The Talk - January 15, 2026

The first episode of the year of CoinShares’ The Talk opens with a New Year welcome and a roundtable discussion featuring Luke Nolan, Matthew Kimmel, Christopher Bendiksen, Alex Schmidt, and Satish Patel.The conversation sets the tone for the year ahead, focusing on CoinShares’ newly published market outlook, and addressing recent volatility in crypto markets following a difficult end to the previous year and a tentative recovery at the start of the new one.

Key takeaways

• Short-term green price action does not yet signal a sustained bull phase.

• Market confidence remains tentative after last year’s drawdowns.

• Bitcoin remains the dominant force influencing the broader crypto market.

• Cautious optimism defines CoinShares’ early-year outlook.

• Crypto IPOs should not generate the same craze as in 2025, although some will be interesting to follow, most notably Kraken, Stripe, and Securitize.

• The price action of “privacy coins” should be analysed cautiously: Zcash remains an asset driven by a corporation with private interests, and while Monero has a genuine use case, its undeniable qualities do not grant it the status of a perennial investment.

• The multiplicity of altcoins fragments liquidity, which explains the lack of a broad “alt season.” That said, altcoins should now be analysed differently from Bitcoin, each with its own value proposition and its own metrics.