A number of factors are behind bitcoin’s New Year rise, according to analysts, including an increased probability of interest rates being lowered and purchases by large buyers known as “whales.”
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Bitcoin has begun 2023 on a positive note, with the price of the world’s largest digital token up roughly 26% since the start of January.
On Saturday, bitcoin’s price rose above $21,000 per coin for the first time since Nov. 7.
It’s still a far cry from the $68,990 record high bitcoin notched in Nov. 2021. But it has given market players cause for some optimism.
Analysts say that a number of factors are behind bitcoin’s New Year rise, including an increased probability of interest rates being lowered, as well as purchases by large buyers known as “whales.”
New Year, new monetary policy?
Inflation is cooling down, and economic indicators suggest slowing U.S. economic activity. That’s made traders optimistic the Federal Reserve could reverse, or at least soften, its rate hiking strategy.
“Bitcoin looks to have recoupled with macro data as investors shrug off the FTX collapse,” James Butterfill, head of research at digital asset management firm CoinShares, told CNBC by email.
“The most important macro data investors are focussing on is the weak services PMI and the trending down of employment and wage data. This coupled with downwards trend in inflation has led to improving confidence, while it comes at a time when valuations for Bitcoin … are close to all time lows. The prospect of looser monetary policy off the back of weaker macro data and low valuations is what has led this rally.”
The Fed lifted borrowing rates seven times in 2022, forcing risky assets such as stocks — and tech stocks, in particular — into a tailspin. In December, the benchmark funds rate increased to 4.25%-4.50%, reaching its highest level since 2007.
Bitcoin has been caught up in the market drama around lending rates, as it is increasingly viewed by investors as a risky asset.
Backers previously talked up bitcoin’s potential as a “hedge” to buy in times of high inflation. But bitcoin failed to achieve that aim in 2022, instead slipping more than 60% as the U.S. and other major economies grappled with higher rates and living costs.
Yuya Hasegawa, crypto market analyst at Japanese crypto exchange Bitbank, said in a Jan. 13 note that this was “brewing a hope amongst market participants that the Fed will further slow down on the pace of rate hikes.”
The Fed is likely to keep interest rates high for the time being. However, some market players are hopeful that central banks will start easing the pace of rate rises, or even slash rates. Some economists predict a Fed rate cut could happen as soon as this year.
That’s as the risk of a recession is also playing on central bankers’ minds.
Some two-thirds of chief economists surveyed by the World Economic Forum believe a global recession is likely in 2023, according to research released by the Davos organizer on Monday.
The U.S. dollar has also sagged, with the greenback down 9% against a basket of currencies used by U.S. trade partners in the last three months. The majority of bitcoin trades against USD, making a weaker dollar better for bitcoin.
“We are seeing the dollar put in a top, inflation easing, interest rate hikes slowing down – all pointing to markets getting more risk-on over the next few months,” Vijay Ayyar, vice president of corporate development and international at crypto exchange Luno, told CNBC.
‘Whales’ buying BTC
Larger purchasers of digital coins known as “whales” may be leading the latest rally in bitcoin, according to Kaiko.
The crypto data firm said in a series of tweets Monday that trade sizes had climbed from an average of $700 on Jan. 8 to $1,100 today on the crypto exchange Binance, indicating renewed confidence in the market by whales.
Whales are investors who’ve hoarded large piles of bitcoin. Some are individuals, like MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor and Silicon Valley investor Tim Draper. Others are entities such as market makers, which act as the middlemen in trades between buyers and sellers.
Skeptics of digital currencies say this makes the market prone to manipulation by a select few investors with large piles of tokens. The wealthiest 97 bitcoin wallet addresses account for 14.15% of the total supply, according to fintech firm River Financial.
In December, Carol Alexander, a professor at the University of Sussex, told CNBC that bitcoin could see a “managed bull market” in 2023 in which bitcoin travels north of $30,000 in the first quarter, and to $50,000 in the second half. Her reasoning was that with trading volumes evaporating, and the level of fear in the market extremely high, whales would then step in to prop up the market.
Bitcoin mining difficulty rising
There are other factors at play, as well.
Several bitcoin miners have been flushed out by the drop in prices. Bitcoin miners, who use power-intensive machines to verify transactions and mint new tokens, have been squeezed by the slump in prices and rising energy costs.
That’s historically a good sign for bitcoin, according to Ayyar.
These actors accumulate massive piles of digital currency, making them some of the biggest sellers in the market. With miners offloading their holdings to pay off debts, that removes much of the remaining selling pressure on bitcoin.
More recently, however, bitcoin’s network “difficulty” has been increasing, meaning more computing power is being deployed to unleash new tokens into circulation.
Mining difficulty reached a record 37.6 trillion on Sunday, according to BTC.com data, meaning that, on average, it would take 37.6 trillion hashes, or attempts, to find a valid bitcoin block and add it to the blockchain.
“Bitcoin mining difficulty is a measure of how difficult it is to create the next block of transactions,” said Marcus Sotiriou, market analyst at digital asset broker GlobalBlock, told CNBC.
“Bitcoin mining difficulty fell 3.6% before the last update, after a winter storm led some miners to shut down. However, now miners appear to have come back online, with new and more efficient machines.”
2024 ‘halving’
Meanwhile, events further down the crypto calendar could give traders cause for some New Year cheer. It is still a year away, but the so-called bitcoin “halving” is an event that often leads to excitement for crypto investors.
The halving, where bitcoin rewards to miners are cut in half, is viewed by some investors as positive for bitcoin’s price as it squeezes supply.
“There are signs this could be the beginning of a new cycle with Bitcoin, as it typically does around 15-18 months before halving,” Ayyar told CNBC.
The next halving is slated to happen sometime between March and May of 2024.
However, Ayyar cautioned, “At this point, we’re in overbought territory with Bitcoin and hence could definitely see a dip.” Prices could go for a dip if bitcoin closes below $18,000 in the next few days, he added.
The Netflix logo is pictured at the company’s offices on Vine in Los Angeles, California on Dec. 5, 2025.
Patrick T. Fallon | AFP | Getty Images
“Who’s watching?” Netflix asks whenever someone accesses its site. On Friday, it was probably everyone with an interest in business, markets and television.
The key characters that had people hooked were Netflix and Warner Bros. Discovery, which jointly announced that the streaming giant will acquire the latter’s film studio and streaming service, HBO Max. The equity deal value is pegged at $72 billion.
Netflix investors did not seem too jazzed about the deal, with shares dropping 2.89% on the sheer size of the transaction.
“Look, the math is going to hurt Netflix for a while. There’s no doubt,” Rich Greenfield, co-founder of LightShed Partners, told CNBC. “This is expensive,” he added.
But if one side is paying a lot, that means the other is receiving a bounty. Indeed, investors cheered the potential Warner Bros. Discovery windfall, sending the stock up 6.3% on the news.
It is not a done deal yet, and faces regulatory scrutiny. U.S. President Donald Trump said he would be involved in the decision, Reuters reported Monday, after a senior official from the Trump administration told CNBC’s Eamon Javers on Friday that they viewed the deal with “heavy scepticism.”
Despite this initial show of resistance, stranger things have happened in this administration, and the transaction might eventually go through. Should we get ready for Netflix’s next blockbuster: “The K-Pop Demon Hunters’ Song of Ice and Fire”?
What you need to know today
U.S. stocks had a positive Friday. The S&P 500 had its ninth winning session in 10 and rose 0.3% for the week. Europe’s regional Stoxx 600 closed flat. Separately, third-quarter euro zone economic growth was revised upward to 0.3%.
Netflix to buy Warner Bros. Discovery’s film and streaming businesses. The total equity value of the deal is $72 billion, announced the two companies Friday. But the transaction could run intoregulatory hurdles.
Core inflation in the U.S. cools down. September’s core personal consumption expenditures price index was 2.8% on an annual basis, 0.1 percentage point lower than expectations and August’s figure. Other numbers were in line with expectations.
A Ukraine peace deal is ‘really close.’ That’s according to Keith Kellogg, the U.S. special envoy for Ukraine, who reportedly said Saturday that there were two key outstanding issues: the future of Ukraine’s Donbas region and its Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.
[PRO] Goldman Sachs unveils its top five global stocks. The picks are from China, Taiwan, India, Germany and the U.K. — and all offer an upside of at least 70%, according to the bank.
And finally…
The Sizewell A and B nuclear power stations, operated by Electricite de France SA (EDF), in Sizewell, UK, on Friday, Jan. 26, 2024. Photographer: Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg via Getty Images
The U.K. once had more nuclear power stations than the U.S., USSR and France combined. It was a global producer until 1970 but hasn’t completed a new reactor since Sizewell B in 1995.
There is ambition to change that. Authorities want a quarter of the U.K.’s power to come from nuclear by 2050. The country is spreading its bets across tried-and-tested large nuclear projects and smaller, next-generation reactors known as small module reactors.
Divorce always raises thorny questions of how to divide marital property. In most cases, the remedy is pretty straightforward, requiring a surgical split between the two parties’ assets — although you can’t do that with the family dog or aquarium. But if you thought deciding who gets the dog was complicated, here comes cryptocurrency.
With the crypto wealth accumulation phase still new within many households, and the recent sharp decline in digital assets including bitcoin and ether dinging the confidence of investors who had just seen record highs, the path forward is murky. But for many married Americans, the current price of crypto doesn’t even register as an issue. That’s because the assets are easily squirreled away from an unsuspecting spouse.
“In divorce cases, crypto is creating the same headaches we’ve long seen with offshore accounts, except now the assets can be moved instantly and invisibly,” said Mark Grabowski, professor of cyber law and digital ethics at Adelphi University and author of several books about cryptocurrencies. He added that the problem is that ownership isn’t determined by a name on an account — it’s determined by who holds the private keys.
“If one spouse controls the wallet, they effectively control the assets,” Grabowski said.
Lawyers now have to subpoena exchanges, trace transactions on the blockchain, and determine whether coins were purchased before or during the marriage.
“Without that transparency and given the lack of reporting standards, it’s easy for one spouse to hide or underreport holdings. Courts are still catching up,” Grabowski said.
In theory, though, a crypto divorce should work like any other. Renee Bauer, a divorce attorney who has dealt with crypto splits, says the biggest question couples fight about is simple on the surface: who gets the wallet?
“That question opens the door to a mess of complications that traditional property division never had to deal with,” Bauer said.
The first challenge is figuring out what actually exists.
“A retirement account comes with statements. A house has an address. Crypto may be sitting in an online exchange or in a hardware wallet that one spouse conveniently forgot to mention,” Bauer said.
Tracing it then becomes part detective work and part digital forensics. Once the digital asset is authenticated, hashing out custody comes next.
“Some spouses want to keep the digital wallet intact, especially if they are the one who managed it during the marriage, while others want a clean monetary split,” Bauer said.
Courts are still figuring out the best way to handle this.
“There is also the security piece. If one spouse hands over private keys, they are effectively turning over total control. If they refuse, the court has to decide how to enforce access,” Bauer said.
She recounts seeing one lawyer who didn’t know much about crypto try to give the other spouse credit for the value of the bitcoin in another asset, not recognizing it’s not so simple, nor fair.
“Many divorce lawyers are slow to catch up and don’t even ask for disclosure. In my state of Connecticut, there isn’t a spot for crypto specifically on the financial affidavits. And for some, that could mean missing a valuable asset if they aren’t looking for it,” Bauer said.
Crypto hunters, PIs of digital asset divorce era
One of the few companies that can help locate a missing asset is BlockSquared Forensics. Ryan Settles, founder and CEO of the Texas-based company, says that the need for his services has increased exponentially since he founded his company in 2023. BlockSquared is dedicated exclusively to the crypto aspects of family law and divorce.
If a spouse (generally women, Settles says) suspects their partner is hiding crypto, their attorney may call in BlockSquared, which does anything from simple asset verification to deep investigations, tracing crypto across continents and into the murky world of wallets and exchanges. Settles’ company will then present the spouse with a “storyboard” that traces and timestamps the movement of cryptocurrencies.
Investigating whether one spouse has crypto is becoming increasingly common, he says, “especially folks involved in high-net-worth divorces and individuals with high net worth.”
Ryan Settles, founder and CEO of the Texas-based company BlockSquared Forensics, which offers services from simple asset verifications to deep investigations, often for women going through divorces who were unaware of spouses’ crypto holdings.
Another aspect Settles looks at is tax liability for the spouse, making sure that gets addressed during the divorce.
“There are a significant number of tax issues that most people, even attorneys, are not even familiar with,” Settles says, adding that the number of taxable events and reporting requirements from even a single transaction can come as a surprise to even the most seasoned litigators.
“Most attorneys don’t understand it, don’t understand the terminology. There is a whole lot of trust without verification going on,” Settles said.
Many of his cases involve wives who were not only unaware of their husband’s crypto dabbling, but when the assets are finally split, can be socked with a massive tax bill from capital gains.
“Unlike a savings account, the value of crypto can swing wildly in a single day,” Bauer said. “Selling crypto to divide proceeds can trigger capital gains. Holding it can trigger new arguments when value changes,” Bauer added.
Relatively relaxed Internal Revenue Service reporting requirements for crypto have not helped, though they are set to get stricter starting with the 2025 tax year.
“There are so many pieces. There are a lot of attorneys doing nod and smile and pretend to understand,” Settles said.
But companies like his are usually brought in only when there is a good suspicion of a spouse hiding significant crypto assets, he said. With a retainer fee of $9,000 and investigations that can cost $50,000, Settles says his services often cost more than an attorney.
Hard questions about crypto property splits
Roman Beck, a professor at Bentley University, where he directs the Crypto Ledger Lab, says that because this is a relatively new area, it’s best to look at it as courts not dividing the digital wallet but instead the assets the wallet controls.
“The law treats crypto much less exotically than people think. The starting point is simple: for tax and most property-law purposes, cryptocurrency is treated as property, not as money,” Beck said.
In divorce, that means bitcoin, ether, stablecoins, and NFTs acquired during the marriage are usually part of the marital estate, just like a brokerage account or a second home, with how that property is split depending on the state.
“Courts don’t split wallets, they split value,” Beck said.
The real legal question is not “Who gets the wallet?” he said, but ‘How do we allocate the economic value the wallet represents, and who is trusted with technical custody afterward?”
This leaves courts and lawyers to do one of three things: split the holdings on-chain, sell and split fiat, or offset with other assets.
“From a technical point of view, a wallet is just a set of private keys, often spread across hardware devices, mobile apps, or even seed phrases on a piece of paper. You cannot safely ‘share’ a hardware wallet or a private key after divorce,” Beck said.
Another wrinkle in a crypto divorce is the volatility of the underlying asset, with price swings in the currency making it more difficult for couples to agree on timing of a split, both as a couple and for the digital assets. In the past two months alone, bitcoin fell from a high over $126,000 to the low $80,000s, a 35% decline, and saw its year-to-date gains wiped out, with plenty of wild daily swings.
If couples are thinking rationally and not emotionally, among the simplest solutions would be splitting the wallet on a chain to create two wallets for each of the divorced partners so they can continue holding their share of cryptos, or drawing up a legal agreement that gives shares of a wallet to each party.
“They would not have to sell immediately,” Beck said.
However, often one party is not familiar with holding a wallet and thus not comfortable with that solution.
Similar to a house jointly owned which a divorcing couple may not want to bring to the market at a bad time, a couple could also agree to turn over crypto holdings to trusted third party to act as agent on behalf of both and to sell the crypto once the market has improved — once a certain agreed upon minimum value has been reached.
But Beck added that while from an economic and technical point of view there is no barrier preventing a divorcing couple from keeping crypto assets using any of these methods to allocate a legal percentage to each partner and delay liquidation until market conditions improved, both parties need to agree, and “most just want to be done,” he said.
Blockchain ledger transparency and the courts
One positive it that despite crypto’s reputation as a haven of anonymity, other aspects of digital assets work well for divorce proceedings.
“Public blockchains like bitcoin and ethereum are transparent ledgers. Every transaction is recorded forever. In other words, on-ledger data analytics turns the blockchain into a very patient financial witness,” Beck said. “That leaves a perfect audit trail if you know how to read the chain. … The real frontier isn’t the law, it’s the forensics,” he added.
Crypto’s adoption by many Americans — surveys in recent years from Gallup and Pew Research estimate that 14% to 17% of U.S. adults have owned cryptocurrency — is forcing family law to become more data-driven.
“The combination of transparent ledgers and powerful analytics gives lawyers and judges better tools to reconstruct financial behavior than they ever had with cash. The policy question going forward is not whether we can trace, but how far courts will go in requiring that level of scrutiny in everyday divorces,” Beck said.
Still, that doesn’t mean people won’t keep trying to hide assets. Settles says that often within 20 minutes he’ll see movement on the ledgers.
“They’ll start scrambling their assets, moving things, hiding things, moving them to tumblers. It’s quite fascinating,” Settles said.
Stocks eked out gains Friday and closed the week higher after the Federal Reserve’s favorite inflation gauge added to the case for an interest rate cut next week. For the week, the S & P 500 rose 0.3%, while the Nasdaq added nearly 1%. Both indexes logged back-to-back weekly gains. The Dow gained roughly 0.5%. On Friday morning, the government’s September personal consumption expenditures price index showed a cooler-than-expected year-over-year increase in the core rate, which excludes food and energy prices. While the PCE report was delayed because of the government shutdown, it was welcome news in a data-starved market ahead of the Fed’s two-day policymaking meeting on Tuesday and Wednesday. .SPX 1M mountain S & P 500’s 1 month performance It has been a couple of weeks since New York Fed President John Williams breathed new life into the possibility of a central bank rate cut. During that time, the S & P 500 rebounded 5% and ended this week just shy of its record-high close of 6,890 on Oct. 28. Here are some of this week’s portfolio highlights. Meta Platforms shares advanced 4% for the week after Bloomberg reported Thursday that the Instagram and Facebook parent was set to cut metaverse spending by up to 30%. It would be a wise move by CEO Mark Zuckerberg, especially if it means the company focuses on technology that can be monetized more quickly, such as Meta’s smart glasses and its AI efforts. Meta has been spending like crazy, and its stock has taken a hit since late October when management increased its capital expenditure guidance alongside strong earnings. Salesforce shares jumped 13% for the week after a big earnings beat. While it was this week’s best-performing portfolio stock, it was still down 22% year to date. That dynamic reflects Salesforce’s struggle to convince investors that generative AI adoption does not pose a threat to the seat-based business model of its core customer relationship management software. Alongside fiscal 2026 third-quarter results, management on Wednesday evening also raised guidance and disclosed more paid deals for Agentforce, the company’s AI platform. On Thursday’s “Mad Money” with Jim Cramer, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff argued AI is a ” commodity feature ” that boosts the value of the company’s CRM software. CrowdStrike on Tuesday evening reported better-than-expected fiscal 2026 third-quarter results and strong forward guidance. Jim called it a “trophy quarter” after the cybersecurity firm delivered record free cash flow, annual recurring revenue, and operating income. We weren’t fazed when the stock, which was pretty flat for the week, didn’t move on the bullish report. It’s become commonplace to see CrowdStrike — and even our other cyber stock, Palo Alto Networks — trade lower after earnings, only to recover and move higher in the weeks ahead. Following the print, we reiterated our buy-equivalent 1 rating on CrowdStrike and raised our price target to $550 from $520. We sent out three trade alerts this week. On Monday , we bought more Boeing as the stock stabilized after a steep post-earnings decline in November. We didn’t buy shares on the way down because the stock was trading like a falling knife. We wanted to see things calm down before putting more money to work. On Tuesday , we bought more Procter & Gamble shares after they dipped following CFO Andre Schulten’s remarks on a volatile U.S. environment. We see better times ahead for P & G, and we’re building this defensive position in case the AI trade losses steam. On Wednesday , we booked some profits on Goldman Sachs , which closed at a record high Friday. We still love this position long-term. (See here for a full list of the stocks in Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust.) As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable trust’s portfolio. If Jim has talked about a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours after issuing the trade alert before executing the trade. THE ABOVE INVESTING CLUB INFORMATION IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY POLICY , TOGETHER WITH OUR DISCLAIMER . NO FIDUCIARY OBLIGATION OR DUTY EXISTS, OR IS CREATED, BY VIRTUE OF YOUR RECEIPT OF ANY INFORMATION PROVIDED IN CONNECTION WITH THE INVESTING CLUB. NO SPECIFIC OUTCOME OR PROFIT IS GUARANTEED.