Bitcoin Maintains $90,000 Despite Rising Geopolitical Tensions, Morgan Stanley Joins the Crypto ETF Race: Weekly Recap

The first full week of 2026 has been quite eventful, but BTC and crypto have remained relatively unfazed.

BTC had regained the $90,000 level at the time, but uncertainty surrounding the attacks pushed it south to $89,300. When the US confirmed the strikes and Trump made some controversial comments about Venezuela’s future, Bitcoin recovered and rose above $90,000.

The gains continued through the first few days of the business week. In fact, the price peaked at just under $95,000 on Tuesday morning, becoming the highest price tag in almost two months. However, the bears intercepted the move and did not allow another run.

Quite the opposite; BTC started losing value over the next few days. It fell below $89,500 yesterday, but almost immediately recovered by $2,000. The price is now just inches above $90,000, but more volatility is expected later in the day when the US Supreme Court is expected to announce its decision on Trump’s tariffs.

For now, bitcoin is trading at a small weekly gain of 1.2%, but its dominance over the alts has fallen below 57% as several of them have outperformed within the same time frame. Ripple’s The other notable winners include SOL, ADA, XMR, XLM, DOGE and BCH from the larger caps.

Market data

Market Cap: $3,180T | 24H volume: $108 billion | BTC dominance: 56.8%

BTC: $90,400 (+1.2%) | ETH: $3,090 (+1.4%) | XRP: $2.10 (+10.8%)

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This week’s Crypto headlines you shouldn’t miss

Truebit loses $26.5 million in the first major DeFi hack of 2026. Hackers have returned quickly after the holidays, and Truebit Protocol is the first major victim of the new year. Recent reports indicated that the platform was empty of over $26 million worth of ETH.

The record green trend of Spot XRP ETFs broke when the Ripple price fell 13% in a few days. After nearly two months of green-only days, the five spot XRP ETFs saw their streak end, with more than $40 million exiting the fund on Wednesday. Nevertheless, Thursday was back in the green, albeit modestly at $8 million.

Why Bitcoin’s Recent Recovery Is Called ‘Structurally Sound’. Although it has lost a significant portion of its recently regained value, BTC is still trading above $90,000 despite the general global tension. Analysts therefore claimed that this recovery to over $90,000 is ‘structurally healthy’.

Arthur Hayes: Low Oil Prices Could Cause a Bitcoin Bull Run. Given Trump’s promises to sell Venezuela’s vast oil reserves worldwide, expectations arose that the price of the commodity would fall significantly in the following months. Arthur Hayes explained that this could be very beneficial for BTC.

Institutional Adoption: Morgan Stanley files SEC filings for BTC and SOL funds. Perhaps the most notable news in terms of global institutional adoption this week came from multi-trillion dollar US bank Morgan Stanley, which filed with the SEC to launch BTC and SOL ETFs. A day later, it was also submitted to ETH ETFs.

Bitcoin (BTC) Mining Isn’t the Climate Villain Many Think: ESG Expert Says. Bitcoin critics have long argued that the mining process is harming the planet. However, an ESG expert claimed that this may not be the case, adding that BTC mining is a lot cleaner than people think.

Charts

This week we have chart analysis of Ethereum, Ripple, Cardano, Binance Coin and Hyperliquid – click here for the full price analysis.