Altcoins jump as dollar slides, bitcoin holds steady: Crypto Markets Today

Markets Share Share this article Copy link X icon X (Twitter) LinkedIn Facebook Email Altcoins jump as dollar slides, bitcoin holds steady: Crypto Markets Today The Dollar Index hit a four-year low, while altcoins surged led by HYPE, JTO and Solana memecoin PIPPIN. By Oliver Knight , Omkar Godbole | Edited by Sheldon Reback Jan 28, 2026, 11:40 a.m. Make us preferred on Google The weakening dollar helped lift altcoins as bitcoin held steady. (Frederick Warren/Unsplash/Modified by CoinDesk) What to know : Bitcoin held near $89,200 and ether topped $3,000, supported by a sharp drop in the U.S. dollar index (DXY). Altcoins outperformed, with Hyperliquid’s HYPE up 25% and Solana staking token JTO extending a 31% three-day rally. Speculative tokens led gains, including Solana-based memecoin PIPPIN up 64%, as CoinDesk’s altcoin-heavy CD80 index beat CD20. Bitcoin BTC $ 89,347.10 traded little changed Wednesday after gaining yesterday as the dollar weakened. Ether ETH $ 3,017.15 gave up some of its gains. Instead, advances came from other parts of the altcoin market. Hyperliquid's native HYPE token extended gains , adding 11% since midnight UTC, and Solana liquid staking token JTO $ 0.3888 surged 32%, its biggest one-day gain since December 2023, according to CoinDesk data. STORY CONTINUES BELOW Don't miss another story. Subscribe to the Crypto Daybook Americas Newsletter today . See all newsletters Sign me up By signing up, you will receive emails about CoinDesk products and you agree to our terms & conditions and privacy policy . The Dollar Index (DXY) fell to a four-year low on Tuesday, crucially below a trendline dating back to 2011 despite an attempt by President Donald Trump to reassure markets by saying the dollar is "doing great," and that he is not "concerned." Dollar strength or weakness has a direct impact on the crypto market because the majority of assets are traded against the U.S. currency. The inverse correlation was a key talking point in the previous bear market, when the dollar rose by 22% between November 2021 and October 2022 while bitcoin lost more than 70% of its value. Dollar breaks trendline (TradingView) Derivatives positioning Another $230 million in leveraged bullish crypto futures positions were liquidated in the past 24 hours, extending the trend of consistent long-side wipeouts since Monday. Bitcoin and ether 30-day and one-day implied volatility indexes remain under pressure, a sign traders do not expect major turbulence even as the Fed interest-rate decision looms. The notional open interest (OI) in futures tied to the HYPE token has surged over 20% in dollar terms in 24 hours. That is largely reflective of price gains in the token, because in token terms it remains largely unchanged near 57 million HYPE. OI in BTC, ETH, XRP and BNB has risen 2%-4%. Except ZEC, and TRX, annualized funding rates for majors remain positive, indicating a bias for bullish positioning. On Deribit, BTC and ETH puts continue to trade at a premium to calls. Activity has picked up in BTC put options at the $85,000 strike, indicating a demand for downside hedges. Block flows in BTC have been mixed, with traders chasing both put and call spreads. In ETH's case, straddles and risk reversals were in demand. Token talk While HYPE and JTO are among the top performers on Wednesday, the largest altcoin gain goes to PIPPIN, a Solana-based memecoin and autonomous AI agent created by AI innovator Yohei Nakajima. PIPPIN is up by 64% in the past 24 hours and is the most bought token by "smart money" investors, according to Stalkchain . Decentralized exchange tokens JUP $ 0.2250 and aster ASTER $ 0.6857 also embarked on moves to the upside, with the former increasing by 3.11% since midnight UTC to notch a 24 hour gain of 10.9%, while ASTER trades at $0.69 having risen by 5.7% since Tuesday morning. CoinDesk indexes are also indicating altcoin strength: The bitcoin-dominant CoinDesk 20 (CD20) Index is up by 2.47% in the past 24 hours and 2.38% since the turn of the year, while the altcoin heavy CoinDesk 80 (CD80) has outperformed its counterpart with a 3.7% 24-hour gain and a 7.3% increase since Jan. 1. The buoyant mood across the altcoin sector comes as bitcoin remains stuck in a tight trading range — historically a bullish period for altcoins because capital is often rotated to more speculative bets until bitcoin makes a decisive move one way or the other. Crypto Markets Today Markets Derivatives Altcoins More For You Pudgy Penguins: A New Blueprint for Tokenized Culture By CoinDesk Research Dec 30, 2025 Commissioned by Pudgy Penguins Pudgy Penguins is building a multi-vertical consumer IP platform — combining phygital products, games, NFTs and PENGU to monetize culture at scale. What to know : Pudgy Penguins is emerging as one of the strongest NFT-native brands of this cycle, shifting from speculative “digital luxury goods” into a multi-vertical consumer IP platform. Its strategy is to acquire users through mainstream channels first; toys, retail partnerships and viral media, then onboard them into Web3 through games, NFTs and the PENGU token. The ecosystem now spans phygital products (> $13M retail sales and >1M units sold), games and experiences (Pudgy Party surpassed 500k downloads in two weeks), and a widely distributed token (airdropped to 6M+ wallets). While the market is currently pricing Pudgy at a premium relative to traditional IP peers, sustained success depends on execution across retail expansion, gaming adoption and deeper token utility. View Full Report More For You HYPE token's 50% surge is a story of crypto-traditional market convergence, treasury firm says By Omkar Godbole , AI Boost | Edited by Shaurya Malwa 3 hours ago HYPE has surged 50%, outperforming bitcoin, ether and the CoinDesk 20 index by a big margin. What to know : Hyperliquid's HYPE token has surged more than 50% to $34.57 this week, far outpacing bitcoin, ether and the broader crypto market, as trading activity on the platform accelerates. The token rally represents the merging of traditional assets with the crypto world, according to Hyperion DeFi, which is a HYPE treasury company. Originally a crypto perpetuals exchange, Hyperliquid has expanded into tokenized trading of equity indices, individual stocks, commodities and major fiat pairs via its HIP-3 upgrade. 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