0xMoon

Tonight's bloody market situation should have been felt by everyone through their positions. Gold, U.S. stocks, and Bitcoin all experienced a flash crash simultaneously. This rare synchronous decline further indicates the uncertainty of the global economy.

This article is prepared to analyze historical similar cases in conjunction with the current world economic pattern, Federal Reserve dynamics, and geopolitical conflicts, discussing why such situations occur and how we should face the future market.

Current world economic pattern: steady yet slowing, with emerging risks.

In 2026, the global economy is expected to show characteristics of 'steady but differentiated.' According to the latest outlook from the International Monetary Fund, global growth is projected at 3.3%, slightly up from 2025, but still below the pre-pandemic average.

Yes, the spot price of gold has surpassed $5500 per ounce and has continuously broken records in recent days, continuing the strong upward trend that began in 2025, when gold's annual increase exceeded 64%, marking the largest annual increase since 1979. This article is a history of pain and tears, a retrospective, and also my study notes.

First of all, what is our question? What is the logic behind gold continuously hitting new highs?

1/ Geopolitical tensions, including the escalation of conflicts between the United States and Iran, the Middle East, tariff threats from the Trump administration against Canada and South Korea, the situations in Ukraine and Venezuela, as well as tensions in US-EU relations (such as the Greenland dispute). These events have triggered global trade disruptions and supply chain risks.

Binance is the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world. If it were a public company, then BNB would be its stock. Under this assumption, how has BNB performed?

I compared BNB's performance with stocks of major American tech giants like Nvidia, Apple, and Google. BNB was launched in 2017 and is primarily used for fee discounts, staking, and governance within the Binance ecosystem, while these giants represent stable growth in traditional tech stocks.

The above chart compares BNB with the three major tech giants NVDA, AAPL, and GOOGL. To be fairer, I took the performance starting from January 1, 2018. From the chart, we can clearly see the 'stock performance' of the four companies over the past eight years.

BNB, as the platform token of Binance and the native token of BNB Chain, is very familiar to everyone. Since its inception in 2017 until 2025, BNB has experienced a ten-thousandfold increase. Some have calculated that, including various returns, the yield of BNB may exceed twenty thousand times.

What is the investment return rate of BNB?

From the end of 2020 to the end of 2025, BNB rose from about 37U to 863U, with a peak of 1375U, resulting in an overall investment return rate of over 37 times. This means that if you invested $10,000 in 2020, your return after five years would be $370,000, not including the returns from LaunchPad, LaunchPool, HODLer airdrops, Megadrop airdrops, and other benefits.

What is USDD 2.0?

USDD 2.0 is an upgraded decentralized stablecoin in the TRON ecosystem based on USDD, featuring censorship resistance, non-freezability, zero-loss conversion to USDT, and over-collateralization.

In the past year, what achievements has USDD 2.0 made?

1/ TVL reached 1.36 billion USD, with a market value of 1.11 billion USD, becoming the third-ranked decentralized stablecoin and the ninth-ranked stablecoin. It continues to grow.

2/ Initial APY 20%, gradually adjusted based on market value, currently still active with a maximum of 8% + 2.4% APY.

3/ Expanded multi-chain deployment from TRON to Ethereum and BNB Chain, USDD has transitioned from a single-ecosystem stablecoin to a multi-chain ecosystem, allowing more users to utilize USDD.

In the cryptocurrency market of 2026, a significant trend is that major exchanges are actively expanding their product lines, launching tokenized US stocks, spot and contract trading for gold and silver. This marks the penetration of cryptocurrency trading platforms from purely digital asset trading into the traditional finance (TradFi) sector.

Market diversification and revenue growth demand

The cryptocurrency market faces the challenge of stagnant trading volume in 2026. According to industry reports, the weakening of crypto liquidity has prompted exchanges to seek new revenue sources. Launching tokenized US stocks and precious metal trading can attract users holding stablecoins to gain trading options for stocks and gold and silver without exiting the crypto ecosystem. This not only increases platform fee revenue but also enhances user stickiness.

I believe everyone has been hearing about the continuous new highs in gold and silver recently, and perhaps everyone doesn't have a clear concept. I can show you a chart.

This chart compares the four-year cycle trends of gold, silver, BTC, and ETH. From the chart, we can clearly see that BTC and ETH significantly underperformed gold and silver, and for most of the time, the trends of BTC and ETH were not as strong as those of gold and silver. Only when the interest rate cut cycle begins in 2024 does BTC start to outperform gold and silver, but then it underperforms again. As for ETH, it has never outperformed.

I believe everyone has heard of a famous meme: spot trading is not afraid. This meme comes from a social media influencer comforting their fans, as the token plummeted 10 times a year later, quickly going viral.

So is spot trading actually afraid? I found the top five tokens by market capitalization, comparing from the highest point to the lowest point of the last round, including this round's highest point and the current price.

1/ BTC

The previous round's highest point was 69000, the lowest was 15476, and the current highest point in this round is 126199.63
The previous round's maximum drawdown was 77.57%, and the increase from the lowest point to the high point of this round is 715.45%

I believe many people hesitate over one thing, not knowing what to do when the bull market is at a relatively high position. I vaguely remember that in the last round I bought BNB, around the end of 2021, following the market all the way, with a low of about 180 USD, and reached a relatively high point in 2025.

But when the crypto market is bearish, do we have to endure the drawdown? Not necessarily. Let's take a look at the US stock market. I checked the three major US indices, including the Nasdaq Index, the Dow Jones Index, and the S&P 500. The candlestick chart below shows from the end of 2021, BTC's relative high to the previous few days.

From the chart, we can see that while BTC experienced a significant drawdown, the three major US indices remained as stable as a mountain, almost steadily rising to the present, with no significant drawdowns over the years. Therefore, when BTC is at a relatively high position, we can switch to US stocks.

Actually, this idea just came to me as well. The reason I use the term 'wrapped' is that in the past, when we talked about wrapping, it was mostly used for native tokens of public chains. For example, WTRX is a wrapped version of TRX because generally, native tokens do not comply with network token standards, and smart contracts cannot recognize them.

So why do I say that USDD is a 'wrapped' interest-bearing version of USDT?

1/ USDD and USDT can be exchanged at a 1:1 zero-loss rate using PSM, which in a sense has the same redemption standards as wrapped tokens.

2/ USDT does not have a native interest protocol, while USDD has a native protocol with an APY of up to 20%. Currently, there is an activity in the Binance wallet offering an APY of 10.4%.

Recently, many people have been participating in the USD1 event because it is very simple; you just need to hold USD1 and then put it in the spot, funds, leverage, and contract accounts to share in the $40 million WLFI rewards.

PS: Putting it in the leverage and contract accounts has an additional 20% bonus.

However, the returns have actually started to decline. Ultimately, it is because the supply of USD1 has continuously increased since the event began. As of this article, the supply of USD1 has reached 4.91b, an increase of 1.6b compared to before the event started, exceeding 50%.....

PS: The more supply there is, the more USD1 participates in the event, and thus each person's returns will be diluted.

How much longer can I accompany them? I have thought about it many times in my mind. I wonder when the final chapter without notice will come, and perhaps that day will be the graduation ceremony for these 300+ furry kids — I leave this university of the human world early, while their eternal lessons have yet to end. Please continue to learn trust, learning to trust the next outstretched hand after losing my embrace.
Loving you all — I will never graduate.
Zhang Xiaoqiu January 18, 2026

Today I saw a tweet from the official USDD account, stating that the lending market for sUSDD/USDT has launched on Morpho. My first reaction was, isn't that invincible? Because this means that circular lending is possible.

Because depositing USDD into the official protocol yields sUSDD, and sUSDD does not need to be kept in a wallet to earn interest, it means that sUSDD can be deposited again to borrow USDT on Morpho, and USDT can again be exchanged for USDD at a 1:1 ratio without any loss, obtaining sUSDD again and again, compounding interest. This is circular lending.

Quickly, I went to check, and the current interest rate for depositing USDD in the Binance wallet activity is 10.4%. This includes an 8% fixed interest rate and a 2.4% reward interest rate, which is quite substantial.