“Editor’s Picks of the Week” is a “functional” section of Odaily Planet Daily. While Odaily Planet Daily covers a lot of real-time news every week, it also publishes many high-quality in-depth analysis articles that may be hidden in the information flow and hot news, passing you by.
Therefore, our editorial department will select some high-quality articles worth reading and collecting from the content published in the past 7 days every Saturday, bringing you new inspiration from the perspectives of data analysis, industry judgment, and opinion output in the encrypted world.
Now, let’s read together:
Investment and Entrepreneurship
In-depth research: The subtle relationship between BTC spot ETF and CME record short positions
At the end of 2017, when CME officially launched BTC futures trading, it coincided with the end of the bull market in 2017.
As of now, CME’s total open interest in BTC futures has reached 150,800 BTC, equivalent to about 10 billion US dollars, accounting for 28.75% of the entire BTC futures market share. The current BTC futures market is no longer controlled by traditional cryptocurrency exchanges and retail investors but has fallen into the hands of professional traders in the United States.
CME’s futures premium fluctuates in a regular pattern with each monthly contract expiry (automatic rollover to the next month’s contract), similar to the basis of the traditional cryptocurrency exchanges’ futures contracts. They tend to have higher premiums when contracts are generated and gradually flatten out as contracts approach expiration.
Hedge funds or institutions have been buying large amounts of US stocks ETFs and opening an equal amount of short positions on CME, conducting a risk-free fixed arbitrage once a month, achieving a stable return of at least 12.7% annually.
Crypto Investment J-Curve Rule: Achieving maximum returns when enthusiasm fades
Top Guide: How to master the selling timing in a major market uptrend?
When users flock to download Coinbase to buy coins, the top characteristics are already evident.
BTC’s monthly chart struggles to break the record of 7 consecutive increases.
Observe BTC unrealized profit/loss, HODL supply, long-term trend indicators MVRV Z-Score, Bitcoin contract open interest, Ethereum Gas fees, social media activity, psychological price levels, etc.
Who is making money in this bull market? Who is making money in this bull market?
Bitcoin holders, CEX, Tether, CeFi platforms, some public chain and DeFi project operational teams, and coin projects with a main goal of selling coins (retail investors should avoid).
Why are altcoins performing poorly in this cycle?
Concerns about token inflation behind the surge of new projects. Insufficient new liquidity entering the market leads to significant dilution and selling pressure when tokens unlock.
In response, exchanges can enhance the fairness of token distribution; teams can prioritize community distribution and larger funds for real users; and higher percentages can be unlocked during token issuance (possibly implementing measures such as graduated sales taxes to prevent dumping).
During a lackluster market, consider this stablecoin appreciation strategy
The article mainly introduces using major DeFi protocols to implement low-risk, high-yield income strategies with stablecoins, covering the Ethereum, Solana, Starknet, Scroll, Aptos, and Sui ecosystems.
Also recommended: “LUCIDA: How do crypto quant fund managers generate Alpha?” “Hunters’ Strategy: How meme coins snipers achieve hundredfold returns?” “On-chain smart money tracking: Collection of 10 top value coin holders’ addresses”.
Deciphering Airdrops: How do FDV and token economics affect token prices?
In recent years, the launch of FDV has varied: the median in 2020 was $140 million (DeFi protocols), soaring to $14 billion in 2021 (NFTs, gaming), dropping in 2022 (L2 at $8 billion). Rebounding in 2023 and 2024 ($24 billion and $10 billion), featuring alt L1 and Solana projects.
FDV overlooks short-term market shocks; therefore, circulation (public supply) is crucial. Tokens with high FDV and low circulation like World Coin ($8 billion vs. $340 billion FDV) may distort true valuations.
Tokens distributed through airdrops to promote protocol adoption are often quickly liquidated by recipients. While initial profits may be lucrative, most airdropped tokens tend to depreciate in the long run, except for outliers like BONK (with a return rate of about 8 times).
Airdrop
Controversial ZKSync airdrop reveals the dilemma of Web3 project cold start
Looking back at Optimism and Arbitrum, interaction frequency is often used as a key metric in specific activity settings, where users with higher interaction receive more rewards. However, this unwritten rule seems to have been abandoned by ZKSync. ZKSync’s reward calculation does not involve interaction frequency but focuses more on the amount of funds in individual accounts and the willingness to stake risk assets.
Intense interaction brings about the problem of front-running, while proof of stake brings about monopolistic issues. For Web3 projects, careful consideration of the value user profile for their own products and designing corresponding mechanisms based on the current environment is essential to effectively incentivize value users while avoiding front-running.
Which projects invested by VCs are more likely to distribute airdrops?
a16z: 15/169 = 8.87%; Paradigm: 10/92 = 10.86%; Binance Labs: 19/216 = 8.79%; Coinbase Ventures: 25/394 = 6.34%; DragonFly Capital: 25/149 = 7.38%.
Also recommended: “The four-year history of the cryptocurrency industry’s grassroots development”.
Bitcoin and its ecosystem
Can Bitcoin become a productive asset?
Bitcoin is undergoing a remarkable evolution, and there are multiple views on its nature.
Considering the ideal Bitcoin-based income product, the gold standard product will combine three key features: local Bitcoin consensus, local Bitcoin assets, and local Bitcoin income. Such a product will mimic near-perfect alignment with Bitcoin.
Ethereum and scalability
Interpreting Pectra: Ethereum’s next upgrade
Pectra is planned to be launched in the fourth quarter of 2024 or the first quarter of 2025, combining two previous planned upgrades: Prague (for execution layer) and Electra (for consensus layer).
By merging, Pectra aims to bring several ambitious improvements to Ethereum, making it more flexible and optimized than ever before. Regular Ethereum accounts will be more programmable, L2 will be more affordable, smart contracts will be more efficient, and validators will manage more flexible.
Investing in L2 vs. investing in ETH: which has a brighter future?
Despite the increasing number of listed L2s, their total fully diluted valuation (FDV) as a percentage of ETH remains unchanged.
Every new L2 token listing actually dilutes the valuation of previously listed L2 tokens.
Multi-ecosystem and cross-chain
Comprehensive exploration of Solana’s ecosystem development: the impact of L2 and application chains
Application chains do not pay fees in SOL or use SOL as a transaction fee token, so they do not directly contribute value to SOL unless it is re-staked for economic security purposes, but their benefits to the SVM ecosystem are evident. Just like the network effect of EVM, more SVM forks and application chains will strengthen the network effect of SVM.
For Solana, Rollup will largely be abstracted for end users.
Unlike Ethereum, the Solana mainnet does not intend to become a “B2B chain”; it has always been and will always be a consumer chain.
With the traffic dividend, can Solana wallets bring out new players?
There is not much space left for new players in Solana wallets. Phantom and Backpack’s position is difficult to shake. The new opportunity for Solana wallets lies in the directions that leading projects are unwilling to explore, such as focusing on embedded scenarios, developer orientation, serving enterprise users, and being Web2 friendly, to narrow down the user base to vertical directions.
Beyond wallets, the “traffic entrance” dividend is still present. In the process of the most dazzling two Solana ecosystem meme coins, BOME and SLERF, the tg bot of the Solana ecosystem has received huge dividends.
Compared with Ethereum and Solana, what else does TON’s DEX need? TON’s performance and pressure-bearing capacity are the only ones that can be compared with Solana among all public chains. However, TON’s ecology is a combination of Web2 mode and Web3 mode. This combination will fade Web3 in usage and delve into Web3 technically.
If Telegram Wallet takes on the CEX experience, TON Space and DEX can interact on the PC and mobile ends. Finally, Telegram’s Mini App and Bot will also serve as the trading front end for DEX or CEX functions. These designs satisfy the optimization in the trading experience, but the backend native interaction on the chain is evidently lagging behind.
The DeFi solution designed for the Telegram Mini App, and LayerPixel incubated by TON public chain’s launchpad TonUP, are expected to supplement the functions of TON DEX.
CeFi
Moving towards Mass Adoption, exploring the intrinsic logic of Paypal’s stablecoin payments
Paypal’s shift to Crypto is quite simple: it meets the needs and is practical (fast, cheap, and global payments). PYUSD is building a truly stablecoin commercial scenario, providing mainstream consumers and businesses with a frictionless and trustworthy payment experience.
Paypal divides the evolution of Mass Adoption into three stages: cognitive awakening (concept introduction); payment utility (integration); ubiquitous (stablecoin payments).
Understanding Tether’s new platform Alloy: a new synthetic dollar platform supported by XAU₮
Tether has announced the launch of the open platform “Alloy by Tether”, allowing the creation of different bound assets supported by Tether Gold. Vaults are the core of Alloy by Tether and can be used to store user collateral, unissued aUSD₮, and user collateral forging positions (CMP) information. The Vault will set specific liquidation thresholds based on the liquidation point or maximum MTV. The liquidation point is set at 75%.
The uniqueness of aUSD₮ lies in its over-collateralization by Tether Gold (XAU₮), supported by real physical gold stored in Switzerland, meaning users can use XAU₮ as collateral to mint aUSD₮ through Ethereum smart contracts.
GameFi
IOSG Ventures: Delving into the Crypto Game’s sinking market, exploring the competitiveness behind Ronin
The knowledge of project parties, VCs, players, and retail investors differs greatly: VCs think it’s a full-chain game and that it’s a groundbreaking gameplay innovation, project parties think it’s AAA, exchanges think it’s Web2 user increment, players think it’s earning in-game resources, and retail investors think it’s high multiples.
However, Crypto natives turn a blind eye to this very Web2 logic. The core competitiveness of chain games lies in the Southeast Asia’s ground promotion channel/localized operation capabilities. In addition to game players, there is a very complex business ecosystem around P2E games, such as Internet cafes, gold-making guilds, chain game education media, software and hardware developers, and more. Players access new game information and mature player communities through these very localized channels. Because they may come into contact with a certain game due to friends/neighbors/teachers/colleagues playing it.
Ronin is like an isolated island, firmly anchoring the user’s attention and money within the ecosystem. P2E never dies, it only grows in suitable soil. The cake of the sinking market is the elephant in the room. The true competitiveness behind Ronin is the localized distribution and operation capabilities of Sky Mavis.
Web3
Bankless: Reigniting the market? An overview of recent key events in the AI+Crypto track
The latest iPad Pro showcases OctaneX, a 3D design software supported by Render Network.
Dynamic TAO, as one of the most anticipated proposals in Bittensor’s history, brings fundamental changes to the network: empowering TAO holders, and opening the dynamic market of subnets.
NEAR adds “User Autonomous AI” to the next stage of the roadmap.
Weekly hotspots refresher
In the past week, Biden will attend the Bitcoin roundtable; the US CFTC is investigating Jump Crypto; in policy and macro market aspects, the US SEC requires Ripple to pay a $1.026 billion settlement fine, opposing its demand for a $10 million fine; the Australian Stock Exchange ASX will list the first Bitcoin spot ETF; the Governor of Oklahoma signed a bill exempting Bitcoin miners from sales tax on electricity; in terms of viewpoints and voices, a former Speaker of the US House of Representatives said that stablecoins could become one of the largest buyers of US government debt, helping the US avoid a debt crisis; Tether CEO: USDT is one of the top three buyers of US short-term Treasury bills globally; Circle CEO: Stablecoins will account for 10% of the global economic currency in the fastest in the next ten years; Glassnode: Market volatility is severe, but ordinary BTC investors are still profitable; Analysis: ETH exchange balance reaches an 8-year low, and the listing of spot ETFs may trigger a supply shock; Consensys: The SEC will end its investigation into Ethereum 2.0 and will not charge ETH sales as securities trading; 21 Shares co-founder: The lack of collateral will not affect the demand for the Ethereum spot ETF, liquidity management is crucial; Forbes: CZ’s current net worth is estimated to reach $61 billion, or holds 94 million BNB; 10x Research: Large amounts of unlocked altcoins are dragging down Bitcoin; ZKsync Chinese community: Matter Labs’ uncompromising principles will ruin ZKsync; Curve founder: Fully repaid $10 million CRV bad debt on the Curve lending platform, clarifying misinformation related to UwU Lend’s hacker attack and CRV token destruction; Farcaster co-founder: Warpcast’s client base are English users, with no international expansion plans; Tether CEO: The stable mechanism of aUSDT is different from USDT, requiring collateral of Tether Gold to be created; Arthur Hayes: The Dogecoin ETF will be approved before the end of this cycle, currently increasing positions in PENDLE and DOGE; speculation on the sale of US bonds by a Japanese bank has cryptocurrency poised for a new bull market; He Yi: Binance’s listing strategy doesn’t affect capital flow, many VC in the industry also struggle; in terms of institutions, large companies, and head projects, Tiger Securities launches virtual asset trading services for retail investors in Hong Kong; Paradigm open sources EVM compiler Revmc, aiming to improve EVM performance; Binance will launch an HODLer airdrop for BNB holders; Coinbase launches pre-market trading services; LayerZero announces token economic model, airdrop sparks controversy, users need to donate $0.1 per ZRO to receive; Ethena Labs and Symbiotic, LayerZero are trialing a universal re-staking framework; ZK Nation announces ZK airdrop open for application; in the meme field, the market value of the Trump-themed meme coin DJT briefly exceeded TRUMP; Arkham offers a $150,000 reward to find the creator of the Trump-themed coin DJT, which ZachXBT has completed the task; in terms of security, Kraken and CertiK have publicly confronted a series of serious security vulnerabilities on social media… another eventful week.
Link to the next issue of “Editor’s Choice of the Week” series. See you next time~
