2024 is destined to be the year of BTC, with two major events: BTC ETF and BTC halving, which will also promote the emergence and development of the BTCfi narrative. At the same time, coupled with events such as the Cancun upgrade, ETH and related L2 ecosystems will definitely usher in a new round of development. In short, we seem to be getting closer and closer to the big bull market.
Today in the group, a friend asked me a question: Is it cost-effective to go long on ETH/BTC now?
If we look directly at the chart, ETH/BTC has been falling in the past few days. Now around 0.05 should be a critical position, and it also seems to be a strong support, because if it falls below this position, some long positions may be liquidated (some should have been liquidated at present).
Some people may think at this time that it seems that the price has already fallen to the right level, and theoretically it should reverse, so it seems that now is the time to choose to go long again, and it seems that it is possible to rebound to around 0.06.
But the market is unpredictable. Once 0.05 is not maintained, it is possible that it will continue to fall to the range of 0.035-0.04.
In addition, whether the Bitcoin ETF is approved or not is just a matter of two days. If it is approved, it will definitely continue to be good for BTC in the short term. If the Bitcoin ETF is not approved this time, the market will most likely fall again in the short term. Not only BTC will fall, but ETH may also fall (some other altcoins will probably fall more), but no one can predict which will fall more sharply between ETH and BTC. Is the Bitcoin ecosystem concept more resistant to falling? Or is the Ethereum Cancun upgrade concept more resistant to falling? It is hard to say, and you have to know that the flow of funds is actually very fast.
Therefore, for me, it is better to continue to hoard BTC. I never participate in such things as long or short, and I really can’t say for sure. But I still maintain my previous point of view. Regardless of whether this round of ETFs can be passed, it is highly likely to be passed within this year.
Therefore, instead of wasting energy thinking about issues such as long or short, it is better to focus more on researching and exploring the BTCfi project. Perhaps, before the big bull market comes, we can discover some potential new opportunities.
In today’s article, we continue with the topic of projects and share a few Bitcoin ecosystem projects that we have paid attention to recently.
The first project is LENX Finance (XD)
LENX is a full-chain lending project built and developed on the Zetachain blockchain. The project integrates fraxfinance's BAMM and zetachain's CCIP, aiming to promote lending and leverage, and supports users to deposit assets into any chain for lending. Recently, with the popularity of the Bitcoin ecosystem, they have also begun to focus on the construction of the Bitcoin ecosystem, while allowing users to provide native Bitcoin as liquidity for borrowing full-chain assets.
For the Bitcoin ecosystem, LENX currently provides 4 core products that can integrate BTC liquidity into DeFi, namely xBTC, Omnichain BTC Swap, among which:
xBTC: is a stablecoin pegged to BTC that can be seamlessly transferred and exchanged for native Bitcoin across chains.
Omnichain BTC Swap: Specializes in swapping and providing liquidity for native Bitcoins on different chains.
XD: XD tokens serve as governance tokens with voting rights in the LENX protocol. At the same time, it uses Frax BAMM to enable loans, non-custodial loans, and collateral assets to enter the full-chain economic system through Frax.
BXD: Bitcoin-backed CDP, a USD-pegged stablecoin issued by LENX and collateralized by native Bitcoin (currently under development and will be released in V2).
Currently, 88% of XD tokens have been released through LBP (Liquid Bootstrap Pool, also known as Dutch Auction), and the current market value has reached 13 million US dollars. As shown in the figure below.
The second project is MVC (SPACE)
MVC (MicroVisionChain) is a Bitcoin virtual machine, and we can also directly understand it as a Bitcoin Layer2 network.
The project is a blockchain platform based on the UTXO model (Unspent Transaction Output) and PoW (Proof of Work) consensus, aiming to provide high-performance, low-cost and highly decentralized infrastructure for Web3 applications.
The token of MVC is SPACE, which is distributed through POB (Proof of Building, Builder Foundation) to encourage users and community members to participate in the construction and governance of MVC.
In the first quarter of this year, they will have a lot of seemingly important updates and new products online, such as BRC20-DEX, MVC NODE V0.2, MVC SCAN 2.0, etc. These are all positive factors for the project and can be properly paid attention to, as shown in the figure below.
The third project is Bsquared Network
Although the Bitcoin ecosystem is currently developing rapidly, the BTC network itself still has some limitations, such as slow transaction speeds and high transaction fees. Therefore, various Bitcoin Layer2 projects have begun to emerge as the Bitcoin ecosystem becomes more popular, and B² Network is one of them.
B² Network is an EVM-compatible Bitcoin layer 2 network developed based on ZK-Rollup, which enables EVM ecosystem developers to seamlessly deploy Dapps. The main features of the project include:
Easy to build and migrate Dapp: can operate various assets on the Bitcoin chain (BTC, BRC20, Ordinals, etc.).
Transactions are fast and cheap: claimed to be 50 times cheaper and 300 times faster than the Bitcoin network.
Seamless access: Account abstraction can be achieved, that is, multiple types of accounts such as BTC accounts, ETH accounts, and Email accounts are supported.
Security: The security of user assets is guaranteed through Bitcoin L1, Zk Proof L2, and data availability.
Of course, the EVM-compatible Bitcoin Layer2 is still in its early stages of development. Whether it is B² Network, BEVM (claimed to be the first EVM-compatible BTC Layer2) or other similar projects, as for which one will eventually develop, this needs to be verified by time and the market.
The fourth project is Orders Exchange (RDEX)
Orders claims to be the first Orderbook DEX on the BTC chain.
In addition to having an on-chain order book trading system, Orders also creates an efficient liquidity pool and improves the efficiency and security of transactions based on the application of PSBT (Partially Signed Bitcoin Transaction) technology, enabling Orders to conduct complex transactions and opening up imagination space for a more interconnected and efficient Bitcoin DeFi ecosystem.
Orders PSBT liquidity pool is the first liquidity pool solution based on the Bitcoin native network independently developed by Orders. It has the characteristics of risk-free, decentralized, and completely based on the BTC main network. Before being used, the liquidity added by the user will always remain in the user's wallet, and the user has absolute control over it; after being used, it will be transferred to the multi-signature address jointly managed by the user and the exchange, and released by the user.
The project will also have some updates in the first quarter of this year, so you can keep an eye on it. As shown in the figure below
The fifth project is Alex Lab (ALEX)
Alex is a DeFi project built on the Bitcoin Layer 2 Stacks (STX) network. Its current core functions and products include:
AMM and Orderbook DEX for trading
Launchpad for discovering and participating in 1DO in the Stacks ecosystem
A cross-chain bridge connecting BTC Layer 1 and Layer 2 and Stacks with other chains
Bitcoin Oracle with Decentralized Indexing of BRC-20
etc…
In the previous article, we also introduced Stacks. In terms of ecological projects and data, Stacks and Rootstock are currently the two best-developed BTC L2 ecosystems. Currently, Alex is the leading DeFi protocol on the Stacks network, while Sovryn is the leading DeFi protocol on the Rootstock ecosystem.
Okay, that’s all we’ll be sharing today for now. We’ll continue to bring you more related sharing later. If you are interested, you can continue to check and learn more through Huali Huawai.
Note: The above content is only a personal point of view and analysis, and is only for popular science learning and communication purposes, and does not constitute any investment advice. The crypto market is an extremely high-risk area, please treat it rationally, improve risk prevention awareness, and abide by the relevant laws and regulations of the country and region where you are located!
