Tom Lee: Precious Metals Surge Masking Strong Crypto Fundamentals, Ethereum and Bitcoin Upside Just a Matter of Time

On January 27, Solana co-founder Toly updated his Twitter profile picture to a Penguin-themed concept image. Per GMGN monitoring (link: https://gmgn.ai/sol/token/i_m4TE56o8_8Jx8AAHj86wbQgUTjGuj6GTTL5Ps3cqxKRTvpaJApump), this news may have sparked a temporary surge of over 17% in **PENGUIN**, a Solana-based meme coin. PENGUIN currently has a market cap of $9,330 and a 24-hour trading volume of $80.6 million. BlockBeats cautions that meme coin trading is highly volatile, heavily tied to market sentiment and hype cycles, with no inherent value or practical use case. Investors should be mindful of these risks.

On January 27, Vitalik published a post outlining blockchain scalability’s core hierarchy: computation, data, and state. Computation is the easiest to scale. It can be parallelized, and block producers can either provide verification hints or replace large-scale arbitrary computation with proofs of the result. Data sits in the middle. If data availability is required, that guarantee is unavoidable—but data can be sharded and erasure-coded. There’s also "progressive degradation": a node with just 1/10 the data processing power of others can still produce blocks 1/10 the size of typical blocks. State is the hardest to scale. Even validating a single transaction requires the full state. Replacing state with a tree and keeping only the root hash still demands the complete state to update that root. While state sharding exists, it requires architectural overhauls and fundamentally lacks generality. His key takeaway: If you can replace state with data without new centralization r

January 27: Bitcoin has surged back above $88,000, now trading at $88,609. On Polymarket, Bitcoin’s chance of dropping to $85,000 in January has fallen to 30%. Additionally, the odds of it hitting $80,000 are 4%, while the probability of rising to $100,000 is just 2%.

On January 27th, the Solana meme coin **COPPERINUS** (link: https://gmgn.ai/sol/token/61Wj56QgGyyB966T7YsMzEAKRLcMvJpDbPzjkrCZc4Bi) launched. Its market cap surged to over $12 million within 9 hours of going live before pulling back; currently, it stands at $9.75 million, with 24-hour trading volume hitting $31.2 million. BlockBeats reminds users that meme coins are highly volatile assets—often fueled by market sentiment and hype, not tangible value or utility. Investors should be mindful of the associated risks.

**Bitcoin Rebounds Above $88k, Bearish Sentiment Eases (Altcoins Still Under Pressure) – Coinglass Data** As of January 27th, Coinglass figures show Bitcoin has climbed back above $88,000, currently trading at $88,408. Mainstream CEX and DEX funding rates indicate bearish sentiment has softened compared to yesterday, though widespread bearishness remains for altcoins. Specific funding rates for major coins are listed in the attached chart. **BlockBeats Note:** Funding rates are set by crypto exchanges to align perpetual contract prices with underlying asset values. They facilitate fund transfers between long and short traders—exchanges do not collect this fee. The mechanism adjusts traders’ holding costs or profits to keep contract prices close to spot prices. **Rate Benchmarks:** - 0.01% = baseline rate - Above 0.01% = broadly bullish market - Below 0.005% = broadly bearish market

As of January 27, alternative data shows the cryptocurrency Fear & Greed Index stands at 29—up from 20 the prior day. The market has shifted out of "extreme fear" territory and into the "fear" zone. Note: The index ranges from 0 to 100, with components including: Volatility (25%), Market Volume (25%), Social Media Hype (15%), Market Surveys (15%), Bitcoin Dominance (10%), and Google Trends Analysis (10%).