MIIX Capital Research Weekly: Welcoming the Spring Breeze, Blossoming Flowers
Author: MIIX Capital
Last week's market trend has hinted at the arrival of a bull market. In addition to the significant rise in BTC prices, which has become a hot topic among investors, WLD has also surged, with both price and market cap reaching all-time highs. The popular project Starknet airdropped 700 million tokens to 1.29 million addresses, which, at a market price of $1.8, amounts to nearly $1.26 billion in total airdrop scale. The strong performance of the market seems to have exceeded people's expectations and imagination.
1. Investment and Financing Observation
Last week (2.12-2.18), there were 21 investment and financing events in the global blockchain space, with a total funding scale exceeding $140 million:
- 5 investment and financing events were announced in the DeFi sector, including the Ethereum stablecoin USDe developer Ethena Labs, which announced the completion of a $14 million strategic round of financing;
- 1 investment and financing event was announced in the NFT and Metaverse sector: the NFT collateral lending platform Meta Street announced the completion of $25 million in financing, making it the largest single financing project of the week;
- 4 investment and financing events were announced in the blockchain gaming sector, with the blockchain gaming studio Overworld announcing it raised $10 million in seed round financing;
- 8 investment and financing events were announced in the infrastructure and tools sector, including the cross-chain interoperability protocol Analog, which secured $16 million in seed and strategic round investments, and modular blockchain infrastructure developer Lava Network, which completed $15 million in seed round financing;
- 3 investment and financing events were announced in other Web3/crypto-related projects, including the decentralized auto-response system Drosera, which completed $1.55 million in seed round financing, with participation from UDHC and others;
About MetaStreet
MetaStreet is a liquidity expansion protocol for the NFT credit market, with its main product being a capital treasury that provides secondary market liquidity for NFT-backed notes, allowing participants to deposit funds to earn returns from a diversified portfolio of NFT-backed notes.
Previously reported: MetaStreet announced the launch of the ERC404 governance token MSTR, aimed at addressing project liquidity adjustments and exploring synergies between NFTs and governance tokens. MetaStreet claims that MSTR will redefine NFT finance while pushing the project into the final phase of decentralization.
About Lava Network
Lava Network's seed round financing was co-led by Jump Capital, Hashkey Capital, and Tribe Capital, with participation from North Island Ventures, Dispersion Capital, Alliance DAO, Finality Capital Partners, and others. Executives from Celestia, Cosmos, StarkWare, Filecoin, and other blockchain ecosystems also participated in this round of financing. Lava plans to launch its mainnet in the first half of this year.
2. Industry Data
$2.5 Billion Flows into BTC Spot ETF
According to Bloomberg data: nearly $2.5 billion flowed into U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs last week, with BlackRock's IBIT accounting for about 58% of the total; 9 new spot Bitcoin ETFs purchased 273,500 BTC over 26 trading days, valued at $14 billion.
Retail Investors are Returning to the Market
Reports from Coinbase and Robinhood for the fourth quarter of last year indicate that retail investors have begun to cautiously return to the cryptocurrency space, although they have not yet dived in as they did during the last bull market three years ago; additionally, Arca trader Kyle Doane stated: "There are signs that retail investors are starting to return to the market, but it has not yet reached the levels of the last bull market."
Google Trends shows that the search volume for the term "Bitcoin" surged in the first half of January when the ETF debuted, then plummeted, but has recently seen a noticeable uptick, indicating that retail investors are starting to pay attention to the market, though they have not fully committed. The download volumes of top cryptocurrency trading applications widely used by retail traders have not yet reached bull market levels.
According to market intelligence firm Sensor Tower, Binance's app downloads reached 10 million in the fourth quarter of last year, up from 9 million in the third quarter and 8.1 million in the last three months of 2022; in the second quarter of 2021, Binance's downloads peaked at 25.8 million.
Moreover, the Coinbase app's downloads in the fourth quarter of last year increased by 13% quarter-on-quarter, but still saw a year-on-year decline: its 1.7 million app downloads in the fourth quarter were just a fraction of the company's peak of 10.8 million downloads in the second quarter of 2021.
Nervos Token $CKB Weekly Increase of 210%
During the Chinese New Year, the price of Nervos Network surged significantly, with a weekly increase of up to 210%, currently priced at $0.0114, with a total market cap of $485 million. The main reason is the launch of the RGB++ protocol (an improved version of RGB) by Nervos Network, which maps Bitcoin transactions to the Nervos blockchain. RGB++ is expected to bridge the gap between Bitcoin and the Nervos chain by making all RGB++ transactions appear simultaneously on both the Bitcoin and Nervos blockchains.
However, the current Nervos ecosystem is still relatively weak, and the project's market heat is limited to the imagination of Bitcoin smart contracts brought by the RGB++ protocol, with its specific engineering implementation yet to be proven over time.
Nervos Network is a first-layer public chain based on POW, where each native token CKB corresponds to 1 Byte of storage space on the Nervos CKB network. Nervos Network uses a dual-layer network architecture to separate the storage and computation functions of the blockchain. RGB is a Bitcoin-based protocol that brings smart contract functionality to Bitcoin and the Lightning Network.
Pudgy Penguins Surpasses BAYC
In the past week, the floor price of the blue-chip NFT Pudgy Penguins has continuously set new historical highs. On February 17, the floor price of Pudgy Penguins broke 22.65 ETH, with a 24-hour increase of 13.71%, surpassing the BAYC series NFT's floor price of 22.55 ETH. From the candlestick chart, it still shows some upward potential. However, in terms of trading volume, BAYC remains in the lead.
The main reason for Pudgy Penguins' floor price briefly exceeding BAYC is that the fat penguins successfully broke into the Web2 space through good operational strategies, while Yuga Labs' large scale has led to a lack of refined operations.
Especially, Yuga Labs, the parent company of BAYC, faced criticism for acquiring the Moonbirds team Proof, resulting in an overall dilution of Yuga's NFT value and delays in product delivery, leading to a generally negative community attitude.
In contrast, Pudgy Penguins has leveraged marketing strategies, boasting 1.306 million followers on Instagram and over 10 billion GIF views. Additionally, several Pudgy Penguins have been licensed for non-invasive IP use in toys, with sales on Amazon exceeding $400 million by September 2023, even surpassing Barbie dolls on the bestseller list at one point.
Sora Launches, $WLD Price Hits All-Time High
After the launch of OpenAI's SoraAI model, the price of Worldcoin reached an all-time high. According to CoinGecko data: $WLD surged strongly last week, with its price multiplying several times, currently quoted at $6.59. Its market cap is now close to $900 million. Other AI-related tokens have also seen a boost in the past few days, with CoinGecko's AI token list rising by about 25% overall last week.
It is reported that $WLD is supported by Tools of Humanity, a company co-founded and chaired by Sam Altman. Altman is also the CEO of OpenAI, which launched Sora on February 16, an AI model that allows users to convert text into video. The token has previously reacted to news related to OpenAI. In November 2023, when Altman was "ousted" by the OpenAI board, the token price fell sharply.
On February 16, OpenAI announced the launch of a new AI system, Sora, capable of creating realistic videos up to one minute long based on text prompts. These videos can showcase complex scenes with multiple characters, actions, and precise themes and backgrounds. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman stated that this tool will initially be available only to a select few creators.
3. Some VC Holdings Changes
Note: The above data is sourced from https://platform.arkhamintelligence.com/, with the statistics time being February 19, 2024, 12:00 (UTC+8).
4. This Week's Focus
February 19
- The Ethereum staking protocol ether.fi plans to announce token economics and major information this week.
- Oasis Network (ROSE) will unlock approximately 171 million tokens at zero point, valued at about $20 million.
February 20
- The ALT airdrop claim for Celestia stakers will be open from today until March 5.
- dydx (DYDX) will unlock 575,000 tokens at 11 PM, valued at about $1.7 million.
- Starknet plans to launch airdrop of 700 million STRK tokens at 12:00 PM UTC on February 20 (8:00 PM Beijing time), primarily targeting individual addresses, with approximately 1.297 million wallet addresses eligible for the claim. Eligible users can claim the tokens before June 20.
February 21
- The Ethereum Layer 2 network Scroll mainnet is expected to execute an upgrade on February 21, reducing cross-chain costs for Scroll users by about 50%.
February 22
- U.S. initial jobless claims data.
- The Federal Reserve will release the minutes of the monetary policy meeting.
- 1inch (1INCH) will unlock approximately 274,000 tokens at 8 PM, valued at about $120,000.
- SPACEID (ID) will unlock approximately 18.49 million tokens at 8 AM, valued at about $11 million.
- Avalanche (AVAX) will unlock approximately 9.54 million tokens at 8 AM, valued at $380 million.
- Solana Mobile plans to conduct a "Snapshot2" snapshot at 3 AM and send Chapter 2 Preorder Tokens to pre-order users.
February 23
- NFT Paris will be held from February 23 to 24, 2024, in Paris.
- ETH Denver 2024 will take place from February 23 to March 3 in Denver.
- Polygon will host the Aggregation Day 2024 event at 10 PM on February 23, with the blockchain aggregation layer AggLayer v1 mainnet about to go live, focusing on unified liquidity.
February 24
- The Blast mainnet was originally scheduled to launch on February 24, and the latest exact date will be announced this week.
- The NFT project TinFun will open its artwork on February 24.
February 25
- Acala (ACA) will unlock approximately 4.66 million tokens at 8 AM, valued at about $520,000.
5. Conclusion
As the market gradually rises, a large amount of capital flowed into BTC spot ETFs last week; retail investors, though cautious, are also starting to gradually return to the crypto market; the floor price of Pudgy Penguins briefly surpassed BAYC; and after OpenAI released Sora, related AI token prices reached new highs. All of this conveys the scent of spring, showing us the gradual rise in market heat, suggesting that a bull market may not be far away.
What we can look forward to next includes the announcement of the ether.fi token economic model, popular token unlocks and airdrop claims, as well as several important network upgrades and token unlock plans, all of which will further impact market dynamics and bring new vitality to the market. We hope to see more exciting news this week as we welcome the spring breeze of the crypto market.
Note: All views expressed above are for reference only and do not constitute investment advice. If there are any objections, please feel free to contact us for corrections.