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BTC $96,420 +2.34% ETH $3,280 +1.82% SOL $185.40 -0.92% BNB $642.50 +0.45% XRP $2.18 +3.12% DOGE $0.082 -1.50% ADA $1.05 +0.80% AVAX $42.10 +1.15%
BTC $96,420 +2.34% ETH $3,280 +1.82% SOL $185.40 -0.92% BNB $642.50 +0.45% XRP $2.18 +3.12% DOGE $0.082 -1.50% ADA $1.05 +0.80% AVAX $42.10 +1.15%
09/28/2024

This Week's Industry Hot Takes and Must-Reads

01. The Crypto Market After the Rate Cut * The Market Recovery: Which Sectors Are Standing Out? * The Fed's Rate Cut — Is This the Sound of DeFi's Revival? * Expert Reports on "Bullish Signals" and "Reversal Signals" This month, with the Fed meeting on the horizon, market sentiment has quietly warmed — like a spring breeze clearing away the lingering gloom. The market fear index has finally broken free and returned to normal neutral levels. Beyond

This Week's Industry Hot Takes and Must-Reads

01. The Crypto Market After the Rate Cut

  • The Market Recovery: Which Sectors Are Standing Out?
  • The Fed's Rate Cut — Is This the Sound of DeFi's Revival?
  • Expert Reports on "Bullish Signals" and "Reversal Signals"

This month, with the Fed meeting on the horizon, market sentiment has quietly warmed — like a spring breeze clearing away the lingering gloom. The market fear index has finally broken free and returned to normal neutral levels. Beyond Bitcoin and Ethereum, which sectors are showing strong performance in this recovering market?

On-chain data: The total market cap of stablecoins has surpassed $172.2 billion, hitting a new high since May 2022, with a weekly gain of over 0.5%. CryptoQuant CEO Ki Young Ju posted on social media: "Institutions are no longer aggressively shorting Bitcoin. Over the past 5 months, net open interest in CME futures has dropped 75%."

The Fed's loosening monetary policy has created ideal conditions for DeFi to thrive.

From a macro perspective, DeFi's trajectory played out like this: In the early days of "DeFi Summer," early adopters had strong conviction in the transformative potential of the technology they were backing. For DeFi, this novel concept had the potential to fundamentally reshape the existing financial system. But as more participants entered the market, the hype peaked, and trading increasingly became driven by speculators chasing quick profits rather than anyone deeply invested in DeFi's underlying technology. After the frenzy crested, speculators dumped their DeFi tokens, prices fell, public interest in DeFi began to fade, and then the bear market arrived — followed by a prolonged period of stagnation.

As the rate-cut cycle begins, risk-on markets like crypto may be the first to benefit. For this reason, Foresight News invited veteran crypto traders, crypto exchange executives, and KOLs to share their insights on crypto trading.

Liang Li: From a product perspective, I think copy trading is ultimately designed to help retail investors make a profit. They enter the crypto market because there's a flood of information, but they don't have time to digest it all. They need analysis and learning support, but not everyone has the time or the ability to do that. So copy trading products are designed to fill that gap. We find skilled traders, we conduct thorough due diligence to ensure their historical trading data is legitimate, and we make credibility and transparency core metrics. We emphasize fairness — for example, with other copy trading products on the market, if you follow a trader and blow up your account, you not only lose your entire capital but you also owe the trader a hefty commission, which feels deeply unfair. Our copy trading product has one key innovation: we only share commissions when you generate overall profit, not when you're losing money. This way, copy traders feel more confident and are more likely to invest larger amounts, which in turn gives lead traders more confidence joining our platform — because they know our commission structure is fair to everyone, creating a genuine win-win. Finally, another differentiator with our reverse copy trading feature is that it gives both copy traders and lead traders more options. They can decide, based on their read of the market and their assessment of the lead trader's behavior, whether they think the trader's judgment is right or wrong — and choose to follow in either the positive or negative direction. This benefits both sides. For copy traders, they have more options; they can even specifically seek out famously "contrarian signal" lead traders and follow them in reverse. For lead traders, even when your trades are losing, the people following you in reverse are making money — and you can still earn a commission.

02. TOKEN2049 Retrospect

  • The Optimistic Case for 2049: The Birth of a New "Big Four," the Dawn of Mass Adoption, Crypto Enters the Mobile Era
  • TOKEN2049: The Temperature Gap Widens — the Strong Keep Getting Stronger
  • A Thousand-Word Glimpse Through TOKEN2049

Over 20,000 main attendees, 400+ booths, and 281 side events counted by Foresight News… This year's TOKEN2049 was an unprecedented success. Three editions of TOKEN2049, three era-defining cycles — Bitcoin stays the same, but we have changed.

The narratives shifted this year. NFTs and the metaverse dominated the conversation in '22, Ethereum L2 was the hot topic in '23, and now Solana, Base, TON, and BTCFi are the ecosystems drawing the most attention in '24.

The key players shifted this year. The crypto ecosystem is no longer dominated by American projects — Americans, Russians, and Chinese builders have all carved out their own stages in crypto. Ethereum is no longer the unchallenged hegemon; the rise of Solana and TON has convinced many that they stand a real chance of competing with — or even surpassing — Ethereum.

Capital shifted this year. The era when you could just attend one meeting in '23 and walk away with your Series A is over. Many founders realized that few investment institutions are sitting on significant dry powder this year, and they've had to look to Europe and the US to find funding.

Three years of TOKEN2049, three entirely different crypto industries. Bitcoin remains unchanged — but the crypto industry has transformed dramatically.

The heat across crypto sectors has started to diverge. Some tracks are becoming more sought-after than ever, while others technically still exist but are functionally dead. Solana, Base, TON, and BTCFi — these four ecosystems have become the new "Big Four" of the crypto industry in the eyes of many insiders.

Kay, Head of Hashkey Chain, said his immediate takeaway from attending TOKEN2049 was: "Chinese entrepreneurs have become much more confident."

At Token2049 in 2022, Chinese builders still called themselves "the Jews of Web3" — feeling inferior and insecure, like trees without roots, anxious about having no home base in Asia, worried about being shut out by Western capital and ecosystems, caught in a no-win dilemma.

But at Token2049 in 2024, Chinese entrepreneurs were noticeably more relaxed and self-assured. After talking with Chinese and European builders at Base, Solana, and TON, the author found that a large proportion of developers and founders across all three ecosystems came from Asian communities — and in the BTCFi track, the Chinese community was outright dominant.

This year, the world's attention is no longer locked exclusively on the US-dominated crypto ecosystem. The Asian crypto community — with major hubs in Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, and South Korea — has become the new global innovation center of the crypto industry.

This year's Token2049 in Singapore remained electric and buzzing, widely regarded as the undisputed "Crypto World New Year." The difference is that builders within high-momentum ecosystems have become more confident and decisive, while others have grown more uncertain.

Through the voices and emotions of crypto insiders, we catch a glimpse of what lies ahead for crypto.

Forest, Co-founder of Foresight Ventures: This Token2049 has made many overseas institutions and projects far more aware of Asia's potential and opportunities — thanks to strong performances from Asian projects and friendly regulatory policies. I also saw entrepreneurs who are still building genuine long-term value, which is a healthy sign for the market. The rules of the game have clearly changed: real-world applications, real users, and revenue will become the benchmarks going forward.

Dr. Lin Han, Founder & CEO of Gate.io: Singapore, as one of the world's major financial hubs, has a very high crypto penetration rate — one in four people has been exposed to crypto. It's also an important crossroads between Eastern and Western cultures, so it's no surprise this crypto industry summit was so lively. I was happy to reconnect with many old friends and meet new ones this time; everyone is bullish on crypto, and the variety of creative ideas was exciting. Hot topics this year included TON, the Solana ecosystem, stablecoins, and more. I was fortunate to be invited to a few sharing sessions — personally, I believe there will definitely be greater technological breakthroughs and development ahead, driving the industry's continued prosperity. ...

03. Industry Reports

  • Bitcoin: A Barometer for Global Liquidity
  • Who Are the Top 10 Largest Bitcoin Holders?
  • Fortune Magazine: Who Is the Basis Founder Who Allegedly Deceived a16z Twice?
  • Fortune Magazine: Who Sold Trump a "Bitcoin Burger"?

Investors need to understand how to measure global liquidity and how different assets respond to shifts in liquidity conditions in order to better navigate these liquidity-driven markets. Of all the major asset classes, Bitcoin has the highest correlation with global liquidity.

Bitcoin's direction is linked to global liquidity 83% of the time over any 12-month window — a higher rate than any other major asset class — making Bitcoin a true barometer of liquidity.

However, Bitcoin's strong correlation with global liquidity doesn't make it immune to short-term deviations caused by idiosyncratic events or internal market dynamics.

Combining global liquidity conditions with Bitcoin's on-chain valuation indicators can provide a more nuanced understanding of Bitcoin's cycles, helping investors identify situations where internal market dynamics may decouple Bitcoin from global liquidity trends.

Over the past decade, a massive amount of Bitcoin has flowed into centralized exchanges, public and private companies, governments, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), and derivative token projects like WBTC. This piece digs into the 10 entities holding the most Bitcoin.

Coinbase holds 1,051,650.41 BTC — worth $66.4 billion — spread across 145,491 addresses. Binance is the second-largest Bitcoin holder, with 765,072.92 BTC across 120,528 addresses. Bitfinex comes in third, holding 359,687.52 BTC across 2,161 wallets. Ranked fourth is BlackRock, holding 357,550.21 BTC across 760 addresses. Notably, BlackRock's Bitcoin is held in custody by Coinbase Custody.

Al-Naji founded both Basis and BitClout — both of which he claimed to abandon within months of launch. In one sense, Al-Naji's story is just another tale of a crypto mogul deceiving his backers. But it also raises a deeper question: how did Diamondhands manage to fool some of the supposedly "smartest money" in Silicon Valley? At the same time, it puts Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) — the most prominent of those investors — in an awkward position: at once a victim of the alleged fraud and a witness for the prosecution.

In mid-July of this year, Al-Naji was arrested in Los Angeles and charged with fraud in federal court. Mariotti said that if Al-Naji is convicted, he could face 3 to 6 years in prison. Court documents show that Al-Naji's lawyers — hired from several top law firms — are in negotiations with the Department of Justice, but no deal has been reached and no formal plea has been filed against the criminal charges as of yet.

For now, Al-Naji appears unconcerned about his legal situation. When asked to share his perspective on the matter, he politely declined.

"I really want to help, but I have to be careful right now. That said, I believe this will be a thoughtful article, and I'll definitely be in touch as soon as I'm able to tell the full story," he replied on Telegram.

In the meantime, he has been very active on a new social media platform called Diamond, with fans worried that his arrest could delay the anticipated launch of a token called Focus. He has tried to calm those concerns through a series of videos and text posts, one of which suggested that the US government's charges against him are a mistake that will be cleared up.

"But after some reflection and discussion, the impact of this event is unclear — and may even be positive. On one hand, if there are negative reports following us when we launch Focus, that could hurt people's willingness to share the app. On the other hand, it would also bring it to more people's attention," Al-Naji wrote.

Pacchia was Fidelity's first outside hire with Bitcoin expertise, and he is now focused on a Bitcoin-themed bar — having positioned PubKey, a Bitcoin-themed bar, as a campaign venue for Donald Trump's election campaign team.

Two years ago, Pacchia founded PubKey, envisioning it as a neighborhood bar in the West Village, a few blocks from Washington Square Park. He wanted his bar to be a place where people could drink beer and discuss monetary policy and politics — the way the Founding Fathers did 250 years ago.

So it was no surprise when a future president paid an unannounced visit. PubKey had previously hosted politicians like Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, and Pacchia had extended invitations to other presidential candidates, including Kamala Harris.

But the details of Trump's visit were more jaw-dropping than anyone expected. Pacchia found out about it just one week before it happened, spending four hours a day with the Secret Service developing a reception plan that included covering skylights and positioning nearby snipers. "It was insane," Pacchia told Fortune the day after Trump's visit, while bar staff scrambled to return to normal operations.

04. Project Watch

  • Decoding Walrus: Sui's New Decentralized Storage Solution
  • Pipe: How to Build a Decentralized Content Delivery Network in Three Minutes?
  • Firedancer, the Breakpoint Standout — What Is It?

Decentralized storage network Arweave launched its AO computing layer, successfully reigniting a revival in AR's price, ecosystem, and overall momentum — a genuine comeback. Sui, as a general-purpose computing chain, is now launching its own decentralized storage network, Walrus. What waves will it make?

Walrus has introduced RedStuff, a brand-new 2D erasure coding algorithm designed specifically for Byzantine fault tolerance. RedStuff is built on fountain codes, combining the advantages of fast operations and high reliability.

RedStuff encodes data into primary and secondary shards through simple operations (primarily XOR, or exclusive OR). These shards are distributed across storage nodes, with each node holding a unique combination. For different encoding dimensions, RedStuff uses different thresholds. The primary dimension uses a recovery threshold of f+1, enabling asynchronous writes — since only 2f+1 signatures are needed to prove that a data blob is available — resulting in a 3x replication factor.

Recently, content delivery network Pipe Network completed a $10 million funding round led by Multicoin. The Pipe Network uses a decentralized CDN to address these challenges, delivering better performance and scalability through its permissionless infrastructure.

At last week's Solana Breakpoint conference, the atmosphere was electric — ecosystem products launched in rapid succession, and a packed schedule of colorful side events made for a standout celebration. The particular highlight was the official mainnet landing of an early version of the Solana Firedancer validator client — a milestone that drew special attention. It marks a qualitative leap in Solana's network performance, while also mitigating the risk of a single-client failure bringing the entire Solana network to a halt.