Crypto Investment Research Weekly Report (0226-0303): Mainstream coins lead the rise, followed by meme coins.

Introduction:

Over the past week, more than $2 billion in new funds have flowed into ETF products. As BTC’s rebound continues, its strong momentum has surprised many market participants, and long holders are immersed in the carnival of continued gains. However, it should be noted that the funding rate has averaged over 30% in the past seven days, making it very costly to hold long positions. High financing rates and the extension of perpetual open positions may pose risks to the rally.

1. Investment and Financing Observation

**Last week (02.26-03.03), a total of 23 investment and financing events occurred in the crypto market, with a total investment and financing amount of approximately US$800 million disclosed: **

**Six investments and financings were announced in the DeFi field, ** among which Ether.Fi completed US$23 million in Series A financing, led by Bullish Capital and CoinFund;

**NFT and Metaverse fields announced an investment and financing, **NFT project Imaginary Ones completed a new round of financing, and Animoca Brands and others participated in the investment;

**Two investments and financings were announced in the blockchain gaming field. ** Among them, blockchain gaming infrastructure company READYgg completed a new round of financing of US$4 million, with participation from Delphi Digital and others;

**13 investments and financings were announced in the field of infrastructure and tools, ** among which the Ethereum expansion project Taiko completed a US$15 million Series A financing, with participation from Hashed and others;

**Seven investments and financings were announced in other Web3/encryption-related fields, **among which Octav, a blockchain data analysis company, announced that it had received US$4 million in strategic investment;

**The centralized financial field announced 1 investment and financing, **Encryption exchange Backpack completed a US$17 million Series A financing at a valuation of US$120 million;

The number of investment and financing transactions in the cryptocurrency market increased slightly last week, and they were concentrated in the direction of infrastructure and DeFi: 9 transactions in the infrastructure field, 3 transactions in the asset management field, 6 transactions in the DeFi field, 1 transaction in the blockchain game and NFT field, and 3 transactions in the Web3 field ; Among them, there are 5 million-dollar financings, including Polygon modular blockchain project Avail, DePIN infrastructure MXC, Backpack.exchange exchange and its ecological projects, liquidity re-pledge protocol ether.fi and AI robot company Figure .

Undisclosed financing amount project

No need to trust the full-chain ledger protocol Cycle Network, Taproot asset issuance protocol Flash Protocol, Babylon, Blast ecological DeFi project Ring Protocol, liquidity protocol Aerodrome, decentralized lending protocol Morpho Labs and Humanity Protocol undisclosed financing amounts.

About Ether.fi

Ether.fi is a decentralized, non-custodial delegated mining protocol with Liquid Staking derivative tokens. A distinctive feature of Ether.fi is that delegators control their own keys. In addition, the Ether.fi mechanism also allows the creation of a node service market, where delegators and node operators can register nodes to provide infrastructure services and share the revenue from these services with delegators and node operators.

About Backpack

Backpack is the next generation cryptocurrency exchange and multi-chain wallet. Backpack's technology provides a self-hosted solution that integrates multi-party computation (MPC) technology to keep funds safe.

The Backpack ecosystem consists of a variety of products and services, including the popular Backpack non-custodial wallet, Backpack Exchange, a regulated global crypto trading platform, and Solana ecological blue-chip NFT Mad Lads. At the same time, Backpack is also the creator and developer of Anchor, Solana smart contract framework, executable NFT (xNFT) token standard, etc.

2. Industry data

Multiple data on the chain hit new highs

DefiLlama data: DeFi lending TVL across the entire network has returned to above US$30 billion and is currently approximately US$32.289 billion, setting a new high since June 2022.

L2BEAT data: The current total locked-up volume (TVL) of Ethereum Layer 2 is US$33.83 billion, an increase of more than 10% in the 7th day, reaching a record high. In addition, the over-the-counter price of USDT has risen to 7.4 yuan. The current exchange rate of USD to RMB is 7.2 yuan, and the USDT premium rate has reached 2.7%.

Spot leads the market, MeMe currency market inspires

In the market performance last week, the spot buyers of mainstream currencies were very strong; derivatives data also became active, leading to a gradual increase in market leverage levels; MeMe currency was stimulated last week after nearly a month of momentum; the overall market showed The market sentiment is driven by the spot bull market, and there is a greater expectation of accelerating the upward trend.

Judging from the actual performance, the current rising market is a very typical spot market, but even in the current atmosphere of extreme FOMO, the IV of the main periods has not even reached a recent high, and it is a downward trend in the long term. Obviously, Fomo sentiment still cannot push IV to take off, which is a very good phenomenon for the options market. The Bitcoin options market has matured, and investors need to pay attention and refer to the sudden plunge in the bull market.

Uniswap proposal support rate 100%

Uniswap opened the fee switch activation voting last week. The voting is expected to end on March 7, 2024. The number of votes currently in favor has reached 12 million, and the approval rate is as high as 100%. According to calculations based on past votes on snapshots, the approximate number of participating votes will be between 10M-30M, and the final probability of passing the vote is more than 90%. But even if the vote is passed, UNI has only confirmed to turn on the fee switch, and the specific rate has not yet been decided.

In addition, as the UNI token hit a record high in the past year, its market value also reached US$9.4 billion, and FDV reached US$12.5 billion. Judging from the data on the chain, institutions are still optimistic about the subsequent market trend and have not found any reduction in holdings.

With the proposal gaining traction, several other projects such as Frax are considering following suit, and if this trend continues across other mature DeFi protocols, we think it could start to bring clarity to previously speculative token valuations degree and foundation, especially for tokens and protocols that generate sustainable fees.

Smart money adds to $BEAM

Last week, in addition to LRT track projects that continued to receive additional holdings from Smart Money, additional projects included Matic and BEAM (nearly US$9 million).

Benefiting from the influx of large amounts of funds, BEAM currency prices reached a record high, with a market value of US$1.77 billion and FDV of US$2.137 billion.

In addition, it can be seen that there are a large number of VCs holding currency in this project. Currently, with the rise, none of these VCs have sold.

Comprehensive analysis shows that the price increase of BEAM this time is mainly due to the narrative blessing of the gaming track, but its main business still relies on investment income (annualized at about 18%). It has not yet seen a bright ecology, and investors need to be cautious when entering. .

About BEAM

BEAM's predecessor is Merit Circle, which is a decentralized DAO chain game guild built on Ethereum and BSC. BEAM is a game chain built on AVAX in August last year. At the same time, its native token $MC can also be exchanged for $BEAM at a ratio of 1:100.

MC has always had its own thoughts on the empowerment of tokens. As a union, it used to focus on unsustainable gold farming. Because games have their own play cycles, this model continued to improve, and later it gradually converted The model of repurchasing and burning tokens with the proceeds from investment covers multiple links of the game industry chain from incubation, investment to infrastructure, and establishes its own game chain BEAM.

**3. **Part of VC holdings data

Note: The above data source, statistical time: 12:00 on March 4, 2024 (UTC+8).

4. Follow this week

March 4th

• CoinList will conduct a public sale of the MASA token of the decentralized data network Masa, and registration will close today;
• MOBOX airdropped 600 ETH to MODragon NFT holders on March 4, and the snapshot was completed on February 29;
• Registration for the 2024 Global Online Hackathon jointly organized by the Solana Foundation and the venture fund Colosseum has opened. Event information and entry entrance will be opened on March 4;
• South Korean telecom giant KT will close its non-NFT platform MINCL from March 4 due to changes in business conditions;

March 5

• The SEC’s decision on Fidelity’s spot Ethereum ETF proposal will be postponed until March 5;
• 657,000 Liquity tokens LQTY will be unlocked at 8:00 on March 5, worth approximately US$1.16 million, accounting for 0.69% of the circulating supply;
• AltLayer will issue the first quarter ALT airdrop to Celestia pledgers, and the deadline for users to receive it is 16:00 on March 5;
• Puffer Finance will update the EigenLayer points and pufETH points policy from 16:00 on March 5. Only users who pledge before the deadline announcement on February 9 are eligible to earn EigenLayer points;
• 2.03 million Galxe tokens GAL will be unlocked at 8:00 on March 5, worth approximately US$6.98 million, accounting for 2.26% of the circulating supply;

March 6

• Fed Chairman Jerome Powell testifies before the House Financial Services Committee;
• L2 Network Mint Blockchain plans to officially launch the test network and simultaneously announce 30 ecological partners that will be supported by the launch;
• SingularityNET (AGIX) will unlock 8.97 million tokens at 8 a.m., worth approximately $6.8 million;

March 7

• European Central Bank announces interest rate decision;
• U.S. initial jobless claims data for the week;
• Fed Chairman Powell delivers semi-annual monetary policy testimony before the Senate Banking Committee;
• Frax Finance will airdrop FXTL points to veFXS stakers based on the veFXS balance at 7:59 on March 7, Beijing time. In the second week after this airdrop, the Flox mechanism will be online, and users will earn from each block integral;
• Voting for Uniswap protocol governance proposals ends on March 7, and on-chain voting will be released on March 8;
• 13.62 million Hashflow tokens HFT will be unlocked at 8:00 on March 7, worth approximately US$6.47 million, accounting for 3.83% of the circulating supply;

March 8

• U.S. unemployment rate in February;
• US non-farm payroll data for February;
• CoinList will launch the public sale of the decentralized data network Masa token MASA at 00:00 on March 8;
• Mantle stopped supporting the Goerli testnet on March 8 and recommended users to migrate to Sepolia; *BounceBit, the native Bitcoin staking chain, will launch the testnet on March 8. BounceBit stated that users who register an account and deposit $100 can receive BounceClub (formerly BounceBox) when the testnet is launched;

March 9

• DeGate is open to receive 40 million DG from the Key exchange DG activity, and plans to start social media token offering (Social Token Offering) within 60 days;
• SEC postpones decision on Ethereum spot ETF submitted by BlackRock to March 10;

5 Conclusion

In the past week, the crypto market has continued to show strong vitality, from the rebound of Bitcoin to the development of DeFi and NFT projects, all reflecting the rapid progress of the industry and the active participation of market participants. In particular, investment and financing activities in the infrastructure and DeFi fields have remained highly active for many consecutive weeks, demonstrating the industry's continued investment and confidence in the development of future technologies and services.

In terms of industry data, the spot market is leading the market, and the performance of the derivatives market also indicates that a new cycle is coming; Uniswap’s fee switch proposal has a 100% support rate, and may inspire other protocols to follow up; smart money is investing in projects such as BEAM The increase in holdings reflects the market's recognition of potential projects. As the crypto market continues to mature, attention and expectations inside and outside the industry are increasing dramatically. It seems that all voices are shouting that the bull market has returned and the road ahead is exciting.

In the coming week, there will be a number of noteworthy events and proposal votes. It is recommended to focus on the Uniswap fee switch vote and the SEC’s decision on the ETF proposal, and be wary of potential risks such as high financing rates and open positions in perpetual futures products. , as well as the market leverage issues that may be hidden behind the active data of various derivatives, actively adapt to the changes, and participate in and welcome this wave of bull market together.