Markets Drop 1.4% with AXS Hit Hardest

The crypto market traded lower on January 25, with an average move of -1.4% across tracked assets. Breadth was decisively negative with 22 assets up and 175 down, consistent with a risk-off tape rather than idiosyncratic selling. News sentiment was neutral in the aggregate, suggesting price action was driven more by positioning and flows than by a single dominant headline.

The most market-relevant development was renewed focus on exchange-led tokenized equities, after reports that Binance is reviving plans for tokenized stocks following a five-year hiatus, alongside separate reporting that Binance and OKX are looking to expand further into TradFi-style products. The significance is structural: tokenized equities would extend crypto venues’ product breadth and potentially increase stablecoin settlement demand, but it also raises the probability of tighter cross-border scrutiny and product gating. The immediate market reaction was muted in broad prices, which stayed under pressure, implying traders treated the story as medium-term optionality rather than a near-term revenue catalyst.

The second key story was continued weakness in ETF flow narratives, with reporting that US spot bitcoin ETFs extended outflows, including a five-day streak totaling about $1.7B and a weekly tally around $1.3B described as the worst since February 2025. Even if the exact daily totals vary by source, the consistent direction reinforces the idea that marginal demand from regulated wrappers has softened at current price levels. In a down tape with lopsided breadth, persistent outflows matter because they reduce the market’s ability to absorb spot selling and derivative hedging, helping explain why risk assets struggled to find a bid despite the absence of a clearly negative headline.

The third story worth flagging was the unwind in legacy NFT infrastructure, after Gemini-owned Nifty Gateway said it will wind down operations, with closure targeted for late February. The shutdown underscores the post-2021 contraction in NFT trading volumes and fee economics, and it is another data point that consumer crypto segments are consolidating rather than re-accelerating. The market impact was indirect today, but it adds to the broader message that speculative demand is migrating away from prior cycle categories and toward infrastructure, yield, and regulated access themes.

Price action in the liquid names highlighted stress in gaming-linked tokens, with Axie Infinity’s AXS among the notable decliners at -6.9%, -5.1%, and -4.4% across observed prints, consistent with high-beta tokens underperforming in a weak market. Fantom’s FTM was volatile, showing both a +7.4% gain and multiple -4.0% to -3.9% drops, pointing to choppy liquidity rather than a clean trend. The pattern fits a broader regime where smaller caps and narrative tokens see sharper intraday swings while the overall market drifts lower, a setup often associated with de-risking and thinner weekend order books.

Several of the day’s largest moves occurred without clear catalyst, most notably FTM’s upside print and the repeated AXS downdrafts, neither of which had linked news in the provided feed. That gap matters because it suggests positioning, technical levels, or venue-specific flows were dominant, and it reduces confidence in attributing the moves to fundamentals. Conversely, some widely circulated headlines did not translate into obvious price response at the index level, including the Ethereum Foundation’s post-quantum security initiative and the Nifty Gateway wind-down, reinforcing that traders prioritized flow and beta exposure over longer-horizon protocol and industry-structure developments.

The clearest takeaway is that breadth and flow signals are doing more work than headlines, with ETF outflow narratives and risk-off positioning keeping the market heavy despite neutral sentiment. For January 26, the key watch is whether selling pressure broadens further or stabilizes, particularly if ETF flow reporting shows a slowdown in redemptions and if high-beta segments like gaming tokens stop leading to the downside. A second marker is whether tokenized-equities chatter evolves into concrete timelines or regulatory responses, which would shift it from a thematic story to a tradable catalyst.