy now owns 687,410 Bitcoin, worth about $63 billion at today’s prices. That is more than 3% of Bitcoin’s total supply, which is capped at 21 million coins.
No other public company is even close. Marathon Digital, the second-largest corporate holder, owns about 45,000 Bitcoin. According to BitcoinTreasuries.net, 192 public companies hold Bitcoin, but Strategy owns far more than all the others.
The timing is important. Strategy bought Bitcoin when prices were in the low $90,000 range, not at market highs. The company usually buys during quiet periods instead of chasing price spikes.
This shows long-term confidence, not short-term trading. When a company turns over $1 billion of stock into Bitcoin during a calm market, it signals that it expects much higher prices years from now, not just weeks from now.
The $97,000 Break
On January 14th, Bitcoin reached $97,694, its highest price since mid-November. This move finally pushed Bitcoin out of the price range it had been stuck in: between $88,000 and $94,000, for almost two months.
The charts showed this move was ready to happen. For weeks, Bitcoin kept dropping toward $88,000 but never fell below it. This showed strong support, meaning buyers kept stepping in. When the price finally broke past $95,000, it had enough strength to keep going higher.
Other cryptocurrencies moved too. Ethereum jumped about 6%, and most major altcoins followed. Bitcoin had been held back for so long that when it finally broke free, the whole market moved at the same time.
Congress Releases the CLARITY Act
According to the Senate Banking Committee, on January 13th, lawmakers released the full text of the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, a 278-page bill aimed at clearly regulating crypto in the U.S. A planned vote on January 15th was delayed as lawmakers continue negotiating details.
The bill introduces a clear “lane system” to end regulatory confusion:
- Bitcoin and other decentralized cryptocurrencies would be regulated by the CFTC
- Securities-like tokens would remain under the SEC
- Stablecoins would get their own category with specific reserve rules
According to CryptoSlate’s analysis, the bill includes a rule that could fast-track approval for several major altcoins. Any token with an ETF trading on a registered U.S. exchange before January 1, 2026, would automatically be treated as a commodity, not a security. This could benefit XRP, Solana, Litecoin, Hedera, Dogecoin, and Chainlink, all of which have ETF applications pending.
The bill still faces challenges. Banks want limits on stablecoin interest payments, a move opposed by Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong. Democrats want ethics rules for officials holding crypto, while Republicans oppose them. Despite this, prediction market Polymarket shows about an 80% chance that some version of the CLARITY Act passes in 2026.
If passed, the bill could unlock billions in institutional investment by giving pension funds and advisors the clear rules they’ve been waiting for.
The Pattern We Keep Seeing
The first half of January followed a pattern we’ve seen many times before: prices go quiet, news turns negative, regular investors panic, and big institutions quietly buy. Then prices break out, and people who sold too early regret it.
We’ve been watching this cycle since 2016. Back in 2018, when most people barely understood Bitcoin, we were already writing about these patterns. That’s why we created the COIN process to sort through thousands of projects and find the ones built to last.
We bought in when crypto was still considered risky, stayed through the 2018 crash, and kept building during 2022, when the industry looked like it might fail. The lesson has always been the same: the best chances come when things feel uncertain, not when everyone is celebrating.
Now, the biggest names in traditional finance are doing what we’ve done for years. BlackRock owns about 4% of all Bitcoin, Strategy owns another 3%, and firms like Vanguard, Bank of America, and Morgan Stanley now allow advisors to recommend crypto. Congress is working on laws that could pass soon, and the crypto system now moves tens of billions of dollars every day.
We’ll be back next month with another update. Until then, focus on the fundamentals, ignore the noise, and stay positioned.
– JB
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