Analysis: This Year's Inflation May Far Exceed Expectations, Fed Rate Cut Outlook Upended

Per Coinglass data as of January 16, Bitcoin (BTC) saw a total net outflow of 1,545.20 BTC from centralized exchanges (CEXs) over the past 24 hours. Leading CEXs by outflow volume were: - Bybit: 1,136.79 BTC outflow - Coinbase Pro: 912.59 BTC outflow - Gemini: 591.20 BTC outflow Binance topped the inflow list with a 1,313.42 BTC inflow.

January 16th: Per HyperInsight monitoring, whale address 0x72718 liquidated a 100 BTC long position at 11:56, incurring a $10,000 loss. The address currently holds no open positions and is in a wait-and-see stance. This address trades a range of assets—including mainstream coins like BTC and ETH, and meme coins such as ZEN and AVAX—with a short-to-medium-term profit-focused trading approach.

January 16 — X Platform updated its policies last night, revoking API access for the InfoFi app. This move has sent the Kaito platform’s native token, KAITO, plummeting. At press time, KAITO is down over 18% in the past 24 hours, with its market cap falling to $160 million. Notably, two weeks ago, a Kaito multi-signature contract address transferred 24 million KAITO tokens (valued at roughly $13.31 million then) to five addresses. On January 9, one of those addresses received 5 million KAITO and immediately sent the full amount (around $2.82 million) to Binance. The community has raised concerns that the Kaito team may have had advance knowledge of the API restriction and opted to sell off part of their holdings. Additionally, 1.1 million KAITO tokens are set to unlock tomorrow, with Kaito’s unstaking period being seven days.

Jan. 16 — Per GMGN monitoring data (via https://t.me/gmgnaibot?start=i_m4TE56o8), BSC-based meme coin Snowball rallied sharply on Jan. 15 and notched a new high this morning, posting a 273% gain over the past 24 hours. It hit a peak of $0.089 at one point and is currently trading around $0.079, with a market cap of $79.3 million. BlockBeats reminds users: Meme coins are highly volatile, typically fueled by market sentiment and hype, with no underlying value or real-world use case. Investors are advised to exercise caution.

**Bloomberg Survey: Yen Movements Key to BOJ Policy; Market Eyes Earlier Rate Hike** A January 16 Bloomberg survey of 52 economists finds exchange rate dynamics are emerging as a critical variable shaping the Bank of Japan’s (BOJ) policy decisions. Amid persistent yen weakness and rising inflationary pressures, market expectations for an early BOJ rate hike are growing. All respondents unanimously expect the BOJ to hold its benchmark rate steady at 0.75% at its January 22-23 policy meeting. For the next rate hike, July is the most popular call (48% of economists), while 17% each see a move in April or June. Economists broadly project the BOJ will stick to a once-every-six-months rate-hike pace going forward. But sustained yen depreciation pushing up inflation expectations could force the central bank to accelerate action. Junju Iwahashi, an economist at Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Bank, noted a dollar-yen drop below 160 could significantly speed up the rate-hike timeline. The yen