Point of View: The Federal Reserve Has Over-Eased, with a 65% Chance of Stagflation in the United States

Update, January 21: On January 20, 2026, at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bennett announced the U.S. government will halt auctions of seized digital assets and transfer all Bitcoin currently held by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and Treasury to the “U.S. Strategic Bitcoin Reserve.” Under the policy, Bitcoin acquired primarily via criminal and civil asset forfeitures will be held permanently, no longer subject to regular auctions by the U.S. Marshals Service. Bennett noted the move aims to “stem the outflow of sovereign digital wealth” and frames the 200,000+ Bitcoin currently held by the U.S. as a long-term strategic reserve on the national balance sheet—intended to hedge against volatility in traditional currencies. Bennett also stressed the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve will expand in a “budget-neutral” manner via law enforcement seizures, with no taxpayer funds used for open-market purchases. The assets will be held in custody by

On January 21st, monitoring data from HyperInsight (via https://t.me/HyperInsight) shows that trader 0x26359 shorted 223,856 MEGA tokens with 1x leverage. The trader’s average entry price was $0.214, with an unrealized profit of $5,721 and a liquidation price of $0.3669. Previously, this same trader shorted MON, LIT, and FOGO, netting a total profit of $41,600.

On January 21st, HyperInsight monitoring (via its Telegram channel @HyperInsight) reported a whale closed a 321.91 BTC long position at 14:45, incurring a $25,000 loss. The whale still holds a 3x leveraged long position of 638,200 LIT tokens, with an average entry price of $1.89 and an unrealized loss of $172,600.

On January 21st, crypto card infrastructure firm Rain closed a $250 million Series C funding round this month—with a valuation approaching $20 billion—sparking rapid competition in the crypto payments space over how stablecoins are actually used. Data from research firm Artemis shows crypto card payments are expanding at a 106% annualized rate, with annualized transaction volume hitting $18 billion—nearly matching the ~$19 billion in stablecoin peer-to-peer (P2P) transfers. Artemis analyst Patrick Kim forecasts crypto cards will become stablecoins’ top retail payment use case by year-end. Right now, this “payment stack battle” is playing out along three key paths: **First: Full-stack issuance model** Rain and Hong Kong-based Reap—by becoming Visa principal members—integrate end-to-end infrastructure (issuance, settlement, etc.) to bypass traditional banking systems. Rain reports its card user base has grown 30x year-over-year (YoY), payment volume is up 38x, and the platform