Ten31 Timestamp 930,735
The new year has officially inaugurated at least a few new narratives, the most notable of which might be that “four year cycles” are well and truly dead (if they ever existed in the first place). We regret to inform traders eager to capitalize on the esoteric alpha of *checks notes* the calendar, but the long-accepted pattern of “Three Green Years, One Red Year” – inferred from a whopping three data points of prior “cycles” – was officially invalidated by 2025, which closed slightly negative Y/Y in what should have been a positive year based on the sacred cow of cycle theory. As in-house Ten31 Quant Matt Odell noted this week, bitcoin may go up or down from here, but either direction won’t be the result of a change of month or year, but rather the liquidity and business cycles into which bitcoin is progressively weaving itself as an emergent, globally important reserve asset. For better or worse, the orange coin may have yet another opportunity to move hard in the coming weeks, as the world is waking up this morning to the US finally substituting bite for months of bark with the overnight arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. The public is undoubtedly about to be inundated with a flood of takes from various highly credentialed talking heads of all stripes regarding “blood for oil,” US imperialism, the need to Protect Democracy by Fighting Dictators©, and similar soundbites, but we encourage readers to evaluate potentially more plausible explanations for this escalation of the “Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine” previewed by December’s National Security Strategy memo. Such a reader might go on to posit that this South American incursion may have significant second derivative implications for the post-70s World Is Flat consensus of the NYT / WaPo cognoscenti, and therefore for the trade assumptions, capital flows, and traditional reserve assets that have come to define that paradigm. It remains to be seen if this aggression will stand, but we think there’s much more signal in events like these than whatever proprietary indicator your favorite Substack Cycle Theorist cooked up last week on TradingView.
Portfolio Company Spotlight
AnchorWatch is a first of its kind bitcoin insurance and custody provider offering true 1:1 coverage through its innovative, proprietary vault technology and backing from Lloyd’s of London, a dramatic step up from the fractional insurance coverage offered by most traditional custodians. The company’s Trident Vault platform leverages bitcoin’s native properties to offer bitcoin holders and fiduciaries an intuitive, enterprise-grade collaborative custody solution that enables highly composable and dynamic custody schemes, all with the backing of regulated, blue-chip insurance products that further mitigate risks of theft, key mismanagement, natural disasters, and more. Trident Vault, which integrates with many popular bitcoin signing devices, was designed with distributed teams and complex workflows in mind, and AnchorWatch’s embedded insurance offerings are set to unlock further bitcoin adoption among high net worth customers, enterprises, and institutions of all sizes.
As the world’s largest investor focused entirely on bitcoin, Ten31 has deployed over $200 million across two funds into more than 30 of the most promising and innovative companies in the ecosystem, and we expect 2025 to be the best year yet for both bitcoin and our portfolio. Visit ten31.xyz/invest to learn more and get in touch to discuss participating.
Selected Portfolio News
Maple AI added support for the open-source Kimi K2 reasoning model:
Media
Ten31 Managing Partner Matt Odell joined the What Bitcoin Did podcast for a year in review and outlook discussion for 2026.
AnchorWatch Co-Founder and CEO Rob Hamilton appeared on the Supply Shock podcast for a wide-ranging discussion on bitcoin treasury companies, insurance, and more.
Market Updates
The minutes from the Federal Reserve’s December meeting pointed to an FOMC that remains very divided and may be reluctant to cut benchmark rates further from here, with several participants indicating it is “appropriate to keep the target range unchanged for some time.” We’ll see if and how this tone shifts once a new Fed Chair is announced, which could happen any day now.
As the Fed continues to only come along kicking and screaming with the easier policy agenda, Standing Repo Facility Operations was tapped for nearly $150 billion in the last few days of 2025, including a $75 billion draw on December 31, the largest single-day figure since 2020.
All the usual qualifications to these headlines apply – bank balance sheet clean-up for month-end, quarter-end, and year-end; nothing to see here, please disperse – but it once again seems noteworthy that no quarter- or year-end period since 2020 has seen anything close to this magnitude of “window dressing.”
For anyone still wondering what time it is, Zohran Mamdani was officially sworn in as mayor of the ostensible capital of global finance in an inauguration ceremony that included a socialist anthem, a speech extolling the “warmth of collectivism,” and – for some extremely on-the-nose foreshadowing – no food or bathrooms.
Elsewhere in the US’s complicated relationship with socialism, the military made its first land strikes in Venezuela this week following months of escalating rhetoric from the Trump administration, and followed up Friday night by capturing President Nicolas Maduro and his wife to face charges of “narco-terrorism” in the United States.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio reportedly indicated that the US is not currently planning any additional (publicly reported) ground operations, but we’d guess this is not the last major domino to fall in the US’s evolving position on the Western Hemisphere (and consequently the rest of the world).
In less kinetic news, bitcoin continued to hover in a very tight band right around the $90,000 mark to kick off the new year, which also marked the 17th anniversary of the genesis block.
Following an extended period of flattish price action in this range, the Long-Term Holder cohort (i.e. bitcoin UTXOs that haven’t moved in more than ~5 months) flipped back to a small net positive trailing 30-day change for the first time in months, ending the largest Long-Term Holder distribution event since 2019.
Meanwhile, IBIT officially clocked in at sixth in cumulative net flows for 2025, making it the only ETF to crack the top 25 with negative annual performance.
Regulatory Update
The US House of Representatives passed the SPEED Act, which is intended to drive faster regulatory permitting for a variety of key industries and infrastructure projects. The legislation, which could be a major piece of the regulatory puzzle for the “run it hot” agenda, now heads to the Senate.
Noteworthy
Iran’s rial currency weakened dramatically into year-end, finally sparking nationwide protests this week as annual inflation has now topped 42%.
The authors of BIP360 – a proposed bitcoin protocol change that could provide greater resistance to future quantum computing advances – published an update to the proposal.
Bloomberg published a piece surveying the rise of so-called “wrench attacks” on owners of bitcoin and other digital assets, highlighting the value of custody solutions like AnchorWatch’s distributed vaults that provide traditional insurance against such attacks. The story may also be a good occasion for readers to revisit the utility of the Second Amendment.
Travel
Philadelphia Bitcoin Jawn, Jan 2026
Nashville Energy & Mining Summit, Jan 2026
Bitcoin Investor Week, Feb 2026