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  • 🌎 A Global risk-off shock is spreading fast

🌎 A Global risk-off shock is spreading fast

Gold and silver hit record highs. PLUS: Japan’s 30-year yields jump to historic levels, Trump escalates tariffs, crypto sees mass liquidations, and markets brace for a defensive rotation.

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Cryptopolitan News
January 19, 2026 • Estimated Reading Time: 9 minutes

🥇Gold and Silver break records amid Japan yield jump and Trump trade alarm

Investors awoke on Monday morning to find a wave of global risk-off sentiment, as markets once again had to digest two blows: fresh tariff threats from Washington and signs that Japan is headed toward snap elections and at the same time, crypto got slammed with billions in liquidations.

The highlight? Gold futures hit $4,660. Silver exploded to $94. Bitcoin tanked to $92,000

And lurking behind it all, an abrupt rebalancing of global capital as safe-haven demand overtakes risk appetite.

One of the most reliable indicators for fears about a country’s economy remains firmly in negative territory.

Japan’s 30-year government bond yields rose 10 basis points to 3.58%, the highest since the bond was first issued, after local media reports on Friday suggested that Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi may announce a food sales tax cut ahead of snap elections, expected in early February.

The 30-year yield jumped 10 basis points to 3.58%, the highest since the bond was first issued. 10-year and 20-year yields also shot up, both touching levels not seen since 1999.

This fueled fears of yet more deficit spending at a time that Japan’s debt-to-G.D.P. ratio is already over 260 percent, the highest in the developed world.

🧠 Quick explainer:

Japan’s consumption tax is a key pillar of its revenue. Cutting it at all could trigger the Bank of Japan into more buying, or worst of all, shake its control over the long end of the yield curve.

🇺🇸 At the same time, President Trump is here with Tariffs

A few hours before that, President Trump approved a 10% tariff on eight EU countries, opening up another front in trade tensions over Greenland (yes, really). The initial round of tariffs starts on Feb. 1 and increases to 25% by June.

Markets recoiled:

  • Silver exploded to $94

  • Gold futures hit $4,660

  • Bitcoin tanked to $92,000

It was a bloodbath in crypto: More than $500 million in long liquidations flushed out in an hour, part of a $600 million wipeout over the day.

💡 Why it matters: When they are breaking records in opposite directions, both precious metals and the Japanese bond market, that’s a sign. Investors are rotating hard, and fast, out of risk and into defensive mode.

🪙 Cryptopolitan’s take

We’re witnessing a global repositioning of that capital, and it’s happening due to real policy action (not Twitter FUD). Now central banks as far afield as Tokyo and Frankfurt are juggling a toxic mix of capital flight and political friction all at once and the reaction is clear: Get defensive, get liquid, get gold.

And crypto’s volatility is little more positioning run too hot, too fast, especially after BTC peaked at $98K this week. And longs were just too leveraged on ETF euphoria, and now it’s correcting hard.

But keep an eye on the flows: ETF demand, institutional inflows, and derivatives open interest will tell us if this is a flush or regime change.

🗳️ Poll of the Day: Where’s your money parked right now?

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📊 Market Watch

📈 Tariff Boom, Tax Pain

The U.S. government reaped $264 billion in tariffs in 2025, a whopping 234% increase from the year before.

Households are already paying more: an additional $1,100 in 2025 and $1,500 this year. In black ink, these tariffs claim to yield $2.2T over 10 years, but when you take account of economic harm and foreign retaliation, net gains work out to be $1.1T. The whole thing now depends on a pending Supreme Court ruling about Trump’s use of emergency powers.

🧩 Powell’s 2020 transcripts resurface

Newly released Fed transcripts show Jerome Powell and his colleagues rammed through “aggressive” rate guidance in 2020, linking future hikes to full employment and inflation overshoot.

Some officials warned it could boomerang and they were correct. Inflation took off in 2021–22, and Powell has since conceded that the forward guidance “wasn’t worth repeating.” The documents also reveal that he saw the coronavirus risks before most of the United States did, acting early to slash rates as a way to prevent financial panic.

⚔️ Solana vs Ethereum: Who blinks?

Solana’s Anatoly Yakovenko says blockchains need to keep innovating or die. He jabbed Ethereum’s “ossify-and-survive” approach, saying that Solana must continue to evolve in order to accommodate users and devs.

Vitalik Buterin has a different vision, aimed at making Ethereum self-sufficient and reliant on humans to a lesser extent. The conflict exposes a fundamental tension: move fast and court centralization (through social control) or slow down and risk irrelevance.

Both chains continue to dominate, but they are clearly betting on very different futures.

 đŸ‘€ Chart our analyst is watching

ATSER is at an all time low and Aster has to use it´s built-in Strategic Buyback Reserve. This represents the first real stress test of its tokenomics.

The catch: buybacks aren’t burns. Tokens are being drained into the treasury, not out of circulation, and with a significant amount of unlock coming to market in February. That dissonance is continuing to keep sentiment under pressure.

Stepping back, this is not just an ASTER issue. Perp DEX tokens are cooling off as the market calms down, and Aster is fighting for its life against incumbents.

Now there is, at least, a riddle: Can buybacks buy time or does ASTER require a much more fundamental rethink about supply and incentives?

 đŸĽ Top tweets

🎭 Culture corner

CZ is not dating Sydney Sweeney: CZ calls out fake news

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