Written by: MIIX Capital
The SEC approved the 19b-4 forms for eight ETH spot ETFs. Although online trading still needs to wait for the approval of the S-1 registration statement, the entire market has higher expectations for ETH price trends and has begun to warm up in advance.
1. Investment and Financing Observation
Last week, there were 33 investment and financing events in the crypto market, up 26.9% from the previous month. The total amount of funds exceeded US$270 million, up 58.8% from the previous month. As the market rebounded, the scale of investment and financing expanded significantly:
DeFi announced 8 investment and financing deals, including Ethereum liquid re-staking platform Kelp raising $9 million, led by SCB Limited and Laser Digital;
GameFi track announced 1 investment and financing, RPG blockchain game Aria completed its seed round of financing, led by Folius Ventures, Spartan Group and Merit Circle;
The NFT track announced one investment and financing event. Singapore collectibles design company Mighty Jaxx received another US$11 million in the extension of its A+ round of financing;
DePIN announced 1 investment and financing. Blockless, a DePIN project that focuses on providing computing power support, raised $8 million in two rounds of early financing;
The Infrastructure & Tools track announced 8 financings, among which Cysic, a zero-knowledge hardware startup, completed a $12 million pre-A round of financing, led by HashKey Capital and OKX Ventures;
Other Web3/crypto applications announced 8 financings, among which Web3 social media platform Farcaster completed a $150 million financing, led by Paradigm and participated by a16z crypto and others;
Judging from the month-on-month data, the number of investment and financing transactions in the cryptocurrency market began to rebound significantly last week, and the total scale of funds also expanded rapidly, indicating that institutions will increase capital leverage and investment frequency when the market recovers. Among them, there were 6 financings of tens of millions of dollars, including Fracmaster, Cysic, Dora Factory, Plume Network, Fantom and StripChain. The market is betting on DeFi, RWA and SocialFi fields. Among VCs, the most active institution this week was Paradigm, followed by OKX Ventures and Animoca Brands, which also performed actively.
About FarcasterFarcaster is a decentralized social network based on Optimism that supports open protocols for many clients. Users can freely move their social identities between applications, and developers can freely build applications with new features on the network. About CysicCysic is a ZK hardware acceleration project dedicated to designing advanced ASIC chips to help reduce ZK proof generation time. It currently has multiple ecosystem partners, including Scroll, Nil Foundation, and Hyper Oracle. About Kelp DAOKelp DAO is a triple yield re-staking protocol based on EigenLayer. Kelp plans to use the latest financing funds to expand its liquid re-staking services on blockchains such as Bitcoin, Solana, and BNB Chain. It is expected to launch 1-2 new chains in the third quarter of this year.
2. Industry data
US BTC spot ETF has seen net inflows for 10 consecutive days
SoSoValue data: As of the close of trading on Friday, May 24, Eastern Time, BTC spot ETFs have had net inflows for 10 consecutive days. According to statistics as of the 27th, the total net asset value of global BTC spot ETFs was US$61.203 billion, and the ETF net asset ratio (market value to BTC total market value) reached 4.53%.
In the data of the past two weeks, the net assets of BTC spot ETFs have shown positive growth, and the proportion of net assets has also been increasing. The growth rate of ETFs is significantly higher than the output of BTC, that is, the buying power is greater than the supply. It is expected that the BTC market will show a slow upward fluctuation.
Hong Kong ETH ETF trading volume increased significantly
As of the close of trading on May 24, the total trading volume of six Hong Kong virtual asset ETFs was approximately HK$45.3323 million, of which the trading volume of three ETH ETFs was significantly higher than in the past. This occurred after the market was favored by the approval of the U.S. ETH spot ETF Form 19b-4, indicating that U.S. policy and economic trends have a strong impact on the crypto market, and that the Hong Kong ETF market still needs more power to guide and drive.
Hong Kong ETF transaction data on May 24: China Asset Management BTC ETF (3042.HK) had a transaction volume of HK$15.168 million; China Asset Management ETH ETF (3046.HK) had a transaction volume of HK$8.5851 million; Harvest BTC ETF (3439.HK) had a transaction volume of HK$6.8468 million; Harvest ETH ETF (3179.HK) had a transaction volume of HK$9.2268 million; Bosera HashKey BTC ETF (3008.HK) had a transaction volume of HK$1.7207 million; Bosera HashKey ETH ETF (3009.HK) had a transaction volume of HK$3.7849 million;
Selling pressure eased, whales increased their holdings by 20,000 BTC
IntoTheBlock data on May 23: In the past week, whale addresses holding 1,000 to 10,000 BTC increased their holdings by a total of 20,000 BTC. This indicates that for long-term holders, a return to the bullish buying phase has begun, especially compared with the previous sharp sell-off after BTC reached a high of $73,000 in March. The recent market selling pressure has significantly reduced, providing bullish sentiment. More space.
Farcaster user data hits new high
Dune data: The decentralized social protocol Farcaster data has hit a record high since the 21st:
May 22, Farcaster day interactions (Unique Reaction) 69,901 times, Unique Cast 60,387 times;
On May 25, Farcaster's total revenue exceeded $1.45 million, and currently stands at $1.4579 million, with a total number of users reaching over 400,000.
Farcaster positions itself as the infrastructure in the social field, which is closer to the concept of "Layer" rather than a single Dapp application. This gives Farcaster the potential to derive more diverse and broader application scenarios, and also makes its growth performance significantly different from other SocialFi products, making it worthy of special attention.
On May 22, Farcaster has completed a $150 million financing, led by Paradigm, with participation from a16z crypto, Haun, USV, Variant, Standard Crypto, etc. The announcement stated that this year will focus on the growth of daily active users and adding developer primitives to the protocol, such as channel functions and private messaging functions.
3. VC holdings
Note: The above data comes from https://platform.arkhamintelligence.com/, and the statistical time is 15:00 on May 27, 2024 (UTC+8).
4. This week's focus
May 27
Solana Mainnet V1.18 will be released on May 27 to solve the mainnet congestion problem;
Bitlayer will launch a two-week Mining Gala event from May 27 to June 10;
Sei has voted to pass the "Upgrade to V2" proposal, and the mainnet upgrade will be carried out on May 27;
YGG will unlock about 16.69 million tokens at 22:00 on May 27, worth about 16.94 million US dollars, accounting for 4.49% of the circulation;
May 28
The Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index for May in the United States;
The London Stock Exchange is accepting applications for listing of BTC and ETH ETNs, with the first batch expected to be listed on May 28;
Blast will be upgraded to support blobs at 5:00 on May 28;
The Open Beta testnet of blockchain game Illuvium is expected to be launched on May 28;
SingularityNET (AGIX) will unlock approximately 8.71 million tokens at 8:00 am on May 28, worth approximately $8.4 million, accounting for 0.68% of the circulation;
Blockchain Week Rome will be held from May 28 to 31, 2024;
May 29
Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook and 2024 FOMC voting member and San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly spoke on artificial intelligence;
The US SEC made a decision on the listing and trading of BTC spot ETF options;
The UK’s consultation on its implementation of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) encryption reporting framework closes on May 29;
Bitcoin Seoul takes place in Seoul, South Korea from May 29 to 31;
Consensus 2024 hosted by CoinDesk was held in Austin, Texas, USA from May 29 to May 31;
Binance will release the latest NFT collection of international football superstar Cristiano Ronaldo on May 29;
Blockchain Economy Istanbul；
GenAI Summit San Francisco 2024；
May 30
Initial jobless claims in the U.S. this week;
The Federal Reserve releases the Beige Book on economic conditions;
FOMC permanent voting member and New York Fed President Williams participated in a roundtable meeting;
Atlanta Fed President Bostic, a 2024 FOMC voting member, spoke on the economic outlook;
The U.S. Department of Justice will hold a workshop on competition investigations in the artificial intelligence industry at Stanford University on May 30;
Virtual asset trading platform VAEX began to ban Hong Kong users from trading;
OKX HK will delist stablecoins and corresponding currency pairs on May 30, 2024, and will list Hong Kong dollar-denominated currency pairs on the "Coin-to-Coin Trading" platform;
Cryptopunks held an auction for the digital avatar series "Super Punk World";
May 31
U.S. core PCE price index annual rate in April;
The new EOS token economics model is expected to be deployed to the mainnet by the end of May;
BNB Chain announced the winners of the 2024 Q2 hackathon and entered a one-month incubation period;
The Uniswap Foundation will launch an on-chain vote on May 31 to upgrade the fee mechanism to reward UNI holders;
Hong Kong companies that have not applied for a virtual asset trading platform license must end their Hong Kong operations by the end of May;
Optimism token OP will unlock 31.34 million pieces at 8:00 on May 31, worth about 79.61 million US dollars, accounting for 2.88% of the circulation;
1.66 million Echelon Prime tokens PRIME will be unlocked at 8:00 on May 31, worth approximately $31.66 million, accounting for 4.23% of the circulation;
Tornado Cash (TORN) will unlock 92,000 coins at 11:30 on May 31, worth about $240,000, accounting for 2.41% of the circulation;
June 1
Dogechain Wallet will be closed on June 1st, and users need to withdraw DOGE in time;
About 33.33 million dYdX tokens DYDX will be unlocked at 8:00 on June 1, worth about $67 million, accounting for 11.91% of the circulation.
ZetaChain (ZETA) will unlock approximately 5.29 million tokens at 8:00 on June 1, worth approximately $8.2 million, accounting for 1.99% of the circulation;
1inch (1INCH) will unlock approximately 98.74 million coins at 8:00 on June 1, worth approximately US$42 million, accounting for 8.52% of the circulation;
Manta Network (MANTA) will unlock approximately 1.87 million coins at 7:59 on June 1, worth approximately US$3.2 million, accounting for 0.74% of the circulation;
Sui token SUI will unlock about 65.08 million pieces at 8:00 on June 1, worth about 68.07 million US dollars, accounting for 2.78% of the circulation;
June 2
Ethena (ENA) will unlock about 53.6 million Ethena (ENA) at 7:00 on June 2, worth about $46 million, accounting for 3.62% of the circulation;
5 Conclusion
Last week, the FIT21 bill was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, marking a friendly shift in the U.S. regulators’ attitude toward cryptocurrencies. The favorable policies have clarified more standardized regulatory directions and political support for the cryptocurrency industry. The U.S. BTC spot ETF has seen net inflows for 10 consecutive days, driving the expected slow upward fluctuations in the BTC market. In addition, the number of investment and financing transactions in the cryptocurrency market has begun to rebound sharply, and the total scale of funds has also expanded rapidly, indicating that institutions will increase capital leverage and investment frequency when the market recovers, and the market is betting on DeFi, RWA and SocialFi.
This week, 18 token projects will be unlocked, among which PRIME, OP, Sui, DYDX, 1INCH and ENA have a cumulative unlocking amount of more than 300 million US dollars. As the total amount of circulating tokens in the market becomes more and more inflated, whether there are more takeover orders in the crypto market still needs to be carefully judged. At the same time, as the Trump team accepts cryptocurrency donations, positive market information is increasing, and it is expected that there will be more and more crypto topics surrounding the election in the future; and the fee incentive mechanism voting launched by UniSwap this week may bring stability and benefits to UNI and the industry in the future market.
We can see that with the US legislative attitude towards encryption, the overall trend is positive and market confidence is recovering. Although the final implementation time is still uncertain, it has taken a big step on the path of regulatory challenges and laid a solid foundation for future innovation and development of the industry.
