1. Industry overview
I. Overall Market Trends
Last week, the range of BTC price fluctuations continued to narrow, with the coin price running between the range of 28775-27200, oscillating and consolidating for three consecutive weeks, with no clear direction. The range resistance remains at 28700-29186, while the range support is at 26600. This week, traders can still follow a range strategy of buying low and selling high, with a considerable profit potential. On Friday at 20:30, the non-farm payroll data for March was released, with a published value of 23.6, lower than the expected 23.9, and the unemployment rate for March was 3.5%, lower than the expected 3.6%. After the data release, BTC and ETH experienced relatively small fluctuations, but the US economy continued to rapidly create employment opportunities in March, lowering the unemployment rate to 3.5%, which is a sign of sustained labor market tightness. The Federal Reserve may raise interest rates again next month. According to CME's "Fed Watch" data, the probability of a 25 basis point rate hike by the Fed in May is 56.1%, an increase from before the non-farm payroll release, while the probability of stopping rate hikes in May has decreased to 43.9%.
Yesterday, BTC maintained narrow range fluctuations, and this week may test the two key positions of the range upper edge at 28700-29186 and the range lower edge at 26600. If the coin price breaks through the range resistance at the upper edge, BTC is expected to return to test the resistance area of 36000 above the 30000 level; otherwise, if the market chooses to break down, BTC may face a medium-term adjustment trend. The Monday night market broke upwards and is currently testing the $30,000 level, with medium-term resistance around $32,400.
As regulatory agencies heat up, Bitcoin is leading the cryptocurrency market recovery: According to the latest information from the Cointelegraph Research Venture Capital database, investment activity in the blockchain industry showed a significant decline in March, with only 59 transactions occurring, lower than 96 in February. This means that investment activity decreased by 38.5%. The total inflow of funds in March was $504 million, a decrease of over 42.7% from $880 million in February. Venture capital requires stable and favorable macroeconomic conditions to support the growth of high-risk businesses. The risk of long-term stagflation makes this goal difficult to achieve, which is also the reason for the recent bearish sentiment of VC investments. Before macroeconomic indicators change, causing investors to shift from safe haven to risky investments, the investment sentiment in the blockchain industry may continue to stagnate or decline. In addition, cryptocurrency stocks had mixed performance in March. While mining businesses pushed up stock prices due to increased revenue, other types of cryptocurrency companies struggled. This includes companies like Coinbase, Canaan, and Block.
In the past few days, the transfer volume in the Bitcoin (BTC) market has increased significantly, with a 153% increase in the number of transactions processed. Another key market sentiment indicator is the bid-ask ratio, which measures buying and selling activity in the Bitcoin derivatives market. Recently, this ratio has turned in favor of buying, indicating an increase in demand for Bitcoin derivatives and potentially indicating bullish sentiment in the market.
Cryptocurrency assets have shown strong resilience: In March, Bitcoin settled $650 billion and facilitated approximately 9 million transactions with an inflation rate of approximately 1.8%, stable and predictable. Approximately 26,000 new BTC were issued, attracting around 13 million new addresses and creating approximately $700 million for miners to protect the network. Despite the temporary decoupling of USDC, the DeFi ecosystem still remains resilient, and the Maker protocol, which uses USDC as collateral, is still functioning effectively. Bank savings in March decreased by 4.1%, the largest decline since 1948. The Federal Reserve has decided to raise the federal funds rate by a record 20 times in less than a year, indirectly leading to the bankruptcy of Silicon Valley Bank and crises in other regional banks. The Federal Reserve has increased its balance sheet by $300 billion, launched a loan relief plan for banks, and changed its quantitative tightening policy in the last six months.
Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are still performing well: During the period when Silicon Valley Bank went bankrupt, Bitcoin appreciated by 49%, from a low point of $19,500 on March 10 to $29,150 on March 30. As centralized and opaque traditional financial systems face crises, there is increasing demand for more transparent, auditable, and decentralized financial services. Regulatory agencies should not blame the bank crisis on cryptocurrencies, nor should they prevent the development of financial platforms that are decentralized, transparent, auditable, and free from centralized failure points. Instead, regulatory agencies should focus on the failures caused by the centralization of traditional banking systems. Despite the tightening of regulations and the frequent occurrence of bank failures, Bitcoin has remained unaffected and continues to grow, with a monthly increase (22.70%) even surpassing bonds (3.15%) and gold (7.78%). In March, Bitcoin's price rose by 23%, in contrast to the regional bank index.
There is a skyrocketing demand for more transparent, auditable, and decentralized financial services. Cryptocurrencies can serve as a solution to address the failures, opacity, and regulatory mistakes caused by centralization.
In terms of data this week, the US March Consumer Price Index (CPI), Producer Price Index (PPI), and retail sales month-over-month are worth watching. The US earnings season for stocks is starting, with the banking industry leading the way. Although the turmoil in the US regional banking industry has eased, the outside world is still paying attention to changes in US economic data.
The minutes of the March meeting of the Federal Reserve are worth paying attention to. Last month, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) announced a 25-basis-point rate hike, but the tone of the policy statement softened, removing the phrase "further gradual increases" would be appropriate. If the data permits, this change provides room for adjustment of tightening policies at the next meeting and suggests that rate hikes may be coming to an end. The focus of this meeting's minutes is the view on the regional banking industry crisis and the details of the discussion on pausing rate hikes.
Ethereum:
1.According to data from etherchain.org, in the past week, the Ethereum network produced 49,300 blocks, a 1% decrease compared to the previous week. The number of active addresses per week was 2,991,896, a 9.1% decrease compared to the previous week. Block reward income was 2,670 ETH, a 17.6% decrease compared to the previous week. The weekly ETH burn reached 19,851, a 1% increase compared to the previous week.
2.The total amount of ETH staked on the entire network is currently 18,019,110, with a staking rate of 14.96%. This represents an increase of 50,750 ETH in the past week. Looking at the distribution of holding addresses, exchanges account for 10.09%, a 0.17% increase compared to the previous week. DeFi projects account for 21.35%, a 0.01% increase compared to the previous week. The top 1000 addresses excluding exchanges and DeFi projects account for 33.68%, a 0.16% decrease compared to the previous week. Other addresses account for 34.88%, a 0.02% decrease compared to the previous week.
3.In March, the NFT market trading volume on Ethereum dropped to $1.37 billion, with the Blur platform once again surpassing OpenSea.
4.According to data from The Block Pro, a total of 92,057 ETH (approximately $151.9 million) was burned in March this year. ETH has been in a deflationary state throughout March. Since the implementation of EIP-1559 in August 2021, a total of 3.04 million ETH (approximately $9.17 billion) has been burned. The monthly trading volume of NFT markets on Ethereum fell by 26.3% to $1.37 billion. The monthly trading volume of the Blur platform once again surpassed OpenSea, mainly due to the launch of its BLUR token.
Ethereum Upgrade: The Shasper upgrade is expected to take place on April 12, 2023, at 22:27:35 UTC. The upgrade will allow validators to withdraw ETH from the beacon chain and bring new functionalities to the execution and consensus layers. The Shanghai upgrade is a change to Ethereum's Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism that stakers have been eagerly anticipating. This upgrade may have some impact on staking and could also affect the market demand for ETH. Therefore, it is important to have a clear understanding of the content of this Shanghai upgrade and its impact on your investment portfolio, whether you have already staked ETH, are considering staking ETH, or simply holding ETH.
The Shanghai upgrade for Ethereum is a hard fork scheduled for March 2023. The Shanghai fork will implement EIP-4895, which allows validators to withdraw ETH that they have held since December 2020. Currently, about 14% of ETH is held, equivalent to 16 million tokens, with a current value of over $26 billion.
Shanghai Fork also includes several other EIPs, mainly aimed at reducing the gas cost for Ethereum developers.
This fork notably does not include EIP-4844, which makes it easier to "shard" the Ethereum blockchain into multiple chains to promote scalability.
The Ethereum upgrade in Shanghai will be called the Shapella upgrade and is scheduled to take place on April 12th, 2023. One of the biggest developments related to the fork is that it will allow holders and validators to extract assets from the beacon chain. Shapella is a combination of "Shanghai" and "Capella," which are proposed Ethereum improvement proposals.
This has a significant impact as staked Ether accounts for about one-seventh of the total token supply, or around 16 million coins, with a total value of over $26 billion at the time of writing.
The exact impact of the Ethereum Shanghai upgrade will depend on individual circumstances. If you have directly used Ethereum or staked ETH through a staking product, you will be able to withdraw funds after this upgrade. However, not everyone stakes the minimum of 32 ETH, and many users have smaller amounts staked on liquidity staking platforms.
For traders, a major concern is that this upgrade could have an impact on the price of ETH. Of course, this impact is not certain. At the time of writing, staked ETH accounts for 13.81% of its total supply, based on staking rewards. After the upgrade, users will be able to withdraw, unlocking a significant amount of liquidity, and staked ETH owners will have the right to extract and sell their staked assets. The staked ETH percentage of total supply will need to be monitored by many traders and investors.
On the other hand, improved liquidity for staked ETH may be more attractive to users. Those who were originally reluctant to use liquidity staking protocols will now have the opportunity to stake ETH directly on Ethereum. Improvements in staking conditions may increase demand for ETH.
For users holding native tokens of liquidity staking platforms, the price of their tokens may also be affected. This is because the opening of Ethereum withdrawal functionality cancels out the unique functionality provided by ETH liquidity staking. Overall, allowing the withdrawal of staked ETH increases the freedom of the ETH market, and ETH holders may react to staking demand and supply to achieve market balance. This reduces the artificial control effect on ETH price and circulation, and should be considered a positive impact.
As of now, the total staked ETH 2.0 has exceeded 18.046 million, or 18,046,182, worth about $33.805 billion at current market prices. In addition, the total number of ETH 2.0 staking addresses has exceeded 580,403.
The Ethereum price has surged and then fallen back, hovering around the 1850 level of the previous volatility platform. The market may wait for the Shapella upgrade. After the upgrade, there may be significant selling pressure on Ethereum, part of which comes from withdrawals (i.e., accumulated interest over the years), about 84,000 to 125,000 ETH per day in the first 27 hours after the upgrade.
Then there is potential selling pressure, which comes mostly from withdrawals (interest) and complete withdrawals (32ETH), at 136,000 ETH and 173,000 ETH per day, respectively, from the third to the fourth day after the upgrade. Secondly, it comes mainly from complete withdrawals, lasting from 19 to 52 days, with a daily selling pressure of about 48,000-53,000 ETH.
The critical resistance level for Ethereum is around the previous volatility range of 1710. If this support is broken, the price may drop to around 1500 for support.
Concise version of macroeconomic data and key events in the cryptocurrency market preview:
April 10 (Monday)
ERG block reward decreases to 39 ERG.
April 11 (Tuesday)
DYDX unlocks 6,520,128 tokens, which accounts for 0.652% of the total supply.
FOMC permanent voter and New York Fed President Williams participate in economic discussion.
April 12 (Wednesday)
Hong Kong Web3 Carnival, Deepcoin CEO Ego and the CTO, CPO, and operation team will attend the exhibition.
APT unlocks 4.5 million tokens, approximately $52 million.
FOMC voters, Chicago Fed President Evans, and Philadelphia Fed President Harker give speeches.
BNB will undergo a hard fork upgrade code-named "Planck".
The US releases CPI data for March.
April 13 (Thursday)
Ethereum mainnet undergoes the Shanghai upgrade.
Rocket Pool, an Ethereum liquidity staking protocol, undergoes the Atlas upgrade.
The Fed releases minutes from its monetary policy meeting.
The US releases PPI and Core PPI data for March.
OPEC releases its monthly oil market report.
April 14 (Friday)
EOS EVM mainnet beta version goes live.
The US releases monthly retail sales rate for March.
April 15 (Saturday)
Huobi will announce the amount of HT destroyed in Q1 2023.
BIT unlocks 187,500,000.32 tokens.
Over the past week, the price of several altcoins have increased, with ALPINE/ERN rising by 44%-48%, and XVS/ELA/ALGD all rising by around 35%. This week, attention should be paid to the top four altcoins in terms of price increases, and whether there will be a pullback or a buying opportunity. Additionally, given the possibility of sector rotation, there may be an opportunity to allocate some positions towards the upcoming Shanghai upgrade. Short-term opportunities for buying into altcoins that have experienced large price increases may arise after an adjustment. Priority should be given to buying spot coins, as they have lower risks compared to futures contracts.
According to CoinMarketCap, Ethernity is ranked 293rd in terms of market capitalization. There are 15,471,054 circulating ERN, and a total supply of 30,000,000 ERN. The 24-hour trading volume for ERN is $2,749,503, with a 19.83% drop in price. In the past 24 hours, the price of ERN has increased by 0.42%.
XVS is the native BEP-20 governance token of the platform, mainly used for participating in platform governance, such as voting for product upgrades, adding new collateral types, adjusting platform parameters, and so on.
ALPINE is a BEP-20 utility token designed to completely change the fan experience for all BWT Alpine F1® Team fans. The token enables BWT Alpine F1® Team fans to join the team's voting, find digital collectibles, purchase NFTs, and enjoy gamified features related to fan rewards or experiences.
In the future, ALPINE will be used for gamified features, with ALPINE token holders able to access various gamified features on the Binance Fan Token platform.
ALPINE tokens are issued as native BEP-20 tokens on the Binance Smart Chain (BSC), providing BWT Alpine F1® Team fans with wider accessibility, more functions, and lower transaction costs.
Currently, the ALPINE daily chart encountered resistance at the previous high of 5.70 and fell back.
AGLD Loot is a randomly generated and stored on-chain adventurer equipment, and it is a community-driven NFT project. Adventure Gold (AGLD) is the governance token of the Loot project initiated by the community, and all Loot holders can receive AGLD token airdrops. Loot NFT holders (holding 1 Loot each) can apply for 10,000 AGLD, and AGLD tokens have been released.
AGLD stabilized and attacked the upper level, with resistance at the 0.65 level, caution is advised when chasing higher prices, and there is limited upside potential.
NKN is a unique peer-to-peer network based on blockchain technology. The NKN ecosystem is supported by a novel public blockchain that uses monetary incentives to encourage internet users to share network connections. This way, they can take advantage of unused bandwidth available to them. As one of the early adopters of advanced technology, NKN has always been an important part of the decentralized application revolution. With its increasing popularity among investors and the continuous development of new solutions, NKN's price may rise as it continues to create breakthrough inventions through its expanding network.
After NKN's big rise, it fell back after reaching a high, with the intraday short recovering all the gains. The probability of the coin price basically topping out is high, and the possibility of a future pullback is greater, with support at 0.097.
ANTAragon announced the first appearance of its new technology stack on the Polygon network.
Users will be able to quickly and safely create DAOs for as little as 50 cents without coding. They can also use Aragon's software and Polygon's second-layer blockchain to quickly build DAOs without any technical experience.
ANT prices encountered previous resistance, for short-term strong currencies, consider entering the spot market after a pullback, with support at 2.5-2.1 US dollars.
According to Lookonchain monitoring, a whale address (starting with 0x0db8) withdrew 1.85 million ARB from OKX. This address previously provided liquidity for ARB on Trade Joe and Uniswap.
ARB has been consolidating sideways for the past two weeks, and the market is trending towards a balanced state, with support at 1.1147 and resistance near 1.428.
GTC, RACA, DIA, MTL, and NKN have relatively concentrated chips. Pay attention to the main force's absorption and large-scale holdings, and look for suitable layout opportunities before the main force rises.
In terms of holding address changes, DOGE, HOOK, and STG have significant fluctuations, and need more attention in the future. These coins are on the long-term leaderboard, and on one hand, it is not easy to have new registered users during a bear market. On the other hand, it may be a behavior of data brushing by the project side, which needs to be avoided.
II. Concept ups and downs
The performance of the themed sectors is as follows, divided by the percentage of rise and fall. In the past seven days, the football, sports, and Defi2.0 sectors have led the way in terms of increase. Specifically, LAEEB had a rise of around 500%+ in the last 24 hours, while RAMP and BZRX had a rise of approximately 160%+. They belong to the football and SBF investment concepts, respectively. Pay attention to the rotation speculation of the sectors to which the above mentioned higher increase coins belong.
III. Overview of macro analysis
On April 7th, last Friday, the European, Canadian, and American stock markets were closed in observance of Good Friday. The global asset performance was affected by the increase in non-farm payroll data, raising the possibility of a May rate hike by the Fed, and causing a surge of more than 10 basis points in US bond yields. The two-year sensitive yield rate rose more than 17 basis points in the last trading session, approaching the 4% level, ending its five-day decline. The benchmark 10-year yield rate rose more than 12 basis points in the last trading session, hitting a daily high of 3.413%, recovering from Tuesday's decline. The DXY short-term index surged nearly 30 points to a daily high of 102.30, with a maximum increase of 0.5% on the day, rising for three consecutive days. Crude oil, gold, and LME London industrial basic metals did not trade on Good Friday.
The US added 236,000 new jobs in March (expected 239,000), the smallest increase since December 2020, with a prior value of 311,000. The unemployment rate slightly decreased to 3.5%, while the annual rate of average hourly wages of 4.2% (expected 4.3%) continued to fall. Analysis indicates that the latest non-farm report continues to demonstrate the stability of the job market. Considering that the deviation of employment data from the expected value is limited, this is not enough to change the Fed's established interest rate hike plan.
Last week, the international market was volatile, with several economic indicators showing a clear cooling trend in the US employment market and manufacturing activity. The main US stock indexes showed mixed gains and losses, with the Dow rising by 0.6%, the S&P 500 falling by 0.1%, and the Nasdaq falling by 1.1%. European stock indexes rebounded slightly, with the UK's FTSE 100 rising by 1.59%, Germany's DAX 30 rising by 0.49%, and France's CAC 40 rising by 0.85%.
Affected by the Qingming Festival and Good Friday, the Hong Kong stock market had only three trading days last week. The main Hong Kong indexes fluctuated downward, with the Hang Seng Index falling by 0.34%, the Hang Seng Tech Index falling by 1.54%, and the State-Owned Enterprises Index falling by 1.07%. The net inflow from southbound trading totaled HKD 9.776 billion in three days, with an average daily inflow of HKD 3.259 billion. The energy/raw material and diversified financial sectors had relatively large gains, while the automobile, consumer, and insurance sectors declined. The Hong Kong stock market was closed on April 10th (Monday) due to Easter Sunday.
In the A-share market, the Sci-Tech Innovation 50 Index led the gains with a weekly increase of 7.35%, while the Shanghai Composite Index rose 1.67%, the Shenzhen Component Index rose 2.06%, and the ChiNext Price Index rose 1.98%. Northbound capital had a net outflow of about CNY 3 billion. Mainstream funds mainly flowed into the semiconductor, securities, internet service, and communication equipment sectors, while the photovoltaic equipment, battery, brewing industry, automobile manufacturing, and chemical industry sectors saw outflows.
Overview of major financial data and events for this week:
Tuesday (April 11th): China's March CPI and PPI data, Eurozone's February retail sales, monthly rate;
Wednesday (April 12th): US March CPI annual rate and core CPI data;
Thursday (April 13th): Australia's March seasonally adjusted unemployment rate and employment population, China's March trade and import/export data, Germany's March CPI data, UK's February GDP monthly rate, Eurozone's February industrial output monthly rate, US initial jobless claims until April 8th, March PPI and core PPI data, OPEC's monthly crude oil
market report：
Friday (April 14th): China's March total social electricity consumption data, US March retail sales monthly rate, core retail sales monthly rate, import price index monthly rate, industrial output monthly rate, manufacturing output monthly rate, and Michigan University's preliminary consumer confidence index for April;
Saturday (April 15th): National Bureau of Statistics releases monthly report on housing sales prices in 70 large and medium-sized cities.
Central bank activities:
Tuesday (April 11th): FOMC permanent voters, New York Fed President Williams attend an economic seminar;
Wednesday (April 12th): 2023 FOMC voters, Chicago Fed President Guersbey speaks, 2023 FOMC voters, Philadelphia Fed President Harker speaks on the US economic outlook, 2023 FOMC voters, Minneapolis Fed President Kashkari participates in an event at the City Hall, Bank of England Governor Bailey speaks, Bank of Canada interest rate decision, Bank of Canada Governor and Senior Deputy Governor hold a monetary policy press conference.
Crypto market highlights:
Monday, April 10th:
Ergo (ERG) block reward decreases from 42 ERG per block to 39 ERG per block.
Tuesday, April 11th:
DYDX unlocks 6,520,128 tokens worth $16,495,924, accounting for 0.652% of the total supply.
04:15 (UTC+8), FOMC permanent voter, New York Fed President Williams attends an economic seminar.
Wednesday, April 12th:
APT unlocks 4.5 million tokens worth about $52 million.
01:30 (UTC+8), 2023 FOMC voter, Chicago Fed President Guersbey speaks.
06:00 (UTC+8), 2023 FOMC voter, Philadelphia Fed President Harker speaks on the US economic outlook.
13:30 (UTC+8), BNB Chain will undergo a hard fork upgrade called Planck at block height 27,281,024.
Thursday, April 13th:
Ethereum liquidity collateral protocol Rocket Pool undergoes Atlas upgrade.
Friday, April 14th:
EOS EVM mainnet beta version goes live.
Saturday, April 15th:
Huobi announces the amount of HT destroyed in the first quarter of 2023.
BIT unlocks 187,500,000.32 tokens, worth about $96 million at current prices.
2. Market News
Industry News
Key News of the Week:
1.Hotspot Tracking: Market Performance After the Launch of zkSync Era Mainnet
As the first zkEVM mainnet on Ethereum, since its launch just two weeks ago (as of April 10), the TVL of zkSync Era has exceeded US$100 million, with more than 350,000 addresses interacting with it. According to data from Dune Analytics, 102,072 ETH have already been transferred across the network, which has also spawned a series of first batch ecological projects, such as Derivio, SyncSwap, Velocore, veSync, etc. Additionally, the timing of zkSync Era's launch was coincidental, as it occurred when Arbitrum caused market sentiment and beat Polygon zkEVM to become the first zkEVM mainnet on the ZK Rollup track, thereby attracting more market attention.
However, zkSync Era has recently experienced two network operation failures. Firstly, on April 1, according to the zkSync Era blockchain browser, the mainnet experienced a downtime event. Later, the zkSync team confirmed on Twitter that the zkSync Era network was down for four hours between 1:52 and 6:02 am Central European Time. Then, on April 4, zkSync announced in its official Discord community that some users were experiencing deposit failures on the zkSync Era network, and the team expects to deploy a fix within the next 24 hours. From the above events and frequency, it can be seen that there is indeed a certain risk of operational instability in the zkSync Era mainnet at present. As a pioneer in the industry, all of this is currently understandable. However, as the market and technology further mature, network stability will become an important factor for success, whether it is zkSync Era, Polygon zkEVM, or other scaling solutions. Therefore, for zkSync Era, having a robust and stable operating network has become more urgent and necessary.
2.Binance Starts to Pay Attention to the Bitcoin NFT Ecology
On April 3 and 4, Binance's official Twitter account posted two articles about Ordinals and the Bitcoin NFT ecology, indicating that Binance has started to pay attention to the Bitcoin NFT ecology.
In fact, since the launch of the Bitcoin NFT protocol Ordinals on December 14, 2022, the Bitcoin NFT ecology and its Layer2 have become a new narrative that the entire market is paying attention to. Next, in addition to this issue's dynamic of Ordinals, I also tracked and sorted out some important events related to Bitcoin NFT.
March 9:
A Twitter user named Domo published the brc-20 protocol document based on Ordinals, which aims to explore the possibility of landing homogeneous tokens on Bitcoin. The first token based on the brc-20 protocol, Ordi, was deployed by Domo on March 8 and minted on March 10. Soon, off-site trading of Ordi began, and the trading price remained at $50/1000 Ordi at one point. Although brc20 is only an experiment, there are still many imperfect features, but this has sparked a frenzy of community pursuit. Today, there are thousands of tokens based on brc-20, and decentralized trading platforms like RelayX have also emerged.
On March 16th, the 1:1 version of Bitcoin Apes began to be minted on the Bitcoin network, with a cost of $100-$300 per Apes due to the large memory requirement. Despite this, all Apes were minted by March 28th. Some owners of the original Apes showed interest in owning a same-numbered Apes. As of April 4th, the floor price of Bitcoin Apes reached 0.23ETH.
On March 22nd, the well-known NFT trading platform Magic Eden announced the launch of its Bitcoin NFT trading market, which currently holds a market share of 36.9% of the Bitcoin NFT trading market.
On April 3rd, luxury car brand Bugatti tweeted about Bitcoin NFT, implying that it was going to issue NFTs on Bitcoin. Shortly after on April 4th, Bugatti announced on their official Twitter account that they would be collaborating with @AspreyLondon to release collectibles made of precious metals and corresponding generative NFTs on Bitcoin.
Since the release of Ordinals, there have been innovative explorations emerging within the Bitcoin ecosystem, which have received positive support from the community. The relevant infrastructure is also being rapidly improved. On the other hand, NFTs on Ethereum and other blockchains are also exploring the path of Bitcoin NFTs. In addition, international well-known brands such as Bugatti have already paid attention to Bitcoin NFTs and have explored combining collectibles with Bitcoin NFTs. In fact, relying on the security and scarcity of the Bitcoin blockchain, Bitcoin NFTs have unparalleled advantages in building consensus. It is believed that with more high-quality projects and brands entering the Bitcoin NFT ecosystem, the future of the Bitcoin ecosystem may see a "Ethereum moment" with a scarcity trait.
3.The rise and fall of Dogecoin due to Elon Musk's tweet
Last week, Twitter changed its logo from a blue bird to the Dogecoin emoji. Shortly after, Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, posted a photo with the Dogecoin emoji on Twitter. This move drew attention to Dogecoin in the market, causing it to rise by more than 20% in 24 hours. However, after the Twitter homepage logo changed back to the blue bird on April 7, Dogecoin fell, with a 7.86% drop in 24 hours.
During this period, according to data from on-chain analyst Lookonchain, two whales among the top five holders of Dogecoin sold about 1.4 billion DOGE (about $121 million). Specifically, the whale address starting with "DDuX" (the fifth-largest holder) sold 1.1 billion DOGE (about $95.2 million), while the whale address starting with "D8ZE" (the third-largest holder) sold 300 million DOGE (about $28.6 million).
From this series of events, it can be seen that the price fluctuations of Dogecoin are closely related to the change of Twitter logo and Elon Musk's tweets. As a top global tech entrepreneur and influencer, Musk's words and actions have a great impact on market sentiment, and the price fluctuations of Dogecoin under his Twitter influence are a clear example. At the same time, this influence also allowed two whales to successfully sell a large amount of Dogecoin in a short period of time, realizing asset liquidation.
This once again shows that market sentiment and the celebrity effect have a significant impact on the price of cryptocurrencies. Although the technical foundation and application scenarios of Dogecoin are relatively limited, its market performance is still remarkable under the promotion of the celebrity effect. However, such price fluctuations relying on celebrity effects undoubtedly increase investment risks for ordinary investors. In this case, investors need to be more cautious in judging market trends to avoid potential risks.
4.Japan releases Web3 whitepaper including NFTs, stablecoins, and DAOs to promote industry growth
On April 6th, according to CoinDesk, the Web3 project team of Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party approved a whitepaper proposing regulations for all Web3-related matters from non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs).
The Web3 whitepaper released by Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party shows that it is actively focusing on and supporting the development of cryptocurrencies and the blockchain industry, including NFTs, stablecoins, DAOs, etc. This whitepaper not only demonstrates government-level support but also provides a clear regulatory environment and laws for the industry, reducing market uncertainty, protecting the rights and interests of investors, and providing a more friendly investment environment for investors.
The whitepaper also emphasizes the importance of public-private partnerships, such as developing guidelines for legal business models of fantasy sports services and jointly sorting out data and NFT rights between public and private sectors. This will help promote innovation and development in the cryptocurrency and blockchain industry. In addition, the whitepaper mentioned that the Web3 minister is responsible for cooperation with other countries, which will help strengthen Japan's cooperation with other countries in the cryptocurrency and blockchain industry and jointly promote the development of the global industry.
Overall, the Web3 whitepaper released by the Japanese government will help promote the growth of the cryptocurrency and blockchain industry in Japan and around the world.
- The Decentraland virtual real estate purchased by singer JJ Lin has lost 91% of its value
According to recent data, Singaporean singer JJ Lin's virtual real estate purchased on the Decentraland platform has incurred a 91% loss, dropping from its purchase price of $123,000 USD to approximately $10,000 USD. This is mainly due to the median transaction price of the world's largest metaverse real estate sales platform, Decentraland, which has dropped nearly 90% from $45 USD in 2022 to $5 USD currently. At the same time, Lin's three virtual properties have very low popularity and are almost unnoticed.
This also reflects the volatility and uncertainty of the virtual real estate market. In the context of the booming metaverse, the bubble phenomenon in the virtual real estate market is becoming increasingly apparent. Some investors may have been too optimistic about the prospects of the metaverse, ignoring the fact that the market is still in its early stages and has a high degree of uncertainty in value assessment and demand forecasting. As the market gradually becomes more rational, the bubble in virtual real estate prices is gradually bursting, leading to a significant decline in prices.
In addition, popularity and practical application value of virtual real estate are also important factors affecting its price. Lin's three virtual properties purchased on the Decentraland platform have very low popularity, which means that the actual application value of these properties is limited. In the metaverse market, the value of virtual real estate largely depends on the actual benefits and experiences it can bring, which further leads to a decline in its price.
Investing in virtual real estate has high risks, and investors need to have sufficient understanding and judgment of the market and invest cautiously. The virtual real estate market is still in its early stages, and investors need to pay attention to market trends and policy directions in order to adjust investment strategies in a timely manner and reduce investment risks. Moreover, virtual real estate is more of a capital raising scheme, and investors need to be careful to distinguish and identify its true value.
Key financing events:
1.Polyhedra Network completed a $15 million Pre-A round of financing:
Polyhedra Network completed a $15 million Pre-A round of financing with Polychain Capital leading, and ABCDE, Sparkle Ventures, HashKey Capital, Foresight Ventures, Kucoin Ventures, NGC Ventures, and Arcane Group participating. On February 21, Polyhedra Network publicly disclosed that it had completed a $10 million financing round, led by Binance Labs and Polychain Capital, with participation from Animoca Brands and Dao5. In less than two months, the company again disclosed that it had completed a $15 million Pre-A round of financing, also with participation from a host of prestigious institutions. The reason Polyhedra Network frequently receives financing is mainly due to its ZK (zero-knowledge proof) technology, which requires a high technical threshold and has high potential, and can provide better solutions for the blockchain industry. ZK technology can directly prove that it knows a certain fact without revealing any information about the fact, which can bring many benefits in privacy protection, fraud protection, simplifying verification, and improving efficiency.
According to the official website of Polyhedra Network, the company will use ZK technology to build next-generation infrastructure for Web3 interoperability, scalability, and privacy. Currently, the company has launched the ZK cross-chain bridge solution zkBridge, which is a solution for sending assets between Web2 and Web3 systems, as well as ZK-DID, a decentralized identity solution, and a programmable NFT protocol-ZK-NFT. zkBridge has launched a testnet and a mainnet alpha version. It is the first cross-chain bridge protocol using zkSNARKs, which can achieve cross-chain communication, data transmission, and ecosystem collaboration for multiple Layer1 and Layer2 blockchains. According to Coindesk, Polyhedra Network plans to integrate zkBridge into more blockchain networks in the coming months and launch application programming interfaces (APIs) and software development toolkits (SDKs) to help developers build and collaborate.
Although cross-chain bridges face some obstacles in promoting the large-scale adoption of Web3, such as security risks, we believe that technical problems are not the ultimate problem. We look forward to Polyhedra Network building more confidence in the industry, and we also look forward to the zkSNARKs technology adopted by zkBridge challenging more impossible things in cross-chain interoperability.
2. DeFi platform M^ZERO completed a seed round financing of US$22.5 million:
M^ZERO recently completed a total financing of 225 million US dollars. The platform claims to employ next-generation technology to improve the efficiency and security of financial transactions.
Information about M^ZERO is currently very limited, with only limited disclosures provided on the official website and Coindesk press release. According to the disclosure, M^ZERO is a neutral value transmission framework, which aims to realize permissionless decentralized minting and institutional value transmission, and create a neutral infrastructure for payment flow. The protocol can be regarded as an infrastructure overlay on Ethereum, providing the function of exchanging value for global large-scale assets and liquidity providers, and supporting builders to build solutions. According to a Coindesk press release, Paul Veradittakit, managing partner of Pantera Capital, the leading investor in this round, said that M^ZERO hopes to achieve (decentralized finance) value distribution similar to what Visa, Mastercard and American Express do in terms of payment. . Therefore, I personally think that M^ZERO is positioned as a payment/value transmission/currency circulation agreement on the DeFi level, and allows participants to perform common governance and value transfer. The product is expected to be launched by the end of this year.
3. Astria, a modular blockchain, completed a $5.5 million seed round of financing:
Astria is a shared orderer network solution for modular blockchains, designed to replace the single centralized orderer that Rollup currently commonly relies on. It allows multiple Rollups to share a decentralized network of orderers that provides censorship resistance, fast confirmation, and atomic cross-Rollup composition while retaining the sovereignty of each Rollup. We can think of Astria's shared orderer network as a middleware blockchain with its own decentralized set of orderers that can accept transactions from multiple Rollups. These transactions are ordered into a block and written to the base layer without executing them. In addition, according to official disclosures, Astria is developing the Astria EVM, a Rollup based on the shared sorter network, designed to take advantage of the fast, censorship-proof transaction sorting of the shared sorter network and the data availability of Celestia to try to solve the problems faced by other EVMs. Limitations of scalability, performance and decentralization. The Astria EVM aims to power Celestia's Rollup ecosystem by acting as a liquidity and bridging hub within Celestia's data availability clusters. Astria's plans and progress in launching specific products are not yet known, so no further evaluation can be made on the actual performance and adoption of its products.
4. Full chain interoperability protocol LayerZero Labs:
LayerZero Labs completed a $120 million Series B round at a valuation of $3 billion, with participation from a16z Crypto, Christie’s Auction House, Sequoia Capital, Samsung Next, BOND, Circle Ventures, and OpenSea Ventures.
In order to better understand the LayerZero mechanism, LayerZero released an official introduction article called "LayerZero – An Omnichain Interoperability Protocol". This article introduces three different cross-chain communication methods for cross-chain bridges, including intermediate chains, on-chain light nodes, and ultra-light nodes. The intermediate chain can receive, verify and forward messages from different blockchains, but has the risk of a single point of failure, which may lead to the theft of assets on all chains. On-chain light nodes are the safest way to transmit messages, but they are also very expensive. Ultra-light nodes have the security of light nodes and the low cost of intermediate chains, and distribute block headers on demand through decentralized oracle machines, avoiding the cost of retaining all block headers. LayerZero is a full-chain interoperability protocol designed for cross-chain delivery of lightweight messages. It realizes cross-chain communication and data sharing through oracle and relay mechanisms, and can be used to achieve cross-chain state sharing, bridging, lending, Swap, governance and other application scenarios. From the current ecological projects of LayerZero, we can also see the diversification of its application scenarios. According to its press release, the protocol has currently delivered more than 2 million messages on more than 30 chains, including decentralized exchanges PancakeSwap, SushiSwap, TraderJoe, and Uniswap, and has locked a total value of more than $7 billion . The growth rate of LayerZero can also be seen from its financing situation. From the A round of financing to the current B round, in less than two years, its valuation has reached 3 billion US dollars. As far as the current development is concerned, LayerZero has demonstrated its potential in the field of cross-chain interoperability. It is expected that it can continue to expand the scale of adoption and further optimize the cross-chain experience under the premise of ensuring security and reliability, so as to jointly promote the next Contribute to the arrival of 1 billion Web3 users.
Detailed investment and financing events:
Last week (4.3-4.9) there were 35 investment and financing events in the global blockchain, an increase compared with the previous week; the total financing scale was about 308 million US dollars, a slight decrease compared with the previous week. The overview is as follows:
1. The popularity of DeFi has dropped slightly, and 5 investment and financing incidents have been announced, namely:
Swiss cryptocurrency startup SwissBorg completes $23 million Series A community financing;
DeFi platform M^ZERO completed a $22.5 million seed round of financing, led by Pantera Capital;
Nibiru Chain completed a US$8.5 million seed round of financing at a valuation of US$100 million, led by NGC Ventures and others;
The DeFi protocol Thala launched on the Aptos mainnet, raising USD 2.955 million;
Steer Protocol, a decentralized liquidity management platform, completed a $1.5 million seed round, led by Druid Ventures.
2. The chain game track has recovered, and 4 investment and financing incidents have been announced, namely:
Chain game RACA received USD 16 million in financing from DWF Labs;
The GameFi project Smart Finance completed a financing of 3 million US dollars, and the Web3 venture capital institution DWF Labs invested;
Chain game Yuliverse announced the completion of the seed round of financing, led by LIF;
DegenReborn received strategic financing from P12, CyberConnect, Galxe and Era7;
3. The popularity of the NFT and metaverse fields has risen slightly, and 5 financings have been announced, which are:
Ubox, a Hong Kong-based NFT trading platform, completed a US$7 million seed round of financing led by C² Ventures;
Social Future, a social metaverse company, completed $6 million in financing, with participation from Mask Network and others;
ENS Vision, the ENS trading market, completed a seed round of financing of US$2 million, led by 1confirmation;
Soccer metaverse project TOPGOAL received multi-million dollar investment from DWF Labs;
Metropoly, an NFT platform based on real estate assets, completed a $1.1 million pre-sale round of financing.
4. The popularity of the infrastructure and tools track has risen sharply, and 13 incidents have been announced, namely:
LayerZero completed its Series B financing of US$120 million at a valuation of US$3 billion, with participation from a16z and Sequoia Capital;
Polyhedra Network completed a PreA round of financing of US$15 million, led by Polychain Capital;
IOST received USD 10 million investment from BitValue Capital;
Alchemy Pay, an encrypted payment service provider, received a $10 million investment from DWF Labs;
Modular blockchain Astria completes $5.5 million in seed round financing led by Maven 11;
Satsuma, a blockchain data indexing platform, completed a $5 million seed round of financing;
Web3 co-ownership platform Lore closes $4 million funding round led by Multicoin Capital;
ZK-RaaS platform Opside completes USD 4 million in seed round financing, led by Web3.com Ventures;
Encrypted salary payment company Franklin completed a $2.9 million seed round of financing, led by CMT Digital and others;
Encrypted token research platform Kryptview completed $1.5 million in financing;
The first round of financing of KuCoin Wallet received support from HashKey Capital and others, and will be renamed Halo Wallet and operated independently;
Safeheron, a self-custody solution, completed the Pre-A+ round of financing led by Hashkey and Bixin;
Bitcoin wallet Mutiny Wallet completed a seed round of financing of over US$300,000, with participation from Ten31 and others.
5. Two investment and financing incidents were announced in the field of centralized finance, namely:
Acre completed a £6.5 million seed round of financing;
Dutch cryptocurrency exchange Finst has completed a $4.4 million seed round led by Sentillia, the parent company of Deribit.
6. Other Web3/encryption-related projects have cooled down, and 6 incidents have been announced, namely:
Delphi Labs completed $13.5 million in financing, led by P2P;
Zealy, a Web3 task platform, completed a US$3.5 million pre-seed round of financing, led by Redalpine;
Web3 platform Ecosapiens completes USD 3.5 million in seed round financing led by Collab+Currency;
Huddle01, a decentralized communication network, completed a $2.8 million seed round of financing;
Patientory, a blockchain health data wallet company, completed financing of US$1.5 million, with participation from BackStage Capital and others;
5G blockchain network Karrier One completed its first round of financing.
Industry Overview Author: Lao Li(Analyst) /Wu Ming(Analyst)
Market News Author: Leon (Analyst)
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