Will CRO reach $1 before the end of January?

The Cronos (CRO) ecosystem has been abuzz this month, from spikes in massive whale buildups to the expansion of the Cronos Labs leadership team.

As January 2026 draws to a close, one big question remains: can CRO reach $1 before the end of the month? With the price hovering around $0.09, hitting $1 would mean a whopping 10x jump.

In this analysis, we look at key price support levels, the recent 1,000% increase in whale trading, and larger economic factors that could either cause a strong rally or keep CRO trading sideways.

Cronos Price Prediction

At the time of analysis, Cronos is trading down approximately 0.5% on the day, with markets experiencing increased volatility over the past 24 hours.

Despite this decline, the general trend remains positive. CRO gained around 1% for the week and over 7% for the month, consistent with a crypto market that continues to show strength.

Market sentiment is cautiously optimistic, with the Fear and Greed Index hovering near the neutral level of 50. Technical indicators support this view, as the Relative Strength Index (RSI) sits near 50 and indicates balanced momentum.

Bitcoin and Ethereum continue to hold key support above $90,000 and $3,000, helping to maintain a bullish backdrop for altcoins.

If this momentum continues, utility and meme tokens could see renewed interest. CRO stands out with its robust infrastructure and robust exchange-backed use case.

Cronos trades at nearly $0.10, with a market cap of around $4 billion and a daily trading volume close to $13 million. This valuation leaves room for additional growth if market conditions remain favorable.

From a technical perspective, price action above the $0.10 support level could unlock upside liquidity. The main short liquidation zones are between $0.115 and $0.12, which could fuel a short sale if open interest increases.

On the downside, a move below $0.10 could pull the price towards a long and important liquidity zone near $0.095. As MACD momentum begins to weaken and trading volume remains low, a breakdown could accelerate selling pressure.

This analysis was provided by crypto expert Umar Khan via the 99Bitcoins YouTube channel. For timely updates on other cryptocurrencies, you can visit their channel.

Cronos shifts strategy under new CEO as trading-focused vision takes shape

Cronos launched as a generic EVM-enabled Layer 1 blockchain, but the company changed course in December 2025 when it named Ryan Wyatt as CEO. Under Wyatt’s leadership, Cronos Labs is evolving from a simple execution layer to a high-performance, first-party financial application operator.

The team now follows a trading-focused strategy that aims to replace fragmented DeFi tools with a unified product suite designed to generate sustainable revenue and network fees across global capital markets.

To lead this transition, Cronos Labs hired Zain Bacchus as Chief Product Officer and Smit Vachhani as Senior Vice President of Growth.

Cronos Labs expands its management team with the appointment of Zain Bacchus @zainbacchus as Chief Product Officer and Smit Vachhani @0xStoleme as senior vice president of growth. Both bring deep experience in consumer technology, capital markets and crypto, creating and evolving the products used by… pic.twitter.com/t7xh1xZFTp

– Cronos (@cronos_chain) January 21, 2026

Bacchus comes from Helius and OP Labs, where he helped grow the OP stack from 40,000 to over 15 million daily transactions and gained consumer product experience at Meta, with a focus on building a transparent and integrated financial platform.

Vachhani comes from Optimism, where he grew DeFi ecosystems to billions in deposits and onboarded major players such as Sony and Coinbase, building on previous experience in high-frequency trading and product roles at NVIDIA.

Together, the management team is accelerating the rollout of blockchain-based trading products to retail and institutional users, a move that has attracted the attention of long-term investors.

Many are now comparing CRO to XRP in its early days, pointing to its established utility, expanding ecosystem, and access to Crypto.com’s 150 million user base as key drivers of long-term growth.

As investors look for a high-performance, utility-focused upside, Bitcoin Hyper (HYPER) is attracting attention. Powered by the Solana virtual machine, it brings fast smart contracts to Bitcoin, has raised nearly $31 million, and is emerging as a potential 1000x next crypto ahead of its launch in Q1 2026.

Cronos signals the future of utility crypto as Bitcoin Hyper builds on Bitcoin

Bitcoin Hyper allows developers to run high-performance applications on the Bitcoin network. It functions as a Layer 2 chain that combines fast SVM execution with the strong security of Bitcoin. This setup allows applications to run quickly while remaining connected to the trillion-dollar Bitcoin network.

Decentralized social media fits naturally into this ecosystem. By relying on Bitcoin, these platforms acquire strong resistance to censorship and true financial sovereignty. Users protect their online identities with the same hard money principles that make Bitcoin a secure global asset.

Bitcoin offers strong decentralization, but it cannot efficiently store large amounts of social data such as posts or videos on its main channel.

Bitcoin Hyper solves this problem by using zero-knowledge proofs to anchor social activity to Bitcoin without changing its core code. This method keeps digital identities secure, verifiable, and portable across applications.

Bitcoin Hyper also helps prevent speculative bubbles by using a single primary asset, BTC, as a medium of exchange. Users access the ecosystem by locking BTC in the Bitcoin Hyper Canonical Bridge, which creates a wrapped, SVM-compatible version of BTC for use across all applications and networks.

By using the world’s most liquid and established asset as its base currency, the system discourages short-lived utility tokens and supports a sustainable creation economy.

Similar to how Substack uses USD to reward writers, social platforms on Bitcoin Hyper pay creators in BTC, providing lasting value instead of short-term speculation.

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