Looking to the Futures

Bitcoin fell with the dollar on Thursday as gold continued to post all-time highs in the face of economic and geopolitical uncertainty. Bitcoin January futures, /BTCF26, settled at $89,445 down $785 from previous settlement.
 

Bitcoin has been coined “digital gold” as individuals describe its fixed supply, decentralization, and consider it to be a “store of value” and inflation hedge. However, compared to gold in 2025, Bitcoin underperformed. In 2025, Bitcoin finished -10% and gold finished +60%. For a volatile year, traditional finance still preferred its classic “store of value”. What is sure, until further adoption is considered, Bitcoin is a speculative asset that carries similarities to gold, but it is no alternative. 
 

Tariffs are still in play as the Supreme Court has yet to weigh on the legality of President Trump’s liberal use of the import duty. Investors reacted negatively with their most recent usage towards Europe and Greenland. At the World Economic Forum President Trump met with NATO allies and later said the framework of a deal had been agreed to, which markets rallied shortly after. Bitcoin saw little gain but lagged traditional finance.  
 

Bitcoin ETFs, on the month, have had net inflows of $56.99B but between January 16th and the 21st, net outflows of $1.5B. In the long term, this is insignificant but in the short term it gauges investors’ appetites for this asset type. Since these products began trading, they have seen net inflows which could be bullish as it is investors buying into these products. 
 

Another gauge is Bitcoins theoretical hash rate. The hash rate is the amount of computational power that miners put into discovering new bitcoin blocks on the blockchain and get rewarded for it. The current reward is 3.125 bitcoins which halves every ~4 years. 
 

As of January 21st, the hash rate was determined to be 1.017B terahashes per second (TH/s), with a recent low on 978.8M TH/s. At the beginning of the month, it was estimated to be at 1.057B TH/s. The figure isn’t necessarily important but instead how it changes over a period. This is the effort that the miners are putting forth to mine bitcoin for the chance at being rewarded 3.125 bitcoins. If their energy output is estimated to be greater than the potential yield, then they may decide to remove themselves from mining the network. An increasing hash rate on a decreasing bitcoin may indicate a bullish reversal and vice versa. 
 

The NYSE announced on Monday they are developing a platform for tokenized securities. This means the NYSE is looking to blockchain technology to make tokens, which are backed by securities and bought with stable coins, to facilitate the modernization of the financial markets through 24/7 trading operations and instant settlement. 
 

This will be done through Fungible Tokens, which are essentially digital receipts that represent ownership and have mass consensus of proof through the blockchain. These differ from NFTs, Non-Fungible Tokens, in that each NFT is unique and are a digital representation of that item. 
 

This is a major step in modernization of a part of the financial industry in realizing a speculated use of blockchain technology. As for which blockchain will be used there isn’t just one, as many now offer smart contracts which facilitate the building and issuing of NFTs. However, one blockchain is not currently setup up in its current condition, Bitcoin. 
 

Bitcoin, in its current state, does not have the ability to support other tokenized products like other chains can through smart contracts. With Bitcoins latest fork, called Taproot, it is shifting towards the direction of smart contracts. 
 

Bitcoin January futures, /BTCF26, settled at $89,445 down $785 from previous settlement and opened at $89,430 for Friday’s trading.
 

Bitcoin is below the 50- and 200-day simple moving averages which indicates a bearish trend. The 50-day SMA is $91,254, and the 200-day is $104,350.
 

The 14-day RSI has been trending down since January 14th and comes in at 45.28%. This reading is not giving any sign of a trend. 
 

The directional movement index indicates a weakening bearish trend. The average directional index is moving lower at 21, the positive directional index is lower at 18.33, and the negative directional index is lower at 24.48. 
 

• S&P Global US Manufacturing PMI – Preliminary 9:45 AM ET
• S&P Global US Services PMI – Preliminary 9:45 AM ET
• University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment – Final 10:00 AM ET
   

New futures products are available to trade with a futures-approved account on all thinkorswim platforms: 

• Ripple (/XRP)
• Micro Ripple (/MXP)
• Micro Corn (/MZC)
• Micro Wheat (/MZW)
• Micro Soybean (/MZS)
• Micro Soybean Oil Futures (/MZL)
• Micro Soybean Meal Futures (/MZM)
• 1 OZ Gold (/1OZ)
• Solana (/SOL)
• Micro Solana (/MSL)

Visit the Schwab.com Futures Markets page to explore the wide variety of futures contracts available for trading through Charles Schwab Futures and Forex LLC.