Geopolitical Tension, Earnings Season, & BitGo IPO

View from the Arch #118

January 23, 2026

Galaxy Ventures published a case study last week about our partnership over the past year, covering everything from lending, tokenization, ventures, platform, trading, and more. You can check it out here!

This Week in Crypto

Crypto had a bit of a rough week unfortunately.

  • Bitcoin took a beating, sliding under $90K on Monday and hovering around there for most of the week.

  • Geopolitical tension was the main culprit, alongside leveraged positions unwinding and broad risk-off sentiment.

  • Technical analysis shows Bitcoin’s sitting in a precarious spot. 

    • The RSI is at 42.84 (neutral territory but trending down), price is below the 100-day EMA, and the Bollinger Bands squeeze that everyone was watching earlier this month finally broke - to the downside.

    • However, analysts don’t believe this is crypto-specific weakness. Analysts report that recent Bitcoin pullbacks are tied to rising global risk and temporary de-risking.

Ethereum got hit harder than BTC, dropping over 7% below $3,000.

  • The broader altcoin market also bled, with Solana dropping below $127.

ETF flows turned pretty brutally negative -

  • On January 20 alone, US spot Bitcoin ETFs posted $483M in outflows, with Grayscale bleeding $160M, Fidelity dumping $151M, and Blackrock shedding $57M.

  • Ethereum ETFs weren’t any better, posting $230M in outflows and breaking their recent green streak.

Not much to report on the regulatory front:

  • The OCC conditionally approved five national trust bank charter applications from crypto firms - a sign that traditional banking integration continues grinding forward despite market weakness.

  • Ripple also announced a partnership with LMAX to integrate its RLUSD stablecoin as core collateral, and secured key UK approvals to expand cross-border payments in Britain.

This Week in TradFi

A lot of market chaos this week - 

  • President Trump’s Greenland obsession was the biggest driver. On Monday, Trump threatened to slap tariffs on eight European countries unless they cooperated on selling him Greenland.

    • Markets responded by having a total meltdown - the S&P dropped 2.1%, the Nasdaq dropped 2.4%, and the Dow fell 1.8% - completely erasing all of 2026’s gains.

  • On Wednesday, Trump flew to Davos and told the World Economic Forum he wouldn’t use force to take Greenland and announced on Truth Social that he’d reached “the concept of a deal” with NATO and was calling off the tariffs.

    • Markets immediately reversed course - the S&P gained 1.16%, the Nasdaq rose 1.18%, and the Dow rose 1.2%.

Earnings season delivered mixed results - 

  • The retail banks (JPMorgan, Citi, BofA, Wells Fargo) disappointed investors and tumbled despite decent numbers. 

  • Meanwhile, the investment banks (Goldman, Morgan Stanley) rallied on strong dealmaking optimism for 2026.

  • Netflix stock fell 4% after posting underwhelming Q1 guidance (despite beating Q4 earnings). Intel also dropped 16% after issuing weak guidance and warning about ongoing manufacturing snags. 

  • Nvidia, though, rose 1.7% on reports that Chinese officials told tech giants they could start preparing orders for H200 chips. 

This Week in Tech

This week saw enormous funding rounds for AI infrastructure startups, signaling a shift from training to deployment. 

  • Inferact, the commercial startup behind open-source vLLM, secured $150M in seed funding at an $800M valuation.

  • Railway, a cloud platform for AI infrastructure, announced a $100M Series B.

  • Neurophos, which is developing tiny optical processors for AI inference, raised a $110M Series A. 

BitGo became 2026’s first crypto IPO!

  • BitGO made its Wall Street debut on Thursday, pricing shares at $18 and raising $212.8M.

  • The stock jumped 24.6% on opening day, hitting an intraday high of $24.50 before settling around $20 - giving the firm a $2.59B valuation.

Capital One announced Thursday that it’s acquiring expense management fintech Brex for $5.15B in cash and stock.

  • Ribbit Capital led Brex’s $7M Series A way back in 2017 - and is now staring at a 700x return.

    • Later investors were a little less lucky. Brex was valued at $12.3B in its 2022 Series D-2 round, meaning that Capital One is paying less than half peak valuation.

  • Brex co-founders Pedro Franceschi and Henrique Dubugras launched the company in 2017 after getting into Y Combinator, initially pitching VR before pivoting to corporate cards and expense management.

  • The company invented the integrated combination of corporate credit cards, spend management software, and banking in a single AI-native platform, serving over 25,000 companies including DoorDash, TikTok, Anthropic, Robinhood, and Crowdstrike.

  • Franceschi will continue leading Brex as part of Capital One, with the deal expected to close mid-2026.

Arch is building a next-gen wealth management platform for individuals holding Alternative Assets. Our flagship product is the crypto-backed loan, which allows you to securely and affordably borrow against your crypto.

Disclaimer: None of the above is financial advice, seriously.